Welcome
Welcome to the latest installment in my game development subset of entries. I’m officially commissioning you to help with input on the latest testable piece of my new game, yes you! Before you get all excited, there is pretty much nothing glamorous about this. I really have no artwork and the usability and visual design are in their first draft. In the interest of keeping this as concise as possible, I’ll get right to it.
Create Team
The latest testable piece for which I am soliciting feedback is the “Create Team” piece. This also happens to be the first really testable piece (other than the menu) as all other development up to this point has primarily been foundational.
I started with the Create Team screen as the first feature since the team is really at the heart of the game. Each player can create a single team (I upped the limit to 3 for this test). Each team consists of exactly 4 team members. Each team member has a class (only 4 are available in this demo), a look (I only have stand in art here now and only 3 models to choose from. Yes that means you’ll have to give more than one player the same look) and a name. And finally each team also has a name.
To get to the Create Team screen, first visit this url: http://apps.facebook.com/battleschool. Using the application requires a Facebook account and requires Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 which is free and a small install. This part is intended to be pretty seamless so I would appreciate it if you can report any issues you have on this step. Once the Silverlight application loads you should get a screen with 3 options: Play Game, Statistics and Exit Game. Click “Play Game”, on the subsequent menu click “Create Team”.
I’m intentionally not going to go into details on how to use the Create Team screen as this is intended to be a usability test as much as anything. I realize it is pretty rough around the edges right now and hope that with everyone’s help I can make it look better and make it easier to use.
Some specific feedback items I’m looking for:
- Did it take a long time for the application to load initially?
- How easy was it to use the Create Team screen?
- Any suggestions for different design or look of the Create Team screen?
- Was the application sluggish at all?
- Did you get any error messages or find any bugs?
Feel free to leave any feedback in a comment here.
* Did it take a long time for the application to load initially?
Loaded very quickly for me. Faster than almost all of the facebook apps I’ve used.
* How easy was it to use the Create Team screen?
Very easy.
* Any suggestions for different design or look of the Create Team screen?
I think the layout is pretty good. The font is just okay for me, nothing too exciting as far as fonts go, but the create team concept is very cool. I’m not a big fan of how the > character stays lit when on your selection while the same > characters is used on a mouse over. I think having your selection highlighted in like yellow would be better while keeping the > character on mouseovers. If that doesn’t make sense, I’ll talk to you tomorrow about it.
Another suggestion is to allow people to use their friends’ as their team members, they just need to choose the class, but the profile pic is used along with their friends name to give that class some identity.
* Was the application sluggish at all?
It ran very well. However the mouseover thing was weird.. I’ll have to show you more about what I saw tomorrow.
* Did you get any error messages or find any bugs?
Whenever I hit ‘tab’ the program seemed to freeze up.
Comment by Jer S. — January 14, 2010 @ 10:34 pm
•Did it take a long time for the application to load initially? Not too long. Maybe 5-10 seconds.
•How easy was it to use the Create Team screen? Very easy
•Any suggestions for different design or look of the Create Team screen? Looked great! Although I agree with the previous comment. I think if a slot is selected that it should highlight the square in a different color or something so you know it is selected.
•Was the application sluggish at all? A bit, but nothing that would discourage me from playing.
•Did you get any error messages or find any bugs? Nope. None that I could see.
Comment by Dan the Man — January 18, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
* Did it take a long time for the application to load initially? No, it was fast! I did have trouble with the install but that may have just been user error
. (FYI – Mac user)
But no error messages!
* How easy was it to use the Create Team screen? Easy
* Any suggestions for different design or look of the Create Team screen? Highlights would be nice, and I found if I didn’t do them in order, the selection didn’t stay and then I had to start over.
* Was the application sluggish at all? No
* Did you get any error messages or find any bugs? On the menu screen, I kept wanting (and trying) to click on feathers… which didn’t work.
Comment by Liz — January 18, 2010 @ 10:20 pm
* Did it take a long time for the application to load initially? no
* How easy was it to use the Create Team screen?
It took me while to figure out what I was doing. I didn’t understand that the boxes for the characters were meant to be empty and that I should click and choose the class, look, name, etc.
There should be some way to lead you through the character setup.
It would also be helpful if the class on the right side followed the character when you clicked on a character that you had already created. It would also be helpful if the base attributes belonged to the character that you have selected on the left.
When naming a character, the name field should be next to the character that you are naming, not remain at the top.
* Any suggestions for different design or look of the Create Team screen? no
* Was the application sluggish at all? no
* Did you get any error messages or find any bugs? no
Comment by Aaron the A-Bomb — January 19, 2010 @ 4:21 pm