Week 10: Playtest and review

This week has been play-testing to ensure that all the necessary player feedback is getting put into the game. Since last week we had come up short with implementing a variety of feedback for Necromanager.

Taking that feedback from others we created a list and from that list, I've been updating and play testing to review that the intended feedback has been put into the current builds.

In addition to that review I've edited the game video reel script for our producer to ensure that the script reads well. Taking out words and re-structuring the sentences to improve flow and style to highlight the key aspects of our game.

Next week: Alpha pass and continuing to Beta

Week 9: Comedy and Modular Houses

Headlines/Item Descriptions:

The week I've been working on adding to the list of headlines that will display at the end of each night based on player performance. The layout of the newspaper GUI consists of side headlines and main leading story. The side headlines are there to add comic value to the newspaper, while the main header is used to reflect the players performance.

Item descriptions for the final asset needed descriptions that would be short, informative, and funny. Working in tandem with another designer to populate the list. The list was reviewed and approved by and planned to implement all the selection before alpha.

Modular Houses:

Working to make assets to populate the exterior area of the graveyard, I was tasked with creating modular house pieces to use. I made six modular house pieces, export the individual fbxs and pass them off to be use in engine.

Next Week: Preparing for beta

Week 8: Working on the Polish

Items:
I've been working on creating simple and understandable descriptions for the in-game items. Ensuring that any player can read it and know immediately how it can be used in Necromanager. At the same time I'm attempting to maintain an element of the humor our game employs.

Tutorial:
Have created this new room asset to be a standalone level that will be the standard demo for our game. The basis of the level has been created and pass to the programming side to add the necessary code and avoid issues.

Levels Pieces:
Working to re-arrange a few asset to give players space to move through each room pieces. Planning to re-work them again when the proxy for environmental art is in place. Additional looking at issues caused by a newer rooms and working to correct them.

Next Week, More Polish Still!

Week 7: New Level Variants & Tutorial Level Dev

Looking at add variety to our random generation system with new room variants. Attempting to provide the balance of space to move through w/o blocking possible room connection pathways. As well as maintain an appropriate number of grave to get it challenging.

Additionally while working to develop rooms, I've been working with Tim and Matt T to create a tutorial level for players. The block-out has been established, the direction and necessary pieces are known. Now it is just a matter of putting it in engine.

Side Note the Unity Repo has been giving our team an issue with art asset missing meshes and textures. Creating an annoying time re-connecting the pieces together. But, finally the system has been updated and the issues with our builds have been corrected. The beautiful art has implemented at last, and it looks stunning. All the pieces are coming together with the deadline speeding toward us.

Next Week: polish, team reel, and upcoming feature lock plan.

Week 6: Push toward new levels

Last week was the digitizing of concept sketches for various aspects of Nercomanager. Since those concept documents are now at a solid point, the move toward adding new levels/room pieces is in full swing.

Well some of the sketches will not transfer well, I will be pulling the parts that will and attempt to recreate specific aspects using the current environment assets we have in place. So the one road block that I had run into was re-establishing the test branch and making sure that all the asset I need were complete and available.

With the help of Devon and Matt T. we establish the working pipeline to get the new levels in progress and implemented later. Now my tasks it the creation of the new room pieces, and while I'm doing that I will be running separate test to see where we can push the assets and rooms.

Next week, level/room update and progress.

Week 5: Digitizing the Concept Docs

To help communicate the design process to the team, I've been working to digitize the documents. We the idea in the mind that it can be easily reference and shown to various team members without the need of a walk through.

Progress with the docs: Currently the process is taking a time to digitize all the documents and make sure that it communicate the necessary information at a glance. So as of now there are currently only a few complete digital versions on the documents.

But each iteration of digitized documents is an aid for the future iteration of the game. With the successful greenlight presentation our concept has a lot of polish to implement and these documents are going to a be tool to tailor our concept direction.

Week 4: Updating engine version and Programs

The paper sketches are ready to be digitized for the team to review. With that in mind the updating of the Unity engine and installation of appropriate programs that are to be used for digitization is a must.

Working to do this while creating a branch folder to maintain structure and avoid possible issues with corruption in the subversion. Beyond that I have been reviewing the juice list and aiding a few bits of information still necessary before we review the finalized list.

The future plan is to review the list and mark the completed tasks so far, keeping in mind the need to iterate on the soon to be complete art task from the list.

