I’m going to try writing a daily log, starting today, outlining development on EXO ONE. Part of the reason I’m doing this is to keep myself honest. Did I spend all day tweaking some minor thing to perfection, or did I get a lot done? Was it important or not? Airing this out will hopefully keep me from spending time on inconsequential things, or overly optimizing/perfecting things.

Hopefully, it will also encourage me, and let me look back at what I did during the week, as it’s so easy to look at the game on week 1 and week 2 and think I’ve ‘done nothing’.

I’m unsure how often I’ll include these in the newsletter, perhaps I can do a wrap up every week or month. Let me know what you think.

16-Jan-2017

Task List/Planning

I’m submitting EXO ONE to Rezzed “Left Field”, which is a London games event with an indie component. The due date is the 20th of Jan (I perhaps shouldn’t have had such a long holiday!), so I did a playthrough to identify what was working and what was broken.

I identified some tasks in order of importance, stuff that needed to be completed or fixed before submission:

  • Controller support really outdated with lots of incorrect tutorial text etc. Game would probably use controller at Rezzed.
  • Sometimes a monolith materialises out of thin air in front of the player at the start
  • Outline in the tutorial how new power/energy/charge (hummm, name?) system works
  • Restrict how much energy the player can gain on a single planet
  • When reaching the end transport monolith, some tidying up needed for sounds etc.
  • Add escape/Start menu so players can restart the game
  • If I have time, a variety of other minor gameplay, visual and audio fixes

I should be able to get the controller support and tutorial stuff fixed up pretty easily (bolded above). The monolith bug however, I recall was a bit tricky, so will see how I go with that.

Development as it happens

I’ll keep notes and type as I go, bringing up things that appear, or were particularly tricky, or if I ‘fell off the wagon’ and started doing inconsequential things.

  • The XBox controller layout is somewhat trickier than mouse/keyboard to handle, now that I have the new pull-up functionality. I’m going to spend a little time trying different configs, because if the game doesn’t handle well it’ll have little chance of being picked for Rezzed, or enjoyed by players! Took 30 minutes.
  • While testing the glide/pull up controls for the tutorial, I realised that at low speed the glider barely rises at all. Adding a minimum up-force. Took 15 minutes.
  • Realised that in the tutorial scene, you could accidentally trigger the wormhole/next planet text by going too fast in the wrong area. Took 5 minutes.
  • While testing tutorial, noticed that brakes apply too easily when accidentally pulling back on the left stick by even a hair. Took 2 mins.
  • Sphere bounces heavily along large polygons in tutorial facility, adjusted position smoothing. 5 mins. Somewhat fixed but still notice it quite a bit. This could be too big a task to tackle now.
  • Now moving on to adding new energy tutorial text/functionality. For now I’ll just ask players to fully charge then drain EXO ONE before proceeding. 45 minutes.
  • Moving onto monolith appearing bug at 320pm. Quick win here as I realised the problem was just a dodgy bit of logic. 10 mins! However there were other issues related to timing and placement that took another 30 minutes.
  • The narration is confusing now that there are kinda two different types of monolith. To keep things simple I’m only going to point to the end transport monolith with the HUD. 10 mins.
  • When collecting energy, realised the text feedback was from an older version. 15mins.
  • Noticed pulling up in glide mode could let you get ridiculously high… Kinda hard to get good results messing with numbers without a good glider simulation! 30 mins.
  • Noticed it was almost impossible to hear the narration over other sounds sometimes, checking audio “ducking”.  I recall this required a Master Audio plugin update… 430pm.
    • Committing first, then making a backup of the MA plugin in case too much stuff breaks.
    • Wasting a little time trying to get MA to let me duck music longer than 5 seconds, because I can’t find the var that clamps it!
    • Bit of a time blowout here for sure – finally found the var then spent a little time getting ducking working/tuned.
    • Total time ~1hr
  • Music begins incorrectly, then begins again when we reach the surface. 6pm. 2 mins.
  • Now I’ll stop energy from appearing once we’ve collected a few energy sources. Pretty easy, 5 mins.
  • Noticed monoliths can spawn on top of the end monolith, fixing. 2 mins.
  • Finishing up now at 630. Spent a little more time just tweaking volume levels and pull-up forces, etc.
  • Commit code

End of Day

Pretty happy with that. Felt like it kept me more focused. Got 3 or 4 main things done plus a bunch of other stuff that I ran into.

Tomorrow

The main thing that remains now, which I didn’t mention originally, is that jumping is currently a big problem (somehow). I’ve been spending a long time on it so far without much gain. Basically I’m using Rewired for my controls, but I’m doing something wrong somewhere, as sometimes jumps don’t happen. You press jump and get an odd visual/physics effect, rather than a standard jump force/visual.

That’ll be my nemesis task for tomorrow!