2011 Spring Semester Playtest Session 8

This level no longer exists in the game

This is the playtest session that basically forced me to create a new level. I was sick of seeing people get destroyed by my level because of my lack of attention to detail. Keep in mind that the level that I'm speaking of was a fairly old level and I've learned quite a bit since then. Anyway, I created the new level and it can be seen in the Gold milestone video on the Nitronic Rush project page, or on the Welcome page. I am happy to mention that all the testers were able to get through all the levels regardless of the horrible level. In my view this shows how good our controls are at this point in development. Even though the controls are fairly good, they are still touchy for some players. We still need to get sensitivity settings into the game. We also need to get in the ability to have different control schemes as there are already two plausible control schemes that work very well for our game. One is where the trick system is activated through the left bumper and then tricks are made using the left-joystick, and the other control scheme is that the right-joystick handles tricks. Both systems are good, but testers enjoyed the right-joystick setup more.

The camera is looking at the side of car which needs to change

Something that still and more than likely always will need work is the camera system. We need to get the camera to not go to a side-ways view of the car when it is backing up. The camera needs to be more like Forza or pretty much any car game that allows the player to go backwards. The camera needs to flip to facing the from of the car when it starts going backwards, simple as that. As I watched playtesters I also noticed that a few were getting turned around in the level which means we need more indication that the player is going in the wrong direction. More than likely this will be done through a wrong-way wall that would pop-up when the player goes in the wrong direction for a period of time. Playtesters were also wanting to be able to destroy stuff in the world. This could be done in many ways and the team has spoken of it before and were interested in possibly implementing destructible stuff in the summer. Some of the ideas that came up were bashing through barriers and blowing up towers and such with missiles that are fire and forget as this gets rid of the issue of aiming. The game also needs tips for the player when they are having trouble doing particular actions in the game. Basically, this is for reversing the car, flipping the car over (though this may be automated later on) and even boosting over jumps. This will greatly increase the playability of our game. Not to say that not too many people can play our game, but only that doing these tips will allow more people to play it effectively. That is about it when it comes to this playtest session, all the other problems are minor or have already been changed by the team and I. Thanks for reading!