This past week, we underwent the second phase of our preparation for halves. We first sat down with one of our faculty advisors (Brenda Harger) to see if we were on the right track for our presentation at the end of the week, and we learned that we still needed to take three things into account:
- Since we had decided to show a demo video of our project during our presentation (instead of giving a live demo), we would need to specify exactly which parts of our game appear in said video when showing it to an audience.
- We needed to add a tech report to update ETC faculty on how far along we are, tech-wise.
- We needed to realize that halves is all about laying everything out concerning our project (the good, the bad, and the ugly) so that we can get help where we need it the most.
As our presentation date grew closer, we finished both a UI prototype and a prototype of the follower count visualization that will be shown on a large screen during play at the Games for Change Festival. Additionally, we were able to create a demo video that clearly illustrates all three phases of our game.
At this point in the week, we also met with ETC instructor Mike Christel, who gave us some useful pointers on a) updating IT staff concerning our choice of server, and b) anticipating questions that we could get at the end of our presentation (as well as preparing answers for those questions).
After hours upon hours of preparing our slide deck and practicing our presentation (both individually and as a team), we were ready; Friday rolled around, and our presentation went off without a hitch.
However, we’re not completely out of the woods yet. We have a fair amount of back-end work to do, and we still need to wrap up some loose ends when it comes to design. Indeed, after meeting with several other ETC instructors and our client—and upon reflecting on some of the questions we got following our halves presentation—we have realized that our game’s third “debunking” phase isn’t as clear (in terms of the goals it aims to accomplish) or as meaningfully social as we want it to be.
Thus, next week will be all about figuring out those design issues, as well as prepping our tech for two of our most important playtests this semester.