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A large portion of Crescendo Encore’s time this week has been spent on preparing for the first external playtest which is going to happen real soon. We have been implementing visual feedback for hitting without any note coming, for missing a note, and for a good and/or a perfect hit. Other than regular notes, we also have two other types of notes–joint note and tremolo–designed and implemented for our playtest.

We adjusted the non-melody instruments’ volume to be slightly higher so that their players can be more likely to notice their instruments’ sound and follow it more easily. We found out this is crucial for players to actually feel they are playing music out of the instruments even though in the real orchestra world the story would be different. For the hardware, after receiving the half size violin we purchased recently, Crescendo Encore has all the four instruments casings in hand now. The team decided to build a more user friendly hardware interaction for the Timpani in the playtest, so we pushed back building French Horn but encased the drum kit (Timpani’s essential part). Besides minor decorations that we will put on it, the Timpani is final.

Last but not the least, Crescendo Encore has finished a sketch of the master design document which includes high level concept explanation, game rules, interaction, scoring system and etc. It’s a comprehensive documentation about our game and it will be updated constantly through out the course of the semester.