## T2 Project Reflection and Next Steps Worksheet

## Original idea
*Revisit your original goals (check out your project proposal).*

Social deduction multiplayer game with real-time combat mechanics and skill tree integration.

#### MVP Progress?
*What progress did you make towards your original MVP / on your stretch goals?*

We made it multiplayer and set up characters (meerkat and hyena) for the social deception part. Hyenas are able to switch disguises and hide in specific hiding spots on the map, which adds complexity to the player's strategies. We also have PVE minions and bosses for the players to kill, which can advance their skill tree progress.

We have a preliminary voting system that allows the meerkats to (attempt to) identify the hyena. For real-time combat, our characters have stats such as health, attack, and speed; they can also fight others (including player-controlled and PVE creatures) either using a projectile or doing melee damage. The players' stats are modified by successfully killing a PVE boss, which incentivizes interactions with bosses.

We made a nice map (the playtesters' words, not ours), and more recently we added a mini-map for easier navigation as well as interactive items on the map for healing, hiding (hyenas only), and future tasks.

Overall, we are on track with what we set out to achieve for term 1!

#### How is it different?
*How is your project different from what you envisioned?*

As of now, our project leans more towards the RPG and combat elements rather than social deduction. We found those features to be more pressing for the term. In essence, the game is more of a battle royale game as of now.

I also don't think that any of us expected the aesthetic of the game to be themed around meerkats (except for Carlos).

#### Still happy with direction?
*Most importantly, are you still happy with the direction that your project is headed?*

We definitely plan to improve the social deduction related gameplay (redesign voting system, add more visual effects to changing disguise, force players to interact with each other rather than fight and run off, etc.) For the combat part, we are happy with the current system and will work on filling in more details (e.g. projectile should be a rock rather than a perfectly round and smooth moon) and making gameplay more smooth.

#### What do you wish went differently?
*What do you wish had gone differently / are there features you wish you hadn't made or made differently?*

* UI could have been planned out to be more intuitive than it is now.
* It would have been more convenient to start with multiplayer sooner than later because it turned out to be a lot more complicated and buggy than we originally anticipated.

## Feedback
*What feedback from last term do you think is relevant and interesting to incorporate. List your feedback broadly and label them with how they stack up for your vision. These may already be in ZenHub but after this discussion they should be.*

* [critical 🔥]
* We did not prioritize our user interface while we were developing (mainly due to lack of time). This led to some poor design choices that annoyed people while we were testing at Technigala (most prominently, pressing "Q" quits the game.)
* We need to revise our voting system. As of now, players are having trouble understanding what's going on during voting, and some did not get to experience much voting/social deception.
* It was difficult for people to experience all the different aspects of our game as we were unable to simulate a complete experience of a round.
* Moreover, there is no in-game resource that teaches someone how to play the game. We had to inform them of everything that could be done.
* [stretch goal 🍦]
* We received mixed opinions on how jumping in the game felt. We may experiment with it later in the future. But, for now, it semes that a majority at least liked the floaty feel to it.
* We should add more variation to our PVE creatures. Perhaps something that isn't a bull.
* [rejected ⛔]
* We won't be adding a voting UI like in Among Us, but we will consider other ways to modify it.

#### Questions
*Think about where the project is headed. What are some questions that you/users/me have about direction/features/functionality that could use some validation?*

1. What motivates/informs players to do what they're supposed to do/try out different things in the game?
a. How do we get players to interact with each other more in order to experience the social deception aspect of the game?
b. What is our big-picture storyline for the game/rounds, and what is the best way to inform the players about it?
2. How fast should the skill tree grow in the game?
3. How do we better guide players?

