Assignment 3 Postmortem
This might be my last post on this account, and probably on Tumblr in general, as all the mandatory posts bar this one have already been submitted, and if thats the case, then thanks for giving these a read (ik only the unit organiser goes through these but still). After the initial playtesting sessions, the goal thereafter was to improve on the design of the game and follow it up with more playtesting sessions for feedback purposes. Unfortunatly my version, which fixed many of the visual errors and added extra gameplay varients was accidentally saved over, which was... just really cool. As a result many of the playtesting was done on an older version out of necessity, which at least means that addressing criticisms is much easier when most of them were already addressed. (I don`t think the playtesters appreaciated us screeching ‘we already fixed that’ every five seconds, but most were probably too introverted to say anything about it anyway.)
Unfortunately, due to being short staffed (seriously, who misses out on the halloween themed playtest session?), the feedback we could collect was limited in scope. Many of the issues were visual based, mostly with the player sprite spasming about when still, the layering issue with the enemies being in front of the pause screen and the very bland look of the background. They also wanted more of an explanation as to what everything in the world was in relation to them, (i.e if the enemies were enemies, etc.). They also complained about how the controls used arrow keys and enter instead of the mouse controls used by the rest of the game. As said before, many of these issues were resolved in the latest version, however others like the controls in the menu are still being labbed out. As for the type 2 diabetes fest (halloween-themed playtesting session) only one person there was even in costume, which makes sense for the introvert course. I was planing on going as something, but couldn`t think of a good enough idea, so I just dressed up as a Wii U owner in 2021 again (still pre scary tbf).
For textbook chapters this week, I decided (was forced to) finish off the final 4 remaining textbook chapters, all of which revolved around the process of game design and making it in the game industry, rather than making games.
Chapter 13 focused on the stages/methods of development, i.e the concept phase showcasing the initioal idea, preproduction phase expanding on the idea, production phase making the game and QA phase of refining the game. The chapter also detailed the process of setting goals to meet by certain deadlines, prioritizing those goals from most to least important, scheduling when those goals need to be finished, budgeting how much money needs to go into finishing those goals and revising the budget/schedule when workload it taking longer than anticipated. Minus the budgeting aspects, this information would`ve been really useful last week, as now we have to create a schedule with one week remaining.
Chapter 14 taught how to communicate designs, through visualising the world, mapping the UI with wireframes and flowcharts, making concept art for the levels/characters, communicating these features to the rest of the team and the player through ingame and out of game methods, and having game macros detailing what each level needs in terms of assets. As our game is planed to have multiple levels, learning how to plan for each of them will be very helpful going forward.
Chapter 15 is understanding the new game industry, mostly, what is the best combo of genre, publisher and game platform that will give your game the biggest audience. For our current project this isn`t very relavent, however once uni finishes, this analysis could be the difference between a successful and failed product.
Chapter 16 was regarding the issue of breaking into the games industry as a newcomer and listed numerous ways, ranging from internships as a student, to networking events, as well as listing out the various processes that make up a successful games pitch, like a sell sheet, game demo, gameplay vid, game design overview, company prospectus, storyboards, a powerpoint, technical design overview, and a competitive analysis. Like with chapter 15, this is information relavent outside the current assessment, but is still useful info regardless.















