Category: DevBlog

We’re now well into the final weeks of building Level Squared, and there really isn’t a whole lot more to do before PAX. This is very good, because there is very little time in which to do anything before PAX.

We’ve been keeping ourselves busy with polishing the game as best we can. In the last week we’ve implemented new sound effects for a lot of things including for undoing projections, being unable to undo any further, level transitions and menu selections. We’ve also been making little adjustments like randomly pitch shifting sound effects that play a lot of times – like our jumping sound effect – so that they don’t get too monotonous.

We also made a new level transition effect that warps out of the existing level and into the new one – check it out!

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We heard a talk on Monday from Chris Wright of Surprise Attack about preparing for and showing a game at a trade show.

We’re in a slightly odd position here because we aren’t building or designing our stand as we’ll be showing as part of the Swinburne Showcase. So the info about how to design a stand wasn’t of immediate use to us, but will likely be useful if we ever do something like this again.

The remainder of the talk was really helpful though, and gave us some great info that we will be keeping in mind for PAX. It included info like:

• Knowing how many people are going to be able to play your game over the entire weekend (way less than you’d think)
• Being prepared for slow internet access on site (way slower than you’d fear) and having your social media scheduled and ready to go in advance.
• Posting to social media early in the morning so people on the way to the show can see it.
• Being the social face of your game – People won’t play if you don’t convince them to play.

So there’s going to be a lot of work to do still in the lead up and over the show. I’m not the most outgoing person and tend to get pretty worn out in social situations, so it’s going to be a challenge for me to be selling our game and drawing people in to play. That’s probably my biggest personal challenge going into PAX.

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And to close off – we were planning to show Level Squared off at the IGDA meetup tonight, but it has ended up being cancelled (for completely understandable reasons). Unfortunately this leaves us without a public play test opportunity.

So we’ll be going along to Get That Game Done at Bar SK this Saturday.

This is going to be our final public play test before PAX, so if you want to check out Level Squared without having to fight the PAX crowds – this is your last chance!

Well we’ve reached that annoying point in the development cycle where the game is pretty much done. If we had to present at PAX tomorrow, I’m confident that we would be able to show off a pretty decent game and that we wouldn’t have any major issues.

However, I’m also confident that there is a whole lot of improvement and polish that can still be packed into the game, and that’s what we are going to be working on for the next four weeks.

And these are all little things, that probably won’t even be really noticeable to anyone playing, but would totally be noticeable if they went wrong, and that are going to make a difference to our presentation on the show floor.

Things like:

• Tweaking all of our UI text to make sure our message is as concise and clear as possible.
• Working on our controls so that our platforming is sharp and smooth to the extent that it’s not even noticed by the player and they can just play and not worry about it.
• Making sure all of our puzzles and levels are as precise and sharp as they can be so that they are frustrating because they are well designed, not because the solution is tricky or mean.

Unfortunately that means I don’t have anything cool to show off on that front for the time being. Sorry.

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What I DO have to show off is our brand new trailer! This has been made for promotional purposes and is supposed to show off all the best aspects of our game, not least our banging soundtrack. Check it out!

 

We’ve also been working to get all of our marketing materials ready for PAX including (but not limited to) T-Shirts, stickers, badges and business cards.

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We’re now moving into the final weeks and our final builds. Going by the timeline for release candidates that I posted about a few weeks ago, today is day -7 to go to the next IGDA Melbourne. And that build is going to be the basis of the build that we take to PAX Australia at the end of the month.

The finish line is in sight!

We’re getting pretty close to the home stretch now. There are only a few weeks left before our big debut at PAX Australia, and there is still plenty of work to get done.

We’ve been working hard to get everything looking as pretty as possible, and cramming in as many cool effects as we can.

Some of the cool new things we’ve included are new look level exits, new level transitions and reworked controls to simplify the player’s experience.

(Sorry I don’t have any cool gifs this week. I’ll work on getting stuff ready for next week promise!)

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We had another playtest at Bar SK last Wednesday as part of their WIP Wednesday show. We had a bit of a short notice to be part of this, so we didn’t have a brand new build ready to go.

But it was still a great night and we had some great feedback from the people who came through and played Level Squared. There were two other Swinburne games there for the same night, Unbond and Marballed: a pretty hefty Swinburne crew!

Some good things that I took away from our playtest:

• We set up a build at the start of the night, and exited out of it at the end. There were no restarts, reboots or reloads required. Our game is stable!
• For the most part (with a couple of exceptions) people were able to pick up the game and play it, without any interaction from us. The game communicates how to play it well enough that we don’t need to explain to players what to do.
• We’re getting better at our elevator pitch – but there’s room for improvement.

