After relatedly testing my first tutorial, many play testers were happy with it and understood how to play my game. They understood, how to control this ship using the mouse, how to interact with the trader ship to gain more fuel to progress in the game using particle systems of different colours. They also know how to 'Mine' a planet and what the action is, as well as know how planets in the game work and when they are full of "Mass" resources due to the pulsing coloured glow around it. Green meaning good and yellow meaning it's drained of Mass resources and is recharging.
Plan for Tutorial Level 2:
The next thing I have done is start on a second tutorial level. The idea of the next tutorial level is to show the payer the different signifiers of how much mass a planet contains. When I originally tried this I had a trader ship in the scene and a single planet to keep things simple and not over whelm the player. Also I reduced the difficulty of the depleting mass mechanic (I disabled it for the this level) when the planet is not being mined (which I may remove because a number of play testers found it confusing how a planet drains when it's not being mined and being mined). The reason I have reduced the difficulty of the previous mechanics is so that the player has time to learn the new mechanic and not penalised too much for learning something new. This way I can explain one thing to the player at a time.
Initially at the start of the level the player is told via the intro screen, there is a planet they have to examine. Because the player should have their cargo full of planet mass, they will go to the trader initially. After this the player will go to the planet and their movement will be disabled. They will start mining the planet.
Changing the planet glowing colour:
Whilst the planet is being mined by the player, the planet's glow will change colour in different stages. Initially it will be green, then blue, purple, orange then yellow to say it's recharging it's resources. Along with this text will be above the planet, show how full of mass it is. E.g. 100%, then 75%, 50%, then 25%. This way I was trying to show the player the percentage of mass the planet has in relation to the colour it was glowing. However many players found this confusing to a degree because the wondered how the percentages were related to the glowing due to the positioning of the text above the planet.
To help with this I thought I would make the mass quantity more visual for the player. What I mean by this is, because the planet's resources are demonising, the size to the planet should also decrease as well. Even though my game is not the most realistic since some planet's are only two or three times larger than the player ship itself, I thought this might help the player work out which planet has more mass more easily and quickly.
After thinking this through, I implemented this into the tutorial level. During the tutorial level when the quantities of mass a planet has is being explained to the player, e.g, 75%, 50%, and 25%, the planet's size decreases by 25% each time. I choose this because I thought it was an obvious enough change in size for the player to see. During play testing, many players like this feature, but they still found the text above the planet confusing (I explained the percentage text will only be there in the tutorial). As well as this player's thought it would be interesting if when the planet was being mined, as well as the colour of the glowing halo around the planet changing colour, the planet should shrink in size and revert to normal when it has replenished it's resources.
After this have has been explained to the player, the warp gate appears and takes the player straight into the game.
Result:
At the moment I have stopped working on the second tutorial level because I will spend too much time on it whilst not implementing a goal into the game. Basically I'm trying to avoid doing what my group has done with our group game, and that it concentrate too much on the tutorial level and the specifics of the game, drilling down too far.
I have play tested my game on a few people to see what direction I can progress the game play in. Many people like the game so far, however I would like to play test it on more people to see how they react to it.
Ideas I may carry towards the existing mechanics:
Planet sizes:
A suggestion form a player mentioned in one of the paragraphs above. When the player is mining a planet, the size of the planet object will decrease in size gradually until the mining process has stopped. I will implement this into the game to see how people will react to it. I will have to make sure the change in size is fast enough for people to see what is happening but not too fast that the planet becomes extremely small and the model turns inside out. I will have to test this on players.
Planets glowing multiple colours:
With the planet glowing multiple colours, I may tweak this in future if people want more information on what quantity of mass is in each planet, but I don't want to drill down too far at the moment. However I will soon though. The other reason will not do this yet is because, a number of players (including one of my lecturers) pointed out what is the point of having another tutorial explain mass quantities when it's explained that the planet glows green to yellow depending on how full it is in the first tutorial.
With this in mind I can see the point what what the play testers are saying, and I will carry on with the game itself.
