Week 11
In week 11, we were working on improving our games based on the feedbacks we received from last week’s playtests. Also, we conducted 2 playtests virtually with one of our teammemeber’s friends family.
Project Progress
On the Priority tasks, we:
- Successfully get 3 Google Pixel 3 for our future on site playtests.
On the Tech Side, we:
- Fix bugs of teleporting from last playtests
- Fix the bug of the safe puzzle and heat map puzzle
- Fix the negative ap problem when interacting with the teleport door
- Fix the bug that some phone cannot find the room in room list
- Fix the bug that the finished puzzle can still be transferred
- Add a mark for clues that have been shared to the board
- Add a shining “New” animation for new clues and puzzles that have been got but not viewed yet.
- Add more notifications for puzzle solve effects (by telling players what memory has been unlocked)
- Add characters’ secret side quests, which players need to try their best to hide during the game.
- Add the hidden room in void base, and a way to open the hidden room
- Add the unique puzzles that can only be solved by Nightclub Owner, Cybernetic Brawler, and Biohacker.
- Add the sound manager that handles the sound effects and music during the game
- Update the interaction of closing the clue infos on detective board from clicking on the board info to clicking on both the info and the outside areas of the info. This makes the interactions more intuitive
- Update the layout of Character Menu by combining the background story and relationship menu together, and add a function that players are able to view other characters’ info.
- Update the solution to specific puzzles to avoid the lucky solve of that puzzle.
Besides, we try to fix the auto disconnect issue when there’s no action for 10 seconds on ios, and when the phone screen is closed for both android and ios. However, since the connection automatically breaks when the website is put to the background (close the screen or switch to other apps), and the photon clear the initiated player controller in such situation, we have the following solutions:
- Solve the automatic disconnection by keeping the website running even they are in background.
- After diconnection happens, allow the player to rejoin the room after game starts.
- Make the phone automatically reconnect after disconnecting.
Unfortunatelly, because of the contruction issue (our player controller is initiated after the game started), both solution may take us a lot of time to achieve.
- For option 1, this could only solve the auto disconnection in background condition for android, because ios requires all browser app using Webki core.
- For option 2, we need to first save all player informations in the host, then load scene asynchronously to make sure the lost player can enter the selection phase, so we can grant them the controller and all information they had before disconnection. Besides, we also need to consider rearranging the photon view scripts on all our managers, which may takes many times.
- For option 3, we need to consider diconnecting the game first, and then reconnecting to avoid the issue that some players don’t disconnect totally. When it comes to disconnecting, we face the issue that the controller will be automatically cleared after disconnection, so the reconnect cannot work, unless we find a way to solve this.
This bug is not unsolvable, but may take longer than we expected. Since we still have a lot of things to polish, we decide to push this problem back first.
On the Art side, we:
- working on the tutorial video and new room layouts to replace our placeholder.
Virtual Playtests
April.5th.2023 Virtual Playtest
For the first virtual playtest, we have 5 playtesters in age range 20 – 30, 1 teammember + 5 playtesters in this game. The attached is the notes and feedbacks from April.5th playtest.
April.6th.2023 Playtest
For the second virtual playtest, we have 6 playtesters in age range 25 – 50.
Playtests Summary
- The unstable connection of ios is still a hard problem, we need to consider how to solve this problem.
- tutorial video should be completed ASAP to make sure players understand how to play this game.
- some of the clues are too obvious and may not fit our thought of letting players to hide their secret by hiding this clue.