Blog for Nyctophobia prototype
To plan my prototype I arranged a Trello board of the tasks that are to be completed in my games development process. I prioritized the tasks that must be done to initiate playtesting before I could do the ones that followed up and to see if my scope was achievable.
04/02/2025
Since I had my sprint complete with some of the essential mechanics I plan to continue working at the pace of my first week. https://youtu.be/k6oKBVRaLLo?si=xtL4zz58H3e-Wmi- From this tutorial I learned about how I can use Unreal Engine's physics handle component to grab objects.
By the end of week 2 I decided to change the scope of my game and diverge from my original GDD as it was reliant on some mechanics - which I think I'd struggle to make - to be interesting to play so I repurposed the mechanics I already made.
11/02/2025
Week 3 was focused on 3Cs. I learned that this is designed first in game development but since I changed my mechanics I designed my 3Cs last, trying to fit the character into the context of the game as best I could which resulted in something seemingly random. It made me realise that obscure character designs can offer opportunities for distinct game dynamics. For my first research I was particularly drawn to the animation section of this article for character design in games: https://americanprofessionguide.com/character-design-for-video-games/ it discusses how subtle movements add depth. This gave me the idea to give my character a shake animation when its battery is low.
18/02/2025
From multiple results I found from research, the timeline node can be used to add some animation to components so this is what I used. I also found this useful for making the character's claw interpolate inwards when grabbing. For the camera I had guidance from this YouTube tutorial in making the camera damping effect https://americanprofessionguide.com/character-design-for-video-games/. I think that this and the animation adds to the robotic feeling of my character.
26/02/2025
Last Wednesday I had gotten some play testers to play my game and based on my results, 6/6 people didn't know how to play it at first as there were still some bugs that interfered with gameplay so I aim to fix them and add clearer instructions at the beginning.
From this forum https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ai-bumping-into-each-other/524614 I found out that if I tick 'Use RVOAvoidance' it would fix the problem I had with the enemies getting stuck when bumping into each other.
18/03/2025
Based on the feedback from my playtest session this week people seemed to be dying too much when they try to grab a battery that's further away so I added a battery saver that spawns in the map around every minute. Based on verbal feedback, particles would be suitable when a battery gets destroyed by an enemy.
A playtester said they felt like there should be an easier way to kill an enemy and another playtester was trying to grab the enemy so I made it so that the player could grab the shadows into the light to kill them. This would still offer a challenge as the enemies are fast compared to the player character.
25/03/2025
From last Wednesday's playtest session, after fixing all of the bugs that interfere with gameplay and making a tutorial, players still seem confused on how to play my game at first so I did research on what makes a good onboarding experience following this article: https://inworld.ai/blog/game-ux-best-practices-for-video-game-onboarding# which explains
- Simplify tutorials and offer bite sized, interactive guidance rather than giving too much information
- Provide context sensitive help or tooltips that offer assistance at the point of need, minimising interruptions.
I then made a short interactive introductory sequence rather than one piece of text.
01/04/2025
I did research on what makes good user interface in games and came across this information from an article https://code.tutsplus.com/game-ui-by-example-a-crash-course-in-the-good-and-the-bad--gamedev-3943tfbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4ghV_cHFbN7iXWEZ6Bk7XqQiOyCLi07MmaKAQA8SWi9wPtgI6i23qO8ddIhQ_aem_8rbXwVtv8g5fT8zt6O-oug
- Elements that exist in the game world are diegetic such as a character
- Elements that only exist in the players world are non diegetic such as a menu
I wanted to make the UI resonate with the game world by making the heads up display elements resemble what my character's camera would display in the game. For example, I made the battery progress bar look like a battery icon. I think that this would make it clearer that the character is supposed to be slower than enemies.
09/04/2025
I felt that my game lacked progression so I researched what makes a good progression system in games. https://l.messenger.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-ekpnJgUw_A%3Fsi%3Dk2nqYivq_cKNvitq&h=AT1eJCXfapjWnBttMm0XkVq-SEL48sehKRKZNW73DukJJIuIOuZH04R3Mdh43Q7v8022Y_ptwc4wjgPy6qoQfVtCf33y94AVDhNQ2oVKFXijC8d8r7dv8P0khdMf-bVV1qisEw This video explains
- Players should have a sense of context, knowing how far they are in the game so that they don't get demotivated
- A level selection is good for this as it shows the player how much 'game' there is
Even though my game was initially planned to be continuous I believe a level selection is more motivating in my game.
23/04/2025
There were things that took longer than I expected and adding more features sometimes messed up and overcomplicated my code so I was afraid to add even more as to change it too much and not get the chance to playtest but I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome of my game especially after I saw what it needed based on how other people played it.