Prototype 5

Overview:

Prototype 5 was less about establishing any more features and instead waa fixing and refining what we had currently developed. Off of the feedback from the playtest 1 i started to figure out how to add and develop a tutorial, unfortunately, i was unable to develop this in time for this prototype, however, i was able to at least fix all the other issues such as the scaling issues, failing when you should be on 0 food, and characters being too fidgety to drop into camps. 

Technical Development:

Auto Camp Assignment and character positioning:

• With a goal of creating a simpler game the first feature to be changed was the placeholder system. Not only was it confusing, the more I learnt about coding the more it made no sense to even have. From the beginning it was an overcomplicated way to attempt to fix some bugs such as scaling issues and buggy hitboxes. By having it set up this way it was a lot smoother and look like a more polished feature
• The main changes to the camp system were:
  • When characters are placed in the camp the auto snap to a predetermined anchor point next to the camp
  • When characters are assigned the fill 1 of four slots in a left to right pattern which removes the previous issues with overlaps, fidgety box colliders and other bugs/ issues

Character and Camp ID-Based Bonus System:

• Due to removing the previous placeholder system I needed to find a way to implement the characters bonuses when they are placed in their preferred camps. This was a lot simpler than i first thought after really looking at my previous placeholder scripts as i could just use the character IDs and the camp IDs to solve this issue:
  • Each character has an ID set in the inspector
  • Each camp has an ID set in the inspector
  • When a character is then placed into one of the camps the GameManager checks if character.id == camp.id if yes, add 5 resource, if not, the character produces add 1 resource

Second Narrative Scene Integration:

• After I had been given the second dialogue script I incorporated it into the game by adding the second narrative scene. There’s nothing really special to talk about, its really just a duplicate of the first narrative scene. All that i had to do was copy and paste the exact same code into the game manager and change the scene transition after progress is pressed to the ‘SecondNarrativeScene’. It really was as simple as that.

Conclusion:

Prototype 5 encapsulated what it means to learn and adapt from feedback. It has ended up significantly improving the player experience. The auto camp assignments have made the game feel and look smooth. Whilst Anna’s addition with the weekly tasks panel has significantly removed the excess clutter from the screen. All these changes have laid a good foundation for our playtest 2 and is set up to let players really test the game thoroughly.