Hello, Joel here! Welcome back to the programming side of things! This week we are talking about all the polishing aspects and bug fixes that come with programming a game, more specifically Toyland Tales. 

Throughout this process, I have been the only programmer for our game.  So, for any bugs that came up, I had to change code if necessary or move things around because it only affected my work. We kept all of our initial features in the game but along the way, we had to add in a lot of small new features that we realized would further enhance our game. So far, we have had 3 playtests with other classmates and a few guest playtesters from the industry, as well as other friends and family. Everyone gave us a lot of great feedback, so we decided to keep some of the more doable options and implement it into our game. 

Some of the enhancements we polished were with our dust bunny enemies; we added more knockback, and visual and auditory feedback along with it. Instead of the player just hitting the bunnies a couple of times and then disappearing, we decided it would be best if they would get pushed back, wobble some, fall to the ground, and then disappear with a VFX of dust particles, as well as now make sounds. 

We also decided to add more visual help to our players to help guide them, like adding a UI visual of how to build our robot in the end. As the player goes around collecting robot pieces, there is now an inventory checklist that helps show the player what they have collected. In addition to changes we made with the collection of our robot pieces, we decided to create blocking paths for the player to not continue on if they have not collected a piece, this forces the player to make a choice and a collection before being allowed to continue playing the game. 

Lastly, we decided to add a double jump feature to our game to assist some of the players who aren't used to platforming games. Right now it is just always on but we are working on a way to allow the player to toggle it on or off so it doesn't make the game too easy for players who enjoy more of a challenge but it is also available to be enjoyed by those who aren't as used to these kind of games. 

Thank you for reading my update so far and look forward to sharing our final product with you!