{"id":49,"date":"2015-02-13T01:24:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T01:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/?p=49"},"modified":"2015-02-13T05:54:07","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T05:54:07","slug":"the-drop-newsletter-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"The Drop: Newsletter #5"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

What’s happening!<\/p>\n

Week 5 is almost in the books and we are moving forward with testing new game mechanics and other hopeful improvements. \u00a0Recently we have been getting a few playtesters and observers checking out the game and gotten quite a bit of useful feedback about what is working and what isn’t working in the game. \u00a0Luckily, most of it coincides with things that we already knew and had already planned to address in the game.<\/p>\n

Control Points<\/strong><\/p>\n

Merely having one-on-one death matches\u00a0is kind of boring by itself, so relatively early on we knew we wanted to add some more dimensions to the game. \u00a0Basically, we wanted another goal for the player besides just “killing” (we are also working on the theming for the game to make everything more musically oriented) your opponent. \u00a0We have a long design document (the “idea vault”) which has various ideas we want\u00a0to try, but decided to start with the idea of control points.<\/p>\n

Rather than health points determining who’s music is being played, whoever controls the majority of the 3 control points will not only have their music being played, but will go on “offense”. \u00a0Control points, which are giant knobs, can be controlled for now by simply standing next to one for a few moments.<\/p>\n

Speakers!<\/strong><\/p>\n

There will eventually be other benefits to being on offense, but the first experiment we are trying involves having a speaker that you can shoot with your sound waves (only while on offense) in order to get points and eventually\u00a0convert it to your color\/music. \u00a0The match will last as long as the song (where the player with the most points will win) or until one player converts the speaker (pictured above and designed by Elizabeth) by firing on beat while aiming at it. \u00a0There are many details to be worked out, but the best way for us to test it is to quickly implement a simple prototype.<\/p>\n

Multipliers<\/b><\/p>\n

As you can see from the picture about, we implemented combos (hitting the notes successfully in a row) that result in multiplier rewards. \u00a0The multipliers make your projectile strength stronger every 10 notes you hit in a row. \u00a0One of our big design goals for the project is to have the game be balanced for FPS players and rhythm game players. \u00a0This addition is one that helps the balance swing back towards the rhythm players and has added a nice extra dimension\u00a0from the playtesting we have done so far.<\/p>\n

Visual Feedback<\/b><\/p>\n

In our previous iteration, it was very unclear who was winning at any given moment and whose music is being played. \u00a0The two songs, while somewhat dissimilar, blend together smoothly enough that it is hard to tell which is which for people that don’t know music very well. \u00a0To add additional feedback, we now have the world’s color dynamically shifting between red and blue depending on who is winning thanks to the “cross-fader” dynamic created by Ariel.<\/p>\n

Tao\u00a0also changed each of the two placeholder characters to red and blue to make it clear which player is on which side. \u00a0We are also taking a long hard look at the music to see what kind of songs can blend together smoothly, while also still being more obviously different. \u00a0Visual feedback was also added to when you hit the other player as that was another area of confusion for us and our playtesters.<\/p>\n

Dynamic Beatmaps<\/b><\/p>\n

After deciding that mixing two songs in some fashion was something that we wanted to explore for the game, this created a problem with the beatmaps. \u00a0If the two songs are mixed back and forth according to who is winning, then the losing player will have a beatmap that doesn’t match the song that they are hearing. \u00a0We considered that this could be one of the disadvantages of losing in the game, but really it just hurts the experience of the losing player. \u00a0So JD implemented dynamic beatmaps that will change the beatmap of the losing player to reflect the song that they are hearing.<\/p>\n

These were just a few of the big things we have been working on\u00a0this week.<\/p>\n

Thanks for stopping by.<\/p>\n

The Drop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s happening! Week 5 is almost in the books and we are moving forward with testing new game mechanics and other hopeful improvements. \u00a0Recently we have been getting a few playtesters and observers checking out the game and gotten quite a bit of useful feedback about what is working and what isn’t working in the game. \u00a0Luckily, most of it coincides with things that we already knew and had already.. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/the-drop\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}