Following last weeks completion of many of the assets and animations of the main character, the team focused the week on implementing the different features and mechanics of the game. As the artists finalized pieces of assets predominately objects, notes and photos, the coding team moved the assets into the Unity environment and began creating functionality. During this time, we also created and implemented various pieces of text that appear such as the instructions in the Home area and the dialogue text that appears at the bottom of the screen upon interaction.
The lead coder laid out the overall level, created different scenes that would be joined together i.e. the Shack and Home area, as well as creating the scripts and logic for many of the gameplay mechanics. From there, various additional pieces were implemented as standalone scripts such as the dialogue text that appears on key press next to an object of interest. During this time, we also began creating the necessary documentation such as the Rationale document, Level document and the play testing report. The diagrams helped the team better understand how the level ramps in difficulty over time as well as the lead path through the level.
From March 2nd till the day of code completion, the team worked on finalizing as much as possible. This included ironing out any bugs/glitches, implementing additional logic and fixing adjustment of assets. Over March 5th till the 7th, the team conducted a total of five play tests. This included play testers with of various player types including explorers, achievers and role-players. The play test sessions were immensely informational for the team as we got a sense of the game without the bias lens of developers. We finished the weekly period with an amazing showcase during lecture. With senior designer Rick Brown, we received a great deal of quality feedback from the lens of a professional in the industry. The entire team left the presentation with unique insight and invigorated motivation to complete the as well as possible.
