Amenti – 5

This week I’ve mostly been working on feedback and also a lot on making our mechanics work in the Main Level. The Main Level is the scene where all final things are implemented. When working on new things that will be implemented we work in our own levels that are just copies of the orginal one since new mechanics/assets often needs iteration and when that is done we’re allowed to implement those in the main level.

So what happened this week and the week before is that the graphical artists have implemented a whole bunch of new assets into the main level which has messed up some of the mechanics causing them to not function as usual. Since we had our Beta-playtesting this week it was one of the top priorities to get main level to work properly, and that’s what I did.

So as I said I’ve been working on some feedback and it has been much fun working on this. I have taken help from Kevin this time to create some glowing materials which I have implemented with some blueprints on objects of interest that we want the player to notice. Amongst these are the HorusEyes, AnubisStatues and the left hand.

Both the anubisstatue and the hand got a green emissive material that represents the player picking up life and once given to the statue it starts glowing. The horuseye on the bottom image got a red/orange emissive material that starts glowing once the player stands on a horuseye platform to attract the players eye. It’s been a lot of fun working on these feedback effetcs and gives the player a better clue what to do in these situations.

Later the same week on friday we had a playtest which went reallt well. Many people played our game and actually made it through the whole game without much help from our side, which feels great. They also gave good feedback and found some interesting bugs which was pretty minor and easily fixed. Lightning in the horusroom was the biggest problem since people couldn’t see a lever which is placed in a quite unfortunate spot where there is little light. But we’re very happy with how it went!

Thats it for this time!

Amenti – 4

I have done a lot of design work on the Horusroom and at this point I am pretty satisfied with how it is.  I also worked some on feedback to make the player understand that he/she is doing something right and is on the right track.

Here is an image when the player first enters the Horus room. The first thing the player sees is a round kinda wierd looking thing on the wall with arms sticking out of it, and two levers. This round thing is supposed to symoblize the sun. After all it is the room of the god Horus who actually is the sun god amonst other things, so it only seemed fitting.  Besides from being symbolic this sun has another purpose in this room and that purpose is to give feedback to the player when he has lit a torch in the room. And this is one of those feedback things I have been working on. Once the player lights a torch one of the arms will start to glow like the image below shows. Each arm is also connected to a specific torch so that the player can keep track on which torches are lit. Which I think is pretty cool and works as good feedback to the player.

As you might have noticed there are only five arms which also means that there are only five torches in this room. This is one of the improvements I have done in this room. By making the torch amount smaller we could make the room smaller which makes it easier for the graphic artists to make this room feel more alive, and enjoyable. Since it can be difficult with large rooms since there will be a lot of empty spaces that needs to be filled out. 

There is also a perspective puzzle in this room now that I put some hours on. There is a bunch of chains hanging from the ceiling that holds jewlery which resembles door arches, and I made it so that one of these match perfectly in a certain angle to the other door arch standing on the first floor in the room. This puzzle was actually pretty cool and fun to work on and looks pretty neat.  Once the arches are lined up, the arch from the jewlery will teleport next to the other arch creating a door that opens and leads the player into a small room with a torch in it.

Once all torches are lit, all the arms on the sun will be lit aswell and besides that I made it so that the players screen lights up and a melody will play along with that. This happens after all puzzles and is meant to be an indicator that the player is done with this room and puzzle. Unfortunatley I have not got any images of it at this moment.

So that is what I have been up to since last time.

Amenti – 3

Lately I have been working a lot on the Horus puzzle. I have playtested and tweeked the room and placement of the torches to make the puzzle a bit more interesting. And I also came up with an additional perspective puzzle which we will add to this room during the next week.

The first concept and version of this puzzle lacked interesting choices the player had to make in order to light the torches in the room. The former version was basically just running around in a circle and light torches without any problem at all, the player did not have to stop and think about the next move or in which order to light them. Which is just a really boring puzzle room, or not even a puzzle in that case. Therefore this week I had to spend most hours playtesting and repositioning the torches to make it more challenging. So me and Gustav the lead designer sat down and  discussed new ways to make it a bit more interesting. I came up with the idea that we should have some walls that follows along with the floor when elevated or lowered, and also put torches on these walls.  In that way we could we could create situations where the player had to elevate the floor to the third level and light a torch/firepit which could not be lit at first or second level and then lower it down again to light other torches on other levels. We could also choose which walls that should follow along to make it so that certain torches can only be accessed on certain levels. In this way we force the player to visit all three levels in the room in order to complete the puzzle. With this small tweek of walls following along we could make the puzzle a lot more interesting.

 

In the former version of this room the player entered the room on the first level but I decided to redesign it so that the player enters the room on the third level while the floor is still on the first level. I made this choice since I want the player to get a good overview of the room right before starting the puzzle. The player can see where torches are placed and think of a way to figure out the puzzle and plan out the best way of solving it.

In the image on the top left you can see that there is a platform on the third level of the room. This one is added for the perspetive puzzle that we will create next week. The idea is that the player need to stand on the platform and lower down the floor to the first level, so we put to levers on this platform aswell. And there is a chain hanging down from the ceiling with a very small doorarch hanging from the end of the chain looking like a piece of jewelry. But when positioned right on the platform and looking down towards the other door arch on the first level (you can see it on the image at the bottom), together they will form a door and the player will be able to access a torch in the first level that otherwise cant be accessed. It may sound a bit difficult but is actually quite easy! The more difficult part is to get the player to understand that they need to stand on a specific position in order to trigger this event. But we leave that to next week!

Thursday this week we had playtest with the rest of our class and all the first year students. People who playtested actually enjoyed the game, more then I though they would. Since there is still a lot of feedback missing to tell the player what is going on. And feedback for our puzzles is a essential part in order to complete them, especially the perspective puzzles. But they liked the graphics even though 80% is just placeholders, which was a bit funny. Otherwise the playtest went as we axpected it to, there were a lot of confusion on the tutorial perspective puzzle and by lacking a animation when the player has fire makes it difficult to know when you actually have fire to light torches. So thats what we will do next week.

That’s it for this time!