Teachers, Look This Way!
|
Since I have received ‘incomplete’ on the Student Portal for some reason, in this post, you will find my comments and their corresponding links “Good to hear you´re feeling better now! It´s just that time of the year. The harpoon looks fitting for the visual style of the game and the feeling. Not very dangerous-looking, but for this concept I think that´s the right way to go. I think it´s clear what you did, and why, but I´d also like to know what tools you used to get there. It´s great that you have a picture of what you made. It would have been more insightful to also see the ship, since you made an important design decision based on retaining the same style and shape language. Improvements: Include a little section describing the technical work that went into making the asset (if it is relevant to the topic of course). It will give the reader a better idea of how you work and also helps to fill out the 350 word count requirement. Finally, if you make decisions based on a visual correlation, include a picture comparison and a description. Great work this week, man. See you next week!” “I feel your pain. This is probably one of the most difficult things most of us have done. To me, the production comes across clearly and you thoroughly describe the process. It would have been nice to see all your key frames to get a better idea of how you work. I would have liked to learn more about the details around determining movement of the several legs of the spider since this appears to me as a big challenge. For your future blog posts: I don´t think you should spend a whole paragraph to defend your work or explain in such detail what failed or became an issue. I would much rather read about how you overcame those obstacles! A piece of advice I hope applies in your case: If you find yourself struggling in deep water, racing against the deadline, think simplicity. For example, the movement up and down of your spider sprite could also be the spider pulling itself up by its web without using any of its appendages. On the way up the arms and legs can drag a bit behind, essentially locked in one frame of animation until it stops and reverts to it´s stationary animation.On the way down the arms and legs can drag slightly above their stationary positions to indicate direction clearly with minimum animation and coloring effort. Difficult to explain in text, but hopefully the message comes across! Best of luck at the drawing board! Kill´em with success!” “Thorough and well-written. I think you make many good points about the benefits of having a rather strict set of rules to follow, especially as we are all novices and didn´t know each other that well at first. It sounds like what you´re describing in the post is very similar to Parkinson´s Law. You should look it up! I´ve also become a fan of ‘MVP’ and short sprints for productivity and efficiency. It´s very nice. Keep up the good work! Kill´em with success!” “Hej, granne! Animation sure is challenging, but it appears you have a decent grasp of it already! Regarding squash and stretch, I think the stretch could have been more pronounced. When the squid pushes forward I personally would have liked to see more stretch, unless there´s a design-related reason for it to look like the squishy squid boy could use some yoga classes. Also, I think adding more frames after the push forward would make the squid appear more hydrodynamic as it effortlessly glides through the water before pushing off again rather than appearing to constantly struggle to move forward. I don´t know the movement of this enemy type (speed, if it follows the boat etc.) so it is difficult to say. The stretch of the head is great though and gives the animation a clear sense of direction. The anticipation of the push is also well executed, slowly building up force before the tentacles are thrown forward in an exaggerated motion followed by the push to emphasize the most intense part of the animation cycle. Watching other people´s work is a great way to get inspired and see principles applied by adepts within the field. I hope it goes well for you and your group, and I wish you a pleasant day! Kill´em with success! //Jesper Karbing” “Hey Benj! Love the name of the blog. I think you guys went about collecting data and analyzing it in an effective manner. The fact that you kept a few questions the same for alpha and beta in order to compare results was a great way of gauging success in the changes you made. It´s easy to get caught up in what you are creating and forget that people outside of the group may have a different perception of your product. Like you said, the MDA framework has been a wonderful tool in crafting a specific player experience, and the feedback received during play-testing will show black-on-white that you are or are not succeeding in your design. Having the aesthetic goals as an anchoring point when in doubt was also a very good idea. Personally, I found it difficult to ask the right questions and have the testers keep in mind the questions I most wanted to be answered, while also keeping it concise and to a point. I would have liked to learn more about your thought-process behind the questions you asked (including the actual test of the game) and how you decided on what was useful/unuseful data. I remember play-testing your game during alpha and found the ‘fish physics’ to be hilarious! It was probably unintentional and broke my immersion, but perhaps you would not have found it as funny as I did and kept it. Who knows! My point is that play-testing has truly had a significant positive impact on the development process. Best of luck working towards GOLD! Kill´em with success, my man! //Jesper Karbing” “Hello, Therese! What a great post to read right at this time! I have found it hard to let go of the project I’ve spent so many hours working on for these past 10 weeks. You clearly show you have the right mindset to be a productive and forward-facing developer and it is down-right inspirational. In your post, you recognize the game’s shortcomings and how it could have been possible to reduce these. I think you will get much use of this type of introspective analysis while making your Arcade Game and other future projects. Furthermore, the ability to ‘kill your darlings’ is invaluable when it comes to concept development and constructive iteration. It is so easy to become too proud or too blind of ones own work and creatively stagnate oneself with mediocre ideas and products. When I played your game during the beta play testing session, I remember how I was struck by the fluidity of the animations. Just like the fish in your post, the simple colors and low-detail approach seem to have let you—free of distraction—just show your skill in animation. You clearly have a sense of timing and motion from what I can see. The movement of the fish is clean and smooth and despite it being flat, it looks as if it using its whole body to swim through the air in that fish-like ~-motion. You seem to be serious about improving your skills and growing personally as an artist, while keeping your mind open to lessons learned the hard way. I sincerely hope you find yourself in a more functional group for the Arcade Game course, so that you may focus completely on dreaming a beautiful world into life for us all to experience Best of luck, Therese. Kill’em with success! //Jesper Karbing”  |
