I am currently working on the "blocking out" of the level design. The first thing I did was sketch out some concepts and drawings, none of which are final; rather, they were meant to increase my flow of ideas and understand exactly what I have to do in order to make good game flow for the player.
I have so far constructed our first asset list, but in the process of design I've already found more assets that need to be made for the insides of the dragon (such as a viking longboat.)
We really haven't had much problems, and everything (for now at least) seems to be flowing nicely.
My time spent on working is mostly in class. Jake and I talk quite a bit about our ideas outside of class though, which keeps things fresh in my mind.
I think we are too early in development to evaluate the project as a whole. But things seem to be going well.
Well, I missed last week's update. Fortunately things have been running pretty well along for me aside from being in poor health for a little bit there.
What stages of the project am I on, and how is it progressing?
I am currently finishing up the major blocking out of the level, I have made some changes to the detailing of how the player will traverse throughout the level, but the overall layout is the same (4 major nodes with an entrance/hallway).
Did I change my project milestone goals?
Nopers.
How did I deal with problems that came up?
The only problems I encountered were not having the assets I thought I needed, so instead I just carved certain elements (such as the ship) into the level via Constructor. I of course had problems with Constructor crashing on me, which set me back a few hours. I just ended up doing it faster immediately after... I had to resize the level slightly anyhow.
What is working/not working in the planning/implementation of the project?
I haven't really encountered anything that has prohibited me from getting my desired results.
Time spent:
I've already spent at least 10 hours alone on the construction of the level. I anticipate there to be about another 12-15 before I am satisfied, and I have great confidence that I will be finished by the middle of the weekend.
At that point I plan on helping out with textures and probably some UI set up, as well as working on character animation.
Evaluate the project as a whole:
I am surprised that things have been working out as well as they have. I truly have no regrets in the makeup of our team, in fact I expected less. Things are getting done, and I'm happy for that. Go TEAM!! Except Scott really needs help getting those animations to EXPORT. I will help with that if it comes down to Tuesday and it's still having problems.
I feel like we accomplished what we set out to do (with the exception of a finished Boss encounter)... however, we accomplished it in as chaotic of a manner as could be imagined in a 5 week span. They ways in which we worked well as a team were solely dependency based; that is to say, "Hey, I got this done, you got that done, great! Let's mash everything together."
We got things done. What we didn't do was make everything fluid. We did not allow for a focal art and design direction. We acted as individuals and not as a cohesive whole, but that is to be expected when we only have 5 weeks to turn an idea into a working prototype.
In the next project, I will be sure to have learned from this first team game production experience. I will try to include actual Art Direction and cohesive design into the next project, but how? I am not sure. I think it was impossible to do from the start because we handed out multiple Art related jobs to different people, and we didn't force a sketching phase where everyone agreed on what the characters and assets should look like.
When it came down to the wire, we simply started producing the things we still needed to be in the game and only worried about getting them done and into the engine. No time was spent on final detailing and design relevancy to the rest of the project.
However, I am, once again, proud to state that I did accomplish what I set out to do. If I had more time, I would simply only add further detail to the level, playtesting every time I changed/added something. I would work more on the lighting.
The thing is, how weird would it be to play in a well-designed level with plenty of time expenditure with such a raw and unfinished main character? Why should the people who weren't in charge of character design have to work extra to make sure that the characters fit into the world? Or even animate? Or have a collision box?
We did express that we wanted more to be done with the character. It's not like we just said, "hey, that looks good enough. Don't worry about doing anything else."
I guess we just didn't quite realize the type of problems we were going to encounter when only 3 of us wanted to actually have a finished game, and something we could actually be proud of and show off as portfolio work.
I am currently working on the "blocking out" of the level design. The first thing I did was sketch out some concepts and drawings, none of which are final; rather, they were meant to increase my flow of ideas and understand exactly what I have to do in order to make good game flow for the player.
ReplyDeleteI have so far constructed our first asset list, but in the process of design I've already found more assets that need to be made for the insides of the dragon (such as a viking longboat.)
We really haven't had much problems, and everything (for now at least) seems to be flowing nicely.
My time spent on working is mostly in class. Jake and I talk quite a bit about our ideas outside of class though, which keeps things fresh in my mind.
I think we are too early in development to evaluate the project as a whole. But things seem to be going well.
I will start on the viking longboat immediately.
ReplyDeleteWeek 3:
ReplyDeleteWell, I missed last week's update. Fortunately things have been running pretty well along for me aside from being in poor health for a little bit there.
What stages of the project am I on, and how is it progressing?
I am currently finishing up the major blocking out of the level, I have made some changes to the detailing of how the player will traverse throughout the level, but the overall layout is the same (4 major nodes with an entrance/hallway).
Did I change my project milestone goals?
Nopers.
How did I deal with problems that came up?
The only problems I encountered were not having the assets I thought I needed, so instead I just carved certain elements (such as the ship) into the level via Constructor. I of course had problems with Constructor crashing on me, which set me back a few hours. I just ended up doing it faster immediately after... I had to resize the level slightly anyhow.
What is working/not working in the planning/implementation of the project?
I haven't really encountered anything that has prohibited me from getting my desired results.
Time spent:
I've already spent at least 10 hours alone on the construction of the level. I anticipate there to be about another 12-15 before I am satisfied, and I have great confidence that I will be finished by the middle of the weekend.
At that point I plan on helping out with textures and probably some UI set up, as well as working on character animation.
Evaluate the project as a whole:
I am surprised that things have been working out as well as they have. I truly have no regrets in the makeup of our team, in fact I expected less. Things are getting done, and I'm happy for that. Go TEAM!! Except Scott really needs help getting those animations to EXPORT. I will help with that if it comes down to Tuesday and it's still having problems.
Post Mortem:
ReplyDeleteI feel like we accomplished what we set out to do (with the exception of a finished Boss encounter)... however, we accomplished it in as chaotic of a manner as could be imagined in a 5 week span. They ways in which we worked well as a team were solely dependency based; that is to say, "Hey, I got this done, you got that done, great! Let's mash everything together."
We got things done. What we didn't do was make everything fluid. We did not allow for a focal art and design direction. We acted as individuals and not as a cohesive whole, but that is to be expected when we only have 5 weeks to turn an idea into a working prototype.
In the next project, I will be sure to have learned from this first team game production experience. I will try to include actual Art Direction and cohesive design into the next project, but how? I am not sure. I think it was impossible to do from the start because we handed out multiple Art related jobs to different people, and we didn't force a sketching phase where everyone agreed on what the characters and assets should look like.
When it came down to the wire, we simply started producing the things we still needed to be in the game and only worried about getting them done and into the engine. No time was spent on final detailing and design relevancy to the rest of the project.
However, I am, once again, proud to state that I did accomplish what I set out to do. If I had more time, I would simply only add further detail to the level, playtesting every time I changed/added something. I would work more on the lighting.
The thing is, how weird would it be to play in a well-designed level with plenty of time expenditure with such a raw and unfinished main character? Why should the people who weren't in charge of character design have to work extra to make sure that the characters fit into the world? Or even animate? Or have a collision box?
We did express that we wanted more to be done with the character. It's not like we just said, "hey, that looks good enough. Don't worry about doing anything else."
I guess we just didn't quite realize the type of problems we were going to encounter when only 3 of us wanted to actually have a finished game, and something we could actually be proud of and show off as portfolio work.