So the immediate task is to review the previously assigned art tasks and suggest/make necessary changes to fit the theme as well as the setting on the game.

Week 3: Juicing The Game

At the suggestion of another team member, Kevin, I watched a video called "Juice it, or Lose it." The conclusion of the video presented the idea of that to make a game seem new and provide a better experience, just required added visual and audio improvements.

The presenters used breakout as the example, and walked the audience through their step by step process of visual and audio addition that changed the entire feel of the game.

So, taking that idea I began to create a living document for Necromanager. Breaking down each section of the game into smaller elements that can benefit from visual or audio additions to help promote the intended experience.

With the list the designers have a direction to pursue and communicate with the rest of the group to aid in creating the overall intended experience.

Week 2: Level Sketches (rough difficulty numbers)

This week was another round of level sketches, working with variables in the attempt to find a balance between all the elements. The basis of this initial varied difficulty level drafts the focus on three elements (number of graves, number of connecting rooms, and total number of room per area).

The issue that was identified as the higher difficulty were created, was that the number of connections will greater reduce the combinations of area shapes that can be produced.

While I'm working on the paper sketches at the moment to identify how the difficulty scale will effect built rooms, Devon is working on establishing a base line numbers for each component so when the levels are built in engine the total random generation system will be a controlled random generation system.

Necromanager Part II: The New Team week 1

Week 1: The team has grown from 4 to 11 members, bringing a new ideas and needed skills to help bring the game to the ideal state.

Jumping back on for week 1 was a hectic start filled with early clustering, to compartmentalize the large team into manageable size for individual tasks. For my week one task the GUI was the focus, reviewing existing UI the cluster set forth goals and a direction to work from.
The team had a brief meeting on Thursday to set the sprint goals for the GUI tasks.

In the meantime, i'll be individually creating early paper sketches for the level concepts. Reviewing player skills and abilities that to possible tailor levels to emphasize their use. While other concepts are just purely interesting ideas to present to the team for possible future iterations.

It is all rough at the moment, giving the team a starting point and momentum to re-engage and focus back on the development of Necromanager after our break.

Cutie Pie's Post-Mortem: The Final Slice

Recap:

We did it, we made it to next semester! Necromanager has officially become an approved Senior Team game. The Cutie Pies have been successful in our attempt to create a worth game (Too most).

Our game about keeping your graveyard under control and bank account full is preparing for the big polishing and improvement phase. At least that is the current major goal moving forward.

The Good:

The team of Matt T, Matt C, Tim H., and Ian were able to appropriately find a core experience to work toward, providing an understandable vertical slice. All disciplines established their pipelines early and was able to break down individual tasks to work on.

The best choice the team made at the beginning was identifying what would be the core game play and the three phases that would help create the intended player experience.

The Bad:

The hiccups of the journey become apparent during the development of direction. The team had a lot of ideas for the future of the game, but we had little to work off. So we developed the three phase to help direct, but allow for creative design. Allowing the team to produce possible assets, code, and design that could highlight the phases and fit with the feel of the game.

Which was still a little up in the air for some time. Finding the light-hearted theme to sell the mundane routine of zombie keeping. Giving it that unique feel in addition to it idea of limited violence in game.

It took some time to establish all the elements, but once the team was in agreement of these elements. We were able to create the current product, which we are still very excited to be working on.

The Ugly:

Creating character art was the hardest challenge our team encountered this semester. Appreciation (as much as I can give) goes to Matt Therrien for his willingness to accept the task. Producing something that would help to get our theme across for the enemies and player avatar.

While the first few character art pass result in some interesting sprites (the turtle zombie), the visible improvements to the in-game art was huge. Meeting a lot of praise and some critique, but the resulting affect from more art polish was critical to maintaining the game feel.

The Team Moving Forward:

Having worked with the art direction for characters and enemies in a 2D stylized idea. The team found it to be placeholder and moving forward we want to move to 3D. To allow rigging for the animations with have in mind to add to the theme, to allow shadows to be cast by the character and enemies, and to allow the oncoming 3D artist to produce 3D models.

Programming wise taking on a graphics artist is important aspect for polishing and to allow our lead programmer's talents to be put to else where. Additional programmers to help with coding and splitting the workload.

Additional designers to have a more committed producer role and new/fresh ideas for developing the game moving forward.  