Friday 28 March 2014
Friday 21 March 2014
The first tutorial level and refining the second one
For my first tutorial I decided to re-do parts of it.
Firstly at the start I created a cube to block out other distractions for the player so they could get to speed with the game. Then after this I explained to the player through the text at the beginning that they will be going towards a planet. However after a number of play tests some of my thoughts were confirmed. The introduction at the beginning was way too long, it had the important information in there but it has too much back ground info in it. For example I would explain the federation of miners logo that is at the top of the screen.
To fix this I removed most of the text that contained background information and it tells the player there is a planet in the system and the player most ravel to it.
The second part was the ordering is objects in the scene. Initially the player goes to a planet and then they are told lots of information about how to mine the planet and a planet's mass drains over a period of time. When explaining this I was info dumping to the player where I should have gradually brought elements into the game.
I fixed this by re-ordering how the in game objects appear. After the introduction text appears and the player has read it, they can press the "Continue" button to remove the dialog intro text box.
The player can see the ship in the centre of the screen and there is a blue fuel bar in the bottom left corner of the screen. Also there is a planet in the distance of the players view that is glowing green and has a yellow arrow pointing at it.
After a few seconds some text appears above the ship quickly telling the player how to move. After the player has moved for a few seconds the text disappears, (unfortunately it is a bit delayed and some times it is not removed after the player does this but I'm working on the bug).
After after the player's fuel has drained so they have one third of it left, they are told their fuel is low and a purple trader ship appears. Four arrows around the trader ring ship also appear and they are pointing to it to help the player work our where they have to go.
When the player is refuelling they will freeze (in the tutorial only). The player must go into the force field in the middle and stay in order for the transaction to take place. When the fuel is going in blue particles from the trader ship move towards the player ship, the blue HUD fuel bar increases in size, and text appears above it saying, "You are now refuelling". This can been seen in the image below. As you can see in the the picture the bar pulses in opacity when being interacted with. Many players found this confusing because they didn't know if it was still relevant to the game since it nearly disappears. Due to this reason I will make sure the bar stays solid through out the game to avoid this confusion.
Once the player is fully refuelled and exits the ship through the other end, the ship and arrows disappear. Then the "player is refuelling" text is replaced with a message saying "You are fully refuelled, continue to planet". Many players like this feature because they are then aware their fuel tank has been fully refuelled, as well as it being show visually by the head up display fuel bar.
After this the player is told to continue to the next planet, also the arrow pointing to the planet is still there. This has made it easier for players because after the trader disappears it makes it clearer for the player where to go to because all of the unneeded stuff has been hidden away from the player so they will not be confused, like the trader after it has been used. With the arrow above the planet, originally I removed it after introducing the trader as to not clutter the screen. However due to this many players thought they didn't know if they still had to travel to the planet any more and became confused. In order to fix this I made the sure the arrow was visible and was animated above the planet (bobbing up and down to grab the player's attention), to show the player they still have to go there, as well as added the text in the picture below. This is like a little reminder for the player as to what the main objective after they have completed a mini task in the game.
I have also kept the text near the HUD bar so the player knows the information is related to said item.
When the player is near enough to the planet, this activates a trigger that starts the mining mechanic. The yellow arrow above the planet is removed because it's not needed any more since the player is at the planet any how.
When the player is mining the planet as particle system inside the planet activates firing green particles towards the player ship at a rapid pace. About half a second after this starts the green ship mass bar (above the blue fuel bar) appears. This demonstrates the mass cargo holding capacity of the player ship. Along with the bar appearing, some text also shows up, describing to the player, they are mining a planet. I made sure the delays between these two actions was about 0.5 seconds because firstly I don't want to show the player too many things going on at once. Secondly if the delay is two slow, many players did not see the connections between the two items. With this the player sees one action occurring and ask's "What is this?", then the player is quickly told what is going on just after said action is occurring. Along with this, the green bar increases in size as the player is ming the planet and the bar itself pulses, indicating the player is receiving something important grabbing the player's attention.
