Game Update and Development Lessons Learned
by Twisted Jenius · 07/24/2013 (3:42 pm) · 8 comments
Hello all, I've been working hard behind the scenes for the last several months and have just come out with a major update for Twisty's Asylum Escapades (if you'd like to know the basics about the game, I covered that in previous blog posts here and here). The biggest change is that we ported the game to a newer version of the engine. This allowed for much better graphics, including improvements to the textures, better shaders, etc. This change alone has made the game look much better.
Side-by-side of the old and new graphics respectively.
However, that's not the only update that we've made to it. Many of our other changes came as a result of feedback that we've gotten from various people and from the many "let's plays" that have been posted on YouTube. This information has given the Twisted Jenius team a lot of insight about how to improve the game.
We often have a tendency to focus on discussions about game development from the standpoint of developers on GG (and with good reason; this is, after all, a game development site) and we don't always necessarily tend to discuss the player experience quite as much here, but this is something that I've had to think a lot about recently.
One of the biggest problems that I noticed that many players were having with the game was that they simply weren't being given enough explanation about what to do. As the developer I mistakenly assumed that they would be able to figure some things out that they couldn't and this led to many players not fully utilizing all of the features in the game and thus having less fun than they could have while playing it.
Here's an example-
In the game we have a weapon called "hypno". You use this to turn neutral AI NPCs that are randomly wandering around the environment into friendly "minions" or "pets" (for anyone who's familiar with The Universal AI Starter Kit), who will then follow you and help you to attack your enemies.
The problem was that at the beginning of the game, players would automatically try hypno on one of the first enemies that they encountered, and after seeing that it didn't work on them, they would completely forget about it and never bother trying it on a roaming NPC that they were supposed to use it on. Our method for fixing this was to simply only add the hypno weapon to the player's inventory when they need it, as opposed to giving it to them right off the bat when the game starts.
This actually does a couple of very positive things. It gives the player a greater sense of progression, because it gives them a new ability later in the game. But more importantly it also alerts them to when they need to use that attack, instead of just simply giving it to them at first and then letting them try to figure out when and where it is useful.
It seems like a simple thing in retrospect, but players were completely ignoring an important mechanism of game play because they didn't know how to use it and thus the game wasn't as interesting or fun for them.
Another example of this type of fix involved a brief tutorial that we have towards the beginning of the game. This tutorial is within the game itself (not separate from it) and is designed to show the player how to do one specific move involving the right mouse button. Although we have a bit of text popup that specifically tells the player to use the right mouse button, we noticed that many players, even after reading the text, still used their left mouse buttons in order to do the task and therefore messed up the tutorial and any chance that they would learn what it's trying to teach them.
We chose to deal with this in a bit of a humorous way and have one more sentence of text pop up if they do it wrong saying- "No! Your "other right" mouse button".
As game developers, it's very easy to become absorbed in our projects. It's often difficult enough just to create a game in the first place and so usability from the standpoint of the general public is not always something that we even consider. Of course that's fine if you're making a game just for you, but usability becomes a much greater issue if you want to release it for others to play and enjoy.
Enhancing the "user friendliness" of your game isn't always easy. In fact it's often one of the most difficult and time consuming elements of software development. It's also one of the easiest to overlook or neglect. Based on my experience so far, the key is testing. Lots and lots of testing. Test everything yourself and have others do it as well. That's the first step towards polishing your project (I'll also mention that it's probably a bad sign if you think that testing your game is a chore, it's supposed to be fun to get in there and play, remember?)
One thing that I've learned is that there's a big difference between the perceptions of the developer and the perceptions of the regular player and these things definitely need to be considered. As the developer, you're always going to know your game better than anyone who's playing it. After all, the player didn't spend years of their life planning and creating the thing. ;)
Twisty's Asylum Escapades is available for free, so if you'd like to see what the game is like firsthand, then simply download and play it!
Side-by-side of the old and new graphics respectively.
However, that's not the only update that we've made to it. Many of our other changes came as a result of feedback that we've gotten from various people and from the many "let's plays" that have been posted on YouTube. This information has given the Twisted Jenius team a lot of insight about how to improve the game.
We often have a tendency to focus on discussions about game development from the standpoint of developers on GG (and with good reason; this is, after all, a game development site) and we don't always necessarily tend to discuss the player experience quite as much here, but this is something that I've had to think a lot about recently.
One of the biggest problems that I noticed that many players were having with the game was that they simply weren't being given enough explanation about what to do. As the developer I mistakenly assumed that they would be able to figure some things out that they couldn't and this led to many players not fully utilizing all of the features in the game and thus having less fun than they could have while playing it.
Here's an example-
In the game we have a weapon called "hypno". You use this to turn neutral AI NPCs that are randomly wandering around the environment into friendly "minions" or "pets" (for anyone who's familiar with The Universal AI Starter Kit), who will then follow you and help you to attack your enemies.
