ECTO post mortem

ECTO presentation is over…

I have attached some photos from action. It’s from my camera so I’m not on them. Maybe I will get something later from organizers.

Important thing is that it was an first face to face contact with people that had real possibility to try Virtual-O.

Just my feelings

I will try to make some conclusions from presentation. Of course I’m not objective. So it’s only my feeling from it.

I cannot know how many people went away with negative feelings without telling me. So if you would be reading this, don’t hesitate to add negative critics on facebook post. Virtual-O can only learn from it.

From technical side everything was working, that was something that I was most afraid… only sun was creating some reflections on start, but later it was better.

I think that feedback was very positive. For me very surprisingly sound was getting good rating. (it’s part of game making that I’m least experienced in, so I’m really happy).

There weren’t one hundred members queue on Virtual-O but computer was busy nearly 100% of time. You know I was really afraid if someone will come… :)

Some practical conclusions

Map assistants were great success. Maybe 70-80% of people were playing with at least map orientation assistant enabled. And it was big help for non-gamers. I see great potential in them for newcomers. (and there is still space for mouse based map handling maybe this will be another way to go)

I got some questions about running model (what is counted in it) and I would say that after answering them it’s on the right way. I got some feedback that steepness penalty is too high so I will tune it down a little for EOC presentation.

I got many questions about OCAD converter and release date. So I need to write some articles about these topics. (although estimated release dates are dangerous things, still I have some idea so why not to present it)

Probably very important thing is that kids were most enthusiastic players.

I need to add some more compatibility to CF handling. Space press map mode and y axis reversing.

Maybe less sensitive y-axis would help non-gamers to handle the game better at start.

I need to improve more in english :)

Thanks to everyone who has tried it. Now preparing to EOC and than focus will get back into game development.