BGP Week 7: Beta

Crunch, crunch, crunch. This week was beta week, and we had been working late to get as much done as possible, some days as late as 2 am. We have accomplished more this week than during any previous week. Personally I animated the ghoul character and painted more textures than I can count. However, there is still much that has to be done. There environment is near completion, but the character texture might require a repaint, spells need more impact feedback and the boss does not have any texture. There is also a huge amount of polish that has to be done on the functionality of the controls.

The controls was biggest issue according to the feedback received during the beta feedback session. The testing group was very negative towards the gesture system used to cast spells. It was considered unnecessarily complicated and more frustrating than fun. To be honest, I was not too surprised, the gesture system was a bit of a gamble, and we had discussed that earlier. However, we received did not receive any negative feedback on the gesture system during previous play testing sessions, so we dropped all plans of changing it.

The last week is probably going to be quite tough, for the programmers in particular. We will have it a little less stressful on the art side, though there is always room for more polishing, so there is no excuse to rest until we are past GGC.