Lots of progress this week, mostly focused on visual improvements for the game. Comprehensive list of improvements and gameplay screenshots under the cut.
Next week I will be gathering playtesting feedback in order to identify areas of improvement for the game and to see how well our game meets the enjoyability metric that we set in our design report. In addition to whatever improvements are suggested while playtesting, I also have a few more gameplay touchups in mind that I will be working on next week (adding a stun mechanic, a main menu, tutorial, pause menu, and scene transitions, and a counter for number of fish killed as well as a high score tracker for maximum depth reached and max number of fish killed).
For tests on the enjoyability of the game (unrelated to controller tests, which Alan / John will work on), we’ll be handing out a playtesting survey when we have people try our game. To measure enjoyability we will be using a simple, binary “would you recommend this game” question in the survey, similar to how Steam user reviews work. Tests haven’t been performed yet because we are still working on finishing construction of both controllers.
Progress this week:
- Added a texture overlay to the background that moves according to speed and steering of the player
- Added tileable, randomized wave lines to the background
- Made size/amount of bubbles produced by the motor of the submarine change depending on how fast it is traveling
- Added lighting
- Added a blood spatter effect when fish are damaged / killed
- Added a Jellyfish obstacle which damages the player if run into
- Changed some of the fonts in the UI
Overall it is much easier to tell when the player changes speed of movement now, and easier to see the fish move against the background. Adding in the jellyfish should encourage players to steer and adjust speed more. I think the changes made a big difference.
Of the tasks for next week, the most important to get in, mechanically, is the stun ability for the net gun; otherwise, there isn’t that much motive to use the net gun right now considering that it does much less damage than the harpoon. The rest is all quality-of-life stuff. The game is basically finished. I might also update the “how to set up the unity project” post because after the latest round of commits it’s gotten a little outdated.
I considered also adding in the ability to upgrade your module abilities, but ultimately decided against it. I wasn’t planning on having upgrades from the start so there isn’t much infrastructure set up for it right now; the amount of effort it would take to refactor the code to set up upgrades wouldn’t be worth sacrificing the time that could have been used to make many small updates instead of the one large update. Still, something to consider if I ever come back to this or find myself with an abundance of time after completing next week’s task list.
Anyway, here are the screenshots.
