377 Mobile Development - Blog Post 3

Team Titan Sprint 6 - 7

This progress blog post about Titanic Arena's final two sprints, Sprint 6 and 7. Both of these sprints were focused on making and implementing art assets. Other than that, we kept making improvements to our game based on player feedback in our playtests. We are home stretch in our development and the goal for Sprint 7, our current sprint, is to polish and finalize our game. 

A Closer Look at Each Sprint: 

Sprint 6

Cards Assigned to Me: 12

1. As a team, we want the APK to be ready by the playtest (1)
2. As a player, I would like to be able to unlock dash (1)
3. As a player, I want to be able to unlock the spearman character in the upgrade shop (1)
4. As a player, I would like to know how to defeat each boss (1)
5. As a player, I want to be able to unlock the rogue character in the upgrade shop (1)
6. As a player, I want to be able to unlock the flailer character in the upgrade shop (1)
7. As a player, I would like to see what each character is visually in the shop (.5)
8. As a player, I want to know what the second shop does and is for via a panel or through controls (.5)
9. As a developer, I would like to see the blood of enemies fly out when they are hit via particle effect or UI element (1)
10. As a developer, I would like to see the blood of player characters fly out when they are hit via particle effect or UI element (1)
11. As a player, I would like to visually see my health go up (1)
12. As a player, I would like a dynamic game over screen so I am enticed to play again. (1)

Incompleted Cards: 1

1. As a player, I would like a dynamic game over screen so I am enticed to play again. (1)

Half of the cards I was assigned to this sprint were art assets while the other half were cards about our final feature. This feature was decided by us as a team as a substitute for the cards about saving the game (after quitting the application) and creating individual player stats for each class because I couldn't figure out how to implement a proper save feature in the game and we weren't sure how to tackle the individual player stats feature. Instead, a character shop and unlocking feature would incite player replayability and add more incentive to use the shop other than to just buff the two upgrades available in the shop. The art assets I finished for this sprint were particle effects that give feedback for the player to know when they have taken damage or dealt damage to the enemies. I also added UI elements for the boss fights since each boss is unique and has different strategies or methods to defeat them. I also added a UI to the second shop or the character shop so the players know what the shop purchases do exactly. 

Second shop for unlocking classes or characters

Boss infobox 

Sprint 7

Cards Assigned to Me: 12

1. As a Player, I would like to be able to choose to play an endless mode. (3)
2. As a team, we want our game to be ready to be published in the Google Play Store (1)
3. As a player, I would like a dynamic game over screen so I am enticed to play again. (1) [From Sprint 6]
4. As a player, I want the control page to be clear and concise. There might need to be multiple pages for this to work. (1) [Feedback]
5. As a Player, I would like a dynamic background for each of the levels (1)
6. As a player, I want a feature graphic for the game that makes me want to download the said game (1)
7. As a player, I want a dynamic poster for the game that makes me want to download the game (1)
8. As a player, I would like to know when I can select a character (1)
9. As a player, I want an enticing icon for the game that makes me want to download said game (1)
10. As a player, I want the control page to work flawlessly and is visually helpful. (.5)
11. As a player, I would like a moment of pause before the boss spawns so I can read the textbox (1)
12. As a player, I want the rotation of the game to be locked (.5)

Completed Cards: 

1. As a Player, I would like to be able to choose to play an endless mode. (3)
2. As a player, I would like a dynamic game over screen so I am enticed to play again. (1) [From Sprint 6]

Our current and final sprint's focus is purely art assets and getting elements for our Google Play page ready. This included getting screenshots of the game, making graphics and posters, and even a gameplay video or trailer. More internally, I need to make sure our control page is as concise and coherent as possible since it's been our game's major flaw for the past few sprints as many players could not get through the character select screen. I need to also work on the feedback for our game's UI elements that were suggested by playtesters. So far I finished our game's dynamic game over screen, making it more appealing and graphic and as a team, we completed one of our epics which was to make the game "endless", this meant our game does not have a game over, similar to Temple Run, a famous mobile endless runner. 

Game-Over screen

Total Card Count (as of now):

Cards Assigned to Me: 56

Completed Cards: 46

Cards Left: 10

Total Point Count (as of now):

Points Assigned to Me: 60.5

Completed Points: 51.5

Points in Progress: 9

Since we are very close to the end of development, I can really see the total number of cards I've done and the hours I've worked. I try to be accurate when assigning points, there are very few 3 point cards and no 7-point cards at all. This is due to most larger cards being split up into more cards and often I used .5 for UI elements that changeable through the inspector or settings and do not require adding assets such as scripts or game objects. Seeing an overall total of the work I've done is very cool, it seems about accurate to have done roughly 2 months' worth of development work for our game over this semester. I'm thankful for my team to be great at their roles and being able to smoothly develop our game with only a few bumps here and there. I think our game is amazing and has many great features to offer. Thank you Adam for being a superb programmer and cheers to Austin for implementing the levels and helping with everything else. Great work team! 

Issues/Problems Encountered 

Problem #1: Save Feature and Individual Player Stats 

One of the problems I encountered during multiple sprints was making a save feature for our game. So far we have an in-game save feature that carries the upgrades and shop purchases over the screens but when the player quits the game, the game does not save. Saving a game is pretty difficult and I've spent multiple sprints tackling it. I've tried multiple tutorials online for saving games but none of them have bear fruit. I assume this is due to the save and serializing not being able to save the scripts with player data since those scripts are using Player Prefs.

Attempts at serializing and saving the game

Solution #1: New Feature Substitution 

 Regardless, since this feature is taking too long and we've reached our last two sprints we decided that we'll substitute the save game on quit feature with a new feature. This feature will incite the game's replayability and encourage the player to use the shop more. Originally, the player can choose a number of classes and characters to play as but with this new feature, they only start with the warrior class and need to unlock/purchase the remaining character classes on the second page of the shop. 

Scripting for locking and unlocking characters/classes