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.