CAGD 377 Blog

Post Mortem         

    What went right?

This project was a big one with lots of good things bubbling up amidst the challenges that unfolded. My greatest joy in this project is that our final product, despite some imperfections, is a fun and playable game. Not every project reaches that point, even for professional teams with big budgets, let alone a small team of students with short deadlines to get stuff done. While also a little rough around the edges the tutorial level I made works pretty well at teaching most players how to play the game. I am especially proud of the second main level, the office themed level. This level was not originally intended to be the final main level but it works quite well to serve that purpose. Level two is far larger than the other levels with a variety of challenges throughout. The first section has several sub strategies available to players to either overpower the obstacles or move around them. Then the stair section which was improved into a vent section which was a great idea from Anthony, adding a more fleshed out vent section and improving the previously bland stair section. The tank suddenly being tiny in relation to this gargantuan office space is a classic platformer gimmick which works fairly well to make an interesting challenge. The first level, the city known as the bustling burg, also turned out pretty well. It is a lot shorter and simpler than level two but has some interesting gimmicks of its own with a bigger inclusion of a water hazard in addition to a sand trap of sorts. I think integrating the sand trap as a construction site was a fun touch, though perhaps presented somewhat ambiguously. The basic placeholder props I made for level two were actually quite useful for prototyping and a few even made it into final design. I found a cool copyright free sound effect for the cannon firing which is impressively loud while not being annoying. I also created the background music for both of my levels, which are once again imperfect, but pretty good considering my amateur experience with making midi music. Overall, this project was a great experience working with an excellent team to make a fun game which I am proud to be a part of.

What went wrong?

While this project turned out well in the end there were a lot of flaws throughout the actual process. My biggest disappointment was failing to complete level three for the game. The third level was supposed to be the final level and would synthesize various game elements from throughout the rest of the game for a satisfying conclusion. The third level was going to be a national park with an underground section, water hazards, sand traps, and vertical platforming. All of these interesting ideas unrealized due to time crunch, a classic problem in game design. In hindsight level two should have included a water hazard or sand trap of some kind if it was going to be the end. Some of the sound effects I wanted to add were not finished but this is not a terrible loss since the most important one, the firing worked well. I also wish I had been able to implement some of the particle effects I worked on. While these effects are crude and simple, I meant to work more with our programmer to get those working with the ball firing. One of the biggest individual setbacks was that due to some programming issues level two did not end up being playtested for several sprints, which would have been very useful due to its large scope and challenging design. While I am mostly happy with how the tutorial level ended up turning out it has some flaws. The way I implemented the text for the tutorial level often confused players. A design idea that I believe I did not use to its full potential was the ability to blow up objects. None of my platforming made blowing up stuff necessary, just an option for ease, and the delineation between objects that can be destroyed and those that can’t is often not sufficiently clear to players. In the end there were a lot of small setbacks and unfinished things but this project still turned out pretty well in the end.

Lessons Learned

               I learned a few important lessons in this project. Balancing numerous group projects in various classes and contexts was an important part to my successes. Collaborating on level design closely with the team lead allowed for the second level to be far more compelling as the vision holder was able to help me understand his ideas and translate them. Getting the core loop of the game down early made design easier to do while incorporating feedback throughout the process. Visual design plays a very important role in level design to properly guide the player and doing so correctly is very challenging Finding the fun is a challenging but rewarding process and I am glad that we ended up succeeding in this respect. 

    Sprint 6

      How was this sprint for me? It was fine, could have been better, could have been worse. I got most of my assigned work done and have little left over. Only a small technical bug not under my purview, now fixed, kept my second level from being in our penultimate build. I started work on some sound design stuff. I messed around with particle effects to create some cool ones for various features. While I did a fair amount of work, I wish I could have done more. I especially regret not making a playable version of level 3 which is now unfortunately going to be scrapped. A significant personal event occurred during the first weekend of the sprint which killed my pace not only for this but other projects. Despite setbacks I am glad of what I completed this sprint.

               What went well for me this sprint? I am finally nearly fully finished with level two, only waiting on an important component to create a ventilation puzzle to replace the current enormous vertical climb present in the level with something more interesting. I found good sound effects for the tank movement, cannon firing, and a decent explosion sound. The explosion one was somewhat hard to find one which matched what I was looking for but I managed to find a pretty good one. The cannon firing sound effect is apparently a stock cannon sound effect from 60s movies which is pretty cool. I got all of these sound effects from Freesound.org which is an amazing source for such things. I created numerous particle effects which, while somewhat primitive, are fairly effective at portraying various elements in the game. There is a sand particle effect, an explosion particle effect, a water particle effect, a cloudy particle effect, a wind particle effect, and a leaf particle effect I am less satisfied with. I also created some placeholder props for level one and two. I had one leftover level two prop which I made of a variant computer to diversify the scenery and obstacles in that level. I also created various placeholder props for level three elements which are fairly evocative of the vibe despite their simplicity. I got a decent amount of good work done, but I wish I had been able to do just a bit more.

