Thanksgiving Break Playtesting

So at the end of Thanksgiving Break, I gave the game to my Roommates to play with. Despite their initial distaste with the concept when I presented it to them before, they had fun playing with the simple concept.

The general consensus among the three of them was it was pretty fun, though they thought it could get a little polish since you couldn't see the number of torches that the player had left and the jumping took a little getting used to, lining them up with the majority of our play testers before.

Overall, the experience went well and they had fun with it. Feedback was pretty much the same, which means we don't have a large amount to fix. We are just about done with Leap of Faith.

Rundown of the Playtests

So, our game has had two play-tests now. I managed to get the menu systems implemented completely before the second one so that we at least have the menus. Outside of that, I'm just waiting on our artist to get the various art assets to me so I can put them in. So onto the play-tests.

The first play-test was interesting because of an issue that we had with the light masking of the platforms in that the platforms were pretty much visible from any distance, making the original aim of the game moot. Our torches also never went away, and because there was infinite of them for testing purposes, they also shot any difficulty in the foot. The last encountered issue was a matter of our falling platforms generating at the bottom of the screen and giving no opportunity to actually get off of them before "dying". We managed to fix all of these issues to some extent before the second play-test.

We changed the light masking so that it doesn't show the platforms until they are actually touching it and toned down the brightness slightly. The torches actually go away after just a few seconds. The background has been implemented finally and everything seems to be working.

The general consensus for the second play-test has been positive for most aspects. The only issue that we have had was the light masking was good, although still too bright for most people. The other was adding some UI elements like the number of torches the player has left and a score system. Overall, not much that we really have to do and I think we will have a finished game by the end of all this.

Sprint 3 - Time for UI

So, with the start of the third sprint, I finally have the code that our project owner wants me to use for the UI. It isn't really anything special, but it appears to be at least solid enough for the time being. My current job is just to get the various states working for the game, which include an options screen and a game over screen. I will probably implement something close to the mock-ups I made for the first sprint in regards to both. I'm also going to have to change the code slightly so that it actually has a background to display since it doesn't currently have anything for it period.

Something that really wasn't part of my job was I changed around the code so that the game actually does exit upon hitting the escape key. I only did it because it was kinda bugging me that it hadn't been done yet.

It seems we are drawing close to the end and I'm unsure of us actually getting all of our goals completed and I'm not entirely sure what happened along the way that makes me feel this way. Oh well, onwards towards the 4th sprint I suppose.

Second Sprint for Leap of Faith Update

I really don't know what to say for this sprint as I still haven't gotten the chance to do anything. I started looking into either using the old menu system I had used in the GSD3 game I worked on, but my friend suggested I also look into using a Finite State Machine. While I was looking into this, our Project Owner came up and asked if I would like to use the Menu system that he had made for the game beforehand, and I could just re-skin the UI so it fit our project. I wanted to get a look at the system to see how it looked before doing anything. This was on Tuesday of last week. I have still yet to see this code. I'm not sure I'm going to before the presentation on Thursday either.

First Sprint: Leap of Faith User Interface

So the group work begins and I am the head of the UI section....which consists of me. Work is split rather thin for this project. Hopefully it will get better as we continue through the game. Either way, I don't have anything to implement a screen system on, and I would rather add that to an existing system rather than trying to work the other way. I did that once before for my GSD3 class and that was many nights spent bug fixing. Without any actual programming work to do, I got to make some mock-ups of what the screens would look like.

I really like the lantern personally

This is our Options screen. The idea I've been working with is that our PC, I shall call him Lucius (or Lucy if female, I'm not picky), is that he is carrying a lantern around which generates the light for him to jump around to. I fully admit I'm not an artist, but I like the aesthetic that I managed to make.

The lantern is tipped over, alone

This would be the game over screen. It was pointed out that the player will always "fail" the game. I find it more inspiring if we don't just point out that it's impossible, regardless of the player knowing or not.

The Start Screen, in media res

The title screen basically shows off what the player does in the game. There really much variety wise with the game outside of just straight playing it, as befitting the scope the game is trying to fill.

There is a pause screen as well, but it is basically a transparency over the game screen itself. I also had to make a power up that refills the lantern, but it's just a can of oil.

Will-o-Wisp

I honestly don't know if this will be used, and even if it matches what we are working with. That said, I didn't have much work to do and I liked the idea of the floating light ball helping the player. We don't have an overwhelming amount of work to do so we may have this in game after all.

Leap of Faith Update

Well, with the start of the second sprint coming up, I may actually get to do some work this time. My job on the team has been UI design and implementation, but up until now, there hasn't really been a framework to work with. Considering the rest of the game, I don't think the UI is going to be very complicated. This is due in large to the lack of needing a HUD of any sort since it would be a little intrusive to the experience.

This leaves me with just having the different screens to implement which will basically just be 4 objects which get cycled through in an array. One for Title, one for the game loop, one for pausing, and one for the Options screen. I had to do the exact same work for my GSD3 project back in freshmen year. Honestly, this entire project has felt rather slow. I haven't had any real work to do, but hopefully that will change now.

This does leave me wondering what the programming core is going to do. It is unlikely that they won't finish polishing the "engine" during this sprint, but what will they do after? All I know is that after week 10, I don't really know what any of us will be working on.

P.S. I'm sorry for the lack of updates on Leap of Faith, but I don't generally have much to report.

First Experiences

Well, this feels kinda weird to do. Never really had a blog before for anything other than class. I guess that hasn't changed, but I feel like I might end up using this one far more than anything I did on tumblr. Might have to do with all the stuff I had to do just to do this post.

IRC is a little odd to me. I understand what it is and why it is still an important resource. I guess I just don't get why it is still be used as opposed to something a little more...current? That is just me though. Either way, I had to set up IRC on my laptop and set up an account. My name on IRC is the same as it is on here (got lucky both times!).

Technically starting this blog was the second step, but I couldn't add anything to it until I was finished with everything else. So that leaves the Github exercises. First I had to get an account on Github (again with Pharas!) and then fork the repository for my class so I could add my own personal yaml file to it. I had never heard of a yaml file before this, but Notepad++ had a language setting for it, so I'm happy.

Overall, I think this will be the start of something pretty fun. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day