Vinyl: Score Design

After much deliberation, we finally decided that Vinyl needed some kind of scoring system.  We resisted this idea for a long time, because we didn't want to enforce a "right way" to play our game and scoring systems naturally imply a proper method of play.  However, without one we kept running into the problem that playtesters didn't understand what to do in our game.

The biggest issue we had with a scoring system is the game has always been about audio manipulation, and if people want to make their songs sound weird and silly, we didn't want to stop them.  We had all but abandoned that notion, until JJ and our professor came up with an idea of "genre changers" which allow the player to have some more agency over the type of manipulation that is happening.  This system has no impact on the score, so the player is still free too play with the sound while still trying for a high score.

We tried a few scoring solutions, all revolving around the idea of a streak.  We initially tried basing everything on that one number, but it got confusing when your streak would suddenly go up 15% for hitting a filter since your streak no longer meant how long you've gone without hitting an obstacle.

We have since decoupled the score and the streak, so the streak adds to your score, and other things like filters also add to your score, but the streak is always how many obstacles you've passed since the last one you hit.  It works well, but we've struggled with the growth curves, since certain actions are more beneficial to you once you already have a big score since they are percentage based, and others are just linear.  Since all of this math is hidden from the player, it's probably not a good idea to make boosting worth tons of points near the end of the song, but have it be essentially worthless at the beginning.

I ended up coding several options for growth curves and score bases into the system so that we can play test quickly with different combinations of options that can be quickly tweaked from within the Unity editor.  I think the system is well designed, we just need to find the right balance to make it feel right.