Final moments in the Entropy project room before the nerf guns are packed up and the art wall is taken down.
PRODUCTION
This week was the last week of our project. Our final presentation was on Tuesday, and final playthroughs were on Thursday. The rest of the week was spent archiving and cleaning our project room. It has been an excellent semester and I think the team is really happy with what we’ve made and learned.
Jesse Schell plays our game during final playthroughs.
Introducing our girl character, by popular demand.
ART
New Start Screen
Touch up & polish
New particles
Some of the final art to go in the game included this Gay-Lussac launcher for a fun puzzle to complete the level.
DESIGN
As we’re wrapping up development on the game proper, I’ve stepped in to take on any end of semester tasks that others are too busy to do. This had made my primary responsibility the creation of our promo video. I also have some light design responsibilities that involve answering any key design questions that Kshitij or Akshay have and making sure that our final build is playable.
PROGRAMMING
Fixed crash on game reset. Was due to a soundmanager loading issue
Imported girl character and got animation controller working
Fixed issue with girl character’s rotation during abilities
Created character select screen
Got character select feature working correctly
iOS and necessary XCode updates for the new iPad
Imported new menu, credits, character select UI and BG screens
Implemented Gay-Lussac launcher
Imported sky/space BG for the last puzzle
Imported new UI assets
Got height badge system working
Changed particles to use the new meshes
Audio now starts from the main menu
SoundManager persists between scenes so audio doesn’t cut when loading
SoundManager preloads audio tracks now to prevent lagging when loading new BGM
SoundManager crossfades with customizable duration. This prevents the sound from stopping abruptly when switching tracks
Audio mute button functionality
Loading screen
What the game looks like now.
PRODUCTION
As we are approaching the end of the semester, my work this week included ensuring we had the finishing touches in place for our finals build. Some of our final game development tasks were simplifying platforming, adding sound, improving the look of the particles and including a female character. Additionally, Julian and I worked on the lesson plan in collaboration with Mr. Botzer from Trinity High School. I also put together the presentation for finals and made sure the team worked together on slides and practised in the RPIS. During festival on Wednesday, we welcomed a number of guests into our project room including one of our earliest champions for this project, Eric Keylor. I also started archiving, uploading our photos, videos and other material into Randon, so that Julian could work on the video. I have started looking into festivals and conferences where we can submit our project. Looking back on the semester, I’m happy with how far we’ve come and how much we’ve learned and am grateful to the team, our partners and the faculty for their support in making this such a great semester.
Collecting our insights on transformational game development throughout the semester to go in a final deliverable document.
ETC Faculty John Dessler and Director Drew Davidson play our game and give feedback at Softs.
ART
New Character
Art assets for Final Puzzle
New UI
DESIGN
I spent the majority of this week making changes to the game based on feedback we received at softs. The bulk of these changes involved changing the level geometry to make the platforming portion of the game much easier. Another major wrap up task is getting the final scene into the game. To this end I’ve met with Kshitij and Akshay to plan out the final scene and create a task list to complete it.
PROGRAMMING
Integrated Sound Manager
Imported audio assets
Created logic for final puzzle
Fixed collision bug with the first explodable container
Sound Manager plays random BG tracks one automatically but keeps track of played tracks. So songs do not repeat
Got UI particle container transfer working in the final puzzle for PC and iOS
Cleaned repository because we were having issues with version control in the main scene
PRODUCTION
We had Softs this week on Monday, which was tough, as although we received a lot of useful feedback, I feel that our product could have been further along. The team being separated during Thanksgiving and without a strict production structure it seemed that we were falling behind with much of our work. We had one playtest at Elizabeth Forward High School, where we observed reactions to the new collection system and additional puzzles. We also had a visit from Mr. Botzer and his students from Trinity High School, where we observed Mr. Botzer talking about the game with his students and took them on a tour of the building. Production, while slow, looks to ramp up with my renewed efforts at organisation to give the team motivation towards the finish line. We also need to think about end-of-term tasks like the finals presentation, archiving, postmortem, video and self-assessments.
