Nearing the End

        We are coming to the end of the development for our game. So far I am very happy how it has come out. Many of the fixes we are currently adding to our game are visual ones. Once big addition was the inclusion of bump mapping. This is not being done in real time, but through baking the textures in Maya. This helps the game look more realistic as well as visually appealing. This also took design choices as some of the baking caused the textures to go dark. Some adjustments had to be made in order to keep the player from getting lost in the darkness. 

        As for the difficulty of the game, I feel we have hit a good balance, as I had my younger sister play the game and she was able to get to the last level without guidance (she mostly plays games such as Angry Birds and Bejeweled, so she is not an experienced gamer). A few last fixes includes added more of a spectacle to the victory screen, to help visually reward the player. Some arrows were also added in some levels to further convey the proper path. We are also ironing out any glitches that show their heads, such as one that caused the timer to keep counting down after the goal was reached. I am very confident that the game will be ready for the Level Up event on Monday, I hope people will enjoy playing the game as much as I have crafting it.          

Playtesting Helps

With the Lightbox event coming up soon, we are trying to get our game polished as fast as we can. Luckily, we are currently at the playtesting stage and are trying to tweak the game so that it is as good as it can be. Some of the suggestions we had received hand to do with navigation, feedback and sound. There still seemed to be some parts of the levels that did not convey to the player where to go next. Some arrows were added to help guide the player though these parts. After a player finishes a level, the victory theme plays and the next level loads immediately. A suggestion we got was to congratulate the player more, to make them feel then just accomplished something. Currently, we have created a screen that will fade in that will not only congratulate the player, but will compare their time to the times of other players. 

        Lastly, we were given more suggestions about the sound of the game. Currently our games does have sound effects, but not that many of them. Currently, it is very difficult to find sounds as many online sources require money for their sound effects. Hopefully we will be able to find more sound effect and add them into the game to help the levels feel more alive. So are cracking noises have been added to the teeter totter and the AI’s give off a creepy computer sound when you get close to them. With about a week to go we will not be able to fix all the problems with our game, but we should be able to get it very close to fully complete.   

This now makes noise when you roll on it. 

            

Helping the Player

       For this week, we had met with our professors to get their option on our game. Besides a few suggestions with shaders, one of the biggest issues they found was that our game did not guide / teach the player enough. At times they felt lost and did not know where to go when navigating the levels. Some of their suggestions were to add a kind of arrow prompt that would tell the player where to go next. We felt this was helping the play too much as it would take away a large portion of the challenge. Instead we are going to use small cut-scene at key points to help show the player where to go. 

      We are also going to raise the height of the camera so the player gets more of a view of the level. This means they will be able to see obstacles ahead and make navigation easier. We will also add a few arrows in the geometry and textures to guide the player, but not be too explicit. Lastly we will create a type of tutorial level that will teach the player the basics in a controlled environment. We felt that the first level might a bit difficult for new players to get use to the game, so the tutorial level will ease them into it so they are conformable and gain confidence to get though the levels.      

An example of small arrows to show the player the way to go.

Paper Prototype

For this week I will explain how my group went about converting our game into a paper prototype. Unfortunately for us, our game was not the easiest one to try and convert into paper. Since it was physics based, we found in challenging to translate that mechanic into paper form. At first we were going to have some kind of formula for the player to figure out how many spaces they have moved based on the speed. This method was much too complicated for the paper prototype. Fortunately, I feel we have found a perfect mechanic for the paper game, that captures the physics based mechanic. For the game board, we drew an outline of a type of level that would be in our game. We include some hazards such as sharp curves, crushers, exploding rocks and moving platforms. The track was then divided up into different sections, placing each section into its own zone. This is similar to how we divided up the computer games levels for the respawning. Each section has its own attributes associated with it. The attributes will explain what the player needs to roll in order to get past that part of the level. The player can choose “fast”, “medium”, or “slow”. If it is a curved piece, the attributes might be “fast = 4”, “medium = 2” and “slow = 1”. This means if the player wished to pass that part going fast, they must roll a 4 or higher. Failing to do so, means they must restart that section over again. 

Furthermore, for every roll the player makes they gain “time tiles”. They get three if they roll slow, two if they roll medium and one if they roll fast. This will incline the player to risk going fast, hoping that they do not fail as they will have to gain more time tiles. The player who gets to the end of the track with the least amount of time titles wins. I feel this accurately reflects the strategy of the real game as player can risk going fast, meaning they might require multiple attempts, or go slow, but waste a lot of time. 

Respawning Breakdown

For this blog post I will explain the process of deciding where and how to include the different spawn points throughout the levels in our game. As you have previously read, the player is able to respawn as soon as they fall off the track. They are spawned at a certain point further back to where they had fallen off. When deciding where to place these points, I try to mentally divide the level into different sections. For example, in the cave level, the long bumpy part of the track in one section, the teeter totter would be another section and the rock with the buttons is also a separate section. This means that if the player dies on the teeter totter, they are respawned at the beginning of the teeter totter. This separates the level into smaller chunks for players to tackle. When choosing the actually place for the player to respawn, I must also take certain precautions. I am sure to choose a spot that is safe and sturdy, such as in the middle of a flat service. This is to ensure that the player does not immediately die after respawning, that they have a chance to take in their surroundings. Places that would be an inappropriate choice would be on top of the teeter totter, right in front of a cliff etc. If a player were to spawn in those places, they would not have enough time to react. I also try to choose a place that the player has past by before. This prevents them from getting disoriented of where they had spawned. Usually the spot will be a on the path they took in order to get to that part of the section. This will help them recognize where they are and continue on their way.   

                                                Bad place to spawn.