Capstone Game Post Mortem:
Panel de Noms
Title
Panel de Noms
Genre
Match 3 puzzle
iOS with Android to follow
Revenue model
Panel de Noms will be free to
play, supported by unobtrusive ads that can be disabled with a US$0.99
purchase.
Panel de Noms uses Unity 3D
and C#.
The target audience for this
game is 25+ Y.O. married women with a secondary audience of players who enjoyed
Tetris Attack and all associated games.
Copyright/Reference
Panel de Noms is copyright
2014 Audguy Productions, LLC.
Backstory:
Sound Bite
Battle your way to sweet
rewards!
Executive Summary
You and Chef Fluffy will be
working together to battle time and your friends to make the best looking cake
out there! In this match 3 puzzle game
you will be in a land of candy and cakes to get the highest score or live
longer versus your friends. Panel de
Noms is the game to get you away from other games that seem to just want to
ravage your wallet with power-ups.
Inspiration
Panel de Noms was inspired by
Tetris Attack(Intelligent Systems,1995)and it’s predecessor Panel de Pon(Intelligent
Systems,1995). The reason I wanted to
make this game is because I enjoyed the games that inspired it and was tired of
the current crop of games that just seemed to be there it rake in money.
Capstone Scope
The current scope of Panel de Noms
is to have single player and multiplayer verses and continuous complete.
My Ideal version of Panel de
Noms is not too different from the current one.
It would have AI there to battle with when you can’t find an opponent,
but other than that it makes me happy the way it is.
The Critique:
What went right…
Design & Aesthetics
The biggest thing that went
right for me is the game mechanics, when I need to test the game, I find myself
playing much longer than I really need to.
During the testing phase, most of the people who tried it wanted to
continue playing the game. As far as
visual aesthetics, I am very happy with the style, even if it isn’t exactly
what I originally decided on. Input
wise, after a few bumps, it has come out to my complete satisfaction.
Project Management
In my opinion, the structure of the development courses that took
place during the design and creation of Panel de Noms had a huge positive
effect in making sure the game proceeded in a well-timed development
process. The way the weekly assignments
and check-ups coupled with the need to produce a screen cast of your progress
really pushed the progress in a good way.
Development
The choice of using Unity was one of the best choices I made in
several ways. First of all was the way
it made reuse of assets and code so much easier. Single player and multiplayer
both share a common base with each other.
Unity also allowed me to build a prototype component, clean it up, and
then integrate it into the game with little issue. This allowed me to make drastic, or risky
changes, test them without risking the entire project.
Unity was also a big help with networking, using the built in RakNet
API made the development silky smooth, and a major portion of the multiplayer
code was written in a single day.
Development was very easy, because all the important parts were already
there: Game state synchronization, remote procedure calls, and a pre made
master server and associated functionality!
Very early on I made the decision to use a pre-release version of
Unity 4.6. This was a very good idea,
because it included the new UI system.
This new UI system was a great help, and allowed me to quickly set up
new components of the game with little issue, and typically react well to a
change of platforms.
I know it sounds like I am constantly praising Unity, but it does have
many good traits, for example, with little more work, I will be able to port
Panel de Noms to Android as well. It
currently runs fairly well on the Nexus 7 (with some minor visual artifacts),
this is a big plus, as it will allow me to get to a bigger market very quickly.
Testing
Testing was an interesting phase for me; it has given me much
insight into my game and how people play it, and what their thoughts are. Through these tests I was able to find
several good changes that needed to be made, that really improved the game.
I also was introduced to leanplum, a testing suite. I foresee future projects benefiting from this. Several of the features allow you to make
adjustments to the game without redeploying the game. It also makes it even
easier to gather statistics on the game.
The Critique:
What went wrong…
Design & Aesthetics
During the development of an
early prototype of Panel de Noms, I found several songs that seemed to go with
the game. After exhaustive research, I
was unable to get ahold of the rights owner, so I had to remove the songs (all
of them happened to be by the same guy).
During the production process
the artists that I asked to work on the game with me ran into issues that
pulled them away from the game and they were unable to complete the project
with me. I did find the art that I
needed for the project using the Unity asset store, and am happy with it.
Development
During
development there are always little things that delay or cause you frustration,
this project was no different. During
the early days, as networking was being added, I ran into a problem. I had all the necessary items and code in the
project to have basic multiplayer gameplay running, but it would not
communicate. After fighting with it all weekend, I figured out that I had made
the changes to the wrong scene. What I
have learned from this is that you should make scenes that look alike, have
something that stands out (maybe a label) to help you make sure you are working
on the right part.
Testing
During
the development of Panel de Noms, there was constant testing, most code was
placed in a test environment before it was integrated into the main codebase,
that being said, some of the techniques that we learned in our testing course
should have been implemented much earlier in the development cycle. Full proper unit testing would have helped in
many cases, but were a last minute job.
Summary:
I feel that, even though
Panel de Noms had a few shaky parts, it all turned out fine. There are still
many things I would like to fix and add before I release it on the Apple App
Store. Most of the changes are cosmetic,
for example, I would like to add more visual feedback when a user makes a
match, give it more eye-candy. Another
thing that I intend to add is a bonus system when a player makes more than a 3
in a row match.
The process of creating Panel
de Noms was a very rewarding process, I have learned much about Unity, and have
greatly improved my touch input skills in the process, something I had no
ability before. I have also gained much
experience in testing and gathering information from test player. This information will help me greatly in the
future when I produce other games that I already have ideas for.
References
Audguy Productions, LLC.(2014). Panel
de Noms[Mobile Game] Winter Park, FL
Intelligent Systems(1995)Panel de Pon[SNES
Game] Kyoto,Japan:Nintendo
