Playtesting: Round 1!

This past week was our first official round of playtesting! The results are in, our game is...

"...too scary to keep playing!"

At least that is what one of our primary critics told us. It was then followed up with a swift, "...more of a fan of the brightly colored, puzzle like games...", and, "...don't make fun of me!"

Our main focus for this week's playtesting was to try and get some environment variables set in stone.

The majority of our play testers were male, with only four females participating out of the thirteen total testers. The general consensus is that we need to have either text pop-ups or a quick "tutorial level" before throwing the player into the game, with most playtesters responding that there was not enough initial direction for them to know how to move forward. Testers also desired a darker environment, as the current settings made it too easy to see in the dark.

With the Creature AI still being in development, the testers made sure it was known that it was way too easy to avoid and escape the Creature.

The L.E.G. light orb mechanics drew a divide amongst the testers, with the results of being nearly a perfect 50/50 split.

The complete results can be found here.

New Group Policies

Due to last weeks chaotic submission process and deadlines not being met, we have come up with the new policies below.

New Submission Policy: We now have a Deliverables spreadsheet on Google Drive, which can be found here. Each week, your deliverables should correlate with the Gantt chart (also on Google Drive). Send your assets to whoever is listed in the "Submit To" column, by the date and time in the "Submit Time" column. The receiver should then provide feedback to the submitter, and let them know if revisions need to be made. After the asset is deemed finished, the receiver needs to sign off on the spreadsheet, and graded on a scale from 1-5, (1 is bad, 3 is average, 5 is great). This grade will not affect your Diefenbucks unless the quality is a 1 or 2.

Deadlines: All art assets should be sent to Dylan by Tuesday morning. If they're not in, you'll receive a 30% reduction in your Diefenbucks for that week. If they're still not in 24 hours later (Wednesday morning), you'll receive no Diefenbucks for that week. Note: If people abuse the 30% reduction, we'll up it to 50%.

Diefenbucks Distribution: The Diefenbucks we receive each week will be distributed evenly among the group, provided there were no penalties for an individual. If there are penalties, the Diefenbucks they forfeited will be evenly distributed to the other members of the group. For example: we have 8 members in our group. In one week, we earn 8/10 bucks. If every person does their work without any deadline penalties, each person receives 1 buck. However, if Evan was late on his submissions within 24 hours, he will receive 0.7 bucks and the rest of the group will get 1.04.  If he's 24 hours or more late, he will receive no bucks, and everyone else will receive 1.14 bucks.

Playtesting v1.0

In preparation for the upcoming weeks of playtesting, an initial playtest survey has been created and can be found here:

The Unseen Playtesting Survey

This survey focuses mostly on environmental variables and general mechanics, so that we can determine the best setting for each variable. Later surveys will focus more on actual gameplay.

This week, each member will be taking the survey themselves, as well as giving the survey to at least one other person.

Progress On Environment Modeling -- Week 04

This is the first version of a energy room model I made. And it's also the first room model I made for games. I say it's looking not bad.

We decided to make each trunk of the environment by 10s. This room is made out of a 30 by 30 box. I cut all 4 corners to make it a 8-sided room.

The benefit is pretty obvious, I can make things and duplicate them by 90 or 45 degrade angles.

Just heard from Dylan that the pipes are too high poly, I guest it's time to smooth things up!

Oct 17 Class Meeting

Today Cory presented our Week 4 scrum presentation which can be found here.

Our presentation overall was good, and we got a few tips on how to improve it. I took some notes.

• Compare what we said we'd do vs what we accomplished (relate it to the previous week)
• How successful were we, self reflection
• Art
• Show concept art vs prev week vs current
• Art asset checklist overview (show overview, table)
• Gun concept as player would see (player perspective)
• World assets need to fit the theme better
• Programming
• Basic ideas of scripts that were made that week, what they're based on
• "For Next Week" section
• Organize by category
• Programming, art, audio,
• As a whole section

We also had some discussions about our game and debugging menu.What we have so far is a great start, but we need some debug options for the enemy, including speed. For our debug version, we should also show the player's HP.

Lastly, we also really need to hash out our monster, and what makes it scary. It's possible we'll have to do some redesigning of it if players don't find it scary.

Next week we'll have our first playtesters play through our prototype level and give us basic feedback.

Creature Modelling Progress

This is the progress towards the creature model so far, Some issues that have been encountered include the polycount with which I was a bit to liberal, and the potential need for the model to be encompassed within an upright capsule in order to function correctly within once of the navigation softwares. Oh, and it doesn't have a head yet, but that is the most straightforward of these issues. All things considered, I'm glad that this work was but in early to allow for these revisions and considerations.

Progress on Environment _ Week03

As I'm doing modular environment design, I find the more I try to make something continuous, the harder for me to model.

Making the transaction piece

2 way done

3 way done