4.3 Maintenance and Future Development

Current Limitations of the Project

• Offline support - The game can only be played if the user has a steady internet connection.

• Platform availability - The game can not be played on mobile, a personal computer with suitable hardware is required (see 1.6 Hardware and Software Requirements).

• Content - The game only contains two levels which while the game is challenging, could get repetitive.

• Solo game mode - The game is single-player only so two people cannot compete against each other simultaneously.

These limitations would hopefully be addressed under future developments and therefore improve the game significantly, allowing the game to grow and adapt towards the perfect game.

Short-Term Maintenance

The game is rather easy to maintain at this smaller scale. The only real maintenance work that would be incurred would be in the form of bug fixes. These would take place after minor developments had been made and would need to be checked up on regularly in order to keep the game functional.

If all Short-Term Developments are made, the game should be ready for its final release and could quite easily be left to grow in popularity.

Short-Term Development

Bug Fixes:

At the start of future development, all bugs flagged up by Survey Participants and during my testing would need to be fixed to ensure a seamless User experience. Listed below are the bugs that have been discovered including a short description of how to fix them:

• Looping music - When the coin was collected multiple times, the music would overlap. This could be fixed by stopping the music each time the Player's character dies. Therefore resetting a boolean value.

• Clipping error at spawn - By the sprite's spawn point, there was a reported issue where if you held against the wall and jumped, the sprite would clip its head on the block somehow. This could be fixed by adjusting the block's hitboxes or by changing the grass block to a different shape.

• Spike hitbox being too big - Some players reported that the spike hitboxes were too big and that therefore the game was extremely difficult to complete. This could be amended by reducing the size of their hitboxes slightly.

Levels:

Adding more levels to my game would make it significantly more interesting. This is because the User would have a variety of unique scenarios making game completion more of a challenge. All of the colour themes would continue to be contrasting and distinctive in order to hold the User's attention.

Testing:

Once all of these fixes and adjustments had been made, they would need to be put through another stage of testing to ensure that there were no further errors created. Afterwards, there are two different pathways which the game could take, it could either be left as it is to grow. Or, the game could be pushed onto Longer-Term aspects detailed below.

Future Limitations of the Project

• Web-based platform - the game will need to be transferred to a downloadable application instead of a web app.

• Single difficulty, no cheats - the game should incorporate various difficulty modes in order to allow those with less experience or familiarity to still progress through the game without too much extra practice.

• Graphics and animations - because my game is developed in a web-based editor, it is extremely hard to implement animations and detailed graphics.

• 2D Platformer - the game would remain a 2D platformer and therefore the same side-scrolling perspective would be used indefinitely.

Long-Term Maintenance

If the Long-Term Development plan is chosen, there would need to be an increase in workforce for the game. This would include a couple more developers whose primary objective would be to maintain the game's functionality and to assist in Long-Term Developments. All of the current code is commented to make it easy to follow and understand, therefore not much training would be required in order to bring the new team members up to speed.

Long-Term Development

Downloadable Application:

Switching the game over to a downloadable application would allow the game to be more accessible across platforms. It will also allow the game performance to no longer be limited by the browser used because the User's computer or phone would now be able to solely focus on running the game. This also means that the game has the capacity to become more complex and detailed.

Multiplayer:

In the future, multiplayer would be a brilliant addition to the game. Players would be able to race against each other and compete for a place on a leaderboard. This would add an extra aspect of competitiveness to the game while also making it more entertaining.

Custom Levels:

I think that a popular addition to the game would be to add personalisable levels. This would be similar to Geometry Dash which, due to this feature, is an extremely popular mobile game. Having custom levels would allow the Users to create their own layouts and be able to play them with their friends. This would be very entertaining since there are almost limitless possible designs which could be created.

Custom Character Skins:

Another great feature to add would be 'Character Skins' or 'Custom Characters' whereby the User would be able to adjust the appearance of their Character by spending points earned. These points would come from winning multiplayer races, completing levels and from watching advertisement videos. This would also encourage the User to play more often and to invite their friends to also download the game in order to play together.

Advertisement:

In the future, my game will need to generate revenue in order for the maintenance team to be employed. This would be in the form of short, 20-second or 30-second long advertisement videos. In return for watching these, the User would have full access to all game features and would have the opportunity to watch extra ads in return for in-game rewards (Level skips and character skins)