Devlog - Beta Development

Devlog #3: Beta

With our move into beta production, we have been working to make our functional build more effective by adding the art, sound, and narrative while improving all the mechanics already implemented. Our plan was to end this phase with every single scene to have, at minimum, first pass versions of all elements we needed. 

We ensured that we used all the feedback received from our alpha playtests to guide us going forward. By this point we already knew what we needed and could finally polish the parts that we knew worked. In the end, we were able to achieve all these and make a build that wasn’t just functional, but effective.

During this step of development, I was moved around between multiple roles to help out wherever needed. This was because each other member was focused on specialties that needed someone dedicated to them while I, since being booted out of narrative, was more of a jack of all trades that could do a little bit of everything. As a result, I moved between documentation and narrative during beta to best utilize our time.

Playtest Report

While everyone else had to focus on implementation for the actual build, I was left to do the playtest report myself. As an assignment with clear guidelines and a rubric to follow, it was easy enough to figure out what to do and how to do it. I first just needed to transfer the data from our post playtest survey to a spreadsheet and format it so I could actually look it over to see our findings. I was able to move them around to categorize as needed to find our trends, the things we would have to focus on most as they were recurring data points. 

From there, it was just a matter of properly filling in the report by section, inferring from our data and getting my team's perspective as needed. With a clear spreadsheet, I was easily able to show our data that led to our thoughts and decisions from the playtests. We were lucky that our finding revealed few major issues with our game as a whole, so we were able to talk and effectively plan for the coming weeks of beta for the changes we needed to make. And once the report itself was done, I sent it off to the team to look over to ensure everything needed was included and there were no issues. So once they made a few small edits for clarity, we were able to submit the report on time without issues. 

Narrative

Finally, I was given the opportunity to work on narrative for the remaining sprints. By this point, the main narrative team already had a rough outline of every single scene and the dialogue needed for it, but they needed some help actually getting some of them done, especially since one of them needed to be moved on to sound. Because I was our floater, I got the chance to write the entire doctor scene and the narration of the first office section. 

Because it was much more important, being the setup for the transformation sections of the game and onboarding for the pill mechanic, I focused my work on the doctor scene first. Firstly, I needed to establish what the scene needed to do through the dialogue. I knew we had to teach the player how to use the pills, what they did, and why they needed them. For this, we needed to establish the pain Jessica is in, and that it affects every part of her life. Then we have to make her take a pill and show how it improves everything. After that, we needed to establish the mechanics limits, telling them that the pills effects for a limited time. 

We already established how Jessica’s movement and vision are reduced by the pain leading up to the hospital room, so we needed minimal explanation in dialogue for that. I was just able to show it is hard for Jessica to pay attention due to the pain and have her just mention she’s in pain to hit it home the last little bit. From there, I just made it so, once the doctor gives her the pills and she has to take one, they explain what the pills do as it’s shown as well and the limits.

After sending this off to my team, I got their feedback and made changes accordingly. I mainly just needed to shift dialogue around to put the brunt of it after Jessica takes the pills. This is because I forgot about the text garbling during the pain. But after I altered that, everyone agreed it was good enough for implementation and we were able to put it into the game properly 

Conclusion

With my art done and sent to the team, it was able to spark discussion of what parts we did and didn’t want, setting us up to improve on further versions. The feedback I got was also able to improve my understanding of how everyone else viewed things in their heads. In the end, we were better able to get a clear vision of what everything should look to help further our transformation.

With my tasks complete, sent off, and implemented or submitted, all my work was done. Because of my position, my load was lesser than everyone else's. We all knew it, so it wasn’t an issue with our planning, just how our distribution had to be based on our skills and roles. Regardless, I was able to help get our assignment done on time and was finally given the opportunity to work on narrative, creating a scene that achieved all the goals we had for it. And with everyone else being able to do their work just as effectively, I am confident in our project as it is and our progress going forward.