Plans for Each Member

The development process of the game was to divide up the labor amongst ourselves. Essentially, one person would be the primary programmer, one person would create the original artwork used in the game, and the other two would do level design. The final responsibilities were split as follows: Andy for primary programming, James for original artwork, and Nihal and Soji for level design.

Game Development Process

The game development process began with each member of the group carrying out the roles assigned to them. James created the sprite work for all the necessary components for our game such as the levels, enemies, and the player itself. Andy worked on the code for basic player movement, animations, UI, and etc. Soji and Nihal created the level designs for all the levels and included all the necessary platform animations based on the visions that they had in mind for each level. As the process progressed, each member delved in other fields and helped make progress in the game in those areas. Besides script work, Andy also contributed to UI designs and created a start and instruction scene. James helped improve upon the scripts and added to different levels in the game. Soji added sound effects to the game and also helped contribute different scripts that were essential to the gameplay. Nihal worked on the game over and you won scenes and helped organize the scripts so that everything was easy to follow. Each member of the team also contributed greatly to the bug finding portion of play testing and made sure that everything ran as expected.We also had to switch from unity collaboration to github because of the switch to plastic and we didn’t have the time to properly migrate. This caused some issues with merge conflicts but we were able to figure it out and get back on track. 

Play Testing

Play testing was done continuously throughout the game development process. Jumping was an important mechanic in our game and early on, we had an issue with the feeling of the jump. When play-testing, we noticed that at certain times, the jump force felt higher than intended and wall jumping felt a bit clunky and unresponsive at times. We also had to play test the levels extensively because since they are so large we needed to make sure every aspect was playable. We had to make sure every jump could happen and every platform could be reached. This was especially problematic because the building functionality was not working for two members so we had to test using unity remote the entire time. Although it was an arduous process it was an important task.

In terms of feedback during beta testing, a lot of the groups agreed with our play movements comments and how it didn’t feel smooth at that moment. The groups also added that we lacked content within our game and mentioned that the buttons in the game for jumping and shooting weren’t really intuitive and it took some time for the play testers to figure out which button did what. We also had issues with the canvas and a little bit of latency which we tried to adjust for the final product. 

Final Thoughts on the Development Process

Overall, play testing early was a great idea since it helped catch several bugs. The refinement process took longer than expected, but with the early testing, we were able to catch and resolve several key issues in the game. 

The way in which we divided the work initially worked well for the team because everyone was able to do their part. We underestimated the amount of work each member would have and in the end, all our roles merged together and we all contributed to every aspect of the game. In the end, we believe the development process turned out really well and every member was able to contribute.