We invited students from Trinity High School to the ETC for our final playtest, and Mr. Botzer conducted some great class discussions based on our game.Clearly, Mr. Botzer’s favourite part of the tour was trying out the cockpit that the first years are using with their virtual reality game for festival.
Bringing Seth Glickman on board for music composition and sound design. We’re so lucky to have him!
ART
Created the first cut for the Start Screen.
DESIGN
This week, I continued to build out the final puzzles and work with Akshay and Kshitij to get the final puzzle functionality in. I continued to iterate on puzzle usability based on feedback from playtests. As we move towards softs, I want to keep the puzzle layout flexible so that we can incorporate any faculty feedback with minimal effort and lost work.
Observing a science lab class at David E. Williams Middle School, thanks to Jason Ruscitto and Justin Aglio.
PROGRAMMING
Created application loader which manages scene transitions
Added pause functionality which works with the application loader
Created main menu, credits and pause screens
Integrated art assets for these screens
Cleaned up animation code for character’s abilities. Now the abilities cannot be spammed between animations
Checkpoints now spawn bursts of particles and change their texture when discovered
Got pressure electronic gates working
Better feedback for pressure – the dial changes color over a gradient to show the direction of pressure change
Implemented locking & unlocking animations for temp & pressure electric connectors
Created explodable objects. Using rigidbodies and explosive forces, we can rip objects apart such as the bridge in the opening scene
PRODUCTION
It was a slow production week due to Thanksgiving break. I think I need to be clearer about priorities with the team, and get back on track with Scrum and meetings. Nevertheless, this week the team worked on the build for Softs, and communicated with Seth about sound and background music. We had playtests and visits at David E. Williams Middle School and Montour High School, and were impressed by the facilities at Montour High School. I worked on the Transformational Game Development Document this week that outlined our insights on designing games for the classroom. There is a lot to be done before this is a complete product and I am worried given the little time left in the semester. It will be a challenge to reprioritise, set limits on development time and communicate clearly with the team what cannot be done.
Developing a plan for the upcoming weeks to Softs based on playtest feedback.
ART
Worked on new “Floating Molecules” collection art
Made an electronic temperature meter
Concept for electronic gates that open at specific temperatures.
DESIGN
This week was rather painful due to me being taken out of commission by two separate illnesses. We’re currently scrambling to finish the finishing touches on the game but I think we’re getting results as far as application in the classroom. The number of playtests that we’ve done so far has allowed us to zero in what the problem areas are and we are currently working to address them.
PROGRAMMING
Implemented new “falling zones”, which are areas where the camera follows the player more closely (such as during large drops and when the player moves upward quickly). This allows you to “look ahead” when moving fast through these zones
Added the explosive property, which allows containers to explode when their pressure exceeds maximum value
Added an explosion which can be customized for different size and duration
Implemented auto-save & load, which tracks the player’s current load zone and saves the corresponding checkpoint. When the game is started it loads the last checkpoint. This data can also be erased by restarting the level.
PRODUCTION
This felt like a slower, less organised week because Kshitij was out of town, but we did make some progress and learn some useful information. We had a playtest at Trinity High School and one for 25 Hubbard Middle School kids who were touring the ETC. That was the first time we tested in a roughly classroom setting, the Cluster. This showed us that students were very interested in the collection mechanic especially when it came to competition between classmates, and frequently grouped up in groups of 3 or 4 around a single player to discuss the puzzles. We also got some feedback from Dave Culyba on our temperature gates and gears, and on how to work towards a final deliverable. At Trinity, we gained insights from Mr Botzer on how to ask the assessment questions, and what teachers would need to bring our game into the classroom. We also brought a group of teachers from Montour to visit the ETC, and held a roundtable discussion with them about our game and how it relates to teaching. We will playtest at Montour School District at both the middle and high schools on Monday. Next week will be short due to Thanksgiving and we still have a lot to do especially with documentation and archiving before Softs on the following Monday. I’m anxious this will get overwhelming in the last week, and the team will have to work closely together to figure out our priorities.
