Boss 101 Update – Polish, the Map Room and the little things
Today’s update is about the little things in game development and how they can sink or float a project. I don’t know about you but this is where stuff gets real and games can become legendary or get buried.
Squashing those jumping bugs in Boss 101
Joshua (our programmer) and myself have been going through all aspects of Boss 101 and cleaning out the little weird things. This includes straight out bugs (like crashes) and also includes adjusting the UI and gameplay to ‘make sense’ to the player.
It’s that making sense thing I want to talk about right now. When we are working on the game we make decisions which seem correct in the moment. I am sure most people who have ever written a letter, drawn something or done any sort of creative endeavor will relate – you occasionally make decisions that seem genius at the moment but they are less so after consideration. An example from Boss 101:
So, we have the map room. Way back in the day it was a simple affair that had back plates representing the levels you battled on. Oh how proud we were of that room! I personally liked the way it came out (and still do). Of course the deal was WE understood it perfectly but upon fresh replays we saw players would probably not understand it as we did.
For one thing you progress by moving your character about on a hoverpad. All well and good, right? The thing was people didn’t see the path they had to move on. We felt it was pretty obvious since we put in these arrows to tell you direction you could go but the things really came together when we added the tracks to show you the whole path all at once.
Of course the next thing was to spruce up the map by showing you the gopher’s you can rescue on each level. This further clarified the way the levels and goals for the levels were structured.
The thing we want to do is make the game fun and at the same time engage players with clear goals and things to do. I love mystery but the UI and such should be helping the player not impeding him. Hey, it’s all part of game development and ideally when Boss 101 is in your hands you will agree with the choices we made and really enjoy the experience.
Keep checking back and thank you for all the letters and contact. If you have any more questions you can always mail us directly or contact us in the forums. Either way – thank you so much for your support and talk with you soon.
Live your dreams!
-Tim