Another note: When an action is happening, I temporally prevent the player from turning the ship or moving. this is so the player knows what is going on and does not move away from an area when receiving instructions about it.
Another note: When I tested this mechanic on several players, any of them thought the mining process and any transactions the player performs (such as getting fuel from the trader) should be quick and snappy (no more than a few seconds). With this I increased the transfer rates of the trader ship and the planet mining mechanic. Both actions last no more then two seconds, and when play testing this, many players found it to be a nice improvement.
Arrow above planet bug in previous version (relating the both the picture and paragraph above):
Also in previous play test as a bug I accidentally left the arrow above the planet when the player was interacting with the planet in the tutorial (when they are mining a planet), and many player's were confused because they didn't know if they had completed the action of arriving to the planet correctly. Also some player's found the arrow distracting because it kept grabbing their attention whilst they were trying to concentrate on what the text was saying and the mining action in the game.
Planet recharging mechanic stage:
When the player has finished ming the planet, the glowing halo colour around the planet changes to a bright yellow and half a second later, the text above the green mass GUI bar reads "You have drained the planet of it's resources". Using these starkly different colours quickly and easily shows the player weather a planet has mass resources or not and can be mined. Many players liked this during play testing because it was very quick and simple, unlike having text above the planet. Therefore when the player is in the actual game, they can quickly see which planet's can be mined are full of mass resources with out wasting time going to the planet to find out.
This part of the tutorial I am happy with. About half a second after the player has been told they have mined the planet, the old text disappears. A new instruction text in the top left appears, telling the player to travel to the warp gate particle system. Because the
I speed up the creation process I decided to purchase an animated particle system form the unity asset store (ghdalstjr130@gmail.com. 12 Apr. 2014. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/13998). I found one
I thought was perfect and spherical, like from the TV show "Star Gate"(the image below was the visual effect of what I wanted, the blue watery part) (Stargate. 1994, Kurt Russell.). Because it is a bright blue colour and animated, it grabbed player's attention during play testing and every one likes it.
The warp gate originally appeared right behind the planet, however many players found it difficult to find, even with a large yellow arrow point to it. I changed the positioning so it's to the left of the planet and not too far along the 'Z' axis so the player can actually see it when it appears. When the player enters the warp gate, they enter the actual game level straight away, this is so I can keep the player immersed in the game experience with out disrupting the player's flow.
Firstly at the start I created a cube to block out other distractions for the player so they could get to speed with the game. Then after this I explained to the player through the text at the beginning that they will be going towards a planet. However after a number of play tests some of my thoughts were confirmed. The introduction at the beginning was way too long, it had the important information in there but it has too much back ground info in it. For example I would explain the federation of miners logo that is at the top of the screen.
To fix this I removed most of the text that contained background information and it tells the player there is a planet in the system and the player most ravel to it.
The second part was the ordering is objects in the scene. Initially the player goes to a planet and then they are told lots of information about how to mine the planet and a planet's mass drains over a period of time. When explaining this I was info dumping to the player where I should have gradually brought elements into the game.
I fixed this by re-ordering how the in game objects appear. After the introduction text appears and the player has read it, they can press the "Continue" button to remove the dialog intro text box.
The player can see the ship in the centre of the screen and there is a blue fuel bar in the bottom left corner of the screen. Also there is a planet in the distance of the players view that is glowing green and has a yellow arrow pointing at it.
After a few seconds some text appears above the ship quickly telling the player how to move. After the player has moved for a few seconds the text disappears, (unfortunately it is a bit delayed and some times it is not removed after the player does this but I'm working on the bug).
After after the player's fuel has drained so they have one third of it left, they are told their fuel is low and a purple trader ship appears. Four arrows around the trader ring ship also appear and they are pointing to it to help the player work our where they have to go.
When the player is refuelling they will freeze (in the tutorial only). The player must go into the force field in the middle and stay in order for the transaction to take place. When the fuel is going in blue particles from the trader ship move towards the player ship, the blue HUD fuel bar increases in size, and text appears above it saying, "You are now refuelling". This can been seen in the image below. As you can see in the the picture the bar pulses in opacity when being interacted with. Many players found this confusing because they didn't know if it was still relevant to the game since it nearly disappears. Due to this reason I will make sure the bar stays solid through out the game to avoid this confusion.
