Letting them loose on it....

So yesterday, we had our first proper playtest session where the other teams got to play our games and we got to play theirs..... Eeeek.

This is a good thing as you can become blind to your own game when you are working on it and other people will see the flaws and bugs.

We set the game up so that the players got to see to key parts of the game.  The stasis section and an example actual level.

The feedback was good to get overall even though not all positive.  There are a few of main points which stuck out for me, apart from the obvious bugs we knew about, like the ladders not working.  The main point was that the game itself is too dark, as in lighting and not subject... The stasis scene is meant to be like this with the ECG light going passed to show your way.  A suggestion though was to have some kind of light around the player so he can actually see and use the ECG to see where you may want to travel too.  I like this idea.  In the main levels though, I had to agree, it was just too dark.  There definitely needs to be more ambient lighting around to show the scene itself, otherwise you just completely in the dark and keep dying.  Quite frustrating....

It was also mentioned that, because we are doing a platform game, we really need to make the character controller movement and play-ability a lot more slick.  This and the key mechanic of dying in the dark really need to be focused on and less on coming up with new design ideas for the levels.  I kind of agree as we haven't even got the basic right yet and I'm still being asked if things are possible in programming to achieve a new design idea that has been thought of.  We have been advised to lose the temporary character model and go back to just a block, as the model is distracting and nothing like the model we are hoping to have.  We have also been advised to create a new level with perhaps just one or two puzzles in that we can develop to a polished state for the vertical slice presentation.

We have a lot to think about and I hope Max can get these points across to the other guys who couldn't make the session last night.

Hmmm..... lets sort this out guys :)

Things are looking up...

So we have finally got to have a week off after our last pre-production hand in and time for a bit or R&R and what a week it's been.

I have managed to get myself a new job in the meantime.  A proper full time job back in Manchester which starts in June.  My new job is a senior developer for a huge opticians company.  The great thing about the job is that it will be coding in C# which is going to mean that I can can concentrate on my C# coding skills all the time now which is going to help the game coding no end.  There is also a fantastic opportunity to start game coding for them to as they want to introduce little games on there website which they are keen for me to start doing so it's defo a win-win-win situation for me.  It also means because it is back in Manchester that I should be less tired and have more to to concentrate on our game to :)

Before we left for the week we had a meeting to come up with the new product backlog for the production stage of the game and hopefully we shall be able to get the product pipeline running a lot smoother and not be waiting for work from other team members to be able to carry on with our own bits of work.

I'm really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things next week.

Hehehe :)

Now we get serious...

So we have got to another milestone in our project..... The end of pre-production...

The presentation has gone better than the first nightmare one.. but more of that later.

There was definitely a mad crunch period for this milestone even though the team has got a lot better at communicating and we have been doing mini update meetings every lesson and on Friday.  It still meant that the final weekend before the presentation we all we going like the clappers to get stuff done.  The technical document I put together to a lot longer than expected but got all the stuff in there.

We have has to scrap some of the design ideas due to the complexity of them and also learnt a few things on the way regarding the whole pipeline of stuff like getting the 3D model of the level done and sized correctly in 3DS before passing to Unity as it get a messy if you make alterations there.  Got to remember it's all a big learning curve anyway.  Better to makes these mistakes now than later on in the production phase.

So the presentation went well I thought.  The cost of the printing was ridonkulous.... £59 I'll have u know.  There was a bit of mix up with the girl in the printers saying it was cheaper to print in black and white, us telling her which ones to print in B&W, then her just ignoring all that and doing full colour everything... but anyway... There are not really any major documents to hand for the production phase so no more unexpected payments required....!!!  Anyway, we got them all in on time this time, which was a bonus :-)  

The other teams games were at a stage where they asked the audience for a volunteer to play test the game but I knew that ours had bugs in and it wasn't at that stage.  Also, as we were showing it we realised, the level(s) were huge and it would have taken an absolute age for someone new to it to get through it.  This isn't bad for the actual game, but for demo purposes... defo on the large side.

We'd fallen a bit behind on the art side so our game was very greyscale compared to the other teams... But no worries, we have now put Max in charge as the team leader and we are going to prioritise tasks better this time to make sure the important stuff gets done first... This obviously applies to the programming too.

So at this stage, we have just had our first production planning meeting and created our new product backlog....  When we next get together it's full steam ahead.....!!!!!

Onwards and upwards :-)