bett3rlat3thanev3r - Tumblr blog

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Assignment 3 Post-mortem

As Astroscpae development wraps up, I decided to reflect on the process of developing and designing this game. It started pretty awfully, as the team only met each other online the day before the first part of the assignment was due. While this should have been the sign telling us to catch up, I had to solo develop the first prototype for in-workshop testing. I attempted the AGILE style of team work. I tried dividing the work out to the other members so that the game could be tested by some of the other members in class, however, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was left to make the game’s prototype level, code the mechanics solo. 

To complete this I turned to the textbook for another read. In the AGILE team process, it is important to set goals for the project. This can include “gameplay goals, such as mechanics and levels, and technical goals” (Fullerton & Zimmerman, 2019). So I look to Part A of the assignment which had our MVP Description to list down what needed to be done before the first prototype was ready. This included:

- 1 Level that showcases core mechanics

- Player is able to move in a side scrolling manner, unaffected by gravity

- Player is able to fire bullets directionally based on the mouse position.

- A timer on the HUD that counts down, if it reaches 0 game over

- Collectable ores which are counted on the HUD

- Hostile Enemies that the player can shoot to destroy

- Speed powerups

With this list I used the second step in AGILE team process from Fullerton & Zimmerman’s book, prioritise. I chose which mechanics were required for a viable prototype and was able to reduce them by removing the timer and ores on the HUD. However, they would be the top priority for the next prototype. The first priority was the movement. Through experience from playing games and from reports on how other side scrollers were made, I figured the movement was the most important aspect to implement. So I got the concept designer to send me the assets the they made for their one page and one sheet. With this I was able to develop the movement of the game. I started with the adding the forces to the different directions. I started with D move the character right, but once I added the shooting mechanic I went back and changed it. 

I used a very similar shooting mechanic to the Asteroid-like game I developed, Gem-Miner. The player would constantly be angled towards the mouse, and the bullets position and angle would be based on that of the players. Later in development, I remembered playtesting another class members Asteroid game where there was a triple shot powerup. I asked them about it and they helped explain what they did to make it work for them in their game. From that information, I developed the triple shot gun in Astroscape. Which goes to show that its good to experience other games, no matter the quality, even for just some ideas or useful tips in developing mechanics. 

Since the development of the prototype was very touch and go, I’d probably want to change the work ethic of the team. While they did come together on the final day of the assignment. Their minimal effort throughout the development process of the prototype overall was very disappointing. I was pretty clear in communication with them about when things were due and what needed to get done. However, I could have done some scheduling in the form of a Gantt chart or another form of time management to help assist the team in working on the game evenly across the development. 

One thing I’d like to change about the prototype is sound. Currently the game has no sound or music which makes playing the game a bit dull despite how fun the mechanics are. Sound and Music and make or break a game, if we are able to get sound in, during this last hour of development, then I might come back and edit this.

If we do get sound and music in, I probably change the level visual variety. During some of the first talk about the project, we thought of having multiple types of environments to traverse. So if I could change one thing it would be that isn't sound/music, it would be colour palette changes between levels. 

Fullerton, T. F., & Zimmerman, E. Z. (2019). Game Design Workshop (4th ed.). CRC Press.

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Assignment 3 Playtesting Part 2

This week (week 12) we had the real playtesting session. 

Summary of what happened: One of my team members showed up, the other two still missing. We got 2 playtests done during the workshop time. 

The first playtest went a little rocky as it was the first time the game was tested by an user not on the team. At first we gave the participant a questionnaire about games they like/don’t like and gauged what kind of player they are. Then we moved onto the blind test. We gave the participant the game and asked them to play it as if they were playing our game alone, although we also asked the first participant to think out loud during the blind test. The tester was very easy to work with. I ran the playtest while my present team member took notes on what they were doing/saying. 

First tester’s thoughts on the game:

Movement: Unusual but very enjoyable when they got used to it

Shooting: Felt okay but would prefer the button to shoot be clicking instead of pressing the Spacebar

Art style: Nice to look at, sort of a retro aesthetic

Enemies/NPCs :  Hard to tell between what NPCs were enemies and what were allies

Ore-Mining: Hard to hit some of the ores in the walls.

Portal: Was hard to notice when teleported back to hub room of the tutorial, thought it was always there and they just didn’t notice it.

After the blind test, we ask the participant to play another playthrough if they wanted to, but they could ask questions about the game during the test. They raised some thoughts on a use for the ores rather than just collecting for the sole reason of collecting. They also asked about why they couldn’t kill some enemies when shooting them, which was explain that they we allies rather than enemies. After that was done, we asked them to complete a quick survey about their experience with Astroscape. 

