CAGD 270 Post 9

3D Game Level 2 v1 Feedback

Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be going over the feedback that I received from the playtest on my 3D level 2 project. With this level we continued to work with the Unity engine to create it and we were also given a new theme and goals to work with this time around. Our new theme would now be Medieval and our new goal was to create a level where we can challenge the player leading up to a boss fight. With that being said, I immediately got to brainstorming a couple of different ways to implement our new theme and goals. When I landed on a couple of good ideas, I sketched up an annotated map to visualize it a little better and then I got to work. For the actual playtest we got into groups of 5-6 people in class so that we could get as much feedback as we could. 

What went right

This time around with my level 2 project, I honestly had high hopes of creating something good where I could almost picture it being perfect. Unfortunately while there were some areas of my level where I felt things went right there were also a few areas that went wrong in my level. I’ll start with the stuff that went right. During the playtest, almost every player told me that they could clearly see the critical path in front of them and that they did not have any trouble knowing where to go. They also mentioned that the way I structured my level was very cool.

One player really liked how I added some composition to my level to where I could show the player the path ahead or in this case the ending at the very beginning of my level. That was something that I intentionally added to my level so that players could see the finish line without actually knowing how to get there and it turned out to work really well. Another thing that I felt went right in my level was perhaps the interactable's placed inside my level such as the enemies, checkpoints, crystals, switches, doors and breakable cubes. All these things seemed to have been working perfectly during every single playtest and players did not have any problem with them at all. 

What went wrong

Moving on to the stuff that went wrong with my level 2, there were perhaps 3 major things that I noticed right away at the very beginning during the first playtest that needed to be addressed. Number 1 was that my level was very short. It did not take my first play tester very long before he could reach the end of my level. Even though I saw him die a couple times, It did not stop him from completing my level faster than I expected. Number 2 would have to be that I underestimated the level of challenge I presented to the players.

I had originally thought that by adding more enemies into my level it would create more of a challenge for the players. What I failed to realize was that I did not increase the health of the enemies. That could have caused the players to more effectively fight them and keep an eye on their own health. Another little side problem that I saw was that I did not add any health boxes to my level at all, which resulted in many of my play testers having to die from enemy damage and then simply just respawn at the checkpoints.

Lastly Number 3, was that I did not implement any boss whatsoever into my level. Originally, I had also thought that we weren’t supposed to create a boss but rather challenge the player leading them into a boss fight. I totally misunderstood that part of our goal for our level 2. Whatever the case may be, I can definitely say that I am going to continue to work hard to improve on these little and big mistakes and prevent them from happening again. 

CAGD 270 Post 8

3D Game Level 1 v2 Feedback

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog, my name is Angel Suazo and today I will be going over the feedback I received from our Version 2 project of my 3D level in class. Our goals and objectives for our version 2 were exactly the same as before, we did however have an opportunity to improve on last time. This time however, I will try to go into more detail from my feedback, since we were put into groups of 5 for this playtest. This allowed me to gather some more feedback from players and overall have more people try my level. 

What went right

Getting started with what went right, ultimately there was a lot of good feedback coming in from my playtesters.All of them agreed that they thought the critical path was very clear and obvious for my level. No one really had any issues finding where they had to go or how to get to the next area of my level, which was very good. I do want to point out that I did have some newly added areas to my level towards the end so players could have more game time and it indeed turned out to be cool. With that being said, players also really enjoyed play testing my level because of the level of challenge I created for them.

With my first version of my level, I had gotten some feedback from players saying they loved the specific jump points in my level that originally made it challenging, but that they wished the platforms for the jumps could have been scaled up a bit. So that is exactly what I did this time around and players seemed to have enjoyed it much better. Another thing that went right was that players found all the barriers of my level to be in fact working and this time around, there were no areas of my level that I had missed where players could go beyond the boundaries of my level and explore the outside plane. So, I definitely consider that a win. Aside from all else, the enemies and checkpoints of my level also worked perfectly fine, which all of my play testers let me know as well.

 

What went wrong

For what went wrong with my level, there were a few things that were pointed out to me during the playtest. One specific player had only good things to say about my level but he did say that if he could fix one thing it would probably be that there was no color whatsoever in my level. I pretty much had left my level in grayscale and had not added any colored walls or backgrounds.

He pointed out to me that he would have loved to see some color in it but besides that he really enjoyed my level. I will definitely be adding color to my next level I work on so that this doesn't happen again. Another player pointed out to me that during the play test he had originally thought that he had activated the checkpoint before dying, but that once he respawned it did not respawn him there. It had actually respawned him at the previous checkpoint he had passed.

After looking back, I had realized that the area in which the checkpoint in question was located was so big that he must have walked around it and missed it by accident. This is definitely something I am going to be improving on so that it also doesn’t happen again. Lastly, one other player suggested to me that she really liked my level but wished she would have seen some more variety in it with how the level was laid out. Other than that, I will also work hard next time to improve on these little issues so that I can bring the players a more fun experience. 

CAGD 270 Post 7

3D Game Level 1 v1 Feedback

Hello everyone, my name is Angel Suazo and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be going over the exciting feedback I got for my 3D level this time for our new unit in class. As you can see this time around, we are working with 3D level design, so with that being said this project was done on Unity Engine. I would like to mention that this was my first time ever working on Unity, so I did have some extra work when it came to getting familiar with the software. However, this did not impact me in any way shape or form and the fact is I did a wonderful job and was able to properly handle the requirements for this project. For this project we were given a new theme and goal. Our theme for our level was Sci-fi/Jungle and the goal was to teach the player the base mechanics along with simple combat. Knowing this, I sat down for a brainstorming session to find the perfect way to incorporate these new requirements to my level. Once I had come up with a solid layout for my level it was time to go to work.

What went right

One thing that went right in my level was that I came up with a simple but challenging layout to my level that I really wanted to grasp the attention of my players. This definitely proved effective because when I had players play testing my level, they were really interested in getting to the end to finish it. Part of this was thanks to the level of challenge I implemented into my level when it came to getting across the acid pools.

I definitely did not want to make it super hard to the point where players would get angry or annoyed if it took them too long to get past these. I also did not make it too easy for them that they would find the level of difficulty to be rather boring and easy to get by. Therefore, making the challenge just the right amount of difficulty was definitely a success. Another thing that went right with my level was the enemy scaling. I had in the early stages of my level introduced a couple of the enemy chompers, so that the player could go ahead and get familiar with them as well as learn the combat skills.

By doing this it also allowed me to introduce a health kit box into my level early on into my level so that players could once again interact with it and learn what it does. One last thing that went really well with my level was perhaps the doors and switches I incorporated into my level. Players got to come across these resources and engage with them to find out the purpose of them and how each thing worked. 

What went wrong

For the actual things that went wrong with my level they were only a few minor things. However, these are things that I will have to work on next time to try and improve on. One of them was that there were a few spots where players were able to find a way out of my level boundaries due to some structure gaps, I had left unnoticed.

This was definitely something I should have caught with my own eyes before having people playtest my level. Another thing was that one player suggested to me that during one of the acid pool areas of my level it would have been nice to have a checkpoint in the middle on one of the platforms so that when they would die, they would not have to restart from the beginning. This is also something that I will definitely fix for next time.

Overall

My first 3D level was not that bad, and I can't wait to start on my version 2