Alpha Build

You might be feeling proud of your game, or disappointed in your progress, or some combination of the two. Regardless, you’ve laid the foundation of your game and you know more about where you’re going.

It’s typical to have some bugs and messy code in a milestone build, so spend some time now, using what you learned in this project to spend time cleaning up your code.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be on the road to alpha, the milestone where all the content and features in your game are present. So this iteration is about horizontal expansion – adding more art, more content, more feedback.

Remember to develop concentrically. That is, focus on delivering things that will actually be in the game right away, with art, sound and code together, rather than, say, building all the enemies through Level 12. Remember, there’s no guarantee you’ll have time to finish the rest of what you’d need for Level 12!

When you’ve turned in your build, please choose a classmate’s build to look at, and do a quick check-in via the comments about whether they seem to be on track.

Here are the steps:

1. Using your refactoring and sprint plans you created in the previous tutorials, get started building.
2. Share screenshots, a video capture or the WebGL link to the gallery.
3. Provide feedback to at least two other course member’s submissions. Use these guidelines as you provide feedback:
   • Accessible - Is your classmate’s build uploaded or posted correctly? Does it run without game-breaking errors? If not, describe the problem here.
   • Art - Look at the art in the build. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “all placeholders” and 10 is “completely finished”, how finished is the art?
   • Audio - Think about the audio in the build. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “no sound at all” and 10 is “completely finished”, how finished is the audio?
   • Feedback to Player - Can you see and understand the effects of your actions on the game?
   • Favorite Part - As a player, what part(s) of the game do you enjoy the most?
   • Ready for release - Is there anything that (in your opinion) needs to be fixed for this to be a releasable game? Describe it briefly.

In the next project you’ll learn about the final piece of the design loop: playtesting. You’ll learn how professionals design, prepare and run playtests to learn as much as they can from players, and we’ll give you tools to run your own.