Introduction
Hi everyone and welcome back to our blog!
This week, we are not going to deal with any specific topic. However, that does not mean that we do not work on anything ;)!
As we are working on several optimizations concerning our code, there is not much to show today. Nonetheless, we are happy to present 3 topics to you which we worked on: "New Enemy: Car", "New Music" and "UX Test Preparation".
New Enemy: Car
On the left, you can see the newly implemented enemy: Car. As simple as it sounds, the car is just another enemy with differing values. For example, the car moves faster but has less lifepoints in return. On the right, you can see how the cars look like in the real game.
New Music
Beside the work of last weeks, our team member Fabian worked on 4 new soundtracks as ingame music. At the moment, those are not finished yet. However, we want to present 2 of them to you today:
The first soundtrack does not have the same dark atmosphere as the other 3 soundtracks, but we think that it gives a good variety. If you want to explore all soundtracks, you have to listen to them in the game 😉
Enjoy!
UX Test Preparation
Very soon, the tower defense app achieves the status in which it can be tested by outsiders. As we already decided in the past, UX (usability) tests seem to be most senseful in our case as a third test type.
Before the app becomes delivered to selected testers, a UX testplan has to be created. In our elaboration, the testplan is reflected on a Google formular sheet, which can be accessed using the following link: https://forms.gle/JjKckiCuGKEAeqC56
This formular begins with a small instruction on how to download and install the app and goes on over several app-specific questions. This process is divided into many sections such as "Installation", "Play!", "Main Menu", "Ingame", "Popups" and "Overall game". For each section, we provide some questions so that hopefully after some UX tests, we get some feedback on which components of the app we still have to work on.
If you want, you can already follow the Google formular link above in order to find the current download link for installing the app. If you can free some time and own an Android device, we would be really happy and appreciate if you could run through the UX test as well. By doing that, you would help us a lot! But if you cannot run through the test right now, that's okay as well!
That's it for now. See you next week!
Hi folks,
I spent some minutes testing your game.
Let me provide some feedback which did not find a correct spot inside your UX testplan.
– You should add you guys as app developer so one popup less at installation.
– For me it was not intuitive how I can place towers. How should I have known that I have to click an empty spot first?
– Please, add a speed up button
– For me filthy casual one questions comes up: Is it even possible to win hard mode? I mean you cannot control the focus of the towers
– The enemies and towers look quite good but the map itself needs some love …
Best regards,
Philipp@KeyCloud
Hi Philipp,
thanks a lot for your feedback! This extensive feedback and test help us a lot improving our app!
Concerning your mentioned additions:
– The whole installation process will move to Google Play in the future which will include the signation of the app. But agreed: This is a necessary adjustment.
– What would you suggest how a tower should be built? Without making use of drag and drop, this solution seemed most intuitive to us.
– I feel your pain :D. Due to our current engine, it is not possible to add this function until the final hand in. But it’s definitely on our ToDo list for further improvements.
– Every difficulty becomes designed so that one can win the game – „difficult“ as well ;). It depends a lot on how you place towers and how you combine the special functionalities of them. That’s actually also a point which makes the game different in comparison to other tower defense games.
– The map design is on our ToDo list.
Again, thanks for your detailed feedback! We will keep working on that!
Kind regards,
Team Tower Defense
For the sake of completeness, here are the screenshots of the installed app provided by Philipp of team KeyCloud:
