Dev Blog 35 - Feeling Better

Feeling better today, not 100% though been tired and wiped out all day. Today I worked on the pause sensitivity issue; although the swipe changes I implemented did reduce the sensitivity, there were still accidental pauses every so often. So I changed the pause mechanic for mobile to be 3 fingers on screen instead of swipe to pause. This should alleviate a lot of the accidental pauses, if not eliminate them.

I also changed the joystick mobile inputs, A is now jump, X is now punch, B is now pause.

Lastly, I added another tutorial billboard to explain the pause mechanic, and I tweaked the position of some billboards so they show up better on mobile.

Update: Also did some recoloring on the obstacles to differentiate them from the props; one of the most common pieces of feedback I've received is that props are mistaken for obstacles. After trying out a few different colors, nothing really looked quite right, since the black boxes fits in with the art style so well. I finally went with adding a simple red line around the edge of the obstacles, to make it pop out and differentiate it from background props. I'll see how others interpret that, if it's not enough of a change to differentiate.

Dev Blog 34 - Sick all day

Woke up with a stomach bug and puked this morning =( Haven't been able to sit upright until just now, 8PM. Might try to to some work later tonight, focusing on recovering well enough to get back at it tomorrow.

Dev Blog 33 - Level 6, Small Fixes, YouTube video

Hi there! Today I implemented the music track "nice_6" into a sixth level using the automation tools I wrote last week. I had some trouble remembering how many tools I wrote and how to use all of them, so I wrote up a step by step process (for both myself and others to use). The tools helped a lot; once I was done cutting the song in FL studio I was able to get a working level in 5 minutes flat - something that would have taken hours for a 4 minute song.

Today I also fixed some smaller issues, such as locking the game to horizontal (landscape) for mobile. The game is significantly more challenging in portrait, and the navigation menus are nearly unusable. I also worked on making the "swipe to pause" functionality less sensitive on mobile. It's becoming quite an issue, I might implement a different method to pause the game.

Lastly, Andre wanted to see one of the levels that his music was featured in. He didn't have an Android device, so he requested a YouTube video instead. I figured this would be a great time to start spreading the word about Chromacore anyways, so I recorded a video of the alpha gameplay featuring his music and posted it here! I also created social media pages for Google+, Reddit, & Facebook.

Dev Blog 32 - More automation, another level

Instead of writing a separate tool, today I added y position support to AutomaticNotePlacer.cs.

Now, for each Note, a ray is cast in the downward y direction and checks the proximity of Notes to level platforms. If the distance is above or below certain thresholds, the Note's y position is adjusted accordingly.

I thought for quite a while about what to do for Notes that aren't above any platforms. I considered checking the position of the previous Note that is above a platform and setting the position to that. I considered setting the position to some default value. I considered simply doing nothing and leaving it wherever it is. However in the end I decided that if a Note is not above any platforms and above a certain threshold, it is flagged for manual attention with Debug.LogError(), and then I'll go adjust it myself.

Today I also cut up the music track for another lever, using Andre's (/u/ioncehadsexinapool) music track "nice_6".

Lastly, I create a Google Group so that I can give specific people (such as Casper, Andre, and others) access to the alpha build on Google Play.

Dev Blog 31 - Implementing Feedback

This weekend I spent some time implementing Casper's feedback. Now instead of teaching the player game mechanics with simple text billboards in the background, the game pauses once the player approaches each billboard, and a pinging sound players to notify the player they are being broken from the game for a moment. Once the player presses any key or input to continue, a different ping is played to let the player now they are back in control.

This does 2 things: gives players time to actually read and comprehend the text before they need to use the game mechanic, and also makes sure players actually notice the instructions in the first place.

Dev Blog 30

The meeting with my professor Casper went great today! Got some great advice on the design of the game, specifically on implementing a more effective tutorial without breaking from gameplay. He suggested that  instead of having tutorial text scroll by in background, I freeze the game at key point and show exactly what each important mechanic is and how it works, and then unfreeze the game. This is a much better method, as it doesn't break the player away from gameplay like a tutorial animation would, and isn't simple text in the background that the user might miss, ignore, or not fully comprehend in time to apply the information.

I also did a presentation for a freshman Computer Science class today - I talked about a basic overview of the CS & Game Design degree at Northeastern, as well as some details about what the degree is all about. This presentation series was intended to give freshman CS student an idea about what dual degrees are available and what they're all about from the perspective of actual students. Overall, it's part of the Major Mentor program at the CCIS that I've been participating in as a mentor for the past 2 years. There's so many students now that doing one-on-one mentoring sessions won't be as feasible in the coming years.

After this busy day I didn't get the chance to work on Chromacore much, did some quick level design work for level 5. More to come sooon!

Dev Blog 29 - More Tools

Today I wrote 2 more tools today, one to instantiate level platforms en masse, and the other to instantiate backgrounds en masse. With 8 minute levels it would have taken several days just to copy/paste the platform and background game objects, and label them properly. Now all I have to do is tell the tools how many I want instantiated and where, and it takes care of the rest. Quite the time saver.

At this point I'll spend another day or two writing automation tools for the entirety of a level. Creating new ones from here on out should be a lot faster.

Meeting with Casper tomorrow to go over progress!