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Testing!
NewBlack- 08/24/2012 10:36 PM
- 2179 views
STUFF!
So as of a few days ago the first level of tCoCL was officially entirely complete and the game "engine" finally had every essential feature implemented (you could finally die when playing! and a bunch of other stuff that was previously not implemented).
So today we finally had the first closed tests of the first level of this game and was able to get some important feedback, with the help of EvilEagles, Archiea_Nessiah and Rhyme (and soon hopefully there'll be a couple more sets of feedback from Scinaya and Elements ;=;).
To cut a long story short, despite a few annoying bugs and general rough-edges stuff, it went pretty well!
Also thanks to the recently implemented "Score Scroll" (of humiliation) we've been able to use it to gather useful information on how people performed while trying the game out, that is , assuming they make it through the level. kekfa.wav
Basically the game calculates your performance of the level based on damage dealt, damage taken, and your clear time and scores you accordingly, based on a combination of your performance in those three criteria. Then based on a series of thresholds for total score of all criteria combined - the game determines your level rank result as either E, D, C, B, A or S (we were thinking about an "F" but we decided that is just basically when you fail entirely and get a gameover instead)
There are also some other performance-based statistics and "titles" based on certain ways of playing or achieving certain performance thresholds. The vast majority are based on a player having a predominant preference for a particular weapon over the course of that level, but some others are based on things like using a lot of bullet-time or achieving a very high accuracy score. Stuff like that. It's kinda fun to see what people get.
So, in an effort to make sure this blog entry has pictures, here are some of the results scores from today's test runs.
Testers: (I'm not saying who is who :P)
Here's my personal best (screen-capped) result:
..and last but not least; here is Kazesui's:
;_;
So, from that I guess I could say the game is certainly shaping up to be fairly challenging and I like that a lot. Even with experience of the game, working on it, and having experience of all the previous builds before this one, the best I have managed to muster is a B rank. Kazesui's managed plenty of A and S rank runs but that's apparently because he's just good.
In terms of general feedback from today, it's mostly been positive, with a few issues here and there. But thankfully it seems like the vast majority of the issues were caught by testers and that they enjoyed playing, even if it was hard/painful :>
tl;dr - People played the game, they seemed to like it a fair bit, I am very pleased.
Oh and of course - Big thanks to Nessiah, EvilEagles, Rhyme, Scinaya, and Elements for offering to test for this! :3
Thank you for your time.
.
..
...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Public demo soon?
..maybe :3
Watch this space and all that.
So as of a few days ago the first level of tCoCL was officially entirely complete and the game "engine" finally had every essential feature implemented (you could finally die when playing! and a bunch of other stuff that was previously not implemented).
So today we finally had the first closed tests of the first level of this game and was able to get some important feedback, with the help of EvilEagles, Archiea_Nessiah and Rhyme (and soon hopefully there'll be a couple more sets of feedback from Scinaya and Elements ;=;).
To cut a long story short, despite a few annoying bugs and general rough-edges stuff, it went pretty well!
Also thanks to the recently implemented "Score Scroll" (of humiliation) we've been able to use it to gather useful information on how people performed while trying the game out, that is , assuming they make it through the level. kekfa.wav
Basically the game calculates your performance of the level based on damage dealt, damage taken, and your clear time and scores you accordingly, based on a combination of your performance in those three criteria. Then based on a series of thresholds for total score of all criteria combined - the game determines your level rank result as either E, D, C, B, A or S (we were thinking about an "F" but we decided that is just basically when you fail entirely and get a gameover instead)
There are also some other performance-based statistics and "titles" based on certain ways of playing or achieving certain performance thresholds. The vast majority are based on a player having a predominant preference for a particular weapon over the course of that level, but some others are based on things like using a lot of bullet-time or achieving a very high accuracy score. Stuff like that. It's kinda fun to see what people get.
So, in an effort to make sure this blog entry has pictures, here are some of the results scores from today's test runs.
Testers: (I'm not saying who is who :P)
Here's my personal best (screen-capped) result:
..and last but not least; here is Kazesui's:
;_;
So, from that I guess I could say the game is certainly shaping up to be fairly challenging and I like that a lot. Even with experience of the game, working on it, and having experience of all the previous builds before this one, the best I have managed to muster is a B rank. Kazesui's managed plenty of A and S rank runs but that's apparently because he's just good.
In terms of general feedback from today, it's mostly been positive, with a few issues here and there. But thankfully it seems like the vast majority of the issues were caught by testers and that they enjoyed playing, even if it was hard/painful :>
tl;dr - People played the game, they seemed to like it a fair bit, I am very pleased.
Oh and of course - Big thanks to Nessiah, EvilEagles, Rhyme, Scinaya, and Elements for offering to test for this! :3
Thank you for your time.
.
..
...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Public demo soon?
..maybe :3
Watch this space and all that.
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All of this sounds/looks great! And I'm guessing that with all mechanics working properly, development will go faster now?
Anyway, two minor graphical things. (You know me =P) First, the entirety of the scroll should be made in the same style, either pixel-art or drawn. It looks weird as a mix of both... And second, what's the reason behind the Rank's colors? I first I thought it was the rainbow but that's not exactly accurate, nor does it make much sense; Like, bronze - silver - gold, for example.
Anyway, two minor graphical things. (You know me =P) First, the entirety of the scroll should be made in the same style, either pixel-art or drawn. It looks weird as a mix of both... And second, what's the reason behind the Rank's colors? I first I thought it was the rainbow but that's not exactly accurate, nor does it make much sense; Like, bronze - silver - gold, for example.
author=alterego
All of this sounds/looks great! And I'm guessing that with all mechanics working properly, development will go faster now?
