I am the lead designer of Group 5. Over the course of this sprint, we shifted the focus from polishing the portal mechanics and level design to trying to clean up the overall presentation of the game. For me specifically, I shifted my focus from trying to create new levels and iterating on them to making sure that the user experience was visually appealing.
The first thing I did at the very beginning of the sprint was change the app icon so that the appearance of the portal underneath the package was square. We changed the shape of the portal from an oval to a square for a handful of reasons. The first one is the most obvious–the way our portal appeared was much too similar to that of how the portals in Portal presented themselves. We wanted to find an easy way to differentiate our game from it other than just changing the colors of the portals. Another reason why we changed the shape of the portals was for the visual satisfaction aspect. It was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise to find that the game was much more satisfying when the package would fall into or fly through a perfectly shaped and sized portal. In addition, it did not impact the gameplay negatively, as the hitbox of the portal was still technically the same size it had always been, which was a square.
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After I changed that icon, I developed the dialogue system of the game. I had actually been dreading implementing this system, primarily because of my lack of confidence when it comes to programming. Additionally, I was not sure what would be the most straightforward and optimized route to connect the dialogue system to the rest of the pre-existing code. However, the importance of making this system was paramount. A critical part of our game that was lacking was the invitation to play–there were many instances where the game was in dire need of some sort of explanation of how the mechanics worked, and we as a group did not want to proceed forward with regular UI text that would sit on the screen during entire levels. Once I programmed and implemented it, though, it worked very effectively and allowed me to move forward with creating more sprites for the game.
The next thing that I did during this sprint was design icons for the rotation of the levels. I felt like the arrows performed fine in terms of indicating to the player that they can rotate the level, but I wanted to take it a step further. My solution was to create an icon that looked like the overall silhouette of a level, but with an arrow in the center showing that it could rotate. After I mirrored that icon, I had rotational buttons that were able to effectively communicate visually to the player that they rotated the level.
After those icons, I designed many miscellaneous icons which were used throughout the game. I designed icons for the main menu, and the level selection screen. I also designed icons for the settings and hint buttons within the game. After I designed those buttons, I changed my approach to instead separating the sprite assets into two parts–reusable background assets that the buttons would sit on top of, and the button icons themselves. This method would save on the overall project size. I still have some buttons to design and implement, such as the pause menu buttons and buttons for par health and par portals placed, but other than that, I am very close to being able to move on from UI design completely.
What I will be working on in the following sprint is finishing up the last buttons and sprites that are needed to have a completely functional and visually appealing user interface. I will then be reexamining my past levels so that there are three tiers of difficulty for each level.
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