Once the player is fully refuelled and exits the ship through the other end, the ship and arrows disappear. Then the "player is refuelling" text is replaced with a message saying "You are fully refuelled, continue to planet". Many players like this feature because they are then aware their fuel tank has been fully refuelled, as well as it being show visually by the head up display fuel bar.
After this the player is told to continue to the next planet, also the arrow pointing to the planet is still there. This has made it easier for players because after the trader disappears it makes it clearer for the player where to go to because all of the unneeded stuff has been hidden away from the player so they will not be confused, like the trader after it has been used. With the arrow above the planet, originally I removed it after introducing the trader as to not clutter the screen. However due to this many players thought they didn't know if they still had to travel to the planet any more and became confused. In order to fix this I made the sure the arrow was visible and was animated above the planet (bobbing up and down to grab the player's attention), to show the player they still have to go there, as well as added the text in the picture below. This is like a little reminder for the player as to what the main objective after they have completed a mini task in the game.
I have also kept the text near the HUD bar so the player knows the information is related to said item.
When the player is near enough to the planet, this activates a trigger that starts the mining mechanic. The yellow arrow above the planet is removed because it's not needed any more since the player is at the planet any how.
When the player is mining the planet as particle system inside the planet activates firing green particles towards the player ship at a rapid pace. About half a second after this starts the green ship mass bar (above the blue fuel bar) appears. This demonstrates the mass cargo holding capacity of the player ship. Along with the bar appearing, some text also shows up, describing to the player, they are mining a planet. I made sure the delays between these two actions was about 0.5 seconds because firstly I don't want to show the player too many things going on at once. Secondly if the delay is two slow, many players did not see the connections between the two items. With this the player sees one action occurring and ask's "What is this?", then the player is quickly told what is going on just after said action is occurring. Along with this, the green bar increases in size as the player is ming the planet and the bar itself pulses, indicating the player is receiving something important grabbing the player's attention.
Another note: When an action is happening, I temporally prevent the player from turning the ship or moving. this is so the player knows what is going on and does not move away from an area when receiving instructions about it.
Another note: When I tested this mechanic on several players, any of them thought the mining process and any transactions the player performs (such as getting fuel from the trader) should be quick and snappy (no more than a few seconds). With this I increased the transfer rates of the trader ship and the planet mining mechanic. Both actions last no more then two seconds, and when play testing this, many players found it to be a nice improvement.
Arrow above planet bug in previous version (relating the both the picture and paragraph above):
Also in previous play test as a bug I accidentally left the arrow above the planet when the player was interacting with the planet in the tutorial (when they are mining a planet), and many player's were confused because they didn't know if they had completed the action of arriving to the planet correctly. Also some player's found the arrow distracting because it kept grabbing their attention whilst they were trying to concentrate on what the text was saying and the mining action in the game.
Planet recharging mechanic stage:
When the player has finished ming the planet, the glowing halo colour around the planet changes to a bright yellow and half a second later, the text above the green mass GUI bar reads "You have drained the planet of it's resources". Using these starkly different colours quickly and easily shows the player weather a planet has mass resources or not and can be mined. Many players liked this during play testing because it was very quick and simple, unlike having text above the planet. Therefore when the player is in the actual game, they can quickly see which planet's can be mined are full of mass resources with out wasting time going to the planet to find out.
This part of the tutorial I am happy with. About half a second after the player has been told they have mined the planet, the old text disappears. A new instruction text in the top left appears, telling the player to travel to the warp gate particle system. Because the
I speed up the creation process I decided to purchase an animated particle system form the unity asset store (ghdalstjr130@gmail.com. 12 Apr. 2014. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/13998). I found one
I thought was perfect and spherical, like from the TV show "Star Gate"(the image below was the visual effect of what I wanted, the blue watery part) (Stargate. 1994, Kurt Russell.). Because it is a bright blue colour and animated, it grabbed player's attention during play testing and every one likes it.
