#group-project

[jsigh]

Space Recruitment Postmortem

A future feature that could be implemented into Space Recruitment that was mentioned by a few of the play testers are cosmetics, things such as ships skins along with changing backgrounds after each session. Other great features that could be implemented could be things such as a scoreboard showing the previous in an ascending order and even a highest score meter or something along the lines of that while in game, so the players know their last highest score. And if this was to be released in the future this could also be further expanded to encompass a global leader board as this would help spice things up and to further motivate the player as the objective of Space Recruitment is to try score the highest possible score.

I enjoyed collaborating and working with Jhana as this was an exciting experience for us, because we have always considered trying to make a game together but never made the proper commitment due to personal reasons.

I cannot confirm or deny whether I am satisfied with the overall results of this project as we have learnt and picked up a lot of things along the way, however, I can confidently say I had fun going through the fundamentals of game design. I'm glad that we were fortunate with the chance of interacting with our testers and I’m very appreciative to our testers for lending us their time out of the day to sit down for a 20 minute play test session. Their feedback was critical for us to be able to find the flaws in our game. But, overall I found this project very fulfilling, found it very interesting working in an iterative cycle.

[jsigh]

Space Recruitment Readings Discussion

In Chapter 12: Team Structures from Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design workshop discussed that “understanding your role in a team and having the interpersonal skills to work within a team structure are as important as any of the design skills” that Fullerton has mentioned throughout her book. I believe both Jhana and I know each others skills and capabilities from prior assessments and throughout working together during this unit. Fullerton also recommended to take time to practice team-building and communicate properly with team members. Although Jhana is the lead Game Designer for this project, we generally both brainstorm together and end on the same wavelength of thoughts, which results in what I’d interpret as having good synergy. Due to the fact that we decided to work together as a two member team, all the work and processes are split appropriately.

[jsigh]

Space Recruitment

I am partnering with JKhor GameDesign to iterate on his second game ‘Space Recruitment’, which is a Space Arcade asteroids Shooter. Initially we discussed that we could incorporate the shapeshifting ship from my ‘Pologons VS Circles’ feature, however, due to discussions of balance we refrained from proceeding with the integration due to balance and lack of challenge for the game. 

Both of us have been in a couple of groups together for past unit courses and we believe we dynamically have good communication and work well together. We wish to use our skillset and similar mindset to make Space Recruitment a satisfying and functional game.

Currently we are planning to clean up certain mechanics and bring the game up to a more playable state than where it was left off. We have plans to change into more aesthetical assets as well as implementation of sound effects, however, the smoothness of the game mechanics need to be addressed first.

I believe we will need a playtesting session to figure out the roadmap for the development and changes needed for this game. I am looking forward to see what we can achieve.

Reading Reflection

In Chapter 11: Fun and Accessibility of Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop, the fun aspect of a game can be ruined by stagnation where “nothing new seems to be happening for a long period of time and choices stay the same level of importance and impact”. For our concept and design of the game, there is a high possibility that stagnation can occur due to the current build not having any forms or indications of progression since it is only an infinite scoring session with the only goal for getting the highest score. This issue will most likely need to be addressed during the iterations and changes, but will definitely be an expected response during playtesting.

JKhor GameDesign @ https://jkhor-gamedesign-blog.tumblr.com/

[penny-wiggins-blog]

Group Project | Penny & Isabel

Penny ran up the steps of the apartment building, hauling her backpack and a couple books with her. She was supposed to meet up with another classmate so they could work on a science project together. Science was not her strongest subject, and she dreaded the class. When she was paired with Isa, she had smiled at the girl and kind of shrugged. It could have been worse – she could have been paired with one of the geeky kids in class who wanted to get it done the first night. When their teacher had given them the element Cobalt to research, Penny had groaned and slumped in her seat. Now, maybe if they would have been given something a little more interesting, she would have been all for it.

Instead of spending her day off lounging around the apartment, she was standing on the front steps of an apartment building, about to learn all about a certain element. Penny noticed a call-box on the side of the door, and pressed the button for the apartment number Isa had given her and stepped back.

@littleprincesa-isabel

[mashy-potatoes]

Two is a crowd to me

... and so presenting to a class is a little terrifying.

What while presenting is scary, this one wasn’t as bad as I thought. Probably because Wellesley students are super friendly and actually listen to presentations, and also because somehow giving a technical presentation is more relaxing than a normal presentation.

Some suggestions that I liked:

Grey as a colour indicator for No access. Originally we had thought to reuse the red Out-of-order or another red Closed button, but grey is much better.

Mobile app. We had thought about this when we first got the idea, but I had forgotten about it! And it turns out Meteor has a mobile aspect to it to make it easier to convert.

Develop this as an independent project. Oh ho, I didn’t even about this. Let’s get through the end of this semester first...

[mashy-potatoes]

The Art of Public Speaking

Today my partner and I had our session with our PLTC tutor Sravanti. It was a pretty good run through; we were able to present most of our presentation, and really all that is left is to finish the project. Here’s some things that we did well:

Posture

Volume and eye contact

Use of images

We know our audience (all of the memes!

Some things we need to work on:

Keep things (semi-)professional, which is a little different from knowing your audience

Capitalise bullet points

Talk about all the images on your powerpoint

Don’t look up when you’re thinking - look at the audience. Fun fact: people are lying when they keep eye contact with you all the time. This is because when you’re remembering things you naturally look upwards, whereas people who are lying try hard to make it not obvious they’re not lying, so they look at you for too long. So this piece of public speaking advice is actually counterintuitive...

Make our presentation a little more technical

Something that was specific to me was that I tend to talk as if there are parentheses, and when the parens are happening I tend to talk too quickly and too quietly. This was an interesting point because I have found that I like to use parens in essays, even if they aren’t really ‘formal’ writing.

I’m actually kinda nervous for tomorrow!

[mashy-potatoes]

Our paper prototype, as of last week. Having a paper prototype was great to allow users to interact with our vision of an app, but I think it’s more appropriate for mobile interfaces to imitate tapping with your finger. (I got the idea for a paper prototype from CS220, where we used paper prototypes for a mobile web website.) Post-Its are also awesome; they imitated pop-up boxes, and are quick changes. The numbered alert boxes, for example, we presented in different orders to see which our users liked the most.

TL;DR: Post-Its are the best.