A lot has happened since I last posted. Let’s quickly go over some big things that I helped contribute to in that time before the original beta build due date (April 5th).
Game Intro sequence
Our game now starts with a kind of conversation that is not seen anywhere else in the game. I set up the scene and showed our UI artist the ropes on moving around the camera.
UI art implementation
All the UI in the game is now past its prototyping state and has fully implemented art.
Unlocking Conversations
By getting certain items or running into certain plot points, such as your editor giving you a character’s phone number, conversations are unlocked as you progress in the game.
The Beta Due Date
But… as I was working during that sprint (Sprint 10, the week before during the due date), something occurred to me. We were not ready for beta, at all. We did actually not plan for how all our technically “functional” puzzles, UI, levels, etc. would come together.
Two nights before it was due, there was a group of us working together. Everyone had left to go to sleep, but that is when I took my chance to stay up and work. I did not want to see our game completely fail the requirements of beta and some unknown motivation took over me to get the dang game working.
Now, I look upon that time and think of myself as quite foolish, since I had ignored everything else I needed to work on for other classes and chugged at Blood To Ink for those two days leading up to beta. The second all-nighter clearly was my limit, because as that morning hit, I was not able to think straight and had to take a nap.
So, What Happened?
I don’t think it was announced or anything, but we failed the requirements of beta. It was a bit of a downer, but at least we HAD something. Our professor overseeing the project was able to test and give really valuable feedback. And we had a hard week ahead of us, because we basically moved beta to the end of the next sprint: sprint 11. We had another chance!
So, we made a build every night. Each day, I would meet up with any team member who was around and by the late hours of the night my producer would be there until I got the game built. And after that our testing strike team would take a crack at the build and find any and all issues, (this would be also what our producer did every night, shout outs to him, he worked so hard to test this game every night).
What we ended up doing was polishing every step of the game’s golden path through the levels and conversations. This included:
Making all the required items in the game
Polishing the puzzles into a functional and complete state
Creating a complete path from the beginning of the game to the newly created ending
He and I were so glad to get the game into a working state. It felt so satisfying to see the game playable, it felt so real, but the work was so hard. But surely, this was all worth it, right?
The Second Beta Due Date
That fated day came when we showed off our newly playable game. I came to our presentation slightly late either because I worked hard the previous night or because I was making some critical fixes to the last minute, but I can’t remember which. No one seemed too different, and we headed into our second beta presentation.
It felt odd… Our presentation was short, we were showing off some of the rooms, which the artists didn’t seem jazzed about and our presentation very suddenly ended. Everyone seemed quiet. No one was excited. We passed beta, sure, but it seemed like an average day.
Worst of all, the comments that I heard in class really stuck with me. “The art didn’t really look good,” or “Wow, this looks bad.” And in seconds, all my passion for the work I did went from positive energy to a complete null and void. And very unfortunately, with my feelings suddenly upset, I still had other classes to tend too.
Where Does This Leave the Game Now?
I personally lost all interest since working those two hard weeks for beta, but that has not stopped me from contributing. The last thing I would ever do is leave my team behind because of my emotions. I have mainly taken a roll of supporting people with any problems my scripts and systems are causing. Other than that, I did a few things.
I made a journal note system that tracks player progress through the game.
Narrative Documenting
I also worked with the narrative team a little bit and changed some parts of a guide for “Writing in Ink” I wrote a few weeks back. Just a few standards as well as a new conversation command to switch between Interview and Phone conversation types.
The postmortem is next, and I'm glad because I will have a lot to say considering the heavy amount of work this past month had really been.
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