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.