And things that we still need to work on:

• Some of our puzzles still need refining. The were a couple of notable places where players were getting stuck – these seem to be related to areas that require a fairly precise solution, but where it is pretty easy to get it wrong. These areas aren’t fun, and they aren’t particularly challenging, so they need to be worked on.
• As a team, we need to get better and drawing people in to play our game. We are all a bit introverted so don’t want to be reaching out to players to draw them in.

But overall, this was another successful outing for Level Squared!

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And lastly, I went to Alterconf last weekend. This was a tech and gaming conference that focuses on marginalised voices and issues. It was a really nice change to be in a conference (especially one on tech and gaming) that wasn’t a room full of white dudes! And the topics covered by all of the speakers were super interesting and important too.

You can follow that link above the see all of the speakers and the topics that they covered. Some of the topics included:

• Alayna Cole on Plurisexuality and Playersexuality. (Alayna shared her talk on twitter – you can see it here).
• Creatrix Tiara on the impact that visas can have on work and travel in the games industry.
• Susannah Emery on a game she is creating that deals with domestic violence.

For a good follow along with the talks on the day you can read through Maize Wallin’s tweets over the course of the day. Start here: https://twitter.com/MaizeWallin/status/911397304942264320 (also follow Maize, they’re great).

All of the talks had content warnings where appropriate and the entire mood at the talk was super positive and inclusive. I met and talked with a bunch of people and had a really enjoyable day. And it was so great to hear from people that are not always heard from talking about issues that are not discussed anywhere near as much as they should be.

I would recommend attending the next Alterconf!

Hi folks, nothing big or special to cover this week, so I’m going to do some looking forward instead for what is coming up over the next few weeks for Level Squared.

We’re basically at the point now that our mechanics are all bedded down and done. Our level structure is set up and ready to go. All-in-all, the game probably isn’t going to change a whole lot from here on out, in structural terms at least.

What I’m really saying here is – all the easy work is done.

Now we need to do all of the little tiny quality of life improvements that you probably won’t notice if they work properly, but you’ll sure as heck notice if they are bad.

Things like our tutorial. At the moment our tutorial has been pretty heavily text-based, with words on the screen explaining to the player how to project and which buttons to press. But something we have found (and which everyone probably already knows) is that players don’t read the text. Players much prefer to learn by doing. So we are re-working our tutorial to lead the player to press buttons and find out what they do, rather than us telling them what they do.

This is our current text-based turorial

What we do know from our testing so far is that once players grasp the projection mechanic they are comfortable using it, but there is a period at the beginning of the game that is difficult while they learn what to do. So our aim is to teach the player as painlessly as possible, so they can get on with the fun later levels.

In a somewhat related matter, we have in-game text sprinkled throughout our levels. There isn’t any overarching theme to this text at the moment. And while it adds a nice atmosphere to the game, it doesn’t convey anything specific to the player. We want to use this element to add something special to the game, whether that is telling the story of the player, or the world that they are in, or even setting a specific theme for each level.  It’s something that we are not taking full advantage of at the moment.

And finally, we want to add as much juice and flash to the game as we can. In the last week we have implemented animations on our player character for jumping and landing. This is very simple stretch and squish manipulation, but it adds a lot to the feel of playing and makes the jumping and landing feel more real as you play. Here’s an example:

New jumping animations in action!

So that’s what’s on the plate for the next few weeks!

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But before that – we have another, last minute, surprise appearance at Bar SK tomorrow night (Wednesday 20 September) For Work in Progress Wednesday!

So if you missed out last time, or even if you played last time and want to again, come and hit us up at Bar SK!

Hey folks. Sorry this one is a day late again, we took a new build of Level Squared along to the IGDA Melbourne meet up last night, and I didn’t get home till well after my bedtime…

But the play test went very well! We had a bunch of people play the build over the course of the night, and managed to get some really good feedback and take some good notes for further improvements. And despite a couple of players doing their best to break the game, it was pretty resilient and they weren’t able to wreak too much havoc. So I’m going to count that as a win!

And beyond that, this was our first play test under the new play test strategy that I discussed in last week’s blog. I’m pleased to report that it was a pretty clear success! We had our build tested and approved on Monday afternoon – more than 24 hours before the play test. A marked improvement over our previous early-morning-day-of builds for our previous play test sessions.

There were something that didn’t end up included in the build, just due to some people failing to realise when exactly lock dates were, or not being ready in time. And a few members maybe didn’t take the threat of being locked out 100% seriously until it was too late, but those are all part of the learning process.

Overall, this was a tremendous success and will be part of our build and play test strategy going forward.

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And finally, I’ll hope you’ll indulge me dipping into current Australian politics.

We are in the midst of a needless and hurtful public survey about whether non-heterosexual couples should be allowed to get married.

I am not a member of the LGBTQI+ community, nor am I married. I literally have no horse in this race. Yet I find the idea that I should have any sort of say in whether other people should be allowed to get married offensive and ridiculous.

