First things first, I going to keep these at about an hour for a couple reasons: 1) Most folks only have an hour to attend max, and 2) Shortens post-production time by a few gigabytes!
Episode 6 was all about fine tuning the base prototype game play. In Episode 5 page I pointed out a few things that needed to be addressed. I’m not comfortable adding more rings to game play until every possible scenario is managed and accounted for.
I dove right in so no design sketching today. That said, in Episode 7 I may be going back to the drawing board. No, it’s not that bad. However, it is absolutely critical I get the very first move (Ring 1) established. It won’t matter how many rings I add to the game as Ring 1 will always be the first to move, and will always move to one of two possible positions – Tower B or Tower C.
Several of the items that need to be addressed from last week’s prototype are:
- FIXED: Prevent a higher number ring to be moved if a lower number ring is still on top. To fix this was simply adding a transparent shape (mask) covering any rings below lower number rings. In this episode I tested and confirmed this approach will work. Next is to add it to the overall game play for other considerations plus the associated triggers to ‘hide’ the mask once that ring becomes movable.
- FIXED: Allow the Move counter to keep counting even if greater than minimum number of moves to win. Currently, the feedback shows as soon as the Move counter hits 4, which is one greater than minimum to win (with 2 rings). This was a simple fix by leveraging the T/F position variables along with counting greater than 3.
- NOT FIXED: Prevent rings (drop targets) from dropping positions above the expected drop target. For some reason even though drop targets are in a hidden state, Storyline is still recognizing them as active drop targets. While the deliberate move to place a ring “floating” on a tower peg is unlikely, a user could possibly let go of the mouse during the drag operation before getting to its intended drop target. Once I have fifteen drop targets to accommodate a 5-ring game play, that’s gonna get messy! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to solve that today and will have to revisit.
- NOT FIXED: Prevent rings from snapping back to their starting position. This is a major concern as this is a default behavior of Storyline. Meaning, if a ring is dropped on an invalid position such as Ring 2 on top of Ring 1, it doesn’t matter where Ring 2 was dragged from, Storyline will snap it all the way back to its starting position on Tower A. Again, if users play the game with deliberate intention of winning, this may never occur. However, if I know users I know they will try to test every possible scenario. I need to prepare for every one of those scenarios. Again, this is a major concern as I’m not quite sure how to address this…yet.
- CONSIDERATION: Changing position variables from True/False to Number variables. Currently there are 15 positions in which the value of True or False depends if a ring is occupying that respective position or not. Changing to number variables would reduce them from 15 down to 5 for one per ring. Then set the value based on the one of the 15 positions. I’m still thinking about it. If go this route in would require scrapping all the triggers associated with positions as well as any Change the State of triggers that are conditioned based on current value of variables. The benefit again would be reducing the number of variables to manage from 15 to 5 and I’m *thinking* less triggers.
So, still lots to figure out. In Episode 7 I’m going to start by testing an idea about that starting position drop target as it may prevent fully functional game play and will be reviewed as a “bug” even though it may not be preventable. IF I can solve this issue, then I’ll tackle the idea of changing variables because there is no reason to continue with the current structure otherwise.
That’s it. No sketch today.
AUGUST 14, 2017 FACEBOOK LIVE BROADCAST VIDEO:
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Episode 6 – Aug 14, 2017 – YOU ARE HERE