Playtesting with students in a classroom-like setting is certainly a different experience. We found that students tended to form small groups and strategise how best to play the game. Students also enjoyed the collection mechanic and were very competitive with how many they had each collected.
Worked on the first pass for the electronic gates.
Was part of 4 playtests. Collected valuable feedback.
DESIGN
Looking back on this week I’m astonished with the number of important events that happened. Our four playtests spanned three different schools and many different demographics which has given us really solid data on how the game is performing on both engagement and learning. I’ve handed off the evaluation portion of this project to Cheryl-Jean in order to give myself more time to create puzzle content for the game. Our asset pipeline has me making all the puzzle assets which is fantastic because the designer should be making these decisions but it also means that I really have to step up and work extra to make sure our game has enough high quality content. This week and for the remainder of the project I will resolve myself to create lots of high quality puzzles. I refuse to let any outside distractions pull me away from this goal as has been the case in previous weeks. I can tell the team is a bit worried about the number of puzzles in the game and I absolutely won’t let them down. We’re very lucky to have a group of unusually dedicated 1st year project shadows who have submitted some really great puzzle ideas to us for incorporation into the game. I have already made a few puzzles based on a mechanic proposed by Eric vonFischer who is one of our shadows. As with every week, I am proud of this team’s morale and dedication to the project. Crunch time is looming; we stand ready.
Avonworth Middle School students playtest our game (in the hallway!).Mr. Haskins from Avonworth Middle School was kind enough to invite us to playtest with his class, and it was important for us to have teachers to play the game, not just students.
PROGRAMMING
Added 3D UI art assets into the game with their animations.
Implemented a UI switcher, which is an invisible button that lets you switch between multiple UI types on the device
Programmed color gradient change across the temperature gauge to make it pop more
Added checkpoint restart trigger boxes
Made crankshaft system generic so any object can be rotated or translated via the controller
Worked on making the particles look more like a gas. Tried out some secondary particle emitters, will pick one and add it to the game
Went to 3 playtests, collected feedback
PRODUCTION
Upon reflection, this has probably been one of our busiest and most productive weeks, despite the nasty cold bug that inflicted our whole project team. We had four playtests, one with EDGE girls aged 14-15, one at Avonworth Middle School, one at Elizabeth Forward High School, and our regular Trinity playtest on Friday. It was great to see a larger range in demographics due to the different schools, and we gained some interesting perspectives from the students as well as the teachers.
We continue development with a specific focus on feedback from playtests and faculty. This week, we approached Jesse Schell about some questions regarding the reward/collecting system and he gave us some great ideas about how we could tie the rewards and collecting items back to learning. I coined a system a couple of weeks back where we write down actionable items on stickies, group and arrange them by priority, as part of our sprint planning. This has been effective and well-received by the team, and having a visual representation of our tasks on the whiteboard cannot go amiss.
The biggest insight this week was into assessment. Mr Botzer of Trinity High School has been instrumental in iterating on our assessment for learning, and using his technique, we were able to get the students to discuss and describe the concepts of temperature, volume and pressure far more willingly and eloquently during our playtests. Mr Botzer is the perfect fit for this project. He’s a great asset to our team and I’m pleased with our partnership.
I am a little concerned about the amount of content we still need to get into the game (puzzles, UI,etc.) and while we could iterate forever, it is difficult to call the stops so that we can focus on other important parts of the game and assessment to complete them by the end of the semester. We will also start thinking about developing our lesson plan and collecting our insights into transformational game development over the next week. Scope remains one of the trickier parts of production for me, and I want to keep our plan realistic and not overwhelm the team with too many playtests or extra activities over the last stretch of our project.
Overall, I feel like our team’s momentum has increased, and having the whole team at our Friday playtests was a great motivator for continuing to work hard on this project to the end. I will be putting extra effort into taking care of my team over “crunch” time and thinking about priorities more during this time of the semester as we wrap up.
