So this week our team had our final sprint which consisted of one last stand up meeting to discuss what we’ve been doing since the Skype meeting on Sunday night. We all figured that this week will mostly involve a lot of polishing up of our game.
We also had a few playtesters come in to play our game so we could get more feedback about our game and this only lasted the first session on Wednesday because our game had quite a few bugs to fix. From the feedback we’ve been given via a questionnaire they had to fill out, the common trend that they have said is that the tutorial needed more improvement. The tutorial was definitely there, they thought/felt that it was too long and boring for them to go through and eventually they would skip it because they wanted to actually get to the game which I can understand completely. I would be quite impatient too if I went through a very long tutorial and simply just skip it all mainly because I have an attention span of a goldfish and would forget what I’ve read which I would imagine the playtesters would be thinking as well. Our team has been fixing this problem and hopefully it will be up to par once our game has been playtested again next week where the final milestone is due.
In regards to working on our game, I’ve mainly just been playtesting it to sought out bugs (they do occur constantly which is really annoying) and helping out balancing out variables along with other members of our team. But other than that, I was also working on the other unit I take up at College since I had something due during this week and it needed more attention so I worked on that till the due date. I then went back to our Studio 2 game but more so with my own individual task of writing my Exegesis. I have two sets of documents for this, one consists of the dot points/ideas that I could potentially include in it, the other will be my actually Exegesis with a cover page and all just to simply prevent clutter. So far I’m already nearing the 1000 word mark and I haven’t even finished talking about the first topic to which I have contributed to the project which is the Level Design. I plan to discuss the 3D Modelling and Development of Souls as the second topic. Luckily from emailing my facilitator about the maximum word count, they have said that there is none and that I can write as much as I need to. I should mention that before I started writing up my actual Exegesis, I requested the facilitators some sample exegeses just so I could get an idea how one would write it up as well as formatting it, etc. From the 2 samples that I’ve been given, both of them took different approaches to writing an exegesis. Obviously I won’t copy what they have written because the way/style I’ll be writing it will be very self-reflective (kind of similar to how I write my blogs but this time it will be more formal with sources to back up what I’ve been talking about). I’ll give a bit of what I have written so far. I’ve been reading an article regarding Level Design Principles (Deliberate Practices) and I found it very interesting. I realise that I have somewhat followed the method this person has written out on the article but mostly subconsciously and not in that particular order.
The main aspect that stuck out to me are the six key principles of deliberate practices:
- It is designed to improved performance
- It is repeated a lot
- Feedback on results are continuously available
- It is highly demanding mentally
- It is hard
- It requires good goals. (Galuzin, 2013)
If I have read this article earlier on in the trimester then it would have made the process of level design for me to be even more efficient. I had my own methods of engaging in level design. This mainly consisted of: paper designing the layout then converting that digitally using a blueprint application online, floor planner I believe it’s called so to make the diagram I once drew more legible and once that’s been done I then implement that onto a game engine, Unity in this case as a greybox then eventually replace the level greybox with 3D assets and texturing. But after reflecting on this article it would have taken too much precious time. But at the same time this process of deliberate principles will be a very tedious (yet rewarding) process because it is very demanding and involves a lot of repetition, I wished I could’ve seen this method been implemented by my own hand earlier but such is life. This is something I’ll definitely be taking into account during the trimester break where I’ll be sharpening my skills as a game designer.
Here’s to one more week of working on this game, writing my Exegesis and other work that I have to do.
Let’s do this thing!
DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome).
Reference:
Galuzin, A. (Dec 3, 2013). Deliberate Practice for Level Designers and Game Environment Artist. Retrieved from: http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/level_design_tutorials/deliberate-practice-for-level-designers-game-environment-artist.php
Bloggity of my inner thoughts. 