Glad you like!
Hahaha, you'd think so wouldn't you. :<
In all seriousness, in some ways, yes. In some ways, no. Content and resource creation is (as I'm sure you know) time consuming in itself, as is implementation of things into the levels. New levels will showcase new avenues of possibilies in terms of the gameplay, new enemies with new behaviors, every boss will require its own special stuff for it to be unique and interesting and be generally "different" to what has come before. So it won't be as straight-forward as re-skinning the first level and mixing the enemies up a little.
That's not to mention that there are potential additions to the mechanics already being discussed (and have been for a long time).
(edit - and all the other stuff that is necessary like the non-level screens, menus, interfaces and graphics for all those things)
author=alteregoYou would say that ;=; I personally think it looks fine. Good, even.
Anyway, two minor graphical things. (You know me =P) First, the entirety of the scroll should be made in the same style, either pixel-art or drawn. It looks weird as a mix of both...
The scroll is 100% pixelled (not counting the text, unless you meant that), the other stuff is just some low-opacity vectors from a font of pirate-related graphics and a couple stains from another vector font. So it's not "drawn" per-se. It's unlikely to be changed because any time soon O_O. They were added to make the thing less boring looking when it was done (and there may be some secondary benefits to a more visually complex scoreboard, if you think about it) If I just unticked "antialias" when applying the vectors you may never have even known :X
(I'm still happy to have your feedback on stuff like that though, thanks. :3 Consider it... Noted)
author=alterego
And second, what's the reason behind the Rank's colors? I first I thought it was the rainbow but that's not exactly accurate, nor does it make much sense; Like, bronze - silver - gold, for example.
Basically, there are six graphics used for rank on the score scroll and they are *meant* to be something like.
(Because he's a pirate, and likes treasure.. right)
S - Ruby set in in gold
A - Sapphire set in silver
B - Emerald set in bronze/copper/whatever
C - Gold
D - Silver
E - Bronze/Copper
That was the thinking behind the colour choices. Most jewellers I looked up on google (true research) ranked those three precious gems in that order and we all know that gold/silver/bronze is accepted as an order of worth. So yeah... That's why :X
(Also somewhat partially approximates the ranking colours in Devil May Cry :x :x :X)
If I had screenshots of the whole bunch up it would probably have been a little more intuitive.
Yeah, I mean; I see the text, the scroll, and all that as parts of the same element. So it should all look the same, either 'anti-aliased' or made from hard pixels... There are other things that are more forgivable to be done differently, for example, background and foreground elements, because they, well, they're separate things-- Am I making any sense? xD
Oh, an about the ranks. For example, if you just show me a red letter with a yellow outline the last thing I'll think will be: 'ruby'. So maybe making the ranks more 'jewel-like' with actual volume and sparkles, I don't know; it may help things be even more intuitive. ...Also, considering this is a sea based game, I'm surprised there is not a 'Pearl' rank. =P
Oh, an about the ranks. For example, if you just show me a red letter with a yellow outline the last thing I'll think will be: 'ruby'. So maybe making the ranks more 'jewel-like' with actual volume and sparkles, I don't know; it may help things be even more intuitive. ...Also, considering this is a sea based game, I'm surprised there is not a 'Pearl' rank. =P
author=alterego
Yeah, I mean; I see the text, the scroll, and all that as parts of the same element. So it should all look the same, either 'anti-aliased' or made from hard pixels... There are other things that are more forgivable to be done differently, for example, background and foreground elements, because they, well, they're separate things-- Am I making any sense? xD
Yeah I totally get it. It's something I was fully aware of being a little ":/" even when I chose to do it. It was just a last-minute addition that, at the time, was more of an improvement over the plain scroll than it was an issue with the clash of style.
author=alterego
Oh, an about the ranks. For example, if you just show me a red letter with a yellow outline the last thing I'll think will be: 'ruby'. So maybe making the ranks more 'jewel-like' with actual volume and sparkles, I don't know; it may help things be even more intuitive. ...Also, considering this is a sea based game, I'm surprised there is not a 'Pearl' rank. =P
Totally agree actually and will look into updating them. The thing is, with this project, is that with just the two of us building the whole game pretty much from scratch (well, as close to "from scratch" as you can get when you're using a maker, albeit differently than it was intended and with a lot of alterations/tweaking) a lot of things get done and revisions of things that aren't really TOO much of an issue can easily issue get moved to the bottom of the pile as there is always more new content that needs creating. I mean, there's a whole game's worth of content to make and implement D:
It's not the ideal attitude to take, sure. There are a lot of things I'd like to revise or change in the game but for now it's a matter of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" at least until more gets done or an issue is so glaringly, ubiquitously obviously wrong or broken (like an actual bug or something just looking outright horrendous) that it demands immediate revision.
When I started making stuff for this project my experience of really trying to create game assets, at least from scratch, was somewhere close to 0 so there's been a learning curve for me too (part of my motivation for wanting to work on a collaborative project like this was to give myself a challenge and have a chance to make something original, interesting and custom - basically to see if I could :x).
So yeah, feedback on stuff like that is noted and appreciated and certainly not ignored. It's just that with so much stuff to do, some revisions and alterations of existing content are less of a priority than chewing through the gargantuan task of making all the rest of the stuffs that need a-making. Otherwise I'd probably sit here tweaking the same level's worth of content until the end of time D: I can get like that.
Pearl rank probably should have been a thing too ;-;
So yeah, good feedback, good suggestomendations. Just might not see them implemented, at least not too soon D:
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