Development Blog: Week 12

Week 12 consisted of receiving feedback from faculty, alumni, and other students on our current state of our prototype. Looking at the feedback given by our playtesters, we received generally favorable reviews on the core gameplay and its mechanics. The biggest piece of constructive feedback we received all centered around the UX/UI.  Players had trouble selecting certain units due to the camera, they could not de-click units after selecting them, and they wanted to see movement and attack ranges of units before selecting them.

With that being said, our next sprint is focused on all of the UI issues players had in our prototype. We are focusing on allowing players to more easily see health, movement range, and attack range of units without being stuck selecting them. This includes the enemy units as well. We want players to be able to more easily plan out strategies by being able to visually see all of the options both they and their enemies have.

We are also looking ahead to the next team, and are designing concepts for how to make the ranged units in the game more unique. From visuals to mechanics, we want to make sure these units feel as different as possible from their melee counterparts. 

To add to this idea, our artists have been brainstorming and sketching ideas on how these units will look visually. We are planning on making the ranged Swiss Guard have an armor variation as archers would not have pauldrons and chest plates on due to them limiting movement to shoot. Our initial idea is to give them leather armor to allow for more body and arm movement. As for allied “archer” characters, we are making them a different “chimera” variation on gargoyles. We have their ranged attacks to be shooting stones at enemies in some shape or form. We decided on making the ranged gargoyles more snake-like, giving them the ability to spit out rocks at enemies. This will give them an extreme visual difference to both their enemy ranged and allied melee counterparts.

 

Adding onto our Melee Gargoyle from last week, we tested and decided on a color scheme we like:

 

The finalized color choice for our Melee Gargoyle

We also have made a lot of progress on the concept art for the Cathedral building. We want it to showcase the grandness and majesty of the building.We want it to convey everything that a real-life cathedral does in people who enter them. This will give the artists next semester a strong idea of how to build this style in 3D. Seen below are the iterations the Cathedral has gone through throughout the week.

 

 

Next week will be focusing on preparing for softs with faculty, making sure that we tackle as many issues expressed by playtesters this week. This will be the last major feedback we receive before handing off our pre-production package to the next team, so we want to make sure we can get as much new feedback as possible.