Devlog 6 – Updates/planned updates based upon Testing Session

While the results of the testing session gave me some fantastic pointers on where to go with the game in the future, the time constraints on the development of the game in the present in preparation for submission more or less utterly prevented any work on suggestions that weren’t already going to be worked on this week.

One of the main issues with the build I used for the testing session was the barebones and placeholder goblin AI, which simply ran towards the player and hugged them to death. I also made the goblins far too fast at the last minute, meaning the players would be completely overwhelmed by the goblins quite quickly.

To further compound the issue, the weapons I had available to the player at the time were only the axe, and the placeholder short sword, both of which were unreliable in their ability to kill the goblins, and gave no feedback upon a successful hit.

I believe this is what lead to many testers suggesting ranged weapons when asked for weapon ideas, given that the melee weapons available at the time were borderline unusable and the relentless enemies begged for a more reasonable way of dealing with them.

The suggestion to include some form of visual or auditory feedback to the player upon their weapon being ready to swing was brought up, which I agreed wholly with, and as a result, when the player’s weapon is ready to swing, a “glint” animation appears for a split second on their weapon, as well as a sound effect playing.

Glint4

Several times over the course of development, people have asked me to increase the speed of the weapons, which I have happily obliged each time. The earlier versions definitely had frustratingly slow swing speeds

Now, they are much faster

I also increased the brightness of the axe sprites, so it no longer blends into the background, as mentioned in last week’s devlog.

I’m glad I included the question of what weapons people would like to see, because it has given me a fairly straightforward list of what I can make with full justification for doing so in future. I’m excited to figure out the flail, assuming I can get a physics system working with it. Special thanks to the one person who gave the gigantic list of weapons there.

Another question that turned out to be a gold mine of ideas was asking what people would need in the game to justify a higher price. This revealed a good selection of end-game goals feasible to achieve within the game in future development.

That’s all for now. This might be the last assessment-related devlog, but this certainly won’t be the last devlog for Dark Testament. I thoroughly enjoyed developing it, and look forward to continuing it soon.

Thanks.