6. Play test 2 - Implementing Change

> April 27

The feedback from the play test was really rewarding to hear as almost every group mentioned how good it looked! As the art director and main contributor of textures for all assets in-game I was very glad to hear that. When we had our mid-production presentation and also after the first round of play testing comments about the game's visuals feeling empty, boring and not popping enough were made by students and teachers alike. Now, after spending time in-engine to hand place assets, landscape paint and foliage paint, these comments have reversed to be positive,

I was responsible for placing assets in the scene and shaping the landscape. To make the play area more interesting I created a river with Jame's brilliant water shader and painted dirt paths into the hills and across the map. The grass model and its variant were looking too similar/ repetitive so I created a more subtle and spread out grass. On top of this, I decided to make the grass material emissive because beforehand its shadow as it touched the ground detracted from the bright grass texture.

Implementing Change

With all the feedback that we recieved it was important for us to record and highlight things that were repeated.

There was consensus that the ammo amount players had was not obvious and players didn't notice when they were out.

> To combat this I put my work on UI into action and made the ammo appear clear in a pile of 3 clear slots in the corner of the screen for both player.

There was a feeling that there should be more power-ups or visual aid to show you having your power.

> We made it a priority for our next sprint to work on power ups. So far we only have split ball power-up but we are planning on implementing a freeze and coconut rain too.

> The lack of visual aid I fixed by including a slot for power-up icons which I designed.

The timer was mentioned as not being very noticable as it was a plain white colour standing alone against the background.

> This was changed by adding a wooden backboard to the timer in the UI.

Playtesters felt a little lost at times - finding the other player behind obstructions or finding their dropped ammo.

> James made the characters have a red outline even when behind objects to make players more visible. Ammo was also made to be red when dropped and emits smoke.

> The obstructions we had to remove from the play area to ensure no camping could take place.

> I also realised that some smaller decarative objects in scene were causing slight obstructions to player movement unnecessarily. To fix this I made most foliage and small objects have no collision.

> May 11

I finalised and uploaded the UI pngs for Abbie to implement.

For this tribal stone house asset I first created a high poly sculpt to make texture creation easier. The bake allowed me to generate masks of light, curvature and ambient occlusion. It looks kinda wacky with the green and red colouration I've gone for but I also like it.