Testing Session

During our testing session on Tuesday we received quite a bit of feedback, including areas of improvement, glitches and suggestions from the players to enhance our game. Some of the glitches or areas for improvement that were pointed out were already know by the team, but there were quite a few things brought to the team's attention from our testers that we never thought to test ourselves. 

Areas of Improvement:

• Volume too loud
  • We had a few testers notify us that our background music/ sound effects were too loud.

• Zombies were too slow and hard to find
  • We had multiple comments from testers that the zombies moved too slow while searching for the player and because the spawn numbers for the zombies were low, they were spread across the map and hard to find. Suggestions from testers to fix this issue was to either increase the amount of zombies in the map or to make the map smaller. 

• The camera rotation was quite confusing
  • Because the camera has two types of rotation, one around the player, and one around the mouse. Quite a few testers found this camera movement difficult to get the hang of. Many suggested that we link the player rotation to the mouse instead of having it's own rotation, but quite a few testers liked the idea of having the player stopped and looking around without the player moving.  

• Project took too long to first load
  • This was a known issue to the group before starting the testing session. For some players the game only took about 2 minutes to load up, where others need to leave the game opened in the background and circle back after testing someone else's game while waiting. Some suggestion from our testers was to try and prune through any assets that aren't being used from the project and to try a Gzip compression file when building the game to load onto Itch.  

• The aim alignment for the player's weapon was off
  • This was a know issue to the team, but we didn't realise how far off the aim alignment was. Almost all of our testers mentioned that the aim for the gun wasn't aligned properly, and it could be seen while viewing play testers that depending on the angle the player is standing and where the player wants to shoot, the bullet would be quite far left and sometimes even under the crosshair. A suggestion from a tester included to maybe use raycasting when firing the bullet instead of using prefabs.

Bugs/Glitches:

• End Game/Game Over Button Glitch
  • We only had one tester have an issue with trying to return to the main menu scene after dying, they were presented with an itch error. We are unsure as to why this happened, and have tested the return to main menu button from each scene after dying but have yet to have the error appear. 

• Player can shoot backwards
  • Many testers found that the player could shoot bullets in the direction of the crosshair even when facing away from the crosshair. A suggestion we got from quite a few testers was to make the player always face the crosshair when aiming, that way the player will always face in the right direction when shooting. 

• Glitch in Zombie walking animation
  • This was quite a well known issue for the group. The walking animation for the zombie didn't play when the zombie was walking, instead the zombie would be stuck in idle and glide across the ground towards the player.  

• Glitch in Zombie attack animation
  • A few testers found that when they got stuck next to a zombie while it was attacking, the zombie would only show the correct attacking animation when dealing the first attack and would stay stuck in the idle animation of any attack after, unless that player moved out of the zombie's attacking field and then the animation would restart. A suggestion from testers to fix this would be to potentially change the animation from a trigger to a boolean (Unless thats what we already had).

• Player got stuck in the house in level 2
  • We had a few players get stuck in the house placed in the level 2 scene. This was because once the player was inside the house, because of the angle of the camera it would get stuck looking at a wall or the surrounding environment (depending on where the player was located in the house). A couple of suggestions from testers to fix this issue included, making minor adjustments to the camera to prevent it from getting stuck, or to have the player switch to a different camera once they had entered the building, and switching back when leaving.

Suggestions:

• The Maze on level 3 needs to be smaller
  • This was a slightly known issue to the team. Many players found the level 3 map extremely large considering how many zombies were placed within the scene. A few suggestions that the testers gave us were to make the maze smaller but keep the building the same size, or make the buildings smaller and keep the maze the same size, that way there would be less ground to cover by the player. 

• Lighting on level 2 was too dark
  • Quite a few players found while moving through level 2, that the flash light didn't cover enough ground and the surrounding environmental lighting of the scene was too dark to be able to see properly (Passed to point of visible low lighting). A few suggestions to fix this issue from testers included, making the flashlight attached to the player cover more ground in front of the player and leave the environmental lighting as is, or keep the flash light as is and lighten the environmental lighting by a tiny amount. 

• Damage indications for the zombies
  • We had set the game so that it would take 4 bullets before a zombie was killed, but with our aim alignment off, for some testers it took quite a few bullets before the zombie died. Because of this issue many testers mentioned that it would be a good addition to the game if the player was able to see the amount of damage they inflicted on the zombies, that way they know how close they are to defeating the zombies, rather then feeling as if the zombies were unkillable. 

