Game Production (08-02-2017)
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During sprint 2 of game production (the week before this) I continued work on both programming and design decisions. While most of the process with SCRUM is iterative and assets can always be improved, I turned my attention to the first level we would create. I decided to start with level 2 as I thought it would be a good idea to use my knowledge from creating earlier levels before starting on what will be the most important one. First impressions is everything and I don’t want my first level to be the weakest one. As I began sketching out possible enemy encounters I kept some decisions in mind but my goal was to have several version that I could then analyze and compare to each other. After a little while I put the pen down and tried to ask myself, does my level have variety? Does it have a good learning curve? Does it offer any challenges? While looking through my notes I started to realize that perhaps I was relying on certain enemies to make it more ”interesting” and not taking into consideration that it only becomes interesting when it’s a suprise. Just because enemy A and B gels well doesn’t mean it remains as interesting if enemy B appears with enemy C & D aswell. This was one of the hurdles I discovered I had to get over, come up with new ecounters that challenged the player in different ways. However, it then comes down to the learning curve. Does it teach the player how to play and handle situations in a safe environment before throwing them to the wolves? Perhaps my overreliance on a certain enemy was because I had this in mind? In order to figure out if my suspicion was correct I started to count the amount of times a enemy type showed up. What I ended up with was a fairly balanced amount and going over some of the other versions I found one that in my mind accomplished what I was looking for, variety and learning curve. The final challenge comes down to if my level perhaps is too short? While I do love short and well paced levels that doesn’t drag on for too long, what good is my level if it can be completed in just about a minute. Unfortunately this is something that has to be iterated upon because as of this moment, I can’t possibly know. With only one enemy complete in the games current state, I can only make predictions. But it is here where my role as a designer comes into play, when I have more assets to play around with, I can start to make a final decision through testing the game over and over again. The level I have planned out right now might not even be as good as I had hoped for, but atleast I still have my handy notebook where the most important questions have been asked and answered.
(Perhaps not the most intuative sketches, but they serve their purpose.)
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