#asteroid development post

The asteroid links provided in the week 5 workshop document to help us get inspired gave me confusing and a mixed feeling experience playing the asteroid games. There were no visual instructions outlining the key binds to steer the asteroid which undoubtedly took me a while to gain a better understanding and knowledge of which keys to steer the ship from oncoming asteroids. The reason I went with using a mouse to steer the ship compared to using key binds to steer the ship is because it felt clunky and awkward as the movements from the ship didn’t feel natural or smooth as a player. Furthermore, utilizing the mouse will allow the player to easily adapt to the controls and provide a better experience compared to using key binds for steering.

I took the iterative approach when developing the asteroid prototype to ensure that this time I had a game for my colleagues and players to test so I can gain a better understanding of the expectations and requirement to build a successful play centric experience. Implementing the iterative process in the development phase allowed me to evaluate the aspect of my prototype and communicate my ideas more clearly as I was struggling to visualize what I really wanted which Tracy Fullerton discusses about the concept of the iterative process in chapter 1, page 17.Taking the iterative approach has allowed me to identify a few issues I had with developing the asteroid prototype. For example, I found out that I couldn’t successfully set the condition of the number of lives to more than 1 without the scene changing over to the game over scene so instead I used this flaw to my advantage. I set the number of lives to 1 to enhance the difficulty which worked out in my favor at the end.

The other issue I stumbled across while developing the asteroid prototype was trying to successfully get the asteroids to delete the ship as shown in the video below when the asteroid touches the ship and ensuring the bullet deletes the asteroid smoothly which I achieved after playing with the conditions and actions for a while. Another issue that I came across which I couldn’t figure out without the help of my workshop teacher in setting the correct condition to successfully get the enemy ship from moving point A to point B in repetitive manner which I have attached a screenshot in this post below.