Make Me Happy: Initial playtests

So, these last few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster for me (and I expect next week will be a lot of the same).  So not much development has been done to MMH this week.  I let a few friends at work playtest an early version and from their feedback I have decreased the speed at which the images rotate in the first levels.  I need to revisit this later as I want to gradually increase the speed within each level to improve the challenge.

Another issue was the GUI.  My participants seemed to misunderstand that the score was being displayed on the meter and the time as a number.  I decided to switch these around so that the meter now displayed the elapsed time and the points for the round was displayed as a fraction (shown in the previous posts screenshots).

This change seems much better.  The placement of all of these items are being tweaked but so far this is how it's looking.

I hope (if I have time) to implement "connect 3" and "match the sequence" functionality into the later stages of the game to mix up the gameplay and constantly challenge the player.  I'm thinking the best way to easily show that the gameplay will be different in each level (other than a pop-up) would be to use a different coloured board.

I'll see how effective this is during playtests.

Make Me Happy: So far...

Make Me Happy is a simple, small and smiley mobile game. The smiley's appear in a grid 3 by 3.  You click on the happy smiley to increase your score to make the character happy.  When the character is happy you will progress onto the next level. If you click on a non-smiley you will either not gain any points or lose points.  This is because these make the character sad.  Make the character happy before the timer runs out.

If you gain enough score you could unlock the Bonus round for the world.  Each Bonus level is different.  Follow the instructions on screen here to make me happy.

Keep Smiling!

A quick update

So, now that my jam packed weekend is over I'm going to be powering on adding materials and meshes to my Prison Break level.  It's actually taking me a lot longer than I originally anticipated but watching the whole level take shape is great fun so I don't really mind at the moment. 

The Gears level is on hold until I get the Prison Break level completed.  I've got a lot of researching creating e-holes, better cinematics and splitting the gameplay routes for each player to look into.  So I figured it's better to tackle this again when I can give it my full attention.

A friend has also asked me to put together a prototype of his game using UDK (I know another project) but since this will be great practice for me and is only a prototype to prove the core mechanic can be done using UDK I thought I'd give it some of my attention.  So visit back here later in the year to see how that's progressing.

Kicking myself into gear

After my long and well deserved week off from work I've had time to think in detail about where I'm heading this year and what I need to do to ensure I reach this year's end goal.

Gaming

I finally completed Mass Effect 2 (applause please) last week!  I'm still aiming to work through my backlog of games so that's not going on the backburner (I've also just purchased another game today as it was too good an opportunity to pass up) and with the amount of good new releases this year I can't actually afford to stop playing.

Prison Breakout

So during a bit of downtime at work I used my time to delve a bit deeper into Kismet in UT3 (sadly I haven't got access to UDK at work).


So within about 24 hours (maybe a tad more) I managed to blockout a very small level that I had on my mind for a while.  The objective is very simple.  In order to escape the prison the player must open the bridge.  To do that the player must power the generator.  To power the generator the player must find 3 crystals (I know, who uses crystals to power a generator but bear in mind these are only placeholder at the moment) and then operate the bridge controls to escape.


The crystals are scattered around the map in high and low locations.  To prevent the player from escaping and to create a bit more of a challenge I have spawned bots (the other prisoners) at various points in during the level. 


Currently due to the limitations of the PC I'm on (or maybe just UT3) the editor always crashes when I place terrain and rebuild :(  So the addition of terrain and water volumes will have to wait until I get this project home. 


There's also no SFX hooked into picking up the crystals or opening the doors but I'll get those into the final game.  


Here's a video of the level with the full gameplay implemented in my blocked out environment.






(Apologies for the dual monitor view).  As always any comments are appreciated.