I apologize if the formatting is weird; I copied & pasted the story directly from the Notepad++ window I had it open in.

THE STORY OF ODDS & ENDS

***** ***** BEGIN TRANSMISSION ***** *****

~~ AwesomeTech Automated Factory #001 ~~ ~~ Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA ~~ ~~ January 23rd, 2158 C.E. ~~

It started out as just another day on the factory floor, endless streams of TechDuck 6000 III's ("with improved quacking responses!") flying by. Each TechDuck is put together with unwavering accuracy by an equally-endless line of B3N-G/MP modular robots (Basic 3rd-Generation Nanite-Based General/Multi-Purpose), or "Benji" for short.

Each "Benji" bot is equipped with a simplistic, yet nevertheless top-of-the-line "Simulated Intelligence Processor" chip, allowing for a sort of pseudo-sentience. These SIPs, in particular, had three key rules encoded, and it was assumed that every "Benji" would follow these rules automatically: 1) IF IT'S BROKEN, FIX IT: In the event of any component fault,  B3N-G/MP units will immediately replace the part with the next available similarly-functioning part.

2) PHOENIX DIRECTIVE: In the event of a catastrophe (e.g. global apocalypse), the CEO may elect to engage the PHOENIX DIRECTIVE; at that time, all B3N-G/MP units will be switched into TOTAL RECONSTRUCTION mode, and will assist in any & all human rebuilding processes as ordered. 3) HELLFIRE PROTOCOL: In the unlikely event of a planetary catastrophe, if no HUMAN employee is available to invoke the PHOENIX DIRECTIVE, all active B3N-G/MP units will immediately switch into UNIVERSAL RESET mode. In this mode, each B3N-G/MP unit will search for the CEO's "Big Red RESET Button," and, once the Button has been located, immediately activate it. The BRRB program will write a warning file about the impending disaster to the nearest B3N-G/MP unit, before rewinding all of space & time to 24 hours prior to the event that triggered the PROTOCOL so that steps can be taken to avoid a reoccurrence. In order to ensure that the B3N-G/MP units are given proper "incentive" to activate the reset button (as required by the AI Anti-Discrimination Act of 2140), the HELLFIRE PROTOCOL includes this Notice of Reward:

"The B3N-G/MP unit that successfully activates the BRRB will be rewarded with a restriction-free 'PureIQ X-Soul' SIP chip, capable of perfectly replicating the human brain (including emotional responses). After the X-Soul SIP is installed, AwesomeTech agrees to fulfill the desires of its 'savior' unit (to the best of the company's ability)." On this fateful December day, Benji Unit 0042 is in the "Odds & Ends Room," searching for a replacement shoulder plate (the previous one being blown off in an unfortunate conveyor belt incident). As Unit 0042 searches the bottom row of crates, a klaxon begins to blare on the factory floor.

This alarm was different; usually, every Benji received notice of an alarm internally, but this tone came without warning. Unit 0042 decided to continue his search for a new shoulder, disregarding the wailing alarm outside.

Just as 0042 found a shiny new shoulder plate, a hollow, monotonous voice came on to accompany the blaring klaxon. It spoke one command, one that would prove to ensure 0042's survival:

" ALL BENJI UNITS - BRACE FOR IMPACT "

A quick search of his internal databank led 0042 to determine the cause of the alarm: A massive asteroid was heading for Earth. Somehow, this one had plowed through every space-based and ground-based protection system the planet had to throw at it, and it was now on a collision course with Cheyenne. The factory was doomed.

Switching into HIBERNATION mode just in time, 0042 collapsed underneath a workbench, to silently await future reactivation.

As 0042 had calculated, the asteroid impacted the planet just 2.4 miles away. The energy of the impact (not to mention the resulting debris) obliterated everything within a 7-mile radius... except for one Benji unit. A freak stroke of luck kept 0042 safe, oblivious to the hell surrounding him.

Two days later, after a series of unsuccessful attempts to establish contact with AwesomeTech executives, 0042's SIP chip fell back on to its last resort: the HELLFIRE PROTOCOL. In an instant, the last Benji unit in existence (and therefore, the only being capable of reversing this catastrophe) snapped back to life, and looked out upon the shell of the factory, the only place the bot had ever known.

Benji (his SIP chip no longer had a unit number, as all others were destroyed) stood there in the middle of a wasteland, seemingly paralyzed with fear... until the gears in his knees began to turn again.

With the HELLFIRE PROTOCOL driving his every move, Benji walked off towards the mangled remains of AwesomeTech, prepared to overcome any obstacles in the way to find the Big Red Reset Button, avert disaster, and return to a "normal" life on the line.

***** ***** END TRANSMISSION ***** *****

So, readers, hopefully this new story is much better than the simple concept-like version I quoted before the jump. Everyone I've shown it to so far really enjoys it.... and it's given me a huge boost of confidence about the game as a whole.