That said, I will be voting a definite ‘YES’ in the survey, and I would urge all of my readers to do the same.

This survey is a last ditch attempt by those who oppose marriage equality to delay or prevent consenting adults getting married purely on the basis of their gender. Anything other than an overwhelming ‘YES’ vote will be taken by this group as a validation of their views, and this entire farcical survey has been set up in such a way as to ensure their preferred result. They should be met with a forceful and definite repudiation of their archaic views.

Fill in your survey as soon as you get it. Vote ‘YES’. It’s the right thing to do.

We held another playtesting session this week. This time it was with our fellow game development students in our regular class time.

Now I would be hoping by this stage that we would be old hands at playtesting and that the whole session went without any problems. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and there a few persistent problems coming up that will need to be addressed.

It is true that we have had a number of playtesting sessions so far. We have made public playtests a focus of our semester planning and planned for a few more sessions before we get to PAX.

We have gotten better at being ready for the session, having everything in place and making sure our controllers and sound all work and that our build is stable. We also record a lot of data from our play testing sessions and feed that data back into our development to improve our game.

However, on the downside, almost all of our playtest sessions have been preceded by a very late night session of development the night before. This has resulted in our being able to show a better product on the day of the test, but I don’t think that this practice is sustainable, and it’s probably only a matter of time before it causes a disaster.

There are two mistakes being made that are causing our late night sessions, I believe:

1.   We are not setting a date at which changes will stop being made to the game.
2.   We are not carrying out sufficient Quality Assurance at an early enough stage.

On all of our public play tests to date we have identified major game breaking bugs on the day before the playtest.

In an attempt to address these shortfalls, we have put in place a week long lead time for each of our upcoming play tests.

At a point at least seven days before the test we will all agree what we are aiming to have in that build. The next three days will be dedicated to building and implementing new features.

Then four days out from the test, we declare the build locked and enter the QA phase. This will be in-house testing to ensure that all of the changes are working as expected and that there have been no strange bugs introduced.

The only changes that will be taking place during this phase are to directly address any issues that have been identified by QA.

The primary goal of this new playtest strategy is to ensure we have no more 2AM development sessions immediately before playtests. And above that, it’s to ensure that we have stable and well-tested builds ready to show to the public so that we know that the feedback we will gather from playtests will relate to them playing the game, rather than getting stuck or having stop due to a game breaking bug.

We’ll be taking along a new build to test at the next IGDA Melbourne meet up on Tuesday 12 September, so this gives us an immediate chance to test out our new strategy! So if you’re going to be at IGDAM, look for Level Squared, and come and say hello (I’ll be the one with the notebook).

 

 

So we had our big public play test at Bar SK last week. And it all went really well!

We went the whole night with a single build of the game running. No restarts, no crashes, no game breaking bugs. I was really happy to see that, especially with how poorly our very first playtest for FourShadow went back in April.

There weren’t any particular problems with the game either, no-one got hopelessly stuck anywhere, nothing happened that we were completely surprised by and no-one managed to pull off any moves that broke or short circuited anything.

Basically, I’m saying the playtest went really well, and most of the findings that we had were for small improvements in the game that we have rolled into our work program for the coming weeks.

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Speaking of our work program – what is on for the next few weeks leading up to PAX?

We are feature locked now, and last week’s playtest proved that our game is stable and playable from start to finish. So this leaves two things for us to do:

Polishing and Playtesting!

That’s right, we’ve got a pretty full program of public playtests over the coming months, and between that we are going to be working away to make sure that the games looks absolutely the best that it possibly can.

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We heard a talk at uni this week from Cam Rogers on legal matters relating to game development.

It was mainly focusing on what would be required if we were considering forming a studio following uni and the matters that we would need to keep in mind.

But there were also some things in there that are more immediately of concern. Namely, who owns the game that we are making right now, and what rights the group and each member of the group will have going forward.

At the moment, it’s all kind of a mess. No-one really has sole ownership over anything, and if there is any sort of falling out, or someone goes missing, we’d be hard pressed to do anything further with the game without some serious overhauls.

So I’ve been looking into drafting a sort of contract for all of the team members to sign to cover the following matters:

• Monetising.
• Publishing.
• Using the game in a portfolio.
• Doing further work on the game following the end of university.
• Continuing to work on the game if not all members want to do so.
• Continuing to work on the game if members become un-contactable.

This is just going to be a very basic document that will go over all of the matters. I have no doubt that it wouldn’t stand up to a serious legal challenge, but it will at least ensure that everyone is on the same page for the rest of the semester and beyond.

I have to admit, that this has also been prompted by being caught out by this to an extent. A game we made last year – Light My Way – is not able to be put up on itch.io because we are unable to contact one of the team members any more.

So this will hopefully prevent anything like that happening this time, and people will be able to play LVL² once we are finished with it.

