Part 7: Extending the game for alt.ctrl.gdc (3/13/2024 - 3/23/2024)
Editor's Note:
Welcome to part 7! The grand finale wherein we create a final list of improvements to make before Day of the Devs and GDC based on playtesting, show the game there, and make a lot of last minute fixes at the show! We left off just before taking the game to consignment lounge for demoing and playtesting.
Here's my list, but I'm think we should be careful about working on the same stuff . I'll try to add things to GitHub tomorrow. Meantime if you work on something I guess make sure we know.
12:14 AM
add button key to corridor maze
need no audio help for maze
kills too fast, too short time limit?
input is still broken on maze. Need to reset when you change channels
club icon shouldn't disappear on pan and scan
say "not available" or clarify channels that are unused? Maybe just make suits more obvious
some channels have room small suit icons
outline the icons on pan and scan?
animate pulse the suit icons
make drive don't even bigger, take up the hole screen. Start them already moving? Reduce time to win
pan and scan controls font increase, use volume as well as additional button
make hit ix smaller on drive game
make clue reveal more often
add special icon for clue reveal and quiz
add screenshot of interrogation to quiz interface
clue / quiz answers not saving properly
(edited)
12:14 AM
Also these are raw notes, I need to clarify many
Editor's Note:
Making this list was stressful due to day job time pressure seeping in, but it was very much worth it as other team members fixed nearly everything I added!
well, let's hope we don't need to restart as often
Editor's Note:
Again, making concessions to make the game easier (giving seemingly obvious clues in the TV guide). This was the right call for the shows but one would be surprised how obvious things need to be for most players.
Editor's Note:
👇 I think I was right in this diagnosis, and I'm pretty satisfied with myself for figuring it out. 😂 Plus the hands Mack added are awesome, they look like the killer from a Dario Argento film. Giallo hands!
Interesting that people could seemingly figure out steering in car game but didn't know what to press in corridor.
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12:08 PM
I think it's because without an embodiement it kind of looks like it could just be a camera view
12:08 PM
so you don't realize the camera can "walk"
12:08 PM
but maybe a more video game-minded / literate audience would get it. Either way, I say add the number pad
12:10 PM
Ok, I think I got all my notes on there. I feel like there were some other weird bugs I might have missed, feel free to add things.
12:11 PM
@Ian I wonder if there's away we can add an input that restarts the game from within the game with the remote? would that be too risky players would accidentally hit it? maybe accessing the computer isn't that bad at the next shows?
FYI the interrogation scene is meant to continue playing in the background like a real TV show, so we would need to disable the problematic components. not sure what approach you used to solve it
Editor's Note:
Corridor maze game design moves 👇 This went from the game I was most nervous about (mazes suck) into one of my favorite games. The pacing worked well and when the monster from the power game was incorporated for the jump scare and it helped the whole game world feel more connected.
I feel like we want the channels to feel different so I would rather not do the same style of text overlay. I do think telling the player to find the exit or just "exit" will give the player motivation. It would be cool if you could do a diegetic way of it. Hanging exit sign with an arrow could be cool, but not sure you are spawning the maze so if it pointed the wrong way could be bad lol
I have to run some errands, then I have to finish up some work things. I’ll try work through some UI stuff later tonight, might have to do some of it on the plane tomorrow.(edited)
should I just take the depth of field off the driving game? I feel like the bluriness on the suit is not ideal. I could also do screen space overlay but none of the other games have that, and then the channel change affect does not apply to the suit image. Open to other ideas as well.(edited)
Here's an answer I got using Microsoft Copilot, the world's first AI-powered answer engine. Select to see the full answer or try it yourself.
