CAGD 377

Sprint 6

     For this sprint I have been getting me and the team focused on completing bug fixes, ui screens and random level generation so the game can be played for as long as the player wants too. This would also help with in game points to be used to unlock more levels and see just how far the players can make it with increasing difficulty as the levels go higher. Cameron was the one to actually start implementing this into scripts to have levels randomly generated as well as use the new physical materials I created for bouncing effects off of surfaces. I also worked on creating a stop material for some game objects to use though this was an easy thing to create inside of unity.

I did recreate the title menu with a new character and to make it look more like the characters inside the game though I will probably change it again and just make it what the character actually looks like in 3D render. I will just need to reopen the PSD and add the image since some people thought it was inconsistent since they did not look similar. Talking about characters I also created a character selection screen for players to choose a different color for Chester and allow for a bit more customization for the players to get themselves involved in the game. This did take me some time to figure out and once I got it I was able to also get it to remember the character you choose when you leave the game so when you return you do not have to go back and re-change the character. This is did leave me with some extra work having to change the colors of Chester but since substance painter is something I use often it was an easy change of the color palette, though I would have liked to add a feature to be able to change the color of him or his hat to any color on the scale I just do not know how to yet.

For other things that I worked on I had to create the form for our play testers and needed to get some feedback from family members and random people to get more play test results since we did not have as many as I would have liked to see. However what we did learn is that our game is extremely hard and needs to be tuned down and easier to score. This has to do with two things at least from what I see and what players' feedback has been that the number system does not help them understand how far they are hitting and second is how far Chester can spawn with being too far out of reach or the puff not registering that it was scored. These mostly have to do with fine tuning just how far a player can really flick the puff and where the character can spawn and lower that to something that is almost too easy to hit and the further the level the further he can get. This might fix our problem as well as help with the random generation of levels to make the game harder the further the player goes.

Overall me and my team are looking to finish this game on time and with enough content to have players playing for hours if they love it that much.  For this last sprint we will just be cleaning up the last bit of code, level generation and marketing the game and getting it ready for launch in these coming weeks.  Though this game has come a long way I do feel that it some spots we could have worked better and gotten more done but we did what we could have created a game that we are all happy to put our names on and release to the public to give us real feedback.

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Sprint 4-5

    During these last two sprints we have had 2 play test dates that we were able to get our game out to people and let them play it on their own devices and get feedback from those players. For the first play test we learned a lot about what players want to see differently in the game and what made the game somewhat hard to beat.  We first started off by changing the character and making sure that the mouth was the only part of the body the cheese puff would count as a goal. We also had a bug where the goal would show up multiple times if the puff touched the goal more than once, as well as the ball not having enough power to throw.

     I tried to focus on fixing the problems that we had and just adding a few quality of life fixes like restart button, pause menu, a timer countdown, and a power level indicator to show how hard the players were throwing.  This however, did come with a few challenges like making the timer add time to it with every goal that was made as well as add a score streak to show how many times you hit the goal constantly.  It also allowed for us to add more cheese puff models depending on the score multiplier the players were at.

     However, after our second play test we learned that the things we added still needed a few fine tuning like the power meter didn't give the players an idea what they were hitting out of so they would like to see a change in that, as well as more obstacles inside the game.  So during this time we have been trying to create balances for the game and make sure players can truly make the goal without having to restart multiple times which was a large issue for our players. During this time we have been making sure no matter where the goal is the player has an equal chance to make the goal instead of the 40% chance it is right now.

     There were some things that did not get finished during this time that were adding level transitions between picking levels and ending the game, also would like to have had a win screen but as of right now there is no winning just losing so I need to change that. For what players wanted to see was adding an arrow that shows what direction the ball will be thrown or a shadow trail so you know at least where the ball is going or if you were close to the goal. So what most of the players wanted was to make it easier to get to the goal or at least know what the players needed to know to do differently. These changes should be in our next build and allow players a bit more playability and different objects inside the game.

     Overall, I think the game is coming out fine just a bit slow at times with getting the team to want to work on this project but one has been hit with a storm and lost most of his power and work.  Me and my other teammate have been trying to cover for his work with the coming up play test that we will be having and need to make sure that we have something different for players to enjoy and test to get more feedback and change what we need to.  I do wish to get some more work done with the coming of the end of the semester and hope that this game will have a few levels, change of characters and a few random quality of life game fixes.

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Sprint 1-3

      For these first 3 sprints me and my team have been able to coordinate a paper prototype and take that into a digital concept and finally bring it into Unity and allow for players to test for our first mobile release. Our game that we are creating is Cheese Puff Pass and it’s a single-player, single-touch casual game designed to win gamers over through charming visuals, cute characters, and personality-filled level design. Players will use their fingers to attempt to flick a cheese puff into the mouth of an adorable and hungry creature named Chester, starting simple and then gradually progressing to more creative trick shots and challenges as the game advances.

    During this time we had a few ups and downs with getting the game working on Unity's application Unity remote and having Unity hub work correctly for all of the team.  Once we started with the project on unity we had some collaboration issues with different versions of Unity which caused saves to the game to not update for other players. However once we got that settled and restarted a new project it fixed the issues.

     With me as being lead I've been keeping track of trello work, updating folders and making sure everything was ready for the first release.  A few different tasks that I did through these sprints was creating a character monster for our ring, creating cheese puff models, bringing assets from other group members into the game, creating menus and fine tuning touch inputs before the play-test happened.  However, during these sprints I have made 2 different character models and textures with each one getting better and with new feedback from players I think I have a better understanding of where it needs to go from here. 

Cameron Schiff video

     After having the play-test results and learning a lot from what our players had to say. This is the most important thing you can get from players whether it's good or bad makes no difference because the way I see it, this gives me an insight to what they want to see and look forward to playing if simple changes are made to the game. They wanted us mostly to fix some of the bugs in our game with holding down your finger to launch the puff and having too many goals show up on the screen if you make more than one shot.  Although, this did lead to another problem with how many puffs can be shot at once which we now know needs to be limited to not allow for multiple copies of the goal.

     As of what I am working on now for that game is fixing errors in multiple spawns of puffs and goals. I also will be working on transferring my teammates levels and adding code and prefabs so the levels will be playable for our next release in a few weeks.  Although I will be focusing on coding this sprint to help my team’s programmer, he has done a great job with the base mechanics and fine tuning is key when we are working with a mobile game with touch screen movement.  We will also be implementing a score system and strength bar to determine how far the puff can go and how many you need to move onto the next level.

     Moving forward with the continuing sprints we want to focus almost solely on the game's mechanics and difficulty by adding more obstacles, enemies and even some trick shots to bounce off of walls.  Now that we know what our players want this makes creating the game towards that style will get more people interested into the game. That is what we really want to do is to make a game that allows players to pass the time and enjoy a simple game of Cheese Puff Pass.