In-between the first test and the second test of the workshop, we implemented some quick changes to make the games more user friendly. This was done with the addition of a timer on the HUD and a glow added to the enemies to make them more prominent on-screen. 

The second playtest went better, both my team member and I felt more comfortable testing and were more adjusted to the environment. Before the tester played the game, we asked them to do a thinking out loud activity to get them used to talking while thinking. After the activity we gave them the same questionnaire as the first playtester and asked them to fill it out to the best of their ability. After they filled it out, we gave them the game to blind test. They struggled a bit more with the movement but the got used to it mostly in the end. 

Second tester’s thoughts:

Movement: Interesting but a bit confusing

Shooting: Felt slow but balanced, would also prefer the shooting button on left click

Art style: Assets were good, suggested add a background to the levels to make it more visually appealing. 

Enemies/NPC: Easy to identify with the glow and the eyes combined

Ore-Mining: Hard to hit some of the ores

After their blind test, they were in a bit of a rush so they didn’t have time to participant in the second playthrough but I answered any questions they had before they left. They asked about the story of the game, which is barebones, but we told them that some mining robots have gone rogue and its your job to find out why. They also asked about if there was a purpose to mining the ores other than just collecting them. However, they did have enough time to fill out the post playtest survey so that was good for data collection.

After the playtest, I uploaded the updated version of the game to the file exchange so that if the other members decided to work on the game they could. 

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Assignment 3 Playtesting

This week was practise playtesting before the real playtest in week 12. I was able to scrape together a playable version of Astroscape practically solo. I tried to organise a meeting however, no group members showed up. So I took it upon myself to develop the game so that I could try to playtest if the members showed up to the workshop. 

Again, team members did not show up to the workshop. I’ve had discussion with the workshop coordinator about what I should do. I’m going to try ang get them on track so that I don’t end up developing the entirety of the game. Jack did send through the assets so that I could develop the game prototype.

However, I was able to make the workshop worthwhile by becoming a playtester for the other groups in the workshop. This was both beneficial to the other groups and myself. I was able to make mental note of any mistakes or things the other groups did well to improve the playtests that I will be conducting. 

I was able to play two games. One was an action adventure platformer that followed a ninja looking character. Their game has really nice visuals and music. The playtesting conductor was very easy to talk to and the playtesting materials provided were really good quality, however one question didn’t make sense to both me and the other group. So for my playtest, I’m going to make sure the questionnaire and survey only contain questions that references the game and are essential.  

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Assignment 3 Development Progress

Initially progress was less the progressing. Wednesday of this week (Week 10) was the first time our team had any contact. The next day the group came together and to decide on which group members game to develop. Personally, I didn’t suggest my idea because I’d rather not have issues explaining my idea to the other members of the group. Also, if I can flesh the idea out more and not turn it in as an assignment, I may be able to publish my assignment 2 game idea as a profitable game to put on Steam or somewhere else. However, I want to improve my skills as a game developer before attempting to make Life/Death.

As a group, we decided to do Jack Battams idea, Astroscape. It’s a side-scrolling asteroids like game about mining robots going rogue and the player’s goal is to destroy the rogue machines and escape alive. It sounds like it will be level based. I'm curious to see what we will do with the ores the player collects.

I was the only member to attend the workshop this week, I decided to start work on Part A of this assignment. As no one else in the group has stepped up, I delegated the workload of Part A across the other members of the group. Part A was turned in on time. I asked the other members of the group to review the roles that were assigned to them before I turned the document in, so that there won’t be any confusion and hopefully it will minimise difficulties.

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Car Go Boom Post Mortem

This week I did some playtesting outside of the workshop. I contacted a few friends from different background, one is going into an engineering degree and the other is doing English teaching in the Netherlands. Experiencing testing with non game devs was really educational. I was able to step back and see that some of the features I was thinking of altering didn't require as major of a change as I thought. The shooting for example. With the in workshop testing, a lot of the feedback was on how the shooting felt too overpowered as it was destroying the enemy cars in one shot. I created 2 different versions, one in which the enemies spawned faster and the other where enemies can survive 2 shots. The enemies would spawn every 0.5-2 seconds, the amount was still random. The out of workshop testers found the faster spawn preferable to the more health. This is the last game developing before the group assignment, in which I’m hoping to perform many playtests to ensure that the final version of what ever game it is, is the best it can be.