• Increase difficulty
  • Even though players were warned that we had made the amount of zombies per wave/level quite low because we wanted to make sure they were able to test out all the game functions without being overwhelmed by oncoming zombies, we still managed to get quite a few comments that the waves/Levels weren't difficult enough. Many testers suggested to add more zombies per wave and to make at least 5 waves per level, an many testers liked the idea that for each level increase, more zombies would appear in each wave (e.g. level 1 wave 1 would have 10 zombies, and level 2 wave 1 would have 15 zombies). 

• Make the doors open in different directions
  • Many testers found the doors a bit of a pain to open because the door would open towards the player. This would cause the player to get stuck behind the door as it was opening. A couple of suggestion were making the doors open different direction depending on where the player was standing when opening, or making the opening range of the door larger so the player didn't need to stand so close to open, therefore preventing the player from getting stuck behind the door as it opens. 

Fixes We Have Already Made:

• Zombie Animation
  • We actually fixed the walk animation for the zombie before the testing session, but because it messed with the zombie counter which no longer registered that a zombie had died, the game wouldn't proceed through the waves and levels like planned, so we left the game as it was for testing. We fixed the animation by identifying that the walk animation was not set to loop. This caused the zombie to play the animation once only and then slide across the ground while moving. To resolve this, we opened the walk animation window and enabled the “Loop Time” setting, which ensured the animation would repeat continuously during movement.
    We also adjusted the zombie’s movement speed by setting it to 0.5, which better matched the pacing of the walk animation and made the overall movement look more natural. In addition, we tweaked some settings on the NavMeshAgent, including reducing the acceleration and angular speed, to make the zombies’ movement smoother and more in line with the animation.

• As for the attack animation, we noticed it was either not playing or cutting off too early. This was due to the transition conditions not being properly set in the Animator. We fixed it by adjusting the transitions and parameters to ensure the attack animation could fully play when triggered. We also made sure it was not being interrupted by the movement animations too quickly by tweaking the transition durations and using appropriate Animator layers or triggers. This allowed the zombie to stop and clearly perform an attack animation when in range of the player, making combat feel more responsive and visually consistent.

• Level 3 Maze
• The solution for this issue was just to shrink the building models and rebake the Nav Mesh for the scene. In the image below, you can see the original outline for the map and the new size of the map. The maze will still be considered large as we want the player to feel lost within an urban maze, but it will be easier for the player to move through the new map. 

Future Fixes to the Game:

The team will be looking at fixing and improving major components of the game. Some of these components include:

• Player Walking Animation while Shooting
  • This one wasn't actually commented on by testers, but it was an issue we knew about going into the testing session.
  • We didn't actually have a walking while shooting animation, so this was quite an easy fix by making a new animation for the player and adding it to Unity.

• Aim Alignment
  • Currently were are unsure on how to fix the issue with the alignment of the weapon. If messing around with the horizontal and vertical angles of the bullet's trajectory doesn't fix the alignment issue, then we will have to consult the interweb as the issue will have surpassed our coding knowledge. 

• Damage Indications on the Zombies
  • This would be something the team would require some online tutorials to learn how to do, but once we know what we are doing it won't take long to implement into the project. A few ideas we have looked at the might be something we add to the game was having a health bar like the one used for the player, sit above the zombies showing their health, or a UI pop up that shows a (-25) every time a bullet collides with a zombie and the zombie's health decreases. 

• Camera Rotation
  • One of the possibilities we were looking at to fix the issue with the player rotation would be to use 2 different cameras. That way the main camera is only focused on the player, and we would have a seperate camera following the mouse, that way players would still be able to look around without moving the player. If that solution deems too time consuming and complex to carry out, we will change the camera only to follow the mouse, and have the player's rotation also linked to the mouse. That way the player's can still view the surrounding area without having to walk around and the camera won't be as confusing for the players.  

• Making it so the player can't shoot backwards
• The solution for this issue will 100% rely on how we fix the camera rotation. If we use 2 cameras then we will need to make it so the player will face the direction of the crosshair when the right mouse button is pressed. Otherwise if we change the player's rotation to match the mouse, then we will not need to worry about any extra details for this issue because the player will always be facing the crosshair. 

• Project Load Time On Itch
  • The solution for this issue will require the team to go through the project and remove any unused assets within the project before making a build. If that doesn't effect the time take to load the project once added to itch, then we will either have to mess around with the different type of compression for the builds or possibly look at changing the map for level 2 and finding more low polygon vehicles to add to the project. 

We have chosen these components to work on first as these will greatly impact the performance of the game if we aren't able to fix them. Of course once we have these fixed we will move on to other game components that the testers brought to light, and continue to make changes to the game to fix those issues.  

Testing Form: Survey