Editor's Note:
As mentioned previously, we had trouble with players not noticing the suit icons in the corner of the screen. Some iteration on that problem here. One thing I have learned over the years is that it often takes many layers of feedback to get the point across in games. 👇
I know David is teaching right, we talked about this last night, I like how they “jump” when you change channel - people are still not seeing the icon when they play, so I think this helps
8:40 PM
However I think we want to also have a a “pulse”, background circle that grows and fades, has an initial opacity, that is slow and constant
8:40 PM
Similar to what you see here…(edited)
8:42 PM
8:43 PM
Expect it probably should be white opacity, it’s an element that grows from behind the icon - hopefully this is a helpful art direction
8:44 PM
The example above is too fast, should be subtle and smooth, don’t want it to be distracting
Mike
Expect it probably should be white opacity, it’s an element that grows from behind the icon - hopefully this is a helpful art direction
So if we have time this background element in addition. @Mike are you thinking just a white circle? You might have to give us a png and mack can animate it
8:54 PM
Just because I'm not positive how you want it to look either
right, I was advocating for keeping that in there for sure, the bounce when you change channel and then the pulse is for when they stay on the channel, I can mock up an example(edited)
Done for tonight, very tired, did too much running around today. But I got UI shapes updated for Pan and Scan, I added stroke and color. I think those updates will help a lot. We'll see. Updated the quiz screen with a shot of the interrogation room, would be cool if it was a "live" feed, but too much work for that.(edited)
10:47 PM
fyi TV guide PDF updates are linked in the Google doc
I updated the save system to get stuff working, but i think if you have an old save on your system it will break, so please delete your old saves asap!
Pulsing Thread (not sure if uploads will work on plane)
3:59 PM
Shape
4:03 PM
Here is how this works. 1.) It's behind the suite container graphic. 2.) It starts off at size 4 x 4, 0% opacity. 3.) It taks 1.4 to grow to 96 x 96, 20% opacity. 4.) Then the animation ends at 2 seconds with a scale of 120 x 120, with 0% opacity
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4:04 PM
Video conecpt:
4:07 PM
4:08 PM
There should at least be 1 second delay before the next pulse, might be better if it's 2, don't want it to be distracting
Played the game for an hour+ tonight. With all the fixes today didn’t run into anything super big, good stuff everyone. Gonna try to do some more playtesting tomorrow too.
Be careful I'm changing stuff like crazy to fix the ui
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Editor's Note:
At this point I was intensely stressed out about the mere hours I had to fix a problem where many of the suit icons in channels were not in the safe zone of the TVs we had in California, and I could not figure out how to fix it in my graphics card settings. We are now in the realm of "dirty hacks" to get the bugs worked out in time for Day of the Devs!
should it only select one new minigame when a new passcode is picked? or should we get 4 new random ones? right now it only does one. Im thinking maybe getting 4 new random ones might be better so people dont get bored..
1:20 PM
but if there is a good reason for only having it get one new random one i wont touch it lol
I think we could up it to 2, but I’m not sure about 4. I expect people will move on after they have saved one person so I don’t think boring people is some that will come up too much. Something we can also test tonight and change for Wednesday if we want.
ok so maze game is still having the problem, its only rarly tho and if it stays in rotation after getting a new passcode for 2 or 3 times. gonna look into it. not a crash but just u cant move.
i think it may be because mazgenerator.instance became null, but im not sure how that happens. I tried setting instance on awake to so changign channels could reset it but that didnt seem to fix
so in that state, once I rotate the player a little in editor I was able to start playing again. I think if you change the > .99999f to >= .95f it might solve this
happened again, still stuck in the turning state so def the culprit. If we cant figure it out in the next couple mins we might just need to remove it from todays build
Lol I realize that might sound sarcastic in the context of that giant list of things to revise but it actually was good haha. These are just for the record
Editor's Note:
👆 We needed a standing height or coctail style table. Luckily I found the person managing the alt.ctrl.gdc exhibition and was able to secure one and they did not charge us.
We made a little list of stuff to acquire for displaying the work, plus some last minute fixes. 👇
There's a bug where if you change the channel during the death sequence of the drive minigame, the next time you play the drive minigame you will drive through the tv ending without actually ending the game.
Bad news - Couldn’t fix the bug last night - Good news - couldn’t repro the bug last night - Weird news - David didn’t push his latests changes so I was technically testing “old” version
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Editor's Note:
We showed the game at GDC for three days, and got to attend the IGF as VIPs for being finalists in the alt.ctrl.gdc category. You can check out some photos and videos here.
Editor's Note:
So concludes part 7, where we sprinted to the finish line and survived some last minute bug fixes while demonstrating the game at Day of the Devs and GDC. Thanks for reading!
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