 

This week we have been pushing away at getting a build ready for play testing and displaying at Bar SK, where we will be part of the Work in Progress Wednesday this week!

It’s pretty exciting to be having our first public showing, and the whole team has been putting in the hard yards to both get everything working and to have the game looking as pretty as it can.

So today I’m going to give you a sneak peek at some of our new looks to show how far we have come since we started out waaaaaaaay back in … July.

So here are some screenshots of the levels that we put together for our first play test in late July:

 

And here are some shots of the build that we are getting ready to show on Wednesday:

So as you can see, we’re trying to keep our design quite minimal and basic, with just a few colours and shapes to communicate to the player what is going on. You can see that there is still a bit of text present within the game, to let the player know what is going on and what they are able to do as well.

But altogether, I think the aesthetic is coming together well.

 

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And to wind up, I’m going to acknowledge that a lot of the issues that I identified in earlier posts – to do with roles and responsibilities and clearly working out goals and tasks and so on – seem to be working out a lot better now.

Part of this probably comes down to me feeling a lot more positive about our game in general. But it also comes down to us having actually gotten together and put in the effort to get all of those things worked out.

What this means is everyone now knows what they are responsible for, and who to go to if something needs doing.

Which seems to have flowed on to a much better pace of development. Though, again, this might just be down to me feeling better about where we are heading!

Well we are well and truly back to work now. Unfortunately that means I don’t have any grand event or story to tell this week. We’ve pretty much just been working away at the game without any major milestones passing.

What has been going on is a whole lot of planning for the rest of the semester and the lead up to PAX.

So this has seen me not really doing any actual game design at all. The rest of the team are working away getting our levels and puzzles and sounds and everything in order. Instead, I’ve been working on Design Documentation, production timelines and task management.

And, it’s actually been pretty great.

Our main tasks this week was to present our release plan – this is essentially a reflection on the last semester and our plan for the coming semester.

First of all we went over what we had learned from our play tests, then how we had re-scoped our project for the rest of the year.

Due to our group having scrapped our game and started an entirely new game over the break, we had to approach this a little differently. Most of the playtest data we had recorded wasn’t really relavent any more.

However, we had managed to learn quite abit about how to approach and prepare for a playtest. Our first playtest had been a bit of a disaster. Our build was not stable enough to run, our computer did not have functioning sound and our UI instructions did not work properly.

So one of my tasks this semester is to write up a proper play testing strategy, so that everyone knows what we are doing with each playtest, and everyone knows what we are trying to learn from each playtest.

And finally, I have been mapping out a timeline for us.

One of the other producers found a really useful tool for creating gantt charts out of task lists in Asana. Massive thanks to @RubyDev_Lin  for finding this great resource and bringing it to everyone’s attention.

So here is our timeline:

 

So our plan is to have a lock on all of our mechanics and puzzles very soon. I’m very keen to ensure that we have as much time as possible to polish and refine, rather than continue to create more new stuff.

There is also about a month before PAX where there is nothing in particular booked in. This time is reserved to make sure we have the best build we can, and also just in case there is some sort of emergency and we need extra time.

But, yeah, as you can see, we have plenty to do, and not a whole lot of time left!

Just a quick post this week. Sorry it’s late, but (as I will soon explain) there is a good reason for it!

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So we are back at uni now. And we’re jumping straight into development. As our lecturer explained it: Semester 1 – make a game; Semester 2 – make it good.

Strangely, I have found myself doing almost no game development at all this last week. I’ve been totally taken up with documentation and scheduling. Part of this is due to assignments for uni, but also we have let our documentation slip a little over the break, so there is a bit to catch up on. It’s not as fun as game development, but it’s pretty important stuff, and letting it slip is not really in our best interests.

I’ve also worked out a timeline for our production this semester, including lock dates for features and levels, a rough testing schedule and major milestones.

I’ve set our major milestones around public play-testing opportunities. And that leads into the reason there was no post last night – we were running a play test at the IGDA Melbourne meet up.

We set up our latest build of LVL² on a table and let a bunch of game developers loose on it. This was a very different experience to the Open Day play test. Game developers bring a different mind set to playing and observing games, so there was a lot more effort put into breaking things. And there were quite a few things that got broken…

On the one hand, this is great! We found out a bunch of stuff in our game that can be exploited or broken if the player does something that we hadn’t expected. Now we can go back in and try to mitigate that. On the other hand, we didn’t really manage to find out if any of the changes that we had made in response to the Open Day play test had worked, due to the different play styles of the testers.

But overall this was a very worthwhile experience, and we’re going to try to go along again as many times as we can before PAX.

And our big news – we’re going to be in the Bar SK Work-In-Progress Wednesday event for August!

So if you’re keen to check out where we are at, and maybe give us some helpful play testing data, come down to Bar SK on 23 August!