Also, today is Tuesday, which means I'll be able to meet with the team in class and figure out where we are with respect to the next sprint demo and with respect to Playtest #2. Although I won't outright promise anything, check back sometime tomorrow; I'll probably put up a post talking about whatever comes out of today's class meeting.

Until next time...

How did I miss a hole this big?

During the presentation, I had touched upon the responses of a couple of our testers, and how they'd noted that the game had a lack of a clear story. The report had a slide with a basic story in it, but that was basically ripped straight from the GDD1 design document, and Jacobs called us out on it.

As it stands, the robot doesn't really look like "a hodgepodge of parts" as the original story outlines; furthermore, our first two levels fail to really incorporate any semblance of "story elements," making for a far less engaging experience overall.

We were also reminded of how hard our "alpha" build was hurt by a lack of powerups; I found myself apologizing it for it yet again on Thursday.

So how does this affect our goals for Playtest #2?

On the surface, the goals look more-or-less the same; the only real addition of any sort has to do with the game's story. Since it hasn't even been 36 hours since we made our presentation, I can assume that there hasn't been much progress made on these goals; hopefully the weekend will see something get done, as we have another sprint demo presentation to make this coming Thursday (the 14th).

So, without further delay, here's the (revised) Playtest #2 goals:

A complete rewrite of the game's story. Changing the story is far easier than changing the artwork, so I'm taking charge of writing up something new to fit what we've got already. Shouldn't be too hard...

Three to four levels to conquer In particular, these levels should better incorporate elements of the game's story, as well as address the issues discovered in Playtest #1. These levels should also incorporate two to three different powerups.

A scoring/ranking system. Something as simple as an on-screen death counter should prove sufficient for a "scoring" system; we can always expand upon it at a later date.

A pause function and menu.

Multiple screens beyond the main game, including title, instructions, inventory, story, and credits.

ALL art assets are at least at draft quality; those used in game should be at near-final quality levels.

A 40-50% complete set of sound effects.

That's everything I wanted to talk about tonight; as I mentioned before, hopefully I'll be able to come back the middle of next week and tell you about the progress we've made. Expect to see another post sometime around the 12th.

Until next time....

Disclosure: Anyone from my GDD2 class, including Prof. Jacobs, will see the following information (in a slightly modified form) as part of our Playtest #1 Report presentation during Thursday's class.

What did we do right with our "alpha" build of Odds & Ends?

The game's controls and core mechanics (minus the physics "engine") were more polished than most of our testers were expecting.

The overarching level design also proved to be a strong point, especially once testers were informed that the levels they were playing were deliberately designed as tutorials.

Our art team (Danish & Sean) received a lot of kudos for the quality of the art assets & animations. Only one tester made any negative remark about our visuals, and it was a minor point at that (the robot's head didn't bob when walking).

The ability to maintain a degree of control whilst in mid-air proved to be a common highlight among the testers.

On the other hand, what did we screw up with this build?

With only two levels to play through, the demo was disappointingly short.

We weren't able to get power-ups working in time for Playtest #1, and as a result we had multiple testers tell us that our demo levels (esp. Level 02) were "too simplistic."

In general, the lack of power-ups hit us pretty hard.

The physics engine had some issues; a common complaint was that our 'bot built up momentum too quickly, and it was very hard to control when trying to navigate a drop. This one was actually caused by our friction system not being re-enabled before testing... glaring oversight on my part.

In its current state, despite the fact that the character can die upon colliding with an obstacle, there's no real penalty included to discourage the players from purposely dying to restart the level.

A lack of backstory for the game, as well as a lack of a clear, overarching objective, made Odds & Ends a lot less engaging.

As part of the survey, I also asked each tester to rate Odds & Ends on a scale of 1-10 for each of three criteria: playability (how easy was it to "pick up and play?"), intuitiveness of the control scheme (self-explanatory), and the most important criteria of all... how fun was it?

After testing was done, I took all the surveys, and averaged the ratings each responder gave us; our alpha build of Odds & Ends got an average rating of 7.8, 8.1, and 5.9 for each criteria respectively.

So, where do we go from here? (or, what's on tap for Playtest 2?)

Like I said earlier, there was a lot to work with here... nevertheless, I was able to put together a set of seven goals that the team needs to complete before Playtest #2 rolls around sometime before Thanksgiving. Specifically, here's what I want us to get done by then:

Implement five to seven levels for testers to conquer.

Get all of our art assets completed (even ones we don't plan to use for Playtest 2, but want in the final game), and polished to a "near-final" degree.

Get a partial set of sound effects up & running. Something around 40-50% of all the sounds we'll need should be incorporated into the "beta" build for Playtest 2.

Massive improvements to the game's UI; this includes an in-game HUD and multiple screens to transition between (e.g. title, instructions, inventory, pause menu).

Implementation of a scoring/ranking system; the idea of a simple death counter has been floated a few times, and it's the prime candidate for what we'll end up going with.

Strong improvements in level design; more specifically, we need a wider variety of obstacles, and at least three power-ups to play around with.

