This week was busy for Alice’s Adventure as we were working to meet self-imposed deadlines and work towards softs presentation on Week 14. Up till now, we had only implemented the main window which shows the editor and the interaction box. That meant that all our playtests before had not featured the 5 step tutorial, which is a major design point of the project. We had arranged a playtest on Friday evening (Thank you once again, John Balash!) and we required the tutorial to be implemented by then, so that was what we concentrated on for most of the week.
By Friday evening, we had a final build ready to be taken to a community center at the previous home of the Johnston Public School.The build contained the tutorial for 4 steps, as we couldn’t make the navigation decision step in time for Friday evening. On arrival at the venue, there was an unforeseen problem because all the computers in use were Linux systems, and our program is made only for Windows & Mac OS. Luckily we had a few spare laptops, but the numbers of students still outnumbered the number of computers available. But we used this to our advantage as we paired up the kids on one system.
Earlier on in the week, we had met with ETC Faculty Member Jessica Hammer to give us some pointers on how best to conduct the playtest. She talked to us about clearing defining our playtest goals, and also mentioned pair-programming as a good strategy as it makes the users talk out loud their problems, which would really help us. And this showed, on the actual playtest day, just that it was in a manner not intended by us! The kids caught on to the tutorial and the editor modes pretty well, and once they were able to make an interaction successfully it was easier for them. The one thing that really wished were to have in the game was their favorite movie and cartoon characters, and also their favorite songs playing for the games. The team has previously talked about a work-around to intellectual property in our tool, but due to legal implications we’re leaving that part for the kids to add in. Other than that, we also found several bugs on the UI and Settings, and also several Interface changes that could improve the user experience. We have compiled and made a list of the same, which we will continue working on next week.
Our goals for next week are clear then. Monday and Tuesday are dedicated to softs presentation, where all the ETC faculty will visit our project rooms and grade us based on our product. After we get through that, a part of the team will concentrate on documentation and all the things required as part of the production grade, like the project trailer and the final website. That’s it for this week from Alice’s Adventure!