CRITIQUES AND CHANGES
After presenting my project to Oculus Story Studio’s representatives and a few teachers, I got some really good feedback in making my project better. I’ve also talked to another teacher about showing my project to the class and having a blind play-test session in order to improve the game’s User Experience. I’m hoping that I can gain even more feedback, without my direct intervention, about how to make the game a better experience for players.
Some critiques that have already been implemented into the game are as follows:
Making the in-game gesture recognizer appear bigger so that it matches the runic symbols shown on the shield’s runes (for matching gestures to)
Providing a reference to where the player’s forward direction is at all times
Using a marker or reference of some sort to show how close you are to an object in order to figure out if it can be reached by the player’s sword
This is really important because as a demo, the player will not have a chance to get a feel for the distance between themselves and the objects in front of them
I’ve also changed a few things based on my observations and those are:
I’ve taken away the feature of slowing/stopping the enemies during spellcasting
Most of the people playing this would try to snipe the enemies. Therefore, by having the enemies stopped/slowed, the enemies won’t have a chance to really attack the player if they are being fired upon constantly with magic
This also means that I need to have the enemies go into combat mode as soon as they get hit by magic instead of just entering their trigger zones
They keep missing one enemy so I’ve had to change the position of that specific enemy
For this demo, they have to kill every enemy in order to fill up their special meter in order to summon a special beast that will end the demo
I’ve also decided to get rid of the durability meters for both the shield and sword
For a full game, this system will return to flesh out the system of repairing, replacing, and crafting weapons and shields
I’ve had to increase the trigger zones of the ranged enemies so that they feel like actual ranged enemies
I’ve increased the speed of the fireball’s movement and made it so they get destroyed after a certain amount of time
It’s all about polishing, refining, and fixing things at this point. I’ve been told that I can present my project to some Unity representatives next week, so I’m pretty excited about that too!
On a side note, I’ve received an email that I’ve been accepted into the Academy of Art University’s Spring Show 2016! I don’t know whether it’s this project that’s been accepted or another project that I submitted (or even both?!) but I’m glad I can participate in the Spring Show before I graduate this semester!