               What did not go so well for me this sprint? The big disappointment is level three, which while having already been close to getting cut, I had still hoped to make it. I have an interesting layout in mind and have already started on props for the level, but it was not to be. I should have already frankly made significant progress on this level, and would have done the building this sprint were it not for that unfortunate personal delay right at the start, cascading a slowing miasma on everything. Another unfortunate thing was that due to a technical bug level two was not included in the beta build despite being functional and would have benefited from some testing due to its length. Most things went fine this sprint but I wish I could have made more progress on level three.

               What would I have done differently, and what am I doing in the coming last days of work on this project? If I could have changed one thing, I would have made certain that level two made it into the beta test so I could have some feedback to work off when finalizing our levels for the final build. If I had more time apportioned appropriately, I would have also made a playable version of level three so that it would not have been scrapped, alas that way is sealed. I will be working on polish in these last days, including adding a bunch of new sound effects to the game. Despite some setbacks I am proud of what work I have done for this project and looking forward to seeing our final product. 

Sprint 5

               How did this sprint go for me? This sprint was okay, I completed a lot of the work that was assigned to me but did not finish a couple of my assigned goals. I finally finished level one once and for all with all of the models and even spiced it up a bit with some new bits of environmental story telling and a new particle effect. I got a basic version of the new vision for level two finished as well. I did not get working on the sound yet which I was planning on which is my main complaint with my own work this sprint. The big thing this sprint was that a relatively low volume of work ended up getting cleared and level two was not ready for the playtest.

               What went well this sprint for me? I finally finished building out level one once and for all with all of the props added and placed, most with their textures added. I added some more cars to add variety and even some environmental storytelling implying the unseen inhabitants of this city are incompetent drivers with a car crashed into a light pole as well as two more half sunk in the canal. I made a win screen with a message for the players after they beat the game. I also created a basic particle effect for the canal to refresh myself on how to work with particle effects. I then created a proper build of level two using the placeholder assets based on the design me and Anthony came up with last sprint. One of the specific sub areas I created for this level was a part where the player goes into some vents to access the final part of the level. This level uses a variety of interesting design elements such as relatively close ceilings, enormous level props (the level is designed around the concept of an enormous office building), and alternating sections of verticality and horizontal firing sections. The vent section needs a bit more fleshing out with some more obstacles but is overall a decent penultimate section for the level prior to the finale where the player shoots out of an open office window to reach the goal far below. I feel fairly happy with what work I completed this sprint.

               What did not go so well for me this sprint? I did not get a demo version of level two ready by the playtest build which was not ideal. The water particle effect was rather rudimentary and my future particle effects need to be a bit more interesting. I did not get started on the music and sound this sprint which I had been planning on doing. The level two design I built out is now outdated as Anthony wants to incorporate more vertical sections with greater height change. I also need to add the elevator prop to level two as it perfectly fits the office building design. I may also need to figure out how to make sure that players need to interact with the office props rather than just going over or under. There were some small setbacks and design hurdles I need to solve but nothing that bad.

What will I be doing in this final main sprint coming up? I will get some music for the levels of the game; Anthony has advised using royalty free music but I may actually make some custom music in the music making software I have as it has a vibe which I believe fits our game. Level two needs a revamp and to be finalized with proper props, textures, and functionality. I am going to build out level three, our final main level which should not be that bad as our mechanical tools for level building are solid. I need to work with our programmer to add the final score to the win screen at the end of the game. I will also be making some more particle effects with collaboration from our programmer. I know what I shall be doing in these upcoming weeks.               

  Sprint 4

               How did sprint 4 go for myself? Not bad considering the circumstances. I managed to complete most of my sprint work which was very good. My team lead Anthony and I discussed some more of his vision for level design which will help guide my level design work into the future sprints. My pace was pretty good across the sprint if somewhat backloaded. The main disappointment was not focusing sufficiently on level design work and mainly working on the easy stuff. Despite not being perfectly on pace I am still making good progress and look forward to future work on this project.

