As one of our first real work periods, we've had one of our very first problems. This being the camera, with the menu and controls in place all we need to finish them up is a camera that can rotate around the player. This being how the player knew how levels were set up and how to tackle them with all their tools at their disposal. But guess what, our camera rotates around it's own axis, so the player can't properly move while looking around. We wanted to make the camera make more sense so we looked to a decision together. What we got is not much, tutorials and different unity scripts did not help at all. It wasn't until last Thursday that we thought of making the whole level rotate around the player and camera, which actually worked, with a catch. It needed to adjust to the player, which is what our residential programmer, Judah Free, is working on right now, just another day in game development. Next up is pretty much the last blog post of my high school career, see you guys in college.
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Now that we have finally finished our assignments on affordance and signifiers, we can finally do a bit more work on our game. It's pretty much all going to be game work from this point on until the end of the year, so we're kicking it into high gear when it comes to organizing everything. But in order to start the process we need a formal schedule to work on, which is what we have organized in Trello, now everyone has their own tasks to do with each of us checking on what we got so far. I give them instructions and fill in the blanks for whatever roles we don't have done, for instance, I have to complete the first level so we can start working in it. Everyone else isn't twiddling their thumbs, since we have a whole laundry list of game chores to do. But we do have deadlines, but as per request by Mr. B I put them towards the end of the week, and as a little bonus it's technically due when we get back. So we have everything we need and hopefully I can post about our progress next quarter, see you then. Our Schedule For Making The First Level
The big game project we are making in a group, Strangeview, takes a lot of easy organized communication. Which is why an easy team organization tool is important, Trello does that but there are a lot of other options. Checklists and categories are key, people can finish them at their own pace and each person will know what to do from their position to help. Other than sites, we usually discord call to discuss exactly what we want to put on the project related material, while occasionally goofing around to keep our sanity. A lesson you learn in Mr. B's class is that you can occasionally screw around as long as it doesn't detriment your work. But it really is simple enough with these two, just calling and checking a lost off, as long as each person's specialty is fulfilled then we already finish the project. The depth comes from really putting it all together, which is set aside for it's own time in calls. After making up for 3D work last quarter, we can finally work on our game, which we have renamed to Strangeview. The game process was long and arduous, with a lot of us going back and forth on certain ideas. Most of which were probably for the better, we finally have a menu set up that makes sense, along with a Viewmaster inventory system that adds to the charm of the game. It's changes like this that make our game stand out a bit more, B movie survival horror games are pretty cool in our opinions. We also got to the specific mechanics, which are separated by floor, are now defined and in a set order. We also have our controls down, so we have a less ambiguous game now. What's also important is that we don't have to do as much thinking as to what we should do, it's already outlined in our document.
Other than that, we can actually start posting on the website made for the game, and give a bit more into what we're working on. See you then. Our first official (on class time) meeting went off without a hitch. We had to make a base narrative for what we want with the game, from characters to locations, we had to make sure we had a story we'd all want to commit to until the end of May. This resulted in a mood board we had to make, with images we found. These were images of rundown buildings, where we wanted the second half of the game to be like by going to another dimension, along with B movie posters in all of their overly dramatic and fantastical nature (invasion of the crab people). We wanted to combine these two types of clashing sub genres into one experience, with lots of back and forth we came to the conclusion of one half being an adventure game, and the second half being a survival horror game. It seems crazy now, but what game sounds cohesive when first pitched? What we made was a narrative that can put it all together, the message it conveys about being insecure in high school. Sounds less appealing having a really sappy message about inclusion right? Ahh, we'll do something about it, promise. But so far, we've got a lot done and are currently on the way to making characters and layouts. We goofed around for a short bit, with all the funky squiggles, but who knows? it might be in the game for all we know
As mentioned before, we have a new team to develop our new game. Now we have our groups and assigned roles, we can start learning all about them.
The past couple of weeks we've been putting together pieces of work to showcase our abilities and research to explain our role in the team (all of which is featured on my selected works). We organize into roles so we can best make the use of our time in one thing, and so one other person knows what to do in a certain part. This is done to make sure we all run smoothly to make our parts come together as one. So in order to show what I mean, I'll showcase my Producer role in my team. Judah - Modeler Our main man when it comes to the putting together the characters and environments. Along with talking to the programmer and artist on what everything will be like. Andy - other programmer Andy, who works together with Judah the most, is the one who actually puts all of our work together, in the form of anything script related. Jaiden - Residential artist Her main goal is to give all of us a sense of what it should look like. kidna like a preview to what the game is, that the rest of us bring to life. Moi - Producer My job is to keep the game concept the game concept, tell people what to make or what not to make, for the good of the game's original vision. This will require a lot of interaction with everybody's roles. That's our group, everyone does what there assigned, they tell others when they want something specific to be done, and I consult them throughout (or shut down ideas that don't conform to the story). After a lot of work on 3D last quarter, we can finally hope back on the game design horse. We have started on what is essentially our game's bible, after we changed the name from Strange Occurrences to Strangeview. For our GDD, we had to do a lot of back and forth over various calls, with lots of original ideas we had thought were set in stone now being flipped in it's head, along with some altogether new changes. One of my favorite is how we planned to make the interface a Viewmaster, along with the cover art being reminiscent of a B movie poster. These help in giving the game a more distinct personality along with a clear premise for whoever is interested. It means we know what's in store for our game too, we can just reference what we need to do from this handy dandy document, it's essentially a cheat sheet for what to do for our game.
The best part is that we did it all together, with suggestions left and right for what we should keep or remove, just like the title itself changing. All in a day for game development, now we'll go full throttle on finally building the game's everything. We might even put work we make on the site next time. See you then. |
JamesHe aspires to be a game designer, let's just hope he gets there. He also happens to goes to DSA. Categories
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