Builds, builds, builds and more BUILDS!

Many builds of Wasco...

So... we're still hard at work testing Wasco. Our polish list has lost most of its critical bugs. I've spent quite a bit of time making the menu navigations as smooth as possible. For example I spent some considerable time making sure there's no Load button when you don't have a save game and that if you erase your save file the game responds to this situation by deactivating the Load button as well. 

One doesn't usually put too much thought into these things but at the end of the day when you're polishing you're working to give your players an experience unhindered by breaking menus and buttons.

Following week we will attempt a full playthrough once again and see if we can finish the game without something breaking horribly. If this is the case then we celebrate and immediately start working on the artwork that's been missing.

Once that's done vigorous playtesting and fixing and polishing will take place and then finally the game will be...

... release ready.

A statement elusive to the ears of most game developers.

This however doesn't mean the game will be released immediately after even if we're itching to do so. It mostly means we can prepare all the presskit stuff and try to reach publishers.

Polish, polish and polish some more...

Past two days we've been playtesting Wasco which is a very exciting moment for all of us. It's really motivating to see the game come together. We did come across a lot of rough edges. Good thing was we expected them.

Here's the current polish list we have. It will seem almost complete however the list grows further we play test our game:

(I borrowed this symbolic image from here.)

Critical Polish Elements:

1. Some of our music has been taken from an unknown source. I need to find the source of the music and make sure we can use it before releasing the game.
2. Find and add sound effects for bumping into walls and attacking enemies.
3. Finish setting up the initial waste area.
4. Setup the missing two waste areas.
5. Finish writing the flavor text for picking up items.
6. Create and add all the props.
7. Create the final cinematic sequence for the game.
8. Fix the issue with resizing the font.
9. Visit all scenes and format the hierarchy and naming of all interactable objects.
10. Visit all item prefabs and update the scripts with necessary data.
11. Make Wasco's sprite animate when he walks.
12. Controls aren't as responsive as they should be. This needs fixing.
13. Update Wasco Spredsheet on google docs.
14. Add musician names and song titles to the credits.
15. There’s no feedback when enemy misses.
16. A level up the notification should be more distinct than a dialogue.
17. Exit locations for buildings within the waste town need to be setup correctly for each building. When you exit Repair Shop you end up in front of Recharge Bay.
18. Add a confirmation sound or message to saving, loading, erasing data and or other important selections.
19. After the ending and reloading the game the camera stopped following the player.(Couldn’t replicate)
20. After ending the game twice in one go the game got stuck in the second ending.
21. Level up notification shows before the dialogue.
22. Balance combat elements.
23. UI in Combat is too small to read.
24. Exclude non weapon items from attack menu.
25. When you open the credits menu or another menu at the entrance the toggle doesn’t update the description box.

Non-critical Polish Elements:

1. Add enemy picture to the combat.
2. Add an ‘Are you sure?’ pop up window with options to the game for erasing data.
3. When you change areas player’s animation will freeze for a few seconds. Smoothen this.
4. When you pick up an item the text sags to the second line. For example for the sentence “You picked up I n t e r e s t i n g  I t e m” last letter ‘m’ may end up in the second line.

Requested Polish Elements:

1. Items should be picked up by pressing the ‘A’ button.
2. Buildings artwork in Wastetown is too similar to one another. Needs a type of distinction. 
3. Starting HP is too low and I die too often.
4. Item list too confusing, I don’t know what to attack with.