Updates on assessment for learning from Mr. Botzer.
Partner teacher Mr. Botzer plays our game at yet another 7AM Trinity High School playtest.
ART
Worked on mechanical 3d models (Crankshaft) & its animation
Made new meter system, which now rather than being a UI element are now attached to the system.
DESIGN
This week I continued to build puzzles and iterate on feedback from playtests.
We found that one of Entropy’s strengths is driving discussion and collaboration, especially when two students share one device.
PROGRAMMING
Added new “focus area” feature of camera waypoint system. Defines an area of focus for the puzzle that will always be rendered on the screen. If the player moves within the waypoint, the camera still pans but keeps the focus area drawn on screen.
Wrote a new custom particle system. The in-built system was costing a performance hit and couldn’t calculate collisions fast enough to keep all the particles within their container. Those problems were solved by writing custom particle collision & movement logic.
Optimization: Implemented zone-based loading and unloading. When the player enters a “load zone”, the gases in that zone are started up while gases in all the other inactive zones are stopped. This means the engine only has to calculate collisions for particles inside the active zone.
Implemented checkpoint system. Once a player enters a load zone, if they have to restart to the last checkpoint, it sends them back to the last checkpoint flag.
New floating joystick. The left thumbstick snaps to the finger position on the device, making it much easier to move the character without having to look for the thumbstick on the screen. Our playtests showed the new controls to be easier to use.
Tweaked character “weight” for movement and jumping. The character feels more solid and less twitchy now. His jump, movement speed and capsule colliders have all been adjusted after lots of trial and error. I think this has made platforming easier so players can concentrate on solving puzzles.
Particle slow-down/speed-up is more obvious
Added rewind button to work with the checkpoint system.
Implemented crystal collection ability
Implemented inventory system and crystal collection UI
PRODUCTION
This week, I felt quite overwhelmed with the number of things we wanted to accomplish and with planning for next week. I was also doing some academic work outside of the project that came to a head this week, which took up a lot of time and prevented me from getting as many project tasks done as I had hoped. Working on anything other than the project makes me feel stressed out and guilty, which, now as I am typing this, seems rather silly and is a probably a by-product of the project taking over my life. On the bright side, one of the positive things that came out of half a semester of production is that the team is embracing JIRA. I couldn’t be happier about this as it has made our tasks a lot clearer and a lot more visible to each other.
While working on many polish and iteration tasks, I wanted to focus this week on two playtests and showing the game to a handful of faculty to get feedback. One playtest was cancelled, but we did manage to show the game to Dave, Jesse, Ralph, John, Drew and Jess Trybus, who were all very helpful and had a lot of interesting and useful insights. We also playtested at Trinity High School on Friday, which was incredibly useful as this was our first playtest with a pre- and post-test. Mr Botzer gave us a lot of feedback and many suggestions for assessment for learning. We hope to iterate on assessment as part of our playtest. I am still in the process of typing out all the notes from these meetings and playtests, which I hope to have done by next week.
We also met with our first year project shadows this week, and spoke to them about the project process. Some of them have expressed interest in coming to playtests or helping with design tasks, which could be useful for the project as we are a small team.
Next week will be focused on more playtesting and reaching out to a wider test base as suggested as halves. We’re going to have four playtests, one specifically with girls, and two at different schools (Avonworth and Elizabeth Forward), to address concerns raised at halves and get a better idea of how the game is performing for other audiences.
The team is on board our JIRA board, which is a win for this producer.Mr. Botzer reviews and critiques our first attempt at assessment for learning.Mr. Botzer plays a key role in our iteration not only on the game, but on assessments for learning, and gives us lots of information on how teachers ask questions to draw out learning.Back at the ETC, we invited Ralph Vituccio to stop by our project room to play the current version of our game. At least Julian looks like he’s enjoying himself, perhaps at Ralph’s expense.
