ART
- Created a new System Meter.
- 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.
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.