               What went well this sprint? I got most of my assigned sprint work done with 9 cards done and only a couple incomplete. I was able to complete work all throughout the sprint rather than rushing everything at the end. I was also able to have a good discussion with my team lead Anthony about his vision for level design. Anthony as the vision holder for the game project has plans in mind for how levels should work. My lack of communication with him about this has been a source of problems in previous sprints so getting a good discussion about his ideas was helpful. Level 1 largely was following my existing designs with some small tweaks to increase the amount of destructible obstacles as well as working on the ceiling problem. The concepting for level 2 was more extensive as the original idea I had was a very vertical level while Anthony’s idea was a mixture of horizontal and vertical with several sections of horizontal golfing broken up by vertical jumps to new areas. This includes the new elevator which is being developed by our programmer Westen which perfectly fits the thematic design of level 2 which is office themed. In fact most of what I did for this sprint was creating simple props for level 2 to fit the design. Another interesting design idea from Anthony for level 2 is a vent section in order to reach level exit by firing out a window. This ties into a larger idea he had of including tie ins at the end of the level for following level. At the end of level 1 will be an office building while there will be a small forest at the end of level 2 to tie into the third level’s design of a national park. Here we once again integrated an old level design idea I had of having vertical switchbacks with the national park theme including forests and mountains. One specific idea Anthony had to improve the level was to include a gopher hole underground section which is a pretty interesting idea. Overall work this sprint was pretty good and the design discussion with Anthony was enlightening.

               What went poorly this sprint? I did not complete all of my cards that I had been assigned which I could have if I had better paced myself. I also wish I had more focused specifically on doing level design work in order to complete the design and prop layout for level 1. This was something I had intended to do but ended up putting off. Another thing that was pushed to the side was using all of my finished props to furbish and build out level 2. I also feel I should have put more work into building up the layout for level 3 rather than putting it off until the end of the sprint. There were some less than desirable parts of how the sprint turned out for me but nothing that cannot be overcome.

               What will change going forward? The main changes going forward are the design ideas that Anthony shared with me. The other big thing that we are working on is dealing with players overshooting everything. Our current idea is to utilize ceilings of various kinds in order to reduce the effectiveness of shooting over everything. We have an idea of creating a high altitude wind which stops the ball in its tracks if it goes too high, this idea is intended for places where true ceilings would be out of place. Overall I have some good insights to go off of when moving forward.     

            Sprint 3

   This sprint was a very successful one for me as I managed to complete all of my assigned work on time which is a good point of progress. I needed the help from my teammate Westen to figure out some of the programming related stuff but I was able to do it. I created a working system for text popups to appear and disappear as the player goes through the level so that new tutorial text appear to teach different skills. I also worked on building out level 1 in Unity and including some new designs and props to make it more interesting than the basic tutorial level. The last thing I did for the sprint was build a block-out for level 2 in Unity which was our office building level. This was a good sprint for me and I hope to do even more for the team in future sprints.

               What went wrong this sprint? Surprisingly little went poorly this sprint as I was able to complete all of the tasks assigned to me by our team lead on time, including getting the tutorial level ready for our playtest. I did have some challenges figuring out how to get the tutorial text working the way I wanted. I at first tried to use the user interface and canvas system but the script I had made with Westen’s help would not work with user interface objects to turn them on and off. Westen was able to help point me in the right direction with the assistance of some helpful video tutorials on YouTube. I ended up using Unity empties attached to text which would be the right kind of game objects for the script I had made to control the activation and deactivation of the text. The downside of this method was that the text was an object tied to a point in 3d space rather than a user interface element which would appear over the game and not rely on the player being in just the right place to read it. This leads into the small problems with the tutorial level found in playtesting. The first issue was that because the text was localized in 3d space if the player did not follow directions and moved ahead too quickly they could miss important tutorial information. This was especially problematic with the explosion tutorial text as the obstacle which the player would have to blow up was not tall enough to block high power shots from firing over it allowing players to sometimes miss the tutorial text for how to use the explosion feature. Another challenge that arose for me was finding playtesters outside of class but I was able to find a few friends who had Android phones and was able to send them the playtest build with Anthony’s help. While these issues were annoying and may require some rectification, they were able to be overcome.

               What will I do differently in the future? I will make sure to utilize our programmer Westen’s help whenever I am working on programming adjacent tasks as he is quite competent and helpful, able to quickly reveal solutions to problems that arise. I will make sure to use this playtest info to inform level design, especially for the tutorial level. One small thing I messed up but my team members corrected was that I forgot to add walls on either side of the stage to prevent players falling into the void. In later levels I have been designing I have been adding these “guard rails” to prevent such problems though I prefer to keep them invisible if that better fits the appearance of the level. Online video tutorials are also useful to follow when working on user interface and programming work. This was a great sprint overall with some important lessons learned and I am looking forward to our next sprint and how I can apply what I have learned. 

  Sprint 2 Blog

     How was sprint 2? It was a big improvement on Sprint 1. I finished all of my cards for the sprint and made significant improvements in pace. I worked on several user interface elements including visuals for the number of strokes as well as some of the tutorial user interface. I finished building the first part of the tutorial level. I made a title screen scene with a backdrop. I also worked on a level block-out for one of the upcoming levels. Some things were not as good such as reworking the tutorial level not fitting within sprint 2. I was able to do a lot more this sprint than last sprint in the end.

