Okay, 3, 2, 1, let's jam

I need to learn AI. 

I know a decent foundation, but what if I want an enemy to run away and look for cover? What if I want them to consider how to attack you?

So I'm taking a week out of my usual practice to make a crude hotline Miami game, having 0 art assets implemented, just purely focusing on the AI and behaviour trees. I want it done by Monday if I can, but I'll update my progress on it soon.

Research, 2

I've been mainly posting about my practice on this blog. In fact, in the first semester, I posted almost nothing on research, leaving my blog dead for a few months.

Well, here I am, blogging about my research, letting you know it's all underway.

For it, I need to interview peers within the industry already and get their take on what I believe is the foundation of my practice. I also now need to use my notes of lectures from the past few weeks and write 1000 words on how their practice helps to inform mine.

So this is a "I'll see you later", the deadline for this is April 7th, so until then

Testing, testing

Over the past week I was challenged by my tutor to get 20 people to playtest my project so far. The wager was a box of 20 nuggets.

I will not lose for a box of 20 nuggets on the line.

So what has changed in my project after getting 20 different people to play my game? Well, the level has been scrapped for now, and the tone has taken a very dramatic shift. I've implemented an abundance of tutorial prompts, also.

As the playtesting progressed, and more changes were added, a dramatic shift in feedback happened. It changed from the majority saying something along the lines of "I didn't quite understand how to use the spells" to "I want more spells!"

This, however, now presents a new issue. People want more things to do, and although none of the 10 spells are locked, I can't be dumping people who have never played the game with 10 different spells right in front of them to try out. For the sake of pacing, it's just not great. Maybe I should just lock all the spells from the start? But then would there be fun in playing about with different combinations to try and cast a new spell?

I think back to Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask. In those games, you had a magical Ocarina that can be played to access new areas, manipulate time and be a general fun thing to mess about with to get some nice tunes. When you played a song, though, if you hadn't learned the song already, nothing happened. I couldn't summon a horse, I couldn't make it daytime and I could open the Door of Time.

It never really phased, me, though. In subsequent playthroughs it gave me something to look forward to unlocking, something about the natural progression of the character. I also liked going out of my way to find songs that were completely optional, but helped make certain parts of the game easier, like the Sun's Song and the Redead's.

Let's see what happens.

Let there be less light please

So today I've been working on a new level; I want a serene night time setting, so a lot of thought will be going into the lighting.

One thing I thought would be nice is a particle spawning from certain points of the floor.

Oh boy.



So here's an untextured level with a particle effect. Notice how little lights float around just the character. Now notice how there's a million other lights dotted everywhere else.

Here's my issue.

The material is only visible when hanging around my character, but I've no idea how to tell the particle to put lights onto ONLY what's viable. I'm completely lost.

I'll carry on, but I'll probably have to pester a tutor for a solution.

Ready for the firing line

So I've managed to get a solid foundation of mechanics going, with a few still to add to, but I decided it was time to find out how crap my work is.

Short answer; Very.

When it comes to the mechanics, my playtesting has shown that they're solid in terms of the spells. They're horribly tutorialised, but aside from that, they work and are cool to execute. I've been asked to make more, and more spell combinations, and it's definitely something I want to do, although I'll probably strain myself coming up with them.

I've had a lot of whiplash about the level design. I designed a level I could complete easily, but not first timers. Thankfully a lot of time going into that level was just to make some art foundation, now I can focus on creating a new level that caters towards newer players.

I've also been given some ideas that I'll pick up and implement right away, mainly about tutorialising. As soon as most os the issues are addressed, I'll get it back to testing and find new ways to build!