Thursday 17 February 2011

Play Testing

This week I have been assigned the task of play testing the basic level build of the game for Project Blend.

There's simple objects and basic movement in the level to get as many various assets in to be play tested as possible.

So during my play testing I found that 90% of the problems stem from the jumping of the player throughout the level. As there are side of surfaces that if the player jumps into bounces off of and the ability to jump up walls and out of the level.

Below is a short concise list of what I had found and the possible solutions to each of those problems.


Bug Report

1.     Jumping against the blocks – causes bounce back, stops player reaching max jump height. 

(Solution – If jump height is increased to a height that the player can successfully get to the box 99% of the time. However the player can now jump across objects to reach another level of height over a gap in the level. Not intended to happen.)

2.     Jumping against the games side-wall – If the player jumps on the side wall he can jump up to the top of the level.

(Solution – Restrict jumping to once per press until the player is re grounded with the floor the play cant jump any more. However this will be problematic once play is up on asset and tries to jump multiple times as each climbable asset will need to be added to the script as a floor object.)

3.     Sliding – Slowing down sliding to very little not every surface will be covered in ice and the raspberry will not slide down everything. As this will only serve to confuse the player.

(Solution – Restrict fast sliding to Ice objects)

In addition to play testing the level I have been tasked with obtaining a deeper understanding of how the code works so that I can be a part of the coding team. This is so that I can help the coding team to complete tasks and help with giving them feedback on how to change the code to remove bugs and improve certain aspects of the games design; also to help with the general coding and talking about how to go about coding things such as the play movement through the level and interaction.

I have been going through text books tutorials on Unity I did a few chapters last week when I was assigned the task and I'm going through more and more each week until the end of the semester as any last minute key information will come in handy.