On the Eve of Halves
We have made remarkable progress in the past week to be fully prepared for our Halves presentation, which is next week. Not only have we redoubled our efforts to make the game as good as can be, we have also talked to our OCCO clients in order to gain better understanding of what the long-term, post-semester goals of the project are so that we are better able to field questions pertaining to this topic. At the moment, the project is purely a proof of concept to show that two separate teams can effect meaningful changes in their respective gameplays. Beyond that, no official decisions have been made about what direction the project will take once the semester is over. The server, which is still currently under construction, will be theirs to use in whatever way they see fit after we leave, but the main mission is just to make a game that can manipulated by playing a completely different game.
While we are still waiting to hear about the server’s progress, we have been busy fixing bugs to the game, as well as finalizing features for Halves. We are adding new gestures for the camera such as peaking around the immediate areas surrounding the ship and a zoom in/out function. New levels and models were added, new iterations of the UI were applied, and new visual effects were implemented. All of these features were put into the game so that we could playtest and see what worked and did not. On Friday, we held a playtest open to the general EA public, and we received great feedback from our guest, who included our advisors, Rich Hilleman, and members of the Zimension team.
In the end, we took all of this feedback and tried to fix as much as we could over the weekend to be as ready for Halves as possible. We also put together a preliminary presentation powerpoint that people have used to rehearse what they are going say during it. We will have rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday to hone our parts and make sure that we present the best we can for our audience, which will be comprised of industry leaders and professionals. We are excited to meet the challenge and show off what we have accomplished.