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Assignment 2 One Page/One Sheet

For the second assignment we are having to make pretty much like a pitch for a game to build for assignment 3. This means that I’m making both a poster and a sort of planning document. I’m thinking of doing a pitch for the platformer I planned earlier in the semester, Life/Death. I’ll have to do some mock up drawings of the player character it try and finalise the design.

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Car Go Boom Development

While with Gem Miner’s playtesting I used only fellow game devs to playtest, for Car Go Boom I’m going to get 2 outsiders to playtest along with 1 game dev. This is because when I read Chapter 1 of Game Design Workshop, by Tracey Fullerton, I thought of how I can be more of an advocate for the players of my game. Being a game developer, I was looking at games in a new lens, so I decided that for this game, I’d try testing with some non-game developers to get a different viewpoint on the games.

Developing the game’s basics was fairly easily, getting the cars to spawn and the game to have simulated movement down a road. However, I encountered an issue with the car’s guns. More so, the bullets not spawning where I was wanting them to spawn. Hopefully I can fix this before the first playtesting session, if not it will be the first thing to be fixed post playtesting. 

Another issue I ran into was adding in a countdown timer for the powerups. The timer itself was fairly easy to put in, however displaying the timer was not. Currently it just has a 30 to symbolise where the countdown should be. I’m thinking I need to set the timers value to a scene variable but that has its own issue the correspond with it.

(Still need to add more to this post, check back soon)

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Gem Miner Post Mortem

Playtesting went really well. Most of the testers seemed to enjoy the game, despite its flaws. However, a lot of the flaws that I saw in the game, the playtesters either didn’t see or didn’t mention in their documentation or in discussion with them. In the end I got to playtest with 3 different users, and got to try their games. 

Trying the other games was really good. I was able to see how others had interpreted the Asteroid like game into their own original games. 

The first game I played was a game about a mouse eating cheese. You had to navigate the around mouldy cheese to eat the “good” cheese and score points. It was quite fun to almost drift around the cheeses.

The second game was a space shooter like mine, but it was much more focused on the “arcadey” feel of the game. It had a variety of powerups from triple shot to a nuke that would clear all the asteroids on screen. 

The third game was a little less developed but the idea for the game was very clear. The game took the asteroid mechanics and made a tank vs tank game. Where instead of the enemies being blobs of damage, the enemies would shoot back at the player causing the player to either dodge or shoot first.

To be added:

Playtesting Reports

Discussion About the Feedback

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Gem Miner Development

During development of Gem Miner, it was decided to remove the gem pickup and instead go for a more roguelite approach with upgrades to help survivability and overall fun of the game. I’m going to the playtesting workshop to hopefully see if I can branch out my ideas for this game. Maybe gain inspiration of coding in different games in the future. 

Currently, the game has a few basic mechanics. The first of which is the different size asteroids. Big asteroids split into 2 medium size asteroids when destroyed and medium size asteroids split into 2 small asteroids. There are also different shapes of all sizes of asteroids with different textures to make the game more fun and easier to look at. 

The asteroids can be destroyed using the players instant mining laser, which pretty much works like a gun. The projectile will split the asteroid instantaneously. The projectile is currently always horizontal, but I’m hoping I’m able to find a solution either at the workshop or by doing some research online. 

So, to replace the gems that come out of the asteroids, a small upgrade kit pickup spawns in the centre of the map. Colliding with it causes the player to visit a new scene, the upgrades screen (seen below). Currently, none of the upgrades are coded to do anything, however, I’m going to try to have that fixed before the playtesting prototype. 

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Car Go Boom

A top down racing game with powerups, Car Go Boom, is an ironic take on the racing game genre. The player will have to navigate their car around both ongoing and incoming traffic, trying to reach the high score

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Gem Miner Pitch

Gem Miner is a top down shoot em up game where the player mines gems from asteroids in space. The player ill be able to shoot to mine the asteroids and then collect the gems. 

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

GDevelop Reflection 1

GDevelop seems pretty user friendly for users that are new to game design. However, after using Unity to develop games, the lack of coding makes designing specific features a bit more difficult. It feels like a more advanced version of Scratch. 

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

Life/Death

A 2D Platformer following a dog that has been imbued with the power of limbo. This allows it to change between the worlds of life and death. The two worlds are closely linked with some areas containing obstacles that can only be pass in one of the worlds. It will have a pixel art style.

[bett3rlat3thanev3r]

About Me

My name is Matthew Caunt. I started developing games in 2021 and have been playing them my entire life. I’m interested in seeing the developments in games and technology from a new angle. My favourite types of games are Metroidvania/Platformers and Rougelites. However I have experience with most genres of games.