Final Adjustments, Project Feedback & Future Ambitions

Final Adjustments:

Before the vertical slice of Peanut Gallery can be presented there were first many changes that needed to be made. Not all of the following changes required any code to function, however they each required knowledge of the Unity engine to transfer into the project. The first adjustment was adding a jump animation to ‘Eric’ the elephant in the ‘Peanut Run’ minigame. This animation was scripted into a ground checking script that would monitor the state of the elephant. If the elephant is touching the ground, the running animation would be looping, if the elephant is no longer touching the ground, the following jump animation will play.

Eric the Elephant Jump Animation Created by Kalil.

The second adjustment was a randomization script for alternating advertisement prefabs. This script randomly cycles the image of the advertisement at the base of the ‘Peanut Drop’ minigame. This creates a more interactive and refreshing feel when replaying the game. The third adjustment was applied to the UI buttons as they were inconsistent and looked out of place. For this change, I replaced each buttons background image to a simple red box with rounded edges and adjusted its positioning and scale equally within each scene. I then included a new button to the ‘Win/Lose’ UI menu that allows the player to move on to the next minigame without returning to the map. This fixed the issue where each minigame felt separate rather than as one single gallery. The final change was a last-minute addition of background music. At this stage in development sound was not a priority however, it is a major part of the entertainment aspect of the game and was required for the vertical slice presentation.

Peanut Gallery Final Menu Scene.

Peanut Gallery Final Map Scene.

Peanut Gallery Map to 'Peanut Drop' Transition.

Project Feedback:

After presenting the Peanut Gallery vertical slice, several key areas were highlighted for future improvement or inclusion. The first was a minor issue with the code of the score system in the ‘Peanut Run’ minigame where the score will continue to add up so long as the player remains in the scene. This can be easily fixed for future testing. The second proposition raised was how the ‘Win/Lose’ menu aggressively pops up when the player wins or loses. Viewers stated that the game would feel more interactive and fulfilling if there was a delay and possibly an animation before the menu pops up so that the player can take in that they have completed or lost the game. The last two pieces of feedback were related with the narrative and music choice within the slice. Viewers questioned the music choice stating that it ‘did not feel like a festive game’. The narrative lacked in most areas as the ‘Ringmaster’ was not included within any of the minigames. 

Peanut Gallery Vertical Slide Gameplay

Future Ambitions:

Responding to the vertical slice gameplay feedback, it is important that the first inclusions into the project in the future are fulfilling corrections. With the vertical slice feedback adjustments being addressed the next course of action is to identify external ambitions for the project. Although background music has been included at this time, no other sound effects are present. I wish to import a range of sound effects from Cameron’s sound collection and include them into the minigame scripts. Other additions such as new minigames, mobile device compatibility, scaling, Ringmaster inclusion, ‘Peanut Shooter’ difficulty increase, ‘Peanut Run’ jump spawn timer randomization, and a slider on the map scene for future minigames are also on the list for future development.