After a super busy week, they team finally got all the pieces of the game done and constructed a full play through of the game. Players could start the game with main menu and wait for two players to join to start the game. The game was improved with smooth transitions among levels and even more game mechanisms. Below is the trailer video showing the game.
As the project was coming to an end, the team reached out the clients on how to handing off the project. The plan was to upload all the docs and assets relating the game onto a google drive folder owned by our clients and set up a remote server which enabled players to join the game at anytime without manually opening up the server.
Besides getting ready for the hands off, the team was busy preparing for the open house next week. This event would open to the public for the outside world to see the works being developed by the ETC students. The team decided to do live demo where players can either play by themselves or watch the team members playing the game. Here is one of the poster the team would show in the open house event.
Also, we had couple of play tests conducted this week as well. At the current stage, the feedback was more about how to smooth up the gaming experience instead of modifying the mechanics. The major feedback was still the lack of tutorial for our complex mechanics. So in the final version of the game, the team added a video tutorial during the gameplay whenever the player encountered the new feature for the first time. Below was the tutorial video prompted up when users first interest with detonator.
In addition, the team created a random event system for level 3 which further enhanced the strategic depth into the game. The following random events are generated randomly whenever the user ends their turn.
The Sand Storm event will damage the detector robot directly and the players need to use the fixer robot to repair the damaged detector. They can choose not to fix the robot as well.
The strong wind will affect the robot’s movement speed. The wind direction would be randomly generated. If the robot is following the direction, the speed will increase. If the robot is moving along the opposite direction, the moving speed will be decreased.
The flowing sand will temporary reveal some landmines in a certain area. They will only be revealed for one turn so hurry up!
The mini game fore mentioned in the previous has a brand new look. Our artists tries to create a sci-fi style motherboard chip to give the players a better visual feedback on what they are doing.
The left image visible to one player is the correct answer while the right image shows the other player is trying to replica the correct path. Simple game but requires communications between players.
The last improvement is the addition of robot icon status when player’s mouse in hover on the icon. This increases the visual feedback on the UI and players will know exactly which robot they are selecting.
So the game itself is pretty much done. Next week, which is the last week, the team will wrap up the whole project and ready for the final presentation.