Blanket Fort Games Blog

Beta Test at Cornell

We’re running a beta test at Cornell University, sponsored by the Digital Game Alliance at Cornell (the club devoted to the making and playing of video games).  Come join us at 1:00pm on Sunday, December 5 in Phillips 318 and play the latest beta version of Influence!

Beta (Part 2)

It’s looking like we won’t have the public beta ready before we all leave for thanksgiving, so I have uploaded a friends-and-family pre-beta release to the place where all of the previous evaluation versions are.  It’s set to expire in two weeks, but by that time we’ll have a real beta up.

Things to do before the real beta:

• Take another run at the tutorial, to make it simpler and more obvious how to proceed.
• Fix a couple of potential hangs if people disconnect from a multiplayer game at exactly the wrong moment.

Things to do before release:

• Improve scrolling and drawing when zoomed in.
• Improve load time by loading in the background behind the splash screens.
• Fix any other bugs found in the beta.

Beta

We’ve been working hard for the past couple of months to get to this point.  We have been certified by GameSpy Technology® so as soon as we fix one or two glaring bugs, we can have a semi-public beta of our game (to find all of the not-so-glaring bugs).  Expect an update early next week!

Yes, we are still alive…

Influence has officially been sent off for approval to the guys providing our internet playability. We hope to hear back from them soon so we can release a new beta! In the meantime, check out the latest screenshots. They reveal the new way to customize your ids, some changes to the menus and the capability for full-screen goodness with neutral/adversary indicators.

[nggallery id=12]

One of These Things is Not Like the Other…

In the interest of releasing Influence before the end of the year and also releasing something that is not sloppily thrown together, we have decided that ‘Explore Alone’ will be better as a separate game entirely. There are just too many things about it that make it completely unrelated to multi-player and ‘Daydream’.  As such, we have reached a consensus (haha!) that ‘Explore Alone’ needs a major overhaul and it does not seem realistic to try to pull it all together by the end of the summer (our current self-imposed deadline.) That was our mistake last time and we are loath to make it again. As far as feedback has gone, no one is going to miss ‘Explore Alone ‘ in its current state. That makes this decision easier too.

As for progress, we have internet multi-player working (with chat!) So we’re definitely in the home stretch and hoping to have a new beta ready in the fall.

Expired Beta (Again)

The current round of beta testing just ended, and if you’re looking fora new fix, you’ll have to wait a bit.  We’re integrating the 3rd party internet multiplayer tech, and so we’re under NDA until they approve a beta release.  It isn’t ready yet anyway, so y’all will just have to be patient.  We’ll be sure to let you know when we open up beta testing again.

Zooming Along

To further increase the immersion experience, we’ve enabled panning sound. This means that when you are zoomed in, an adversary off to your left will sound from the left speakers. Pairing this up with the trailing rings really gives you a heads-up to where things are happening when the whole plane isn’t visible, and adds more variation to the music. It is also now possible (again) to select an id to focus on so that the camera doesn’t bounce between split flocks.

Other updates:

• The re-designing of Explore Alone is taking us a bit of time, but in a pleasing, more interesting direction.
• We’ve got a plan to make id selection more customizable and consistent across the game.
• On the white board are sketches for a more cohesive level select screen.

These are some exciting (scary-roller-coaster exciting) times for us and the long uphills have given way to screaming downhills that make it all worthwhile. We’re almost to the top with Influence, and hanging on tight in the front car.

Drum Roll, Please

We found that while the WordPress blog is great for, well, blogging, it is not so great for displaying the other aspects of the Influence project. So without further ado, let us introduce the new and improved playinfluence.com. I moved all of the non-blog content over and added more images. There are also some new goodies sprinkled about, with more to come. Stay tuned, kiddies!

Explore Alone?

After receiving quite a bit of feedback from various trusted beta testers, we are taking a hard look at not only the tutorial levels, but the entire single player experience.  The single player levels were designed originally to fit into a pattern based on the elements that they contained.  There was a section for levels with obstacles, with subsections for lines, triangles, and circles.  This division had three unfortunate consequences.

First, because our level selection screen was a tree-like structure, allowing players to explore the levels in whatever order they wanted, it was possible (even encouraged) to play all of the introductory levels first.  This meant that players would play all of the easiest, impossible-to-lose-so-we-know-you-understand-the-concept levels first, all at the same time.  Boring!

Second, because all of the levels with similar elements were grouped, players played them all in a row.  None of our elements were strong enough to design that many interesting levels without any palette cleansing in between.

Third, the number of levels was determined before any level design was attempted.  There were the same number of levels dedicated to the circle obstacles as there were to the super-ego.  Circle obstacles are not as interesting as the super-ego.  There were a surfeit of boring circle levels and a dearth of interesting super-ego levels.

Additionally, because we had the pattern, we made levels until we filled it, and then we stopped.  Only the most boring, unplayable, or gimmicky levels were cut for quality.

So what are we doing about this?  I’m glad you asked.  First, we’re adding elements to make the levels more involved, more challenging, more interesting, and more unique.  Second, we’re dropping the tree structure.  It just didn’t work.  We’re not sure what we’re going to replace it with yet.  Our plan is to make some really good levels first, and see if a structure for choosing which to play suggests itself.

April Fools!

Ha ha.  Not really.  The beta versions of Influence that we have released up until now just ran out.  If you downloaded your copy from our server, you will be able to find an updated version with a later expiration date in the same place later today.  If you got your version on CD, please send me an e-mail, and I’ll give you the download location and some login credentials so you can participate in the extended beta.

In either case, please please give us feedback.  What works, what doesn’t work, is it fun?

Thanks for participating in our beta test, and thanks for playing.

Ben