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.
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