Week 16 (8 – 9th May) – Building & Testing The Game:
The First Build:
After playing through the first build that Jack sent, I could only get as far as level 1 before the framerate dropped to an unplayable state. This was strange as the tutorial level in the game ran perfectly fine for everyone who tested this version.
We tried multiple different solutions such as deleting some of the foliage in level 1 and getting rid of some of the laser puzzles, however none of those solutions helped the drop in frames.
Thankfully levels 2 and 3 didn’t have as many issues. As this was the case, we considered cutting level 1 from the game if it could not be fixed soon, as we needed to focus on bug fixes as well.
However, soon after this Jack figured out what was causing the framerate to drop and so the next build he sent out ran perfectly fine.
Bug Fixes:
Now that I could play level 1, I realised that the player could easily become frustrated with the game due to a couple of things.
One of these being that you seemingly needed to collect every collectable in the level to progress to level 2. This, coupled with the fact it did not tell you how many collectables are left, was a dangerous combination. Furthermore, I couldn’t even progress to level 2 due to a bug stopping me from getting one of the collectables.
Thankfully these are all things that can and have been fixed.
After playing another new version of the game, I managed to get to level 2. However, some of the laser puzzles felt either impossible or too precise to complete given how awkward the pickup system can be at times.
Jack sent one more version after this which just fixed the lighting of some areas, as well as bugs that caused the player to sometimes get stuck on rocks.
The Testing Experience:
Overall, testing was extremally stressful – especially the first build that lagged out. Fortunately, we managed to solve the frame rate issues and a lot of the bugs in the game. This was a good experience of troubleshooting and eventually, we ended up with a finished and playable game.