The start of week six has begun and the Beta deadline is looming over us.
Us designers have been finalizing the values we want the variables to have in the current prototype. We did this so that all of us have a unified set of values to change and iterrate on further down the line. The morning of today was spent on further working on our values as our lead designer had to prepare for the sprint review. I tweaked a bit more on the players dash to get it to a good state as well as the player’s melee attack range. When changing the dash, I wanted to find a sweet spot in between the dash being too floaty and too snappy. This basically translates to not wanting it to feel like the player levitates away nor like the player is teleporting rather than moving very fast. As for the player’s melee range I wanted it to reach further than the enemy melee range as well as feel like a realistic reach of a katana.
During the afternoon us designers discussed the values we had tested and decided on which to keep. We ended up with a dash that was slightly snappier than the one I had tested my way towards, but it still felt fine if not better than the one I had. The reach of the player melee was made slightly shorter, but it did follow the pattern of the enemy having less reach than the player.
We also had a big discussion regarding guiding the player throughout the levels without holding their hand too much. We have had suggestions of having a minimap and another of having signs that appear behind the player after they enter a room. After a lot of discussion, we came to the conclusion of having people from the other project come in and playtest to see how big of an issue the disorientation of the levels really is. After that, the discussion will be picked back up whether we go for guiding or not.
Emil "The Pagan's" Gamedev-blog 