               The level design for the block out I created this sprint has some interesting potential within our game design and I look forward to actually implementing it and figuring out the nuance of it. The level exists on three tiers of height which the player will cross in a zig zag fashion. The first level has sand and water hazards which will be somewhat standard by that point in the game. In order to change levels I will be using the fans created by our programmer to lift the ball higher into the air to make the distance. On these upper levels the player will have to be more precise in order to avoid overshooting and returning to the first floor of the course. This will hopefully require more careful use of the power bar rather than using high power shots most of the time.

               What went right for sprint two? All of my cards were finished on time which was good. The title screen and user interface elements I made look nice and are cohesive together and with the game idea. The level block-out which I made will be relatively easy to implement while still hopefully presenting a fun challenge for players. The tutorial text style I made was meant to fit the game’s odd pseudo military style with the “narrator” in a classic drill sergeant style demanding the player follow directions. While this is not yet complete it should hopefully flow smoothly in the completed build.

               What did not go so well in sprint two? Firstly the tutorial card had to be reworked which was a good change but technically left me low on points this sprint near the end. I would have been hard pressed to complete the whole tutorial in one card and by breaking it down I can better understand the vision of the lead and create the tutorial in a better manner. I am still grappling with the finer elements of user interface design which means that I need to add some more code to make user interface elements like the tutorial text flow smoothly. The level block out I made did not match the theme the lead had planned for the level so it will be used in a different level and I still need to create a proper block out of the actual level which will be office themed. This was the result of forgetfulness combining with lack of communication with the lead which I am working on. Pace on the sprint was rather choppy which is a problem I aim to rectify going forward. I have learned several lessons which I will carry forward to improve my capabilities as a team member.

               What will be changed going forward? Many things will be improved in the coming sprints as I improve my capabilities as a level designer and team member. I aim to have a good looking, smooth flowing, and very functional user interface system which requires some programming and art work. I need to learn some of the finer points of the unity user interface systems so that I can do this but YouTube is my friend in this regard as there are many tutorials on the subject which I will use. Now that much of the programming and prop making groundwork is complete, I can begin making levels more quickly and can really focus in on the puzzle aspects of our game. Golf is a surprisingly challenging game and I would like to reflect this in the game through our level design. 

Sprint 1 Blog

Sprint 1, what went well, what went wrong, what could have been done better, and what is up next? The main win of this sprint was completing the paper prototype and related materials as well as a couple of smaller tasks related to level blockouts and design. What went poorly was being unable to complete my level design goals due to underestimating what I needed from my teammates, as our game is physics based I need to be testing our mechanics to create the actual level design. The other disappointment was that the paper prototype had some issues around clarity and design. If I could have redone this sprint, I would have made two primary changes; I would have chosen some cards that relied less on work from other team members, and I would have worked on the paper prototype with some help from my team so that it would have been better received. As for what is coming up next, I will be wrapping up the levels that I had planned to make in the first sprint and can begin to expand the level design from there. The rest of the team has really bean able to realize the vision of our lead and we now have most of the framework for the rest of the game going forward.

               The big thing I did this sprint was designing the paper prototype. This was surprisingly difficult as golf is hard game to represent in simple board game terms. The other difficulty beyond merely representing golf in board game form is that our specific game is a physics puzzle game. I considered a few different ideas while working on the paper prototype, I planned on using a grid board representing a 2D side view of the golf course but other ideas went back and forth. With the grid for the board, I considered a few different sizes of the grid and the one that I chose turned out to be around the right size, I had worried it would be too small but it may have even been slightly too large. An idea that quickly developed was using dice to represent the inherent complexity and randomness in golf. Dice are a common short hand in board game design to represent complex things which possess some form of variance. This would turn out to be a major source of issues in the paper prototype as dice may be versatile but can be unfun if there is not enough strategy to the mechanics as the randomness can feel disheartening. The idea I came up with to try to balance the system was having the ability to roll two different sets of dice for different effects and control over how many dice rolled. This was intended to represent the variable strength used when hitting the ball. I experimented with using up to two dice or up to three but with the board space I was using two was the right amount. The issue that would crop up in the playtest was that it was not sufficiently clear to players whether they had to roll both dice for each roll, and some of the players rolled two dice consistently even when they knew they had choice. The intention was to make rolling two dice something which was used strategically to manage variance and push your luck but due to vague wording in the rules it became a source of frustration. The other big mechanic of our game, the exploding golf balls, was represented in the prototype but was of limited utility considering the layout of the prototype board and some players were confused by the mechanic. While much of the design did not turn out great the players were all intrigued by the game idea and generally looked forward to the digital prototype which will show the real capability of the idea to be fun. With all the legwork put in by the team so far I am looking forward to seeing what we can do in the coming sprints.