The final week of our Beta development has now concluded with a full playable version of Klepto, featuring 5 levels to be unlocked and played through. The final week was a fairly slow week in terms of production as the majority of the team attended the New Zealand Game Development Conference. This conference took up the majority of our production time and as a result a large focus was placed on polishing up the final build of the game and each level within it.
The conference was a great learning experience for the team and provided great insight to different approaches which could be used for existing features within our game. For example, the cinematic shots which occur within the level select are currently hard coded and slightly "jittery". From the conference we learnt that this issue can be easily implemented using a new feature in Unity known as CineMachine which allows for easier and smoother camera transitions and set up than the current implementation. With this knowledge gained from NZGDC we now have the ability to further improve these current features in the near future.
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Production slowed this week as we polished what we had. The deadline for the beta phase coincided with NZGDC so our potential development hours were limited. Based on playtest feedback, I made final changes to my level and implemented the new Klepto checkpoints.
We did show our game off at the Auckland Game Developer Meetup. We had a booth where people could come up and play my grappling level or Dylan’s glider level. The feedback was both positive and helpful. It was great to see people getting excited about our game and taking photos! This week our art team has been working hard to bring out the character in Klepto. We have given him a new face rig which includes facial animations, continued working on the interior of the van and much more.
The last week of Beta has been interrupted by NZGDC. With most of our planned assets for Beta done, Corne worked on the important ingame UI elements which we have neglected for a little while since Vertical slice. The main elements we needed to address were the in-game icons to represent the medals for times, the icons for the secret token and the icon for the floppy drives that the player has to collect. The floppys that the player collects in the levels are meant to represent the data that he is collecting in his simulations in order to be a better thief. The speed running/ time trial gameplay mechanic became apparent to us after playtesters seemed to enjoy speed running through levels. We decided to capitalise on this and make it a feature of our levels. And to reward the player with Gold silver and bronze times. The secret token in each level is there to give players the impetus to explore and not rush through the level. Similar to the bread crumb style floppy drives that the player collects, the secret tokens unlock mini games back in the space van.
Week seven has been a massive week for Klepto’s art team. This week, we’ve managed to implement most of the art assets made so far, and we’ve also made a whole lot more. We’ve solidified Wild West World’s theming, as most levels now have proper lighting and colour grading set up. We’ve gone through each level and finalised the placement of most assets, excluding the van. The van will be finished off next week. New environmental objects and structures have been implemented, such as massive canyon rocks, water towers, cactuses, wagons, horses, etc. The world has really come to life, and the humour has found it's way back in through the art style.
This week a large focus has been placed on level design and building as the team started creating and finalising the final levels to be used within our first world of the game. Level four has now been completed and represents the first world in which the player is introduced to the glider mechanic within the game. The level is designed in a way which requires the player to first work their way up to the glider by climbing up the centre of large pipes with various challenges along the way. Once the player has reached the glider they are then able to soar high above the ground as they travel through a canyon before plunging into a cave near the end of the level. Because this is the first time the glider is introduced, much thought had to go into the placement of objects throughout the canyon to help the player get used to the controls as well as the concept wind gusts. Once the level had been completed some serious playtesting was conducted with participants who had never flow the glider before to stress test the difficulty of the level. Overall the feedback given was very positive with all participants saying that they thoroughly enjoyed the glider. Players were also happy with the control scheme and the way that the mechanic behaves in the way that you would expect a glider to behave (stalling at the top of arcs). The first level was also rated as a perfect introductory glider level for new players since its learning curve makes it fun and slightly challenging. One of the major problems found during the playtest was the fact that players did not always choose the path that was intended whilst flying through the level. To solve this problem, the path was defined more clearly using rocks and other props to give players the illusion that certain areas were not meant to be accessible.
Other than this the level select room has now also been fully furbished to represent the first worlds theme of the “Wild West”. By using the wild west props, the level select now gives the player a clear indication of which world they are currently in. After the playtest from last week, I had implemented numerous changes to my level design and the player mechanics to address problems that players identified. Some were minor tweaks and others were more significant changes to the level’s structure. Naturally, I was eager to conduct another play test and see whether these changes paid off.
6 detailed playtest responses were received. These responses consisted of observations I made while watching each player play through the level and answers to questions posed on an online survey that players completed after trying the game. The results were incredibly gratifying. The improvements to the grappling mechanic were immediately noticeable. During the last playtest, many deaths occurred due to the grapple being difficult to control. This time, however, there were significantly fewer grapple deaths save for a couple spots where the grapple points were placed slightly too far apart. People had fun with the grapple and that was fantastic to see! Additionally, the changes to the level layout made navigation easier for players. There were fewer places where death regularly occurred. Unfortunately, there were a couple awkward jumps still in the level which most of the play testers had some trouble with. I quickly corrected this after the playtest. This level was also the first time that people had played our game with the floppy disk and arcade token collectables in. Some players were determined to hunt down every last collectable, whereas others were content with getting the floppy disks that weren’t too far off their desired path. Regardless, everyone was interested in these collectables to some degree and this was amazing to see. I compiled the responses in a playtest report which summarised the actions we needed to take to refine our product. Most of these actions were carried out in the same week. The playtest report can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IRRqlrtSeWnJ87wIdoJjsrsnmjCR0BwP63HDbDW-P6w/edit?usp=sharing Playtesting has been an incredibly powerful tool for our game, especially in the last couple of weeks. It has shed light on issues in our game that we would never have noticed otherwise. |
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September 2017
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