This week was an off week as far as meetings go. Due to a really bad snow storm our Wednesday meeting was canceled. Then our Sunday meeting was rescheduled to Monday because of the super bowl so I will not include that in this post and wait to put that in the next post. We still met during our class times though.
I was pretty absorbed in my work during these class times though so I don't have too much information about what others have done. I'll do my best to inform you though. The video below is the new run through that is was created after this weeks work.
This week we did get written feedback from our professor about our green light presentation. Part of this critique were some general questions that I felt like I could explain here about our game.
- Professor Comment: Although explained in class, I want to know how you plan to deal with the problem of a 300 year old ship drifting in space
The ship has a few different bots that live on it. Some you fight (3 types) and some you don't the caretaker bots. These care taker bots have been there repairing the ship as it got damaged. They have been repairing the ship with the resources on it. In this case they have gold. So as you play through the game you will see patchworks of gold along different parts of the ship. We will be putting up different decals of these repairs throughout the ship. They will become more plentiful as you make it towards the end.
- Professor Comment: If the robots were caretakers, how do caretakers evolve into agents of death?
Again these are two different bots. There is one with the task of defending the gold. Those are the ones that attack you. The others are tasked with ensuring that the ship works correctly. These ones are the ones that will be making repairs to the ship and putting gold patches on the walls.
- Professor Comment: How does a salvage gun with a push beam actually salvage anything?
Our player is a salvager who finds the ship. He is wondering why his salvage tool is able to push the bots away from you. The reasoning behind this is that when working in a 0G environment it is useful to have a tool that can push and move objects around without actually pushing the user back as well.
- Professor Comment: Neon green and yellow textures? These are for testing, right?
Yes. These are place holder.
- Professor Comment about level 1: Will the green mesh holding the crate... wait... what IS the green mesh holding the crate? How does a structure like that function as a crane?
I thought I would share this because I thought it was a good example of how outside feedback is really useful. I played through that level and saw many people play through it as well. He is the first person to actually say something about this. I am not sure what the level designer's plan was for that part of the level. I have always just known to shoot that beam and it will solve the puzzle. Having people who are not as close to the project go through and think about the different aspects of your game is very important for flow and making sure everything makes sense and fits. Sometimes if you are constantly working on different parts you can miss pretty obvious questions like that. Look for this part in the video and you'll see what he is talking about. It is in the room where you walk down the stairs to a giant pit and you need to shoot this to move on.
- Professor Comment about level 1: I like the distracto-grenades. I also like blowing up the bots. Is there a penalty to that? I presume that the energy for my weapon will be toned down later?
When testing the game it is useful to have things like the length of the grenade longer so you can see how it acts easier. It is easier to see what the bots will do around it if we have it last longer. It also allows us to see what bugs it might bring about. In the video below right before the end there will be a bot that doesn’t seem to move and it just sits there. This is a bug from the grenade logic. Because there is an active grenade it won’t target you. But at the same time, since the grenade is too far away it won’t move towards it either. The grenade will have its own timer and will only be able to be shot about once a minute or so and the grenade will last between 10 and 30 seconds. (At least that is what we are thinking now before it has been tested.)
- Professor Comment about level 1: How much platformer do you want in this game?
- Professor Comment about level 3: Why is that fire there?
Because you just broke some stuff earlier in the level. There will be more in the final design.
Here is the link to the video from this week. You can see the changes that have been made over the week from this.
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