On Monday of Week 7, the team held a meeting highlighting the importance of the upcoming halves and the various features as well as the assets remaining before the team feature locks the game at halves. The team used post-its to add pending features, UI, assets as well as other polishing and optimization tasks to the list and sorted it in terms of priority and importance. For example, changing the grid from hexagonal to the square was of the highest priority for the programmers due to the city design being suited for a square grid and not hexagonal grids while features like customization and the in-game store were placed lower. The team also discussed the pros and cons of changing the game from a hexagonal grid to a square grid. The team also discussed the various features which worked and did not work for the most recent playtest on Friday.
On Tuesday, the team did research and bought the required art assets for the game on the Asset Store based on the character tastes of the children. The team also met with Mike Christel and Dave Culyba to get feedback as well as advice on a secondary transformation goal so that the game can have a significant impact on the children’s life. The team took the faculty’s advice into consideration while development especially Mike’s Computational Logic which would help the team understand the W’ s and how the children play their games as well as our game when alone and without supervision. The designers started designing the first iterations of the levels and playtested with various players and categorized each level on a scale of “Easy”, “Medium” and “Hard” on the basis of how the playtests went and how many possible paths lead to victory.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the designers continued designing levels for the game, while the programmers developed the second stage of the AI as well as city generating scripts based on the assets bought on Tuesday. They also got the Rampage mode feature working properly with the team also meeting to get all the aspects of Rampage mode straight and being on the same page. The producers also worked on the halves presentation deck and got feedback on it from Mike and Dave. The designers updated the design documents with the various changes and additions made in terms of features.
On Friday, the team continued integrating art assets into the game with the designers churning out levels and categorizing them based on difficulty. The programmers polished the Rampage mode feature and also added a third state of the AI which made the AI smarter. The second half of the day was getting feedback from Jessica Trybus who came to playtest our game and gave us useful advice on how to approach this game post-halves. Jessica Trybus also highlighted the importance of locking down on an art style so that the art asset integration would not take further time. The team also noted inconsistencies, problems and bugs during the playtest which would be rectified next week.