Worked on new character design. Texturing + Animation
Made & implemented new art assets for the level
Created feedback UI
Made feedback VFX
Prepared for the halves presentation
DESIGN
This week I worked with Akshay and Kshitij to integrate art and new puzzles into our halves build. I’m cautiously optimistic about our halves performance and am looking forward to hearing the faculty’s feedback. During the ETC playtest day, we got so much great feedback from the kids that came to play. The findings from this playtest are the thing informing the design for this coming week. I’m really excited to improve the game based on this feedback and playtest again! We are hoping to have two playtests at Trinity next week which makes me tired just thinking about but also excited to get more feedback.
Middle school kids enjoying our game at ETC Playtest Day.
PROGRAMMING
Imported new character model and got animations working for running and jumping
Changed heating and cooling effects to use particle systems instead of sprite sheets
Added the character ability animation
Added cave art assets, changed the level geometry to the new assets
Changed gas flow logic to use the new discrete system. Also, gas can now flow into empty containers and change color according to the container. This should open up some possibilities for some new puzzles
Added some constraints to the zoom functionality. Still need to add positional zoom
Added feedback for when a container is doing work
Got gameplay demo ready for presentation at halves
PRODUCTION
Majority of this week was spent preparing for our presentation. Despite being out of town, I was able to create and iterate on the slides without too much hassle, and found that my productivity actually increased being physically away. We still had Scrum over the phone and kept each other updated through the online group chat. On Thursday night and Friday morning, we rehearsed for halves with the new art and design in the most up-to-date build. I am happy with our halves presentation and aware that we still have a long way to go, so keeping everyone enthusiastic about the game will be important. I feel quite excited about the project, and energised to keep working on it. I am really grateful to my team for being such superstars, covering for me, keeping communication open, and working with me when I was away, making remote production go more smoothly than I had anticipated. They are the best! On Saturday, we had ETC Playtest Day with 12 groups of kids throughout the day, which presented us with lots of useful feedback. Straight after playtest day, we met as a team and defined some tasks for next week as we head into our iteration, playtesting, polish and assessment phase and main development comes to a close.
At ETC Playtest Day, we had generally positive reactions to the game, with lots of useful feedback for iterations post-halves.
Our second playtest, at Trinity High School, the start of a semester-long partnership.
ART
Worked on level art assets & UI elements
Collected valuable feedback from the second playtest at Trinity High School
DESIGN
This week I finished building a prototype level for use at our second playtest at Trinity High School. I also worked closely with Akshay and Kshitij to make a system for giving players feedback on the pressure, temperature, and volume values of the gas inside our cylinders. How well this feedback system conveyed these values to players was what we were testing for this past Friday. We found that 100% of users could correctly identify the temperature feedback, 33% could correctly identify the pressure feedback, and 0% of testers correctly identify the volume feedback. My focus this week will be to build out most of the puzzles that will appear in the final product and continue to work with Kshitij and Akshay on getting the feedback for thermal variables as clear as humanly possible. This feedback is key to this project’s success as the gas laws are in essence a description of how pressure, temperature, and volume are related to each other in gas systems. Thus, students need to be able to clearly see how these variables are related and to do that good feedback is required. On the teacher outreach front I’ve been visiting many schools and learning about how they teach and how they incorporate technology into their classrooms. My skills as an orator and background in advertising have served me very well in these meetings as I have gotten most of the teachers/administrators very excited about the project. What is really needed now is cultivate the relationships we’ve made with teachers who we aren’t partnering with so that they can assume and advisory role on this project. This will allow us to continually gain insights into pedagogy, how games are used in the classroom, and how educational software is bought in a school setting.
PROGRAMMING
Implemented a new camera waypoint system that allows Julian to create zones where the camera automatically zooms in and out to focus on puzzle sections.
Added functionality for the player to zoom in and out
Background size and different elements also scale with the camera
Re-programmed the core system to use discrete values rather than continuous values.
This required syncing the values of P, V or T based on the gas law being taught – Hopefully this symmetry will make the relationships between these quantities easier to understand for the player.
Re-programmed the UI to reflect these states of the system
Added a volume indicator which shows the volume level of the system
Changed jump button to a sprite
An early game screenshot, with initial UI.
