Ghost Ring – Capstone Prototype 2/1/20

Today a few people tested the current prototype, and I got some useful feedback out of it all! Here’s some of the highlights, and how I plan on addressing them moving forward:

  • Whenever any liquid is on screen, the game slows to a crawl. I plan on simplifying the liquid physics I programmed – fewer, larger droplets, essentially.
  • Without spraying paint, there’s no way of knowing what color paint is currently selected (so you don’t know if you selected a color properly). To fix this, I plan on tinting the ring to fit the color selected.
  • A related issue is that it isn’t clear that you have to press down on the touchpad to change colors – testers assumed they would be able to change color with a light touch. I plan on increasing the sensitivity of the controls so that the touchpad works just off of touch.
  • Some players also didn’t realize there was a color wheel attached to the touchpad at first – the controller was held outside of the Magic Leap 1’s field of view, so they didn’t see the color wheel. I could change the color selection to be on the ring so players see it (for instance, making it so the players have to point to a floating color wheel), but I felt like that would be even less intuitive. Instead, I plan on having the first level of the game give the player access to only one paint color to start. In the middle of the level, the color wheel will appear in the middle of the ring, and fly over to the controller – that way, the player knows where to look.
  • Some players thought the numbers representing the paint fuel and health were “high scores”. To fix this, I plan on making the representations of the fuel meters more visual in nature.
  • In general, players wished the aesthetics of the game were more clear instead of just spheres, squares, and so forth.

Moving forward, I plan on introducing more structured gameplay (i.e. levels with specific enemy patterns). To that end, I also plan on introducing a variety of enemy types to the game to make gameplay more engaging. Here are some rough sketches I drew of different ghosts that could appear in the game:

The general concept with these ghosts is to create designs that are both “cute” and “scary” – something that will fit with a simple, cel-shaded art style, but creepy nonetheless.

The “shaggy ghost” is intended to be the “default” ghost type – it would float directly towards the player, like the spheres in the current version. The “speaker ghost” would have similar behavior, but would take more paint to defeat. The “foot ghost” would always try to go behind the player, making them more annoying to deal with. The “cat-snake ghost” would make a bouncing motion as it approaches – its up and down movement making it harder to hit. The “mushroom ghost” would grow in and out of the ground in an attempt to get closer to the player. The “centipede ghost” would weave back and forth as it approaches the player, and you would have to destroy its tail (or destroy every segment) to beat it.

The “knight ghost”, “cowgirl ghost”, and “serpent queen ghost” are intended as boss characters. The “knight ghost” would have armor of different colors – you have to destroy each of the armor segments before you could destroy the ghost. The “cowgirl ghost” has a magic revolver that can change the colors of other ghosts in the world – the player has to be able to swap colors quickly to defeat her. The “serpent queen ghost” would be massive – so big that you won’t be able to see her entire body at once. The player will have to spray paint in her mouth when she opens it to attack them.

One other concept I have with these ghosts is that certain shapes would change depending on the colors – for instance, red ghosts would have circular shapes on them, but green ghosts would use triangles. This would be done to accommodate for color-blind players – red, green, and yellow, may be difficult to distinguish for many players, so for them the shapes should provide a clue as to which color the ghost is supposed to be.

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