Group Meeting + PlayTest Notes (28/03)

Name: Daniel

Attendance: Alek, Malon, Daniel

Date: 28/03/2025

Week: 11

Venue: Discord Call

This isn't a happy week considering our previous breakdown in group communication but I felt most issues with environment development were readily apparent and mostly an issue regarding time committed and implementation of assets into the unity/github project (which I discussed with Roland along with assigned Mx Planner tasks for ourselves on Monday 24th). As such, our discussions today were focused primarily on playtest feedback, lecturer feedback and assigning additional tasks.

Firstly, we did not have access to this Monday's feedback so I have just requested that from Roland in Discord and we started the session discussing some bugs that were recently resolved in Malon's project push (24/04, 20:55) such as the hyper-spinning camera gimble and small changes between Aleks and Malon's efforts on the project as well as the replacement of my own grossly mis-sized textures.

Next, there were some comments still relevant feedback from the previous week's test (17/03):

Seeing as the camera bug was fixed the most relevant takeaways are our lacking art assets, and that the puzzles are too easy, which also links into our lecturer feedback (Connor's advice) that there remains untapped potential in our 'butterfly effect' mechanic, where shifting past boxes are mirrored in the future and vice versa.

Following on, I mentioned feedback from my ongoing personal playtest where I was working on simpler potential solutions, and provided some emphasis on minor issues I felt were likely easier fixes such as the oversized portal trigger (full feedback notes attached below):

13:28 28/03/2025

Bugs:

- Portal can still teleport off map / into walls / cages.

- key pickup sometimes fails 1st try when stacked with container pickup (such as cabinet or glassbox).

- Puzzles 7-9 disabled.

UX Issues:

- Portal Trigger radius is too large (many accidental teleports).

- Level 4 combination order hard to remember without writing notes (I may fix by numbering/labelling environment corridors).

- May want to reconsider portal dynamic lighting size (too big) + colours.

- May want to reconsider wall + floor textures.

- Positioning boxes perfectly is awkward for level 6 (keep as feature?)

- Need prompt or reminder of what is blacklight keybinding.

- Also 1,2,3,4 graffiti stamps can be confused with actual combination (maybe used blurred numbers/paint?)

- Puzzle 2 needs vent asset implemented (although it wasnt to scale last I checked).

- Is cabinet placeholder asset or modelled?

Asset:

- Add keypad mesh to asset list.

Positive Feedback:

- Pressure plates and new models are cool.

- Character is very cool (alternate universe Winston Churchill as a detective-scientist).

- Great job with the stacked papers placeholder asset.

- Great job with the [L] pickup prompt.

- Music is pretty neat and matches theme.

Rough Ideas to makes puzzles harder (following feedback):

- Maybe have 1 obj-relevant box trapped/caged in past for Level 6 so it requires to be freed in future first.

- Maybe utlise inverse positioning in level 4 (take box forward in future to push backwards in past)?

- Introduce box on Level 2 (maybe need parkour/height to reach glass case).

- Trap future box in cage for Level 3 (requires moving the past box first).

Last of all, to wrap up our meeting we agreed that Mx Planner tasks would probably still help us with productivity despite our recent slump so we proceeded to fill out the blanks, subject to further discussions. I also made a promise to arrange some more consistently scheduled meetings (with Thursday 1pm's as a proposition) in the hopes that it might improve future attendance.