While our current team has a strong dynamic and is able to work well with each other, taking on new members is going to require a adjustment phase. Hopefully that will be short and every one is able to work with issue.

The next steps/goals for the team moving forward is going to require so re-working of the current idea to fit the new art style, but the entire team feel the game will benefit from the change in direction. An additionally it will allow our original artist to work in their specialized field, so they can produce strong art for environment and props game.

Alumi Panel

One of our final opportunities to discuss the possible future of our major. The enlisted alumni were interesting, provide a different perspective on the routes that they took. Where they ended up as a result, and additionally how they are doing now.

Some worrying topics were the lack of outside hobbies that the alumni had time to do (which was none). Worried about that part a little bit, I enjoy a break from the constant game. Also having something to take care of is beneficial for one's mental health. 

The featured paths of contract work, indie, or industry jobs all had unique work flows. From the continuous need to work and produce as a small indie team to not lose the focus. Or a triple A studio job where the pod group work dynamic is eerily similar to senior production. To the final just having the stars align, getting the lucky chance to be part of a game that become successful through steam green light.   

Overall the career path has many chances to fail and succeed, but the one thing to take from the panel is to be prepared to change and move around. Job security is a seemingly rare thing in the current Game Career fields. 

The final push/presentation

The vertical slice is coming together nicely, the final presentation to identify why our game is valuable is under way, and we are rapidly preparing for the formal oral presentation.

Necromanager has been an exciting project to work on, the team has at time butted heads (all in efforts to produce the best player experience). The stress of the quickly approaching final presentation was building.

So we put our heads down, practiced again and again, ensuring we would be knowledgeable and prepared to showcase our game to the public. All the way remember to breath, not allowing the stress to boil over. Allowing the team to be confident and ready for the public presentation.

The day of the presentation has come and we as a team and ready. A strong hope that our game will be selected to move forward, and we can begin the heavy polish phase with new members.

Great strides from Blocks to first Art pass

-The first art pass-

We were looking for a refreshing pass of character and enemy art to breath live into the project. The first pass was a nice attempt towards finding the look we want to reach. They needed work and we as a team knew this, so our artists are working with 2D for the basis of character development.

Pulling inspirations for particular games, Don't Strave and Plants v. Zombies. Looking at them for ideas on how to create a light-hearted undead creature and 2D art defined movement.

-The resulting art of the first pass-

Honestly it needs for work. So are plan is all in-coming is currently a WIP for the temporary future. We have solid environmental artist, who are provide the character art. They are making strides for the current game, but we would benefit from the support of a character artist.

-Planning ahead-

The future plans are feature lock, programming new code with crucial pieces, and heavy polish on art implementation and balancing the game feel.

Modifying the room blocks

-The fatal error-

During the previous, meeting which I created the additional room blocks the generation set. I failed to add the prefabs to the repository. Leading to a lost of rooms, but thankfully the learning curve was easy to master. Allowing me to jump back into the program and quickly recreated the missing room blocks.

-The second pass of room blocks-

Having ensured the last set of rooms were added to the repository, I continued to create additional rooms. I set out to define buffer zones without graves. Allowing hallways and empty area to give the player more time and space to build barricades.

During the process to mitigate issue with the spawning of room pieces, I would run the test demo repeatedly. Checking for missing fences, looking at the entire area, and making sure players could have space to move for each graveyard generation.

-The next step-

Review the current set of rooms and addition to room generation assets to develop variety and ensure the space spawn enough graves for zombies to provide a challenge to players.

Learning the new level building

-The Initial Learning Curve-

  Our programmer set up a module room block, to be randomly generated and connected together to build the space the player will explore. There was an initial learning curve to building out the room sets.

 Tim was gracious enough to explain the process as I built out my first room set. Learning how to use the room end connectors (the forward position), the scripting to apply, and the numbers to modify to ensure the proper layout.

 Having quickly picked up the process, I began making additional room pieces to get additional variety within randomized level build. I created six additional room blocks to add to the overall randomization level generation.


-The results of the first pass-

The room sizing had to be oddly numbered to ensure accurate centering of rooms during generation. This would allow the fence pieces to properly draw and contain the player within the defined space.

Overall the first pass was a good introduction to the established system.

Picking Enemies and Making Metrics

Research:

Looking at various lores and mythos of undead creatures, I found some unique and possibly cool enemies for Necromanager. Of course there are the well known zombies, skeletons, and vampires. Then there are the known but reference incorrectly, ghouls, revenant, and lich. And finally to fill out the group (so far) we have the Manananggal.

