Devlog #6 - Testing

In this development log I am addressing the testing session undertaken a week ago, where a few people took the time to play my game in it's present form and gave feedback via a prepared form. On a whole, feedback was very positive, with only a few small issues, suggestions, and bugs mentioned.

In the week following the testing and before final submission, I laboured to add suggested improvements, and finalised a lot of features. 

Added/Improved Features:

Listed below are features that I have added following the testing session, based either on user feedback, or having already planned on implementing the features. 

• Working Checkpoints & Respawn - Self explanatory. This should help reduce frustrating with needing to go all the way back to the start
• A Finish/Win Screen - Triggered once player reaches the end, shows the stats from the run, the time taken to finish, and buttons to restart/go back to main menu.
  
• Speedrun Timer & High Score Page - Suggested by peer, 'runs' are now timed from start to end, with a little timer displayed in top-right, a final time shown in above finish screen, and a high score section in the main menu.
  
  
• Improved Enemy AI - Fixed the jump getting stuck on corners by improving the AI to lookahead using raycase, and jump before the monster gets to an obstacle. Also fixed sprite flicker/rapid switching when above/below the player. Additional notes on this below.
• Additional Ambience Sound Effects - Regional sounds depending on where the player is in the game world. Ie, caves sounds for caves, wind and desert-like sounds for exterior surface, and additional hum/background noise for the base. Crossfade between areas is presently a little finicky, needs further refinement
• Collectables & Interactable Notes - Interactable and collectable by the player. Adds additional storyline element that goes some way to explain backstory/lore.
• Volume Control Settings Page (with individual channels)
  
• Improved Player Direction - Added some extra helpful popups and reworded existing ones, and also used above collectable notes to suggest lore/backstory, and player direction.
• Fixed Glitchy Gun Arm - Moved the aiming from firepoint->mouse back to armpivot->mouse, but added an offset so that the bullets travel to correct spot (directly to mouse pointer). No more arm wigging/glitching out.
  

Selected comments & my response, from returned feedback forms:

enemy's would get stuck on corners when trying to jump up a level. when standing above an enemy their sprites would constantly flip directions

This was an issue that I was aware of, and after feedback was able to implement a fix. Sprite flipping was fixed by adding a check and only flipping if  player.position.x - transform.position.x was greater than 0.5. I also added logic to scale down the velocity the monster is chasing the player at, so that it starts at full speed from 1f away, down to 0f at 0.2f away on X, preventing the weird vibration/jittering when monster X and player X positions are almost the same.

add collectibles to add to exploration of the game

Done! Following this comment I added a system for in-world popups with storyline hints, scientific journals, samples, etc. Each interacted "collectable" adds to the score/count in the stats, which is shown in the pause men u & at the end (alongside player death count, monster kills, and time to complete the level)

Make it slightly clearer where you're meant to be going

I have taken steps to improve this by refining & adding further hints in the game world, to direct players better and improve flow. I would like to balance this a little against exploration though, and don't want to make it too easy to find your way, as that would detract from exploration and discovery as a core element of the gameplay.

Feedback Responses: