Here are our updates for the week!

Made the BPM (Beats per minute) Modular per level:

Since each of our levels will have a different song, and hence a different BPM, we have made the BPM modular so that we can still accurately measure how “on the beat” the player movements are, even with different levels that have different tempos.

Disable moving left/right with the analog sticks:

• When playing with a controller, we have found that using the D-pad to move left and right is much more precise for staying on the beat. Rather than just keeping it as a suggestion, we have disabled the joystick movements altogether: players can only use the D-Pad.
• We have also disabled moving with the joystick inside the UI screens (pause screen, settings, main menu) to keep controls consistent for the player.

Tutorial Level Design: We have finished the level design for our tutorial level!

• The genre of the song will be hip-hop.
• We are still working on the development, but it will be out soon.

Level 1 Design:

• We have been working on improving our first level’s (Jazz Level) design.
• Taking in the feedback from playtesters, we are working closely with the audio team to improve the audio cues for player actions (jumping, moving left, moving right). We are adding distinct instruments for each type of action, and making sure to lower the volume of the rest of the melody so that they stand out.
• We are still working on this, it will be out in the next build!

Bug fixes 🐞:

• For our music score visual feedback, we only had “Purr-fect” and “Oops” that were showing in the last build. We have added back “Nice”, which appears when the player is not perfectly on the beat but did not miss it either.
• The “Purr-fect”, “Nice”, “Oops” indicators were appearing on top of the settings and pause menu. We have fixed this bug.
• Pausing during the start countdown had a weird and buggy behavior. We have fixed this by not allowing players to pause during the countdown.
• Our level decorations were not bouncing after the player died and respawned. We have fixed that, they now bounce on the beat after the player respawns.

Obstacles/Challenges

• A challenge for us as we approach the end of the semester has been time. As we add in our level 2 and tutorial level and incorporate feedback, we won't have as much time to playtest these new features. We are working through this by really focusing on the feedback we've gotten in the past as we add new gameplay, and we are hoping to fully address it.

Feedback:

There was no presentation/deliverable this week so we haven't received feedback on these updates yet. 

However, one of our updates was to disable the left/right movement with the joystick, and this decision was fueled by the feedback we received. Playtesters had felt that the joystick was too sensitive and not accurate enough for moving left/right: they would often end up moving further than they intended. This was particularly an issue with Xbox controllers,  where we had initially blamed it on the controller being old or having drift, but this has been an ongoing issue. This update should hopefully address this and make the gameplay more enjoyable, as players will have better control over the left and right actions.