Welcome to our 7th devlog for our Game Wicked Warehouse!

This week our main focus was player feedback. We've previously had elements in place that were too barebones for players to properly understand the gameplay. With testing and feedback from others we've made quite some improvements that make our game a lot more playable. With a mixture of new art assets and coding in a place, we're finally able to get rid of some of the very old placeholder assets. Giving the entire game a much needed visual upgrade.

Coding
For coding this week, with some testing we ended up focusing mostly on adding more clear player feedback and tweaking some of our gameplay values to make it all really come together.  We added some clarity regarding the collection zones and a visual UI element to showcase what will eventually become our performance meter. We then also went ahead and made our screen in the back work with all the orders in our level. We also added our starting menu's to make sure we have a working gameplay loop from start to finish.  Overall some very nice progress was made and with all the added player feedback it's really starting to come together and feel fun!
Art

- Environment

The environment is improving now since assets are finally getting in place. We've focused mainly to get the big and medium assets in first before we take our time properly decorating it with smaller stuff, as we first wonder if our new layout will actually work better.
The biggest change that happened to the layout however is the shift in size. Earlier on in the project, we decided to go bigger and made the level deeper so there was more space to work with. However, after some playtests the big size just didn't feel completely right. We sized it down and that brought improvements:

=First of all, the diegetic UI elements in the back become way more readable
=Secondly, the time to walk from A to B is a lot shorter. Less walking, more delivering.

-Thirdly, what happens in the back becomes more clear. We still have to overhaul the conveyor belt assets but once they are in place zone 2, the most unreadable one due to the distance should become more readable with our expectations.

- Assets

For our assets, we've decided to go for 3 box types. After some readjustments, it came down to our classic cardboard one, a wooden one, and a metal one. We'll probably still do adjustments on the textures, but for now, the different colors and textures help differentiate one from another.

Besides that, we've cooked up some smaller assets. They are not yet in the scene as we first want to bring order in the big and medium shapes before set dressing the place.

We also added a monitor to make the order picker interesting. We made it look like a TV which really made it fit in the scene. We also added a performance meter which will release steam if the satisfaction is too low.  We also made some iterations for the clock which will be used later.

To spice up the surroundings a bit more, we finally got some storage racks in game. Feel more like a warehouse already!

Ontop of that, there's also a very expansive modular pipe kit in place now for those pipe dreams of getting out of this stressful job!