Ryan Crim_PPJs_wk11
Ryan Crim, Week 11 Journal
Having had a break for Thanksgiving, there was a total of two weeks to work for this journal. In addition, we are nearing the end of the term, so the main objectives were to fix any important issues/bugs and to generally clean up how the game looks.
One known issue with the previous build was that when the collected boxes were loaded for the end-game product dropper, they would all be the default green box. This was due to all of the different boxes actually the same box prefab with a different texture, so when they were loaded for the dropper they would only have the default texture. Therefore, I created different prefabs for each of the boxes so they would load correctly for the dropper. In addition, Ricardo had created a properly UV’ed box, so now all of the textures wrap correctly. (1.00 hr)
Next, I worked on the most mentioned issues in our playtest data, which were that the raised arm placement put the hand too high to collect some products as well as some products being difficult to interact with in general. Fixing the arm was simple enough by just rotating the raised position a bit down. As for the products, I ended up replacing the hockey stick with a football (made by Ricardo) since it would be much easier to interact with, and I increased the size/decreased the colliders of several products, including the popsicles, cricket bats and lollipops. Other issues fixed in terms of products were removing the extra collider on the pictures that prevented them from going into the cart, making sure all of the products were in the Resources folder to fix checkout bug, fixing the special product system as it was not allowing them to properly be picked up, and repricing all of the products in terms of the product itself and their difficulty to retrieve. (3.00 hrs)
Another issue has been the effectiveness of the vacuums and the lack of visual and audio feedback of their use. Therefore, I modified the vacuums to move products higher above the cart before the force is applied to them to allow more products to actually enter the cart instead of being caught on the side and falling out. In terms of the feedback, I added a suction sound to play when the vacuums are being used and a script to modify the size of the vacuum while active to give a basic animation for it. (1.25 hrs)
The last gameplay modification I made consisted of adding a large trigger beneath the level to reset the cart to the start position, since, while rare, there are still situations where it seems like the player could accidentally break out of the level. (0.50 hr)
In terms of aesthetics, I added the textures to the arms and updated all of the UI in the game. As shown in Figure 1, I added Jinghan’s button icons, which fit more with the game than my placeholders. Next, as shown in Figure 2, I updated the in-game UI to a classic gameshow look for the scoreboard and timer, as well as changed the font and increased the size of the countdown. Lastly, as shown in Figure 3, I revamped the colors of the panels, fixed the spacing of all of the font, and added a ticker to the bottom of the screen to give information about the creators and other items that went into the game. Furthermore, I moved the camera for the product drop further back to give a better angle of all of the products collected. (3.25 hrs)
Figure 1. Updated Start Screen (with buttons pressed)
Figure 2. Updated In-Game UI
Figure 3. Updated End Screen
Also, having had a copywrited, placeholder song in the game for multiple weeks, I spent time updating the music for the game. This included searching for and implementing the music flow for the game from the start screen to in-game and finally to the end screen. All of the music in the game is royalty-free from incompetech.com, and they are all credited in the ticker on the end screen. (3.50 hrs)
The last thing that I did this week was to help out with the sell presentation. Using the information populated in it from previous weeks, I condensed it down, added relevant gifs and reworked the design to more accurately go with the theme of our game. (2.00 hrs)
Positives:
Fixed multiple minor issues with product collection and products in general
Updated aesthetics of the game, including vacuum movement and UI
Found usable music/sounds that fits our theme and works with the game
Cleaned up the sell presentation slides
Got play testers to provide feedback
Negatives:
Had to settle for creating workaround fix for breaking out of map issue, ideally would rework thickness of walls/floors to prevent it from happening at all
Total Hours for the week: 14.50 hrs
