During a majority of the development cyckle we designed our game with the split screen in mind. Everything from the sprite sizes, level design and even the amount of health the player would have was a by-product of the split screen. The longer in in the development we got we started to doubt the split screen on several levels. We doubted how the game played, we doubted how it looked aesthetically and we doubted the the sizes of the sprites. So almost everything in the game we doubted because of the split screen.
It all came to a head during the beta playtesting session where one of the most consisten critiscisms we recieved were about the split screen and how ugly it made the game look.
After the playtest we were worried the game would never be any better because we were stuck with the split screen because it was so prominent in the concept document. Fortunaley we asked Marcus about it and he said we could remove it eithout any problem. So we decided to remove it and see if the games quality improved, and to our delight it did.
With the split screen gone we could finally improve our game to a point where the doubts we had wasn't centered around the damned screens. Now our doubts is about how well the art looks and how it conveys the mood we aim to set in our game (the same can be said about the gameplay).
I feel like this post is a bit confusing and lacks depth. The title implies that there will be argumentation for why you decided to remove the split screen but in the actual text you simply say that, the split screen was the cause of all the problems. But you don't really explain why exactly the split screen caused these problems. I think you should go into a bit more depth on what problems the split screen caused, exactly, instead of just "we doubted how the game played...". It is good that you mention the specific moment you realised that this had to be changed (the beta playtest), but overall you're still lacking depth in the reasoning. Next time try to include concrete examples of problems caused, along with some discussion or arguments for changing things and how they affect or remove the problems you have. There are also some grammatical and spelling errors which you might want to look at.
SvaraRaderaHello Tobias.
SvaraRaderaI think that your post is quite interesting and shows what kind of troubles you can run into when working on a concept or artefact for a long while even though it might have been a hard thing to implement in a good way. I would have liked to know more than just that you doubted the different parts that the split screen system affected. Give some examples on why it wouldn’t work or what and how you think things improved when you removed it completely. You could also explain how the new system works without the split screen (How you set up the scenes and transitions between what used to be on either side of the split screen). I do think that the pictures kind of show the difference in how the game looks with and without the split screen, so that is good. So some more explanations and this would be a pretty good blog post.