Monday 17th Feb

During the weekend, Yiran was able to hand in her deliverables (dialogue scripts) which Anna would review over the next few days.

Joe informed us that the bugs from last week were fixed and there were no more scaling issues. The bio resource had been implemented into the prototype despite it only becoming useful later on in the vertical slice, we decided to keep it for now as we were only focusing on refining the mechanics.

Upon being reminded about the playtest coming up next Thursday, we outlined that we needed the first narrative progression level in order to have a playable game to test. Joe said he would prioritise building the dialogue scene with the reviewed script and then work on the progression mechanic, doing it this way means we can balance resource production too. We are essentially creating a vertical slice of the vertical slice. Rosie feels worried she wouldn’t have the necessary assets by the playtest, she was reassured that it would be okay.

This weeks tasks:

• Joe –  continuation of work regarding the dialogue unity scene
  • create progression requirement
  • linking the dialogue scene back to the survival camp scene
• Rosie – continuation of basic assets and background
  • survival camp background
  • dialogue scene background
  • creating/refining resource assets (will be finished today)
• Gabi – continuation of basic assets
  • Arnold concept art
• Anna – continuation of world building and structuring playtest session
  • review the remaining scenes sent by Yiran
  • create Arnold character profile for Gabi
  • outline playtest structure
• Yiran – review feedback on dialogue
  • come to next meeting to discuss changes and edits

Thursday 20th Feb – Accessibility

This meeting aimed to discuss the accessibility of our game, using the accessibility guidelines we categorised needs for consideration as well as the likelihood that they can be implemented.

Accessibility Requirement	Consideration	Possibility of Adding to Game at This Stage
Motor	– map controls to different controllers – allow touchscreen gameplay	Low-Mid
Cognitive	– avoid flickering images and flashes – allow players to progress at their own pace – simple clear language – easily readable font size	High
Speech	– ensure there is no speech input	High (and done)
Hearing	– clear subtitles – no essential information should be conveyed through sound – voiced speech/text-to-speech – volume controls (music, sound, speech)	High
Vision	– high contrast between text and UI – no essential information conveyed by fixed colours alone – interactive elements large and well-spaced	High

Although these considerations should have been made during the design process in the earlier weeks, it is still very possible to include these considerations. Our technical designer was not present at this meeting but I will make sure that all information and considerations discussed today will be passed on.

From Monday’s lecture Anna was able to prepare the gameplay structure of the upcoming playtest and research questions for QA and user testing, which can be found here. Many of the tasks mentioned in the last meeting have also been completed and we are on track for the playtest.