#### Answers
*Think of ways that you might validate these: discussion with your team, advice from me, polling the class, asking users, and/or collecting and analyzing usage data. Write down some ideas here. This isn't how to validate your project as a whole, but about specific feedback/features.*

For all the questions above, we would certainly benefit from Tim's advice and more feedback from other experienced playtesters on these specific issues. We have jotted down some preliminary ideas (Tim's and ours):
1. From what Tim has said, we could probably use some mechanism that forces players to interact, such as a continually shrinking map, or maybe the (limited) region where players should be changes throughout the game (like phases).
2. Our intuition says that the growth should be pretty fast if we want to reset the skill tree at the beginning of each round of game.
3. Tim suggests perhaps adding a tutorial, voice-over guidance for players; Gillian is thinking of the to-do list (like the one in Among Us) to let players know what could be done.

## Vision
*Refine your vision.*
* Josephine got new glasses.

#### Feedback Analysis
*How does the current feedback/user testing/progress change how you think about the direction of the project?*
* We need to work more on the skill tree and integrating it with tasks on the map, because this is a feature we want!
* We initially wanted to make the map bigger with several different environments, but users seem satisfied with the current map aesthetics and size, so we will likely deprioritize this. Also, instead of adding more to the map (since it seems big enough for the purpose of a social deception game), we could add more maps with different terrains!
* We need to spend more time collaboratively designing tweaks to the voting process to make it more intuitive (including teleportation, voting area size, attack to vote, discussion time before voting).
* We need to spend some time re-designing the game flow to make social deception/voting & interacting with other players more prominent parts of the gameplay experience since some playtesters did not get to experience this aspect as much.
* We need to prioritize changing dangerous hotkeys like "Q" to quit and making the UI more intuitive (e.g. display user health by default while still allowing user to toggle its visibility).

#### Pivot/Adjustment
*If you were to consider a pivot or adjustment in what the product is, what would it be?*
* People like fighting each other, and the creatures were small relative to the map, so we could pivot this into a battle royale game!

#### Ideal Goal
*In an ideal world if you could build out your project to be anything without any constraints of time or skill what would you want to do? Dream big — you can do more than you think. Try to push the limits. This does **not** commit you to anything, so don't worry about overpromising, this is to get you dream about where you **really** want your project to go without constraints. Please don't skimp on this part.*
* GTA V Fortnite Edition
* Alternatively, meerkat with cars
* In an ideal world, the ideas already established in the game would be present in their full potential. We would have a full-fledged skill tree and add more skills to the game to make the combat and gameplay more dynamic. The tasks would be more intricate and have consequenes on the skill tree. More PVE events would occur depending on map location. We'd have more than one map. We would also have more variation among the PVE creatures.

#### Mission Statement
*Now write a mission statement for your project as you see it after all of this great brain activity. Just a few sentences suffices.*
* " "I will not beat. I will never give up. I am on a mission. That is the Meerkat guarantee." - The Office " - Meerkats Inc.
* "Making social deception more intense"

## How to get there
*Now that you've thought about where your project is headed and where you want it to go write down how might approach getting there.*
* Be aware of current progess vs polished MVP objectives (i.e. are we spending too much time on relatively unimportant details?)

#### What are your concrete next steps?
* Issues related to winterim work:
* Finish implementing mini-map.
* Fix nametag visibility bug that was created because of hiding spots (Josephine has apologized to Roberto).
* Clean up `Abilities` directory.
* Design and implement skills on the skill tree.
* Then integrate tasks with said skill tree.
* Fix UI and QOL issues (e.g. "Q" to quit, "1" to fire projectile, health bar default visibility).
* Brainstorm changes to the voting system and bigger picture gameplay flow to foreground social interaction and social deception, culminating in a better informed decision on what game will look/feel like.

#### What are some blockers in your way?
* COVID!! :face_with_thermometer:
* Over the break, we found that you're currently unable to invite Steam friends to play with you. It is based on download region. We'd like to change this so that you're able to add your friends to a game. Given our experience with Steam debugging, this might take some time.

## TeamWork
*lastly, at the end of last term in the term summary you did a bit of work around teamwork. this is just a reminder for everyone to revisit that and if you have any new or further thoughts after the break feel free to record them here.*
* Don't bully each other (except in-game)
* In all seriousness we think we get along okay