Skylanders: Shrink Squad

Ch. 3 Reflection

Introduction
In 2022, I worked on Muzz' boss fight between 18 March and 2 May. He was my first attempt at making a 3D camera and a party system like in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity or the LEGO games. As you might anticipate after having read the last reflection, this did not go over well because I was still experiencing growing pains with Unity.

I used two different character bodies and cameras, which made programming the enemies a pain because I had to copy each enemy's pursuit code for each active body. The bright side is that I figured out how to stop the camera from moving without the player's input, which indirectly came in handy during the first, second, fourth, and fifth levels.

Jumping with the new physics system did not work properly with box colliders. I had to use a trigger just above the arena that determined when the player could jump. Later levels use a capsule collider that lets the player jump without micromanaging triggers.

I first handled the defeat system by teleporting the defeated character under the arena. This occasionally led to the characters clipping under it, which is why I had to tie each of their abilities to a universal Skylander body. Today, the game merely disables the ability and HUD notification to access a defeated character.

I got the enemy attack cooldown right by having their timer tick down at all times, but I could not get the melee enemies to stand still every time they began attacking. I fixed everything about them in the Chaos Kingdom after implementing the line of sight mechanic for the Jester, which serves as an additional flag for when they can chase after the Skylander body.

I was embarrassed at the mess I made with Muzz and how I failed to live up to my goals the first time around, so I did not submit it to Reddit in 2022. I am not as embarrassed this time because my increased self-esteem tells me it is fine to not always live up to the high standards I often set for myself. This level stars the anthropomorphic pepper Pepperjack, the skeletal sheriff Whiplash, the icy nomad Frost Bite, and a surprise character during Muzz' fight.

I revised Muzz and implemented Pepperjack and Whip's movesets between 27 and 30 May 2023. I then submitted the full level draft to Discord on 12 June, and finished the Skylander Academy preface on 23 June.

3D Camera
This was my very first attempt at making a 3D camera in preparation for the next level. It was initially controlled with the mouse, later being turned to its current control scheme with the arrow keys because our leader did not have a mouse. This helped me in the long run because I do not need to fight with my mouse just to make the Skylander body move where the camera is pointing.

Creating a Party
I first thought that building a party system would involve literally switching bodies, rather than simply toggling abilities at the push of Q, E, R, and T. I watched JTA Games' video on a simple swapping mechanism, and scoured Google for a solution that involved sending a message to each character that told them to either deactivate or activate.

The first tagging callouts were specifically made with Muzz' boss fight in mind. Pepperjack told the surprise character, Buzz, to ground Muzz, and the other way around had Buzz tell Pepperjack that the latter's time was now. They are now made without any specific context in mind, calling out the new character's casual name if possible.

Status Bars
When I was preparing myself for Muzz' rework between 20 and 21 May, I figured out how proper status bars work. My first attempt in the Garish Gorge used sliders to monitor Dream Weaver and Leaf Fall's health and toxicity. I had to micromanage each's maximum value and starting value, as well as manually turning the filler on. Each gauge frequently showed an inaccurate reading when a clicked button stayed on the screen, which led to me removing the rockfolk's interaction in the current draft.