Journal Entry - Project B build 2 (after playtest)

Date: 18.4.2022

Activity: 

• edited Project B according to feedback from students from playtesting session

Notes:  

I made a "finish UI" which is shown to the player to inform them about the fact they won and what is there to do next. I show/hide the UI by setting the canvas.enabled to true/false. There was a bug, however, which happened when the player resumed the game and then pressed S+Space. The zone would then restart. I thought it happened because the buttons were still enabled, although hidden, and pressing Space would press a button. And really, I solved this problem by disabling the buttons' interactivity before hiding the canvas. I found this behavior a little bit confusing.

Feedback from the lab playtest I could incorporate without violating the One Page Design from Project A

• Add finish UI allowing the player to restart the level.
• I added some decorative level art (not in the level design). Some testers found the decorative level art confusing and thought they could interact with it so I made it less obtrusive.
• Move the camera to tell the player what is happening when they trigger certain events using a pressure plate. I used Cinemachine for this.
  • Another solution was also suggested: to add some level art, for example, wires, which would hint at what the pressure plate does. I experimented with this solution, but could not arrive at a satisfying version. I originally wanted to combine this with the camera movement, but dropped it for this reason.

Feedback I could not incorporate, because it would violate the One Page Design from Project A

• On the last floor (puzzle part) the pressure plate should react to the player too (in addition to the pushable box) and should be releasable, opening the door on press and closing the door on release. This would tell the player that the pressure plate needs something else to be activated.

Invested time:

• Feedback implementation and experimenting: 6 hours

Outcome:

Build (attached)