"GC14DBM The Stargate Mystery (Unknown Cache) in Setúbal, Portugal created by Blue Trekkers & Sand Trekker." Geocaching.com. N.p., 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. <http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC14DBM_the-stargate-mystery>.
The warp gate originally appeared right behind the planet, however many players found it difficult to find, even with a large yellow arrow point to it. I changed the positioning so it's to the left of the planet and not too far along the 'Z' axis so the player can actually see it when it appears. When the player enters the warp gate, they enter the actual game level straight away, this is so I can keep the player immersed in the game experience with out disrupting the player's flow.
Friday 14 March 2014
Re-writing the first tutorial level again
Weekly blog
I received a lot of feed back this week. A lot of based on my tutorial. Some people liked the QTE and some did not.
It took me a while to work out how to implement the feature. During play testing many players didn’t know why they had to mine a planet until after they had completed the QTE. Due to this I changed the tutorial so the player knows that the QTE will speed up the mining ability.
However the biggest problem was the tutorial itself. After receiving feedback on it I realised there was a big problem with it but I was not sure of what it was. It could have been the order of events, or that I was trying to cram in a lot of information at every point. After one of my lecturers when thought it, apparently it was both and some other things.
What I have changed about my tutorial:
Firstly in the top left corner there is some 3d text giving the player instructions. Initially saying, “Go to the planet”.
Then it tells the player how to move forward using either “w” or up arrow. Also I have hidden elements in the game until the player needs them. This includes things like traders and other planets. This is because initially in my first tutorial I was boarding the player with information, things like, Head up displays, lots of text of the screen and other visual clutter
I cleaned this up by at the start only making the player and the first planet active, then changing info points to collider triggers. So when the player is running out of fuel (about 2/3rd left) the player is alerted their fuel is low, then a trader appears, player is told they have to visit the trader ship. However it’s not explicit why the player has to visit the ship. What I mean by this is I have not told the player the game will end if they do not refuel. This needs improvement.
Also after the player has visited the trader I need to remove it from the level. So far I have been trying different methods of guiding the player through my tutorial. So due to this I need to remove the trader ship when the player has used it as to not clutter up the level and distract the player. Because other wise the player will have a sensory over load and they won’t know what objects in game are relevent.
After this I explain the player is mining the planet when they go near it. However I need to replace the arrow pointing to it to not confuse the player to show it’s still relevant.
When the layer is mining the planet, after a few seconds text appears saying they are mining the planet. After this the player has a prompt for a quick time event, if it is successful, they mine faster. If they fail it there is no response and the mining speed stays the same. After this nothing happens.
After a number of play tests I noted many players didn’t know they were mining the planet until the QTE popped up. Also some people asked why should the mining be slow in the first place? Also many people have asked why don’t they get feedback when they have mined the planet.
Due to this I have re-write the tutorial. When the player is mining the planet, the text will say they are ming the planet. This will also reveal the mining GUI bar above the fuel gauge with the text on top to show the correlation. Also I need to tell the player they have mined the planet when the bar is 3/4 full and make the pleat change to the re-charge colour. After this I need to spawn a warp gate to the next tutorial level and tell the player to enter the warp gate.
With the warp gate, this is to keep the player in the game and keep the game flowing nicely and not spoil the experience for the player.
In the next blog post I will describe how I have changed the level and the feedback from play testing it.
Saturday 1 March 2014
More on the Visuals and Slightly On a Twitch Mechanic
Visuals and Responsiveness:
Player fuel gauge drains:
This week I have been working on the visuals of my dissertation and things have been working a lot better. For example, when the player is moving, there are multiple thrusters on the ship that are represented by particle systems. These change colour from yellow to red and burn out when the player is not moving. Also when the player is moving the fuel gauge fore ground blue bar drops at a noticeable rate showing the player values are dropping.
