I am now in the testing phase of my FMP. I am ahead of schedule and have spent way more time polishing than i had intially planned... and thank god I have.
This being the largest project I have done alone, using a new dialogue and quest system, having respawns, an actual mini story, some AI (friendly and enemies) and it all being in 3D with a combat and small magic system. I have realised the sheer time and pain it takes to polish a game. I cannot imagine how long AAA games take to polish but im going to guess probably almost 40% of the produciton time is polish.
Anyway, I have uploaded my project to itch now for testing with a bug reporting form and recommendaiton form for particiapnts to fill out. I have also conducted a 1-1 live test with a fellow designer to obtain a first hand view of what they did when playing the game. I am hoping to recieve around 20 testers for my project, it is big for me but the project isn't THAT big and I have spent alot of time polishing beforehand, so i hope that there is few bugs to report and more recommendations as to how to improve the experience.
Just prior to testing I did make some adjustments to the puzzles that have been mentioned before. I had to add some form of visual clue to them to ensure players create a mental link between them so they know SOMETHING has to be done. For example, the first puzzle has a pillar of runes matching the larger rune pillars that need to be broken. The visible and damaged one is already lit in white to highlight it is broken and the others are all red. THe cinematic shows the player the runes and shows the hammer pwoering them with dialogue reinforcing it too. I just hope (i'll see in testing) whehter they remember the pillars are identical to the one frozen at the start of the game :) If not i may add some dialogue when the player is raises them to say theyve seen them before etc.
For the second, when the runes are in the right place their corresponding runes on the floor and the ring also light up white instead of red. These start with none already done for them as there are only 3 and the first puzzle hopefully gives them enought to go on to find the seoncd one simple. The ground runes also represent the correct orientation of their corresponding ring, as it stands they are all the same as it makes them piece together and perform an animation but this can be changed to make the puzzle slightly more difficult/varied.
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