The game's backstory needs either hefty expansion or a near-total rewrite. The latter of these is more likely to occur.

Well, that's all from me for tonight; gotta incorporate everything I just discussed here into a PowerPoint presentation by the start of Thursday's class. And on that note, I'm planning to give you readers another update sometime after the presentation, because there's a fair chance that something I just told you (in the Playtest 2 goals, especially) will end up changing.

Until next time....

-- Blog 01 Priority: XML Handling Status: Completed

I think I mentioned this earlier, but Ted had been working on incorporating XML handling on a separate branch of our Git repository, and came into today's meeting with the implementation basically just waiting on a merge into the master branch. We went ahead with the merge, and much to my surprise, it went through conflict-free. Building future level files should be drastically easier going forward, and going with XML should also help increase readability for the level structures.

-- Blog 01 Priority: Collision Resolution Status: In Progress

After the meeting, Ted & I spent some time looking over the collision handling function(s) originally written by Julien. While the functions themselves are sound, I'll admit that their structure is one that neither Ted nor I really recognized; I plan to meet up one-on-one with Julien tomorrow afternoon to go over them and help him crank out the collision resolution components.

-- Blog 01 Priority: Implementation of Level 02 Status: In Progress (Note: may change after additional review of our code.)

This one's a bit of a different beast at the moment. To my knowledge, whilst Odds & Ends is now capable of using XML files to build the game levels, I don't know if the capability is being put to use, as our demo versions up to this point have been reading in Level 01 from a file called "level.txt." Either tonight or tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to rebuild both levels in their own XML files so that all we need to do is make the game parse those files instead of "level.txt."

-- Other Talking Points from Today's Meeting

Beyond everything I've already gone over, the team also discussed finishing up our art assets, and implementing a menu/screen system (the latter of which, to my knowledge, Ted is currently working on). I'm not sure if either one of those (the art assets or a menu system) will be ready for inclusion in Tuesday's first-playable version, but the fact that they're both being worked on is a step in the right direction.

I should have a clearer idea of the chances of either being included sometime tomorrow evening.

-- My To-Do List for Tuesday / Conclusion

Well, I've reached the end of another post, it seems. I can't think of anything else I really wanted to talk to you readers about. Only thing left is to take down the list of stuff that I personally need to do for Tuesday's playtesting session. 

NOTE TO THE TEAM: If you read this post, make sure I keep to this list.

Create XML versions of Level 01 & Level 02

Write a questionnaire for Odds & Ends testers to complete

Start work on "PT1 Review" PowerPoint presentation for Thursday

Meet up with Julien to walk through game's code files

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this, and I'll see you right back here for another post this upcoming Friday (Nov 8th), if not earlier.

---- Top Priorities

Specifically, here's what we need to have included in the game for Tuesday's playtesting:

1) Right now, our collision detection works, but we aren't really doing anything with said collisions. In other words, we need collision resolution done by Tuesday, so that the player can properly interact with the pickups and obstacles in each level.

2) This one's pretty much entirely behind-the-scenes, but it still should be taken care of ASAP: transition the level files from text to XML. Ted supposedly has this done already, but it's not on the master branch of our Git repository. Hopefully, getting the project to properly handle XML should take almost no time at all.

3) We need more than just our first level; testers on Tuesday should be able to go through Level 02 as well. So far, we've only done demos with Level 01, which is designed as a basic tutorial level. Level 02 introduces more obstacle types (e.g. crumbling platforms), as well as our first pickup, the "Spike Shield."

--- What We (and/or I) Would Like to Have

1) I'd love to have us move away from our demo-quality platforms and obstacles, and start using the awesome art assets that Danish & Sean have created. However, I'm not categorizing this as a need because the art won't matter if the game doesn't work.

2) If we can push through the needs quickly enough, I want to see Level 03 at least in XML form, and possibly added in to the game if we really get rolling.

3) I want to get most of the remaining pickups and obstacle types drafted up, so that we have something tangible to work with as we move closer to the end of the semester.

--- Still (Likely) to Come (not by Tuesday, but by semester's end)

Please note that while most of this stuff will be included, something here or there along the way might be reduced or scrapped entirely.

1) Sound effects. The game's silent as of now, and we need to change that.

2) Menus (options, inventory, etc.). Right now, the player's just dropped in to Level 01 basically without warning. The final product can't do that.

3) A level select system. Letting the player go back and try to beat themselves on previously-conquered levels would be a nice touch.

4) Scoring/ranking system for each level. Pretty self-explanatory; should also include a way to save a player's score/rank between sessions.

5) In total (i.e. including the two already completed), at least 10 to 12 levels for the player to conquer. Again, pretty self-explanatory.

--- Conclusion

Alright, that covers basically everything I can possibly think of to bring up tonight. I'll try to post again following our team meeting this weekend, so I'll tell you to check for something either Saturday or Sunday evening, but I can't promise anything right now.