Project A – Journal Entry 4

Date: 2.4.2021
Invested Hours: 240+ minutes
Activity: Revising one page level design and incorporating feedback. Writing longer post as this is final one for this part.
Outcome:  

Technical rant about my uselessness with Gimp:
I tried to use icons, but it does not look that great and I gave up half way through as I could not find icons that could replace elements of 2d game kit, maybe So I decided to keep icons I have and follow with updating colors to be more distinct, but I failed at it again as I should have generated few more colors, but I did not so I ended up with some objects looking almost same. Then there was a part where I wanted to added more information's and I realized that my page was too small for that as it would be hardly readable, If I placed text everywhere, so I had to enlarge the canvas.

Due to my limited knowledge of Gimp I made several errors in layers design, which basically makes all much harder, then it should be. Next time I will hopefully use layers better, so changing anything is not a big deal.

In the end I figured out that it would be probably best to present more variants as each has different level of visual & information noise. See images... (All layers, without icon layer, without text layer, without text and icon layer)

Changing design based on feedback:
First of all I realized that I never thought about jump height in original too much. As I was thinking through it I decided that it will be best to keep jump height around 6 blocks by default and increase it once player picks up melee weapon. 

This leads us to one of few points in feedback, that I had two weapon pick ups without any description, this is know fixed as weapon found earlier is melee weapon and the other one is ranged. This clearly implies that player might not start with weapon or his starting weapons are much weaker then one he pick ups. This would depend on external factors, like is it first level of game or is it continuation and player can carry over his progress from different levels.
Weapon pick ups also received functionality to serve as checkpoints. Both weapon pickups are at important location, right before miniboss and boss respectively. Due to that they are perfect place to save player progress and make the level easier.

Then I changed floor of earliest part with two platforms, so player can fail jumping and survive, while keeping it still deadly if he is too reckless, Written description also explains the idea how are platforms supposed to move.

I touched small areas, where player could get stuck if he pushed box in wrong way. Through I considered just to add ability to grab the object as it would solve all problems and add new opportunities in future level designs.

Finally there is definitely more information know, that describes various parts such as enemies and how mechanism such as pressure plates operates. Level has finally a name! and super short description.

Final thoughts:
Most of the original is still there, just more fleshed out. Game kit  should be enough to implement most of the ideas and few might require to write additional scripts, but nothing difficult. New descriptions hopefully clear most of the misunderstandings and problems. Through nothing is final without implementation and playtesting it. As current values are more of a placeholder.