The problem was that at the beginning of the game, players would automatically try hypno on one of the first enemies that they encountered, and after seeing that it didn't work on them, they would completely forget about it and never bother trying it on a roaming NPC that they were supposed to use it on. Our method for fixing this was to simply only add the hypno weapon to the player's inventory when they need it, as opposed to giving it to them right off the bat when the game starts.
This actually does a couple of very positive things. It gives the player a greater sense of progression, because it gives them a new ability later in the game. But more importantly it also alerts them to when they need to use that attack, instead of just simply giving it to them at first and then letting them try to figure out when and where it is useful.
It seems like a simple thing in retrospect, but players were completely ignoring an important mechanism of game play because they didn't know how to use it and thus the game wasn't as interesting or fun for them.
Another example of this type of fix involved a brief tutorial that we have towards the beginning of the game. This tutorial is within the game itself (not separate from it) and is designed to show the player how to do one specific move involving the right mouse button. Although we have a bit of text popup that specifically tells the player to use the right mouse button, we noticed that many players, even after reading the text, still used their left mouse buttons in order to do the task and therefore messed up the tutorial and any chance that they would learn what it's trying to teach them.
We chose to deal with this in a bit of a humorous way and have one more sentence of text pop up if they do it wrong saying- "No! Your "other right" mouse button".
As game developers, it's very easy to become absorbed in our projects. It's often difficult enough just to create a game in the first place and so usability from the standpoint of the general public is not always something that we even consider. Of course that's fine if you're making a game just for you, but usability becomes a much greater issue if you want to release it for others to play and enjoy.
Enhancing the "user friendliness" of your game isn't always easy. In fact it's often one of the most difficult and time consuming elements of software development. It's also one of the easiest to overlook or neglect. Based on my experience so far, the key is testing. Lots and lots of testing. Test everything yourself and have others do it as well. That's the first step towards polishing your project (I'll also mention that it's probably a bad sign if you think that testing your game is a chore, it's supposed to be fun to get in there and play, remember?)
One thing that I've learned is that there's a big difference between the perceptions of the developer and the perceptions of the regular player and these things definitely need to be considered. As the developer, you're always going to know your game better than anyone who's playing it. After all, the player didn't spend years of their life planning and creating the thing. ;)
Twisty's Asylum Escapades is available for free, so if you'd like to see what the game is like firsthand, then simply download and play it!
About the author
Developer of The Universal AI Starter Kit and Twisty's Asylum Escapades.
#2
I agree that it is a shame and it would be interesting to see even more projects come to fruition. Between Brainworth, Walkabout and some of your resources, I suspect that you have more experience than most when it comes to dealing with issues of development and usability like this.
07/24/2013 (7:37 pm)
That non-language idea sounds like a very good approach for the tutorials. I think that this kind of language flexibility is becoming increasingly important for Internet games. Another one of the features that was included in this update of Asylum Escapades is multiple language settings including French, Spanish, German and Portuguese (though we just used Google to translate the text, since this is a free game and we're on an indie budget). I agree that it is a shame and it would be interesting to see even more projects come to fruition. Between Brainworth, Walkabout and some of your resources, I suspect that you have more experience than most when it comes to dealing with issues of development and usability like this.
#3
07/25/2013 (2:23 am)
On the "when" to use an item I would have thought a contextual GUI change would be good too. Like if you have the hypno ability and you look at an enemy it could modify the icon of the hypno ability to show that it can work on that enemy. Anyway, I think your decision to delay when you have it is a good solution so people don't forget about it.
#4
So in this latest update we not only add the hypno ability to the player's inventory only when they first need it, but we also have a large glowing, blinking ring appear around the icon in the GUI, to get the player's attention and indicate that it is supposed to be used. Hopefully this will be harder to miss than what we were doing previously.
Even if the player doesn't use it the first time, the glowing ring will appear a couple more times when it's appropriate to use hypno. As soon as the player successfully uses it once, the indicator ring will cease to appear because the game will assume that the player now knows what they're doing (because even though it's good to teach people things, there's nothing more annoying than when a game keeps presenting a tutorial over and over, even after you know what to do).
07/25/2013 (12:53 pm)
Actually, we did try something like that. When the player got in range of one of the roaming NPCs that they were supposed to use the hypno on, the icon in the GUI would begin blinking to alert them to this. The problem was that at this point the player was very involved with what was going on in front of them in the game and often didn't notice this.So in this latest update we not only add the hypno ability to the player's inventory only when they first need it, but we also have a large glowing, blinking ring appear around the icon in the GUI, to get the player's attention and indicate that it is supposed to be used. Hopefully this will be harder to miss than what we were doing previously.
