What’s new?
This week we added a number of new things based on previous feedback. New things this week include a new interactive tutorial in place of the previous cutscene tutorial, a dying animation, new transition scene for recapping points earned, background improvements, level aesthetic tweaks, and we fixed our ever annoying lag spikes in the final round. Players can become acquainted with gameplay in the interactive tutorial before gameplay begins to matter. The dying animation for the players takes all their components and flings them in a random direction with rotation, which adds a really satisfying and more realistic feeling to blowing up your competitors. The points recap scene also focuses on the winner of the round and its background has been upgraded to a whole stadium full of spectators! This can make winning a round feel like much more of an accomplishment. The title screen and readyup screen have been changed to a TV outline that lends to the theming of a gameshow in the overall game, and is a much better look than the plain white background that was on the readyup. The levels have been slightly tweaked as well to fit into the theming and just to overall look much more cool. For example, the forest level now features some cabins with a warm glow flowing out of them and the Plaza has some storefronts and parking lot to look more like a city. Of course noone wants to die because of a lag spike so we fixed our issues in that regard for this final release. This is truly a much better and accessible game because of our changes this week and we hope to take home a big prize in the showcase this semester.
Why?
The interactive tutorial was a must. We noticed two weeks in a row that players were much more likely to just skip the cutscene or not pay attention to it because they are just so eager to get into real gameplay. So, we added a tutorial that allows you to play and mess around with the controls before you are thrust into full gameplay. This will make the game much more fun to learn, and hopefully players will learn the controls first before skipping it. Also, people had always made comments that killing an opponent was not very consequential or as fun as it should be. This is the reasoning behind adding the dying animation, so that players feel excited when they get a kill, and of course, just to look cool in general. Many of our playtesters also complained about the nauseating scrolling background and bland readyup. This is why we added a TV outline to our title and readyup screen as well as slowing down our scrolling background significantly. It fits with the theming and addresses these issues quite well. Finally, the points recap scene was spruced up with a stadium and focus on the winning player because players were often confused about who won the round and didn’t feel accomplished when they won themselves. This will put a real focus on the round winner, and show the incentive to winning a round.
What’s next?
What’s next for us? With the games expo is tomorrow, and we hope you will come out to checkout all of the great games made by 494 students this semester. It is in the Bob and Betty Beyster building Atrium 12/11/2018 from 7-9pm. Come on down and enjoy all of our creations, and of course, vote for the best game of them all, BombIT ™ .
