This sprint was interesting, we had lots to wrap up, clean up, and cut.
Firstly we got to discussing what there was to cut, and there was a lot. We made sure no work went to waste while also allowing time for our game to be feature complete for our beta deadline. This all went smoothly thankfully.
By cutting lots of features we were able to focus on polishing, art, and sound, which is exactly what I was hoping for at the beginning of the semester. While we didn't have as many features as I would have liked, this is fine, and realistically, if we continued to add features, this would make our game much worse. As a lead I am becoming very understanding on scope, bug fixing, polish, and the exponential amount of work added to each new feature. Essentially, you are adding more and more work per feature depending on how much there already is in the game. I understand our sandbox requires a lot of balance, and so each new thing has the potential to tip all the scales. We took this into consideration, and removed our ideas for fire, water, and scoring.
Our playtest results were good, however our second electronic prototype could have been better. Our main problem was that our game didn't introduce or use the new tool, the railgun, well enough. This meant that we didn't receive much helpful data on this. The railgun wasn't entirely functional and I should have been more involved with building this tool as the designer. While I made levels to function with it, it simply wasn't playable for unexperienced players. This is something I foresaw and unfortunately didn't fix.
Players however did really like the new additions to our game, such as the art and explosive props. They even mentioned the destruction physics changing for different materials, which was great, as that's a huge mechanic for our game and its good to hear that this transferred over well to our players.
This sprint I spent a lot of time polishing levels, fixing our railgun, as well as building some tutorial functions for the railgun. I also added some new art and fixed some confusing features such as the goober's material change when they die.
This goober is an example of a small polish that was necessary for this game, where dead goobers turned black and blue, which was almost scary, instead of just communicating to the player that a goober was dead.
By looking above you can see how multiple tasks are required to properly polish and prepare a game for shipping, which is exactly what I have been mainly focusing on. This level now has a control prompt for switching tools, showing the player not only how to switch tools, but signifying the player can now use the railgun. This railgun is also much more fun to use, as the projectiles are more controllable. They resemble less of a railgun, and more of a timed charge. Bullets stick to a surface, explode, and break whatever is in their short range. This allows players to break stone. I taught the player this by surrounding the goober by a new material, metal, which cannot be moved, broken, or picked up. This means the only way to beat this level is by using the railgun. While we were taught how to do this early on, it took many different tasks to complete this.
This is largely what we are all doing now, with adding sound, art, and polishing levels. Our scope is set in now, so we know the total amount of levels, which is 15. We are happy to announce this as now we can see a finish line, and all we need to do is pack in as much polishing and bug fixing possible before the end of this class. I plan to work on this game over break to complete the art as well as make sure each levels is fun and properly teaches the player how to play.
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