Development Devlog

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 process began by following the earlier described roles for each member. However, each member started to contribute to other fields of the game. For instance, some of us who were originally only doing level design started to program for a new idea or feature they proposed to help alleviate the pressure of one person. When the programming was mostly finished, Andy would help with creating the background for certain levels. Soji and Nihal assisted in bug fixes for the final game and created the code for moving platforms. After finishing the artwork, James repeatedly play-tested and constantly provided areas of improvement and bugs that needed to be patched.

Play Testing

 When it came to play-testing, we did a lot of it throughout the entire 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 tested for enemy movement and discovered several bugs that included enemies not taking damage, no death animation or sound, and their movement being extremely buggy.

In terms of feedback from other groups during the beta playtesting session, most of their feedback agreed with our own. The other groups emphasized wall jumping feeling off, with double and wall jumping being unintuitive and hard to perform. Several playtesters also showed out-of-bounds areas, allowing the player to escape the bounds of the levels and pass levels without going through intended routes and enemies.

Final Thoughts on the Development Process

Overall, playtesting 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.