Fine Tuning Prototypes
Now that each concept had been given a prototype, the team decided that it was time to head to QA for the first time. Beforehand though, the prototypes needed to be touched up so that they were presentable. For me, that meant giving the Change Please prototype more challenges that required the player to switch between the different types of coins. I decided to keep using the section that I had previously built and just add onto it.
Editing was a bit of a challenge this week due to me somehow being shut out of our repository. Every time I tried to clone the repository in Sourcetree, the clone would fail. The only way I could get in was to install Tortoise hg, but I had to restart the computer every time I installed it. Once I got passed this, I added a jump that required being a penny, and an obstacle where the player rolls a wheel to lift a wall. The trick was that the player had to be a quarter or gold dollar to move faster on the wheel and lift the wall before wall fell back down.
QA Feedback
I actually made a mistake at the first QA session by using the wrong prototype for Pigeon Patrol, but fortunately we still got some good feedback on the art concepts for the game. When we brought the current prototype to the next QA session, we had 2 different camera perspectives that we tested; top-down and back-view. A lot of people really seemed to like how good the controls felt along with the bullet patterns in the top-down version. The back-view version didn't fair as well, unfortunately; it looked like people found it more disorienting than fun.
Change Please definitely faired the best in QA out of all of our concepts. The art concepts were liked universally, and people were really into the game's premise of changing coin types to solve puzzles. One area of criticism we got was with the buttons used to change coins. A lot of people didn't like how they were point and click, and wanted to use buttons on the keyboard instead. Being a big fan of platformers, I can see where they're coming from in terms of wanting to use only buttons on the keyboard.
The Escape From Syria prototype had the hardest time being ready for QA. Connor was having a lot of issues that he couldn't figure out in time, so he chose to throw together a very rough prototype to show. Fortunately, we got a lot of positive feedback on the feel of the movement of the character and the enemy. At the same time though, most people wanted there to be more to do in the prototype than just running away from a constantly following enemy.
Sprint Takeaways
I think I did a much better job at estimating my hours for this sprint, but I'm also a little surprised at how many hours I actually worked. Aside from estimations, the team wanted to use this sprint to figure out what concept we would be moving forward with. In the end, we decided that Change Please was going to be the winner. Pigeon Patrol was just a game that we were having trouble establishing at that point, so we didn't see much point with continuing with it. As for Escape From Syria, myself, Connor, and Julia were still pretty concerned about making a game revolving around such a sensitive topic, as well as knowing how much work the game would be. In the end, Travis was willing to let the concept go so that the team could work on a game that we were more willing to make. On a side note, the team also decided on the team name being "Fat Pigeon Studios", as well as Julia coming up with a team logo.
Next Sprint
With the team having narrowed down our work to one prototype, the plan is to start flushing out Change Please even more than before. My goals are to get a puzzle designed for the first level, and in time for our next QA session. We're also hoping to get Julia's art into the game in time as well to give the testers a better experience. To fix the repository concerns, Connor has taken up the task of switching our repository to GIT, which we think will work much better with Sourcetree. Hopefully, this issue can be worked out so that our production process can stay on track.