Blog Post 1 Marble Masters

 Sprint 1:

    From the start of the project we had to decide what is something new that we can add to the marble maze design. I starting job was suppose to come up with different mechanics that would mesh well with the gyroscope and our game idea. After coming with some ideas for mechanics, the whole group decided to start with 2 mechanics to include in our game. the one that were selected were glass walls that would break from the momentum of the ball and sliding blocks that move  by tilting the gyroscope on one's mobile device.

    Then my next assignment was to make a paper prototype of our concept of our game that had to show the breakable glass mechanic. As a start I created a annotative map for the build of the prototype. however when I send it to verify Sky, my project lead, stated that the map is a bit to big for the prototype. After that I reduce the size and it pass verification. The last part for sprint 1 was to build the the prototype in a physical form that related to my annotative map. 

    A problem that occurred was how to represent glass walls with it having be functional. What I used was tracing paper for the walls since it is very thin paper and has some transparency. One other thing was that I was assigned to create a level but it was pushed to the next sprint.

Sprint 2:

    During this sprint most of my task were to help build that game by adding playable levels. For this we decided on a standard building method by using a grid to make annotative maps, so the levels stay visually consistent. For my tasks was to complete the level creation task from the first sprint and then build 4 more. The first level was designed to be a very small tutorial level that was suppose to teach movement and what pit falls were. The next level was to make it similar to my paper prototype, but add something new. Since I had my initial design of my paper prototype that was not verified, I decided to make that the design for the next level. The for the next 3 levels I try to incorporate the glass pane and the sliding block and make it a puzzle. The puzzle is that the glass are preventing the blocks to move which are blocking the way to get to the end. After getting them verified I would build them in unity and set them up with Sky's camera settings.

    Some problems that happened was that some of my levels became liner, and Sky stated that there needs to be a re-edit on levels that are to liner and a bit difficult. The levels that needed re-verification was my 4th and 5th level that I had created. My initial 4th level design was very liner and that idea got scraped and I made another design for it which you have to move blocks to get to the end. The 5th level I designed the top portion of it the level was a bit linear so I had to re-edit and make a new way to break the glass and to me I thought to move diagonal. That is what got it approved.

Note: These are the levels I made are labeled in the my creation order, not the game build order.

12

34

5

Sprint 3:

    During this sprint I was tasked with making models and texturing them. One of the models was to make a glass pane but having it be piece by piece. The next model is the start of our new game mechanic which was a bumper. Then my next task was that i need to come with some reference for our next game mechanic which is having a station which electrify the ball and the ball has to move it to a button that would activate something. 

    At this point we had our play test and the feedback we have received was that certain levels were to long, hard or tedious to the player. Most of the needed fixes have to do with my levels 3, 4, and 5. One minor fix in level 2. The fixes for level 3 is having  the level be smaller, having a quicker way to get around the map for a puzzle and redesigning the top portion of the level. For level 4 the edits was that I did a little redesign to the level, and having the sliding blocks only go in one direction in the area that is near the end if the level. Finally, for my level 5 I had to redesign the diagonal glass area since that gave players so much difficulty. 

    Problem that were encountered during this sprint was for starters the bumper textures were considered not great by the team and I had to retexture the bumper to a satisfactory level. the other problem that was detected that the way I test levels and the way other people test levels were different. I test with joystick since I don't want to spend money to buy a android phone just to test my level with gyroscope. I know the team has the joystick option for players that have no android phone like me, but in my opinion I can't detect any exploits and any difficult areas that might affect player using gyro controls. This has affected my levels, so some of them needed redesigns and edits. The problem is there is no other way for me to fix this problem without spending money for new hardware. so at the moment I will on joystick and make fixes if something is detected in gyro mode.

Research and Reference

GlassBumper 

Fixed level 3Fixed level 4

Fixed level 5