Even if the player doesn't use it the first time, the glowing ring will appear a couple more times when it's appropriate to use hypno. As soon as the player successfully uses it once, the indicator ring will cease to appear because the game will assume that the player now knows what they're doing (because even though it's good to teach people things, there's nothing more annoying than when a game keeps presenting a tutorial over and over, even after you know what to do).
#5
Good to see an update brother! By the way, GREAT post. You are totally right, we don't spend enough time talking about player experience. I agree with most of the people that have commented though, not many of us have a game far enough along to play test. Also, we are all (to some degree) tech heads and we forget the players.
Again, great info and I am going to bookmark this thread because well, it's a good subject and I know I will want to be reminded of just why we do what we do.
Ron
07/25/2013 (1:33 pm)
TJ!Good to see an update brother! By the way, GREAT post. You are totally right, we don't spend enough time talking about player experience. I agree with most of the people that have commented though, not many of us have a game far enough along to play test. Also, we are all (to some degree) tech heads and we forget the players.
Again, great info and I am going to bookmark this thread because well, it's a good subject and I know I will want to be reminded of just why we do what we do.
Ron
#6
Yeah I here you on overzealous tutorials...
It is funny you mention not knowing how to use a basic mechanic. When I played KOTOR the first time I got to the point where there are waves and waves of Sith coming at you. I could not beat that part. There was no way to get more XP either that point. Then I realized I could have it pause after each turn (because it is a turn based game under the hood) and make decisions in slow mo practically. That made it so I could get past that section. However, up to that point I never knew I could even do that. Boy the places I could have used that to survive better!
07/25/2013 (5:29 pm)
@TJ,Yeah I here you on overzealous tutorials...
It is funny you mention not knowing how to use a basic mechanic. When I played KOTOR the first time I got to the point where there are waves and waves of Sith coming at you. I could not beat that part. There was no way to get more XP either that point. Then I realized I could have it pause after each turn (because it is a turn based game under the hood) and make decisions in slow mo practically. That made it so I could get past that section. However, up to that point I never knew I could even do that. Boy the places I could have used that to survive better!
#7
07/25/2013 (8:00 pm)
Talking about basic mechanics, in the Max Payne games I would always not use the slow mo feature. Partly because I did forget about it but once I did start to use it I found it ruined the game somewhat, making it too easy.
#8
Hey, good to see you! I understand completely why there isn't more discussion about the player experience around here. Focusing on playability can require a completely different mindset than when you're working on tech. The tech begins to take a back seat to psychology because most players really don't care about the tech itself, just how it's implemented in the game and how it's used to benefit them and their experience while playing.
Of course on the other hand, there are some parallels with this and the other aspects of game development that we do often discuss here. In the end it's still somewhat of an engineering task in the sense that it's still all about problem solving. It's just that these problems tend to involve things like human reaction, expectations and understanding/comprehension. And so these types of problems can require a different set of information and knowledge in order to solve.
But the interesting thing is that it all comes back around because the tech is what you actually use to implement your solutions to these problems. And so this requires a good knowledge of the tech as well, so that you know what's available and how to use it in order to solve those types of psychology based problems for your players.
It's this kind of thing that makes game development (and particularly indie development) such a multi disciplinary endeavor (and I'm not even going to get into the issues of artistic and creative vision for a game, which is yet another important element of development). I think it's safe to say that we all have to wear many hats.
07/26/2013 (3:12 pm)
@RonHey, good to see you! I understand completely why there isn't more discussion about the player experience around here. Focusing on playability can require a completely different mindset than when you're working on tech. The tech begins to take a back seat to psychology because most players really don't care about the tech itself, just how it's implemented in the game and how it's used to benefit them and their experience while playing.
Of course on the other hand, there are some parallels with this and the other aspects of game development that we do often discuss here. In the end it's still somewhat of an engineering task in the sense that it's still all about problem solving. It's just that these problems tend to involve things like human reaction, expectations and understanding/comprehension. And so these types of problems can require a different set of information and knowledge in order to solve.
But the interesting thing is that it all comes back around because the tech is what you actually use to implement your solutions to these problems. And so this requires a good knowledge of the tech as well, so that you know what's available and how to use it in order to solve those types of psychology based problems for your players.
It's this kind of thing that makes game development (and particularly indie development) such a multi disciplinary endeavor (and I'm not even going to get into the issues of artistic and creative vision for a game, which is yet another important element of development). I think it's safe to say that we all have to wear many hats.
Torque Owner Daniel Buckmaster
T3D Steering Committee
I agree that we're very developer-centric here. I think it's simply a lack of people getting far enough in their projects to be doing user testing! Which is a shame. But it's great to see projects like this and AIRSHIP DRAGOON (trust me, capslock is necessary for that title) getting to that point.