Pulling the classic creatures helps the audience easily identify enemies in the beginning of the game. Then introducing the new enemies the player will learn more about the ghouls, revenant, lich, and Manananggal. In addition to how the player must combat the new creature, since the old method won't work as well. Providing a different experience and more play ability.

This is the early creature types that we would like to experiment with during play to see how it effects the combat and how the player reacts. So we can work on balance and find what enemies need to be removed, switched, or replaced with new ones. 

Hoping to teach the player and provide interesting interaction for the graveyard with these new creature types. Which are to be implemented at a later date. Additionally more research is planned for new creatures and how the selected creatures may behavior. 

Metrics:

Speed, Strength, & Health. These are the metrics for the enemies so far. How they relate to combat is speed determines movement rate, strength determines damage dealt to the gate, and health determines the number hits before becoming stunned. 

A list is made for all enemies, but is still in early develop and is likely to change. 

Picking the Game

We Don't Need No Heroes! or Necromanager

The winner Necromanager!

Why:

We picked Necromanager as the game to move forward with. We see a lot of potential, many ways that it could go, and opportunities to showcase members skill.

Our first love was Necromanager, everytime we would discuss the game idea and various concepts the group was inspired about various options and cool ways that we could iterate on the game. For the other concept We Don't Need No Heroes! we saw potential but couldn't get as hyped or find the core of the game. We didn't know what was going to hold the audience with the second concept. Additionally the iterations that we did to the second game didn't quite get the game to the point we hoped. We wanted it to turn into something more, but it just never did.

With Necromanager, we knew the core experience, what would make it fun, and how to make it interesting for the audience. We knew where we were going and what the next steps we wanted to make. For us Necromanager is the game we want to work on and want others to enjoy playing. 

Developing the Story

Looking to add depth to the concepts and possible elements, I started to explore potential narrative themes for each concept. Here is what I developed so far.


Concept 1 (Necromanager) Story: 

Pryhill's graveyard has its share of corpses, but few cemeteries would boast about the heroism of their groundskeeper. Anton has protected the people of Pryhill against the abominations that walk the night for decades. The time has come to train a new groundskeeper, an apprentice for Anton to entrust the safety of Pryhill. So the town send him an apprentice.

 

Concept 2 (We Don't Need No Heroes!) Story: 

Having to watch hero after hero attempt to climb the tower, beat the guardian, and whisk her off to a happy ever after…end in failure. Princess Addison Oxworth has witnessed hundreds of wannabe heroes after her hand, but the courage of these men wavers long before reaching Addison’s room.

The appeal of shining white knights is gone, each new hero is an insult to Addison. She wants to change her fate. So she decides to take on the trails of the tower and show the heroes that the princesses of this realm don’t need no heroes! Setting out on a quest to liberate the other princesses and become the heroine of the kingdom. 

Why?
Using the narrative to shape the direction of design and give context to the player. Helping to create a believable world and aspects to explore in later iterations.

We don't need no heroes!

High Concept: The princess is fed up with waiting to rescued by the moronic hero, so she switches it up. Knocks out her captor, takes his armor and descends the tilting tower. She finds the moronic hero in the nearest tavern, she challenges the hero to prove himself in a drinking contest. Drinking the hero under the table, she reveals herself as the princess. Shaming the hero, the princess takes his gold and goes to rescue the other princess and humiliate the other heroes along the way.

Objectives:
-Overcome various physic puzzles
-Shame the heroes
-Liberate the other princesses

It started with the phase "We don't need no hero!" and evolved into the team's second game concept.

Using the physic puzzle with the platforming aspect to give the concept challenge and to separate it from a traditional platformer game. This allowed for a lot of interesting level concepts, which I pull inspiration from old games like Jenga, Tetris, and simple physics ideas like fulcrums.

I wanted the game to feature a heroine, because female protagonists don't get a lot of spotlight or respectful displays of body shape. So I also wanted the heroine to be realistic without a hourglass figure and could hold her own on the same level of the male hero. So I flipped the idea having the men by the moronic fools that are beaten by the princess proving she is capable of doing anything they are suppose to. 

Showing the other princess that they don't need a man to define their existence in this fantasy inspired world of badass princesses and moronic heroes.