Edwin's Final Year Project Blog 2018

This entry will be discussing about the game being publicized in Level Up's Game Dev Hangout. It's a place where fellow game developers show-off their games under a roof with fans able to test them out and give humble feedbacks. My friend and I went to the hangout to show-off our projects while promoting our academic exhibition. The goal of joining it is to promote our exhibition and ask for contacts from the game developer of Super Steam Puff game. At this point, the game was intended to be 97% completed. There are at least 4 sets of testers that played the game. The first session went pretty well despite some in-game scene transition issue. After that session, they found out that there's a huge bug that caused the game unplayable on that specific level. Thus, our hangout didn't last long and went back.

This entry will be discussing about the method of guides and tutorials which based from the Beta Test results The testers mentioned that one stage with large text that ordered the players to do an action was pretty good but Yi Wei is quite disagree with texts as part of tutorial. Thus, he suggested icons first then texts when players are stuck for more than a specific amount of time. Heeding his words, I've made icons with a sketchy look to interpret robots are having loud thoughts of solutions. I've programmed the game to display the icons when the players are stuck for more than 5 minutes then text when more than 10 minutes.

This entry will be discussing about the result of the Beta Test held in class. The testers consist of TOA students only. The game tested is 80% completed and I've given the tester the task to complete the game within 10-20 minutes. The game required two players thus making the test alittle difficult to be tested by a single tester. URL : https://goo.gl/forms/gd3Ly9aT9KLCHaQp2 Variety of questions are asked in the end of the test :- -Question on the fly (questions that are based on the observable pattern of the testers) -Background questions (is the tester a gamer?) -etc. The testers took average 15 minutes to complete the game, 30 minutes was the longest to complete the game. The results: -Game is enjoyable and fun -It's pretty difficult -Lacking of tutorials or guides -Confusing gameplay Conclusion: The game is lacking tutorials.

This entry will be discussing about the method of sourcing copywrite-free music. I've sourced most of the music from this YouTube channel. They provide a wide variety of copywrite musics ranging from upbeat to cinematic musics. Most of the musics are credited at the very end of the game.

This entry will be discussing about the development of SFX in-game. SFX consisted of:- -door opening -player idle and moving -big vault -ambients -explosions -impacts I've used Audition CC to compile all the free SFX from FreeSound to create the respective SFX.

This entry will be discussing about the continuity development for decorating the MO-3 crank. I've 3D modelled 3 items for printings: - 2 Handles (UpDown and LeftRight) - KEV-7 Leap Motion holder I took atleast 2 days prototyping the size of the 3D printed prototypes to see if it fits in the crank's handle. It took few prototype to find the correct scale. After settled with the correct scale, I've loaded up the Tronxy X1 3D printer with the handles. The first print was a success while not so for the other print. It was too big and technical error that causes the model to be displaced in layers. Thus, I loaded the same model and printed it again. It failed due to knotted 3D filaments. Third try was a success. Total it took 2 full nights to fully print 2 handles. After that I've loaded KEV-7 Leap Motion holder into a bigger 3D printer (beside FabLab's main Mac) and start printing the model. Due to too much pink 3D filaments, Ron and I decided to use the p...

This entry will be discussing about creating decoration outer layer for the version 2 MO-3 crank box. Lin Yew and Ronald Chua suggested to use the CNC to carve out the decoration parts from a 1cm plywood. It took atleast a day to completely carve out all the decoration parts. A slight issue with carving plywood is that the material peels or cracks when carved with the CNC machine. Therefore, accidentally creates some somewhat awful looking surface on the decoration parts. So, I painted those flaws with black spray can and it somewhat works.

This entry will be discussing about the building of the MO-3 crank (refer from MO-3 crank sketch) The first version of the crank was scrapped due to structure and rigidity issue. The first version was based on the limited resources which consist of leftover plywoods and mounting boards. After going through Lin Yew's meeting about the crank building, he told me to have the crank box rebuild. Lin Yew helped with cutting another thicker leftover plywood and build a much more rigid box compared with the first version. The existing input mechanisms are migrated to the new box and it still worked perfectly fine. Decorations are required so it will be visually similar to the initial sketch of MO-3 crank design.