PRODUCTION
This week on the production end we had the last of our teacher outreach meetings at Avonworth Middle School. It has been interesting getting to meet different educators and school administrators and definitely a learning experience trying to decide how to proceed with partnerships and at what level. Julian is doing a great job at these meetings, and I feel we are getting better the more we meet with teachers. On Friday we had our second playtest, held by Julian and Kshitij at Trinity High School. Mr. Botzer has been extremely supportive and a large part of the design and development process so far, so we hope to keep him on board. As for me, remote production for this next week will be a challenge, but our pipeline and production practices have certainly settled down since the first few weeks and I am confident in the team’s ability to adapt to changes in plans and other unforeseen circumstances. I’m especially proud of my team this week, because it feels like everyone continues to be enthusiastic about the project and working well together. I couldn’t ask for a better team and I am so grateful for their support. I know I can trust each person to step up and do great work, not only in their individual disciplines but also to help out where the team needs it the most.
One of many interesting meetings with project instructor Scott Stevens.
ART
Worked on Cinema 4D to get the desired Art style
Created UI elements for Feedback
Collected valuable feedback from the first playtest at Trinity High School
DESIGN
This week, we ventured out to Trinity High School to conduct the very first playtest of the game with students. We gained several important insights which we used to iterate on the puzzle design. We’ve also had a meeting with Montour Middle School where we secured another partner classroom with another possible meeting on the high school level. I grossly underestimated how much time the teacher outreach portion of this project would take. These two trips took up about a day and a half of my time. Because of this, my progress on building puzzles has been slowed. I feel a bit frustrated by this but I don’t think it’s anything a few all nighters in the coming week can’t fix. I’m currently in the process of building several puzzles that will be playtested for engagement and learning efficacy this coming Friday and Trinity. I have to keep an eye on evaluation for this Friday’s playtest. My current plan involves asking conceptual questions using diagrams that are based on puzzles they solved during gameplay. My morale is fair as I’m happy with what we’ve made so far but know what a long road we have ahead of us. I’m worried that the level design is taking longer than it should. I feel like I either need to work harder or smarter. I’m not sure which is more feasible yet.
PROGRAMMING
This week I focussed on getting the game ready for our playtest at Trinity school. I changed the controls to use a virtual joystick instead of the left/right buttons, which definitely made the game easier to play. I also added the cooling ability and got it working across the system, so that different components like gases, pistons, etc all respond to the decrease in temperature and pressure. This required a change in the way that pistons work, but I believe the new design is cleaner. I also implemented a new mechanic – “doors” that respond to temperature and pressure. In keeping the design consistent, every gas can be connected to “n” doors (as many as needed by Julian), and so I have continued to keep the system modular and expandable. This week I will be adding features to our existing tools to help Julian build out his levels, as well as tweaking things like camera zooming and controls to get our game feeling right.
PRODUCTION
Sprint planning this week had to be adjusted for our progress last week, so we were focusing on Charles’ Law Island for the second week in a row. Given our progress this week and our additional insights into the realities of playtesting and assessment in schools, I think we need to scope down to only make Charles’ Law Island. I hope the rest of the team is still feeling motivated to finish this and I will strive to keep everyone’s morale up. Julian had a great idea to start writing down things we are noticing about developing transformational games as we probably won’t remember them at the end of the semester, so we now have a giant sticky note for that purpose up in our room. We had our first playtest at Trinity High School and our first meeting with Montour Middle School this week, which were both eye-opening experiences. It is striking to me how different schools can have vastly contrasting attitudes towards technology in the classroom, and it will be an interesting challenge to see how our game fits in with different kinds of teachers and administrative staff. I continue to reach out to more schools and develop our relationships with them. This week, we will playtest again with Trinity, this time focusing on the puzzles. We will also have our first meeting with Avonworth Middle School. As we work towards halves, I am concerned that we did not get as much done as we had hoped, but confident that our product will have the key components we promised, even though we have to scope down.
