Last prototyping and practice

We all got together again to get everything together and do some final texts before the market tomorrow. We didn't get to pre-set up our stall as the room was still quite busy even as we left, but our set up is fairly simple and we'll be arriving early to get it sorted.

I ran the cards and survey by everyone else, then printed and cut them.

We timed and tested some of the mini games.

• The memory cards need to be backed on card or similar to make them easier to flip and also ensure they don't get messed up from so many people using them.
• The exact number of points/time needed for the ball bounce.
• The method used for the final target game (we're going by ammo rather than time given.)
• Also timed out the story overall to make sure we didn't need to trim it down. (It should take roughly 5 minutes, which is a good length.)

We also did a quick run through of the story with Sam as the player to see if this was all fair. We'll probably do a couple more of these tomorrow morning with the full set up if there's time.

More decorations from Kajal:

Mini Games

Here are the final mini games for our story:

Memory Game (Kezia):

[add current image]

Maze (Kajal):

Ball Bounce (Sam):

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Target Shooting (Michael and Kezia):

[Illustration by Kezia; guns provided by Michael]

Test Set Up

We got together outside of class to do a better test set up of our stall.

Original set up plan: cellophane on table, buttons on either side. Laptop and display screen will go back to back. (Also a divider made by Michael so the two players won't get distracted by each other.)

Testing it again, we're now looking at having the cellophane draping down the front. This lets us have a smooth, solid surface for mini games, and also hides the table feet, making things look a bit more put together. Downside is that the buttons make a loud clack on the bare table, but the market will likely be loud anyway, or we could find something else to put under them. Also gets a bit in the way of the legs, but people shouldn't be sitting for long enough for this to be too much of a bother.

Half draped; looks nice, but ends up only covering the one part of the table we actually /need/ for mini games, so probably a no go.

Memory mini game (paper needs to be thicker/backed by something; cards are see through currently which breaks the game!)

We'll be meeting up again on Tuesday for our final prep and testing. Looking on track for now!

Story File WIP

An updated version of our story file, in preparation for our test run tomorrow.

New:

• Image background
• Stat counter
• End card

Still to be added:

• Final fight (Kezia and Michael side)
• More route options (Michael side)
• Possible changes to accommodate new mini games (Kezia and Michael side)

[DOWNLOAD HERE]

Game Mechanics Update

I've been working on a different organization method. We didn't want to have any choices end up being useless/unimportant, which meant keeping track of them all.

Originally I was doing this manually:

[hell.png]

This very quickly became a mess and waaaay more work than I could do (3 choices x 3 choices x 3 choices etc = thousands of boxes).

The new method is taking advantage of some coding Twine has built in, which allows you to keep track of characteristics, so the game can have a money system, keep track of if you've picked up certain items, etc, and change dialogue based on this.

This allows me to keep track of personality traits and give a more personalized end result while keeping the behind the scenes tidier and easy to work with. (It looks the same to the player, but with less of a chance of mistakes since I don't have to spell check 10000 passages.) The traits I'm using are Passive, Aggressive, Curious, Cautious, Fun, and Serious.

[new structure]

I've also been working on the style sheet to make the game more interesting to look at than black text on a white background. I'll look at adding more once I've got all of the technical side sorted.

Our Market Setup:

Week 6 Prototyping and Testing

Today we set up our basic structure and let people test our story.

There was a mostly positive response to the idea, but we also got a lot of feedback of how we could work it better. I ended up making a lot of little updates to the game on the day in response to people's popular choices.

Some main points:

• Larger text (we should have a larger screen on the day, so we can definitely fix this.)
• Images and sound to make it more interesting (these were already in our plans, but it's good to see others thought this too)
• Make the idea of our stall clearly explained up front (we were introducing it as people approached, but signs/etc would help)
• Since we were narrating the story, it was suggested that we remove the text from the screen completely as it is distracting to listen and read simultaneously. (Without narration, there's just awkward silent reading, so we are definitely doing narrating.)

We also got a lot of insight into the kind of choices people were making most often. Since the story set up was an adventure, people were choosing based off what would be most exciting, not necessarily what they would naturally do. People were also very trusting and kind, more likely to talk than attack when given the choice.