During the first half of the week I sent my testing form for my game to classmates and members of my social networks to ensure the feedback was varied. The results were positive: most people enjoyed the game’s mechanics and challenging other people’s highscores. The people who said they weren’t motivated to get new highscores tended to be the first people to play the game, meaning the competitive aspect factored in strongly. Overall, the impressions were as expected considering the game’s limited scope.

The latter half of the week was dedicated to my self reflection log and project report. In summary:

• My prototype aim was to create a short arcade-style shoot-em-um, later deciding to create a bullet hell instead.
• My primary influence was Touhou 7 – colourful bullet patterns coming from various directions feel engaging to dodge and the difficulty scales well.
• Test results were positive and the suggested improvements were varied.
• No bugs were identified – although I did note that bullets spawn slower on low end devices.
• The prototyping process was solid overall; next time I would research various useful functions beforehand and ensure my scope is achievable in the time designated to the project.

During the December break I’m planning to watch some videos explaining the code behind the mechanics of games I’ve played before. My sister was recently playing Baldi’s Basics and the AI behind the enemies was interesting to see revealed, as enemies in horror-style games are often more complex than they may seem on a casual playthrough. Video by Tech Rules

I also gained admin access to a rhythm game website this week, so I’ve been experimenting with adding new songs using winSCP to connect to their remote server and transfer my code over. The process of setting up my NUA website proved useful to understanding the UI and its features, as it shares similarities with FileZilla.