Hello everyone this is the second designer blog for Guilded Fletching. What I will be going over today is the work that has been done and Feedback from the prototype which is very exciting. The team has done some amazing work and I am excited to show that off here today.

First, let us talk about the feedback. What I wanted to test was how the base character felt. To go a little more in detail about what that means is I am testing player movement speed, jump height, the charge rate of the bow and arrow distance. There were a few more things I wanted to know but that is the core. For the breakdown 

• Did you read the controls screen?
  • Yes 92%
  • No 7%

The reason for this is I wanted to know if I should even listen to their feedback as I feel if you did not take the 10 seconds to read that I will not take your feedback seriously. I do appreciate the honesty on the other hand because I know this number should be much closer based on feedback received.

• How did the player speed feel?
  • Way too slow  3%
  • Slow  57%
  • Fast  35%
  • Way too fast  3%

So this is another section that I wanted to gather feedback for the issue I had is the 2 levels I had were drastically different sizes so I will be listening to this but not changing anything yet as I feel the feedback is tipped in one direction.

• How did the sensitivity of the camera feel?
  • Fast  41%
  • Slow 7%
  • Free response 52%

I allowed players to freely answer this question which ended up being a mistake as all the free-response was not helpful. I also presented the question if they wanted to have control of this on their own and that was an overall yes so we will lower the camera speed and expose that for the player to edit themself. 

• How did the jump feel?
  • Too High 43%
  • Too Low 18%
  • Free response 39%

Again another that I made the mistake of free response. Or so I thought the free-response ended up being what I listed to here as the jump height overall was in a decent place it was how floaty the jump was that felt bad. So to change this we are adding additional gravity downward at the peak of a jump. 

• How did the charge rate feel on the bow?
  • Too Slow 79%
  • Too Fast 21%

With this it's pretty easy we will be reducing the charge rate by one second so that players can fire faster.

Overall the feedback gathered was that because there was so little info given to the player they did not know what to do and the environment was packed with too many things to touch that had no impact on the player. The one thing that players did like was the the "puzzle" level had many different ways to compleat it which was nice to see that they played it more than once to try that out. 

On to the work that was done over the past two weeks. There was a lot so I will break down the most important as you don't need to see every little tweak. Starting with the 2D art and we will end with programming here is the breakdown of the key work done.

2D art 

Here we have all 3 enemy concepts. They are locals of the forest that have been taken over by some mysterious force. They fully wrap their bodies in forests' natural resources to be able to hide better. We have 3 types of enemies within the game First shown here is the bomber enemy class he is a ranged enemy that will lob bombs at you to get you out of cover. The second enemy we have here is the Archer class enemy this one is a ranged enemy that uses the standard arrow type to injure the player. The archer fires slow but has a very long and accurate shot. Lastly, we have the melee enemy this is the brute that is most common he will make sure the player is never staying still. Because he gets up close he has the most armor out of the 3. 

Level Design 

We were able to get many more levels annotated with this we now have all of the tutorial levels done. Totaling different tutorial-style levels in most games would feel weird the goal is to have every single one broken up by having more complex levels before as a test before acquiring new mechanics. For example, a late-game arrow can teleport the player so we want to make sure in advance the player knows the importance of positioning and arrow arcing before they get something that can warp them. as for how we will be teaching that warping it is in a very simple way. Forcing the player to use it to advance the level through a linear path that forces the player to use their new tool they will gain the knowledge of what it does. 

We also have combat levels being worked on. The key point of the combat vs the puzzles is that they are going to break up gameplay as puzzles are very slow and combat should force players to always be moving. so here is an example of how we are teaching that combat level. 

The player starts off and sees a locked door so they go to the right and clear the field of enemies to open the door this also forces all the enemies through a 1 block path so the player is not in danger. After they open the door more enemies are ready for the player and will force them to move around while they are being shot at from a vantage point. Finally, they meet the bomber enemy but they are so close he poses no threat it is a teaser of what is to come. 

Programming

There was A LOT of stuff done here so I will break down what I found to be the most important part. The first is that all arrows have had small tweaks and now work as intended. All the Ai is working and I can show that off here

First, for the melee enemy, we have him follow the player and attack quickly then jump back with a large amount this will feel very hectic which is what we are going for. 

Next, we have the archer which is a very accurate enemy that is attacking fast here but that is for testing purposes the attack speed will be much lower in gameplay. 

Next, you can see the bomber in action not only does he push the player away small objects will also be pushed this is to show how strong the bombs are so it feels more real. 

We also have a lot of smaller systems within this two-week period with puzzles we have gotten the core loop down without any levels that have this I find it pointless to try and show off. It is just a simple system of callbacks that allow switches and what not to be used in a multitude of ways and triggered with different objects. For collisions, we are mainly using raycasting vs triggers as they are more accurate.

Overall the past two weeks we have seen a lot of good work done on the project. These next two weeks we need to start getting all the loose ends tied up so we have a cohesive project in the end as the longer we wait to start adding things in the harder it will be to have a finalized product that we are proud of. I am looking forward to the next few weeks as we have some cool things coming I can't wait to talk about it until than see you next time!