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.