Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

This week I fixed the issues uncovered by alpha test. 

As I expected one of the problems was in navigation. If you have some location where player can walk here and there you need something that will tell him or her: "Walk here and not there!". In my case they were notes, records and player's speeches. 

As a developer you would never rely on a long text if you want to navigate your player. At the end of reading the player mostly wouldn't remember navigation hints you put into the text. Also you'd never rely on something that was spoken one time and wasn't written down somewhere. In my game big texts and speeches were the biggest sources of the navigation information. Notes were additional one. 

Alpha test presented me that notes were really important. They could have all important info in a short form. Moreover player could hide and show them when he or she want. Well I had no choice but making notes the main navigator for the player.


The next problem was illumination. Testers said it's too dark in the school at night. I'm not sure if dark school must glow from inside or something like that but who am I to argue with testers? I made some ambient light using post-process effects and now interior isn't absolutely dark. At least on the 1-st and 2-nd floors. 


And the last big problem testers didn't even see: environment. The school was places among the terrain and had only few props at the front side for intro cinematics cutscene. If someone would look into the window with ambient light on he or she would watch a green plane with nothing on it. 

I hate making low poly trees but I did some fake trees to fill that lonely place. Then I added some glowing houses in Russian style. I'm not sure they are cool in the close look but when you look from the far they give a nice illusion of the town existance.   That's all for now. I hope the next alpha test will be smooth and nice and I could finally work on my promotion and Kickstarter campaigns.