Originally I had the par pulsing between two alpha values where so the bar was slight more transparent to attract the players attention. However half of the play testers did and did not like it and one of my lecturers suggested against it, therefore I removed it from he game.
Planet resource transfer to player:
In my last blog post I mentioned when the player is receiving resources the particle system goes towards the player avatar and the HUD bars increase in width. I did the same thing with the the trader ship and play testers thought it was easy to understand, although some people though the ships needs to be a little further back from the trader ship so they can see the particles going to and from the ship. This is one of the things I will be concentrating on next week.
Player Twitch Quick Time Event:
Something I had noticed over the past several weeks but did not concentrate on because I prefer to concentrate on one thing at a time. When the player is mining a planet or trading resources at the trader ship, the transfer rate of resources takes about 7 seconds, and this is a long time for a player and they can't interact with the game when they are doing this. I had been thinking about implementing a quick time event system into the game to speed up the transfer rate if the player chooses to. After a number of play tests this thought was confirmed.
After sorting out the visuals for the transfer rates, I got to work on creating a quick time event. I started creating it myself, and I tried this using two different methods. One where the user clicks to increase a click value but when the user releases the mouse a timer makes the value decrease. This worked but dropped two quickly. Then I made the drop value lower, this worked but the planet transfer rate still stayed up after the quick time event. Then I tried making it so when the player clicks it makes the value raise but when they release instead of setting a timer to true to decrease the value the vale drops automatically. However this worked better but it still did not achieve the desired result.
After hours of struggling I decided to search the web for answers. Some one has already created some simple C# scripts for this purpose. This method seems more efficient and simple and will hopefully speed up my progress. I have implemented it into my project however I have not had the chance to use it yet. It has multiple QTE (quick time event) modes, form pressing a random button quickly to mashing a button. I plan on using the latter. Another point, the quick time event script utilises GUITextures. This means I can use graphic to show the player which button I would like them to mash. This will do well because people have to think less with graphics and it is quicker to give players information this way due to it.
To add to the visuals I have added two items (these still need refining though). The first item is a ling cube and the second is 3D test saying "Mine Boost". When the player clicks to activate the speed boost the test is visible, also the cube increases in height so the player gets visual feedback on how effective their actions are. Also I have added a phasing drilling laser sound effect which I created using Dr Petter's program and modified the properties of it in Audacity, free audio editing soft-ware. After this I implementing it into the game onto the planet. I tried it on the player object but it did not work as well as I thought it would down to technical issues. After implementing the code this made the plater mining action more responsive because they were getting audio feedback.
Altering pitch for mining speed increase:
To add to the visuals I have added two items (these still need refining though). The first item is a ling cube and the second is 3D test saying "Mine Boost". When the player clicks to activate the speed boost the test is visible, also the cube increases in height so the player gets visual feedback on how effective their actions are. Also I have added a phasing drilling laser sound effect which I created using Dr Petter's program and modified the properties of it in Audacity, free audio editing soft-ware. After this I implementing it into the game onto the planet. I tried it on the player object but it did not work as well as I thought it would down to technical issues. After implementing the code this made the plater mining action more responsive because they were getting audio feedback.
Altering pitch for mining speed increase:
Along with the particles speed increasing and the other visuals to show the mining was faster I decided to raise the pitch and volume of the audio clip when the mining speed boost was active. After some experimenting I found two properties that I thought made one sound stand out from the other. This was suggested by my play testers and it confirmed my thought.
Now I just need to play test it on a few people.
Now I just need to play test it on a few people.
I will describe the results of this in the next post since I have not had the chance to test this out.
Link to my latest build (warning the tutorial is still a bit broken but the functions sort of work, I will fix this soon):
http://www.kongregate.com/games/jinfox91/space-miner
Link to my bibliography:
http://josepheasterdissertationblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/bibliography-references.html
Link to my latest build (warning the tutorial is still a bit broken but the functions sort of work, I will fix this soon):
http://www.kongregate.com/games/jinfox91/space-miner
Link to my bibliography:
http://josepheasterdissertationblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/bibliography-references.html
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