This week we got good feedback from our play-testing session, and spent this week going through the issues and missing parts of the game – pushing boxes, puzzle progression, lighting, enemy’s and animations.
We spent this Monday playing through the classes games and set up our game Aswell for other to play. I had fun playing everyones game that I got to, and they’re progressing very well. We got around eight responses from our feedback google doc and we were able to review what people had to say.
Most people had trouble with the pushing mechanic, or the order of how the puzzle should be completed. We will try our best to fix the push to something more suitable, stabilise the boxes, and organise the puzzle direction.
Players were content with the player movement apart from the pushing mechanic, and climbing up the ladder. This week we will adjust the ladders and again look over the push.
The bugs and glitches people experienced were more of the same mentioned above, like the arms, and the boxes. Players also experienced a glitch in going down the slide where you can’t move after it, the pressure plates broke for someone, and players fell out of the world.
Players have rated the game mostly a 4, some a 3 and some 2. We understand as a group the game is at an overall 3 for experience, however we hope it will become a better game once we go through these problems and fix them.
Players wrote down what they would like to see next week. They would like to see hopefully a couple more puzzles to play, some more art assets, better lighting structure and brighter light on the torch. Also, optimisation on the pushing mechanic, and more assets around the game. We hope to see much more assets soon, I will be working on more art assets and the game students will help build the puzzles.
Last of all people have overall enjoyed exploring our game which is great. We see some more feedback that will help us out. One player would like to see AI being implemented more around the area, and have more actions instead of just patrolling. A player also suggested to add more direction in the maze room, and apply a message to areas already discovered so you wouldn’t get lost in the maze. This all sounds good and we will try our best to work on these ideas.
I opened the project this week to add some of the last textures to the game that had been missing – the balcony and stairs for the toy store, and the metal walls for the vents. I took some screenshots of how the game looks so far with my textures/models added in.
First I looked around while playing the game. The rooms look more lively now with the different style of floors/walls, and the spooky decals around the area.
When I played the game at this time the blocks had their own physics so they had fallen from the shelves and scattered about. This has already been fixed just by turning off the physics in most of the models.
The play area room that leads to all the activities looks well too. The light still requires to be built by this time however we are still waiting on some more models before we do so. James’ ceiling lights work well around the game too.
Patrick helped to bring in two models I made as I didn’t have the chance beforehand. The wooden blocks are displayed on the shelves of the store, and my Toy Topia sign is up by the entrance, and also upstairs displaying the toy of the year.
Lastly I added the cyan texture for the arch and balcony for upstairs. It looks much better now in terms of visuals in the game. At this point I will keep helping to texture other models, and add more art assets.
After our feedback I got a few art asset ideas to make. First I wanted to design a label for each room so people know where they’re walking into. I wanted to design it the way Exit signs are made to add to the idea that you are escaping from the evil in the toy store.
Reference:
I have designed each room with a certain colour and a toy that we have created. First I did the ball pit room with our crocodile peaking out with some ball pit balls.
Next I did the Maze room, where the jack in the box points towards the tunnels to go through.
Next was the puzzle room – I drew the bear walking on the mats, avoiding the red mat.
Then I made the toy store sign. This has the porcelain doll on it carrying toys to bring back to the store.
Last, I did the staff only sign, using the Harrington font that’s used throughout the game. This will be in places such as the storage room, the warehouse, the collectors room and basement doors.
After this was done, we figured that the Maze puzzle in our game was quite tricky to navigate around, as what players said too during the play-testing. I decided to make some direction arrows to place around the maze so it would be easier to get around. It would also be good to include a sign that pops up if you have already explored a certain way in the maze so you aren’t in there for too long, however is not a big priority at the minute.
I made two versions of a red, blue and green sign that points in a direction labelled ‘this way’ or ‘that way’. This will benefit the navigation around the maze and help people get across it quicker so they can try out the other puzzles in the game in a reasonable time.
Daniel requested some art assets for designing the doors of the game. He gave me some starting ideas and I helped design the concepts he needed. First, I designed some colour splodges made for the play area door. I used this reference to think about the shape of the splodges.
Here I drew 5 different colours of colour splodges in different variations for Daniel to choose from. I made use of the same colour palette that I used for the wooden blocks.
He also requested some bathroom signs for the bathroom doors. This would help just for detail to the environment. I made three different versions for the three stalls in the bathroom.
For this Monday we have to present our last presentation to the rest of the class. We will be presenting the state of our game so far, what each teammate is working on and what we have left to do.