Prep For MassDigi
So before the competition happened, there was quite a bit that needed to get done. Most of it had to do with some miscommunication that happened between the art and design team. Basically, we had some problems with implementing art and adding colliders properly, so the artists had to re-add colliders to all of their new assets in the refinery. Fortunately, it sounds like the work I've been doing on the train station will make it so that doesn't happen in the future, but the events set down some more guidelines for the level, which thankfully, I've been following this whole time.
Anyways, the designers were tasked with attaching colliders to all of the new assets in the refinery level and making sure that crawling on them felt good. Once that was done and everything looked nice, the time came for the competition.
Presenting at MassDigi
It turns out that this was far from the kind of competition that we were expecting, or were interested in competing in. During the actual judging, we got the impression that we were being judged on the business aspect of our game more than the actual game itself. People were asking us a lot about how we were going to market our game, and what the selling price was going to be. While we all know that there needs to be some thought on business stuff, we don't think it should be the primary judging point of a game. On top of that, the final judges didn't even play the games; they just watched the teams give presentations on how we were going to sell our games. In the end we didn't win any awards, but we're not too bothered by it since we want Arachnotron to be more about the gameplay experience than the price.
On the plus side though, we met a lot of cool developers at the contest who really liked the game, with a bunch of them even asking for us to keep them updated on game. In the end, we might not have won any physical awards, but we got the best prize; people who like and support our game.
Next Sprint
Now that this whole experience is behind us, the next big milestone is ALPHA. Being a level designer and framework person though, my responsibilities probably aren't gonna affect the ALPHA content. More than likely, we're going to start on a new level blockout for our third level, it's still a bit up in the air though what that level is going to be though since we've decided to cut down to only having 3 levels. I'm really excited to get started on it, and to get back to the work that I love doing the most; making levels.
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