The Work This Week
Reflecting
Following halves presentation, the team members on Wednesday of week 9 had their individual conversation with faculty instructors to reflect on the process so far. Speaking from a production perspective, the team became more aware of the fact that despite setting plausible weekly plans, we didn’t really put much effort into thinking how the project should progress in the long term. The cost for that is the consistent change of plans and the consumption of team resources. In order to fix the problem, we talked in the team meeting about streamlining the production process (so there will be less back and forth) but putting more time talking about the goals in each phase so everyone is on the same page and can easily track their progress. We will keep watching our production in the following weeks as things are getting more serious after halves.
Planning
We spent some time reorganizing the tasks on the Trello board and prioritizing those that need be done before the usability/mechanics playtest. We preset some milestone game function according to the needs of each specific playtesting:
- For the usability playtesting, we wanted the playtesters to do certain tasks in the game that involves game economics, so we set the goal for next week mainly finishing all game systems that involve obtaining and spending resources.
- For the ETC playtesting, we wanted to focus on the “fun” factor and balance, so we will have all gameplay systems, onboarding sessions, and numbers checked by then.
- For the target audience playtesting (high school students), who are outside the ETC, we not only want to make sure all game systems are running smoothly, but the visuals and stories should also be (at least partly) polished.
Having set those stage-based goals, we were more clear about what’s next and in the future.
Design
Talking with our instructors, we also realized that we didn’t really “test” our game mechanics before putting programming resources into them. Admittedly we didn’t do much paper playtesting before digitally prototyping our ideas, which could bring the game to high stakes. We want to start evaluating our current mechanics and making sure they do work together delivering the fun for contestants, before making new design decisions. Andrew was working on the quest system (as planned) and the achievement list. Liangzheng was focusing on the mining mechanics, and they have also finished the dialogue on planet Kiryl (three planets remaining).
Game
This week we also had some big updates on both the programming and art side. Muzi has not only implemented the achievement system, but also successfully fabricated some prefabs (confirmation box, progress bar, inv) which would definitely facilitate future programming. Aiden has implemented the mining system on uninhabited planets, though the designers are still confirming all the numbers. JD has implemented the trashbin function and been working with Evelyn on 3D assets.
Client Meeting
We showcased our latest game in the regular zoom client meeting on Friday. The overall feedback was positive, and Megan also pointed out a salient point that we should implement the tutorial/onboarding session as soon as possible. Our client also seemed very interested in our concept art for inhabitants, which was really heartening to us. On the tech side, we asked how we could use our client’s server for playtesting, and the answer was: we probably will need to create several playtesting accounts beforehand, as that process could be tedious and unnecessary. The client’s server is working well and will update as we push the latest build onto GitHub.
The Plan for Next Week
Next week, as discussed above, we will be working hard towards a running build by the end of the week so we can start smaller-scaled usability testing.
