Polishing to Publish -- Week Ending 12 Jan

Happy New Year! With the beginning of my final semester in the EAE:MGS, I've decided to alter the format of my blog posts ever so slightly. Instead of my typical flood of information about everything that may or may not be going on, I'll break my thoughts down into discreet sections for each individual project that I'm involved in. With this approach, I hope to motivate myself to actually do something on each project each week, even if it's no more than a tweak to a design document or an evaluation of a sprint. That way, I hope to ensure that none of the games slip through the cracks into development Limbo.

Let's get to it, shall we?

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Last March of the Dodos
This week has been a matter of evaluating the game as it stands and determining our plans for getting it published by the end of the semester. There has been little actual work on the game, but I've done a hefty bit of research into our publishing options and what we will have to do to set the processes in motion.

Presented with the information I gathered, the team has decided that we do, in fact, want to push for a release on Steam, and we're willing to do what it takes to get the greenlight--"Steam Greenlight," that is! Ha! Beyond that, since Steam does not require exclusivity, we are also shooting to release on Desura shortly after our projected Steam launch to increase our exposure by whatever degree possible. I've been talking with our tech lead, Kamron Egan, about what it will take to meet all of the technical requirements outlined by these services, and he thinks we can achieve them, but we'll need to hit the task hard and fast. So that's the plan!

The Leonardo Project
For my internship this semester, I am a producer on a game that the Utah Game Forge is developing as a joint venture with The Leonardo, a local art-meets-technology museum/exhibitor. We're still in the early design process, so my work this week has been researching location-based games and the interesting styles of play that they can offer.

So far, the standout games I've discovered are Life is Magic, TapCity, FourSquare, Shadow Cities, Ingress, Nintendo's "StreetPass" features and activities on the 3DS, and geocaching. Though they're not necessarily all games by strictest definition, each has a unique way of giving people a fun and interesting reason to get out and explore the world around them (or at least travel about a bit).

I'm incredibly excited about this particular opportunity, so I can't wait to see what we come up with as a team over the next week.

Cleanse (working title)
Pitched and prototyped by members of Cohort 3 (current first-year Master's students in the EAE:MGS), this game was selected by our faculty to represent us in the Ubisoft Gamelab competition (we're the only American school invited to participate in the competition this year!). With an extra open spot on their team, I was asked to join them to assist and consult in the production and design of this "promise of a promise" prototype. We'll be evaluating and fleshing out the prototype over the next three months in preparation for the competition in April. If we win, our whole team will be interning at Ubisoft Montreal over the summer to build a full version of the game! Needless to say, we're stoked about the prospect. :)

So far, my work with this team has been attending meetings and helping formulate stronger mechanics and overall design details. I'm pleased that some of my suggestions inspired great discussion about the future of the game, and some features that I came up with are now a part of the core experience, including what we have termed the "pulse" mechanic. Because the world on which the player finds himself is completely dark except for bio-luminescent nodes on plants and creatures, the player must use this pulse ability to enhance the brightness of those nodes as the pulse wave passes around and through them. This acts like a sort of sonar or "Daredevil vision," but it can also stimulate specific reactions from the player's surroundings. One common use for the pulse is the final blow to light up weakened enemies, thus transforming them into friendly, useful critters.

The design document that we must submit to Ubisoft is due next week, so I imagine that I'll be directly involved with constructing that document.

The Macromancer
This is the game and team that I was originally a part of in our bid to enter the Ubisoft competition. Although we did not get chosen, we were informed that the faculty thought our core mechanic of shrinking and growing objects to manipulate their uses and abilities was likely stronger than the other games' mechanics (there was just something more unique about Cleanse that pushed it to the top). Because we felt the same (and we had great confidence in our core play from our early design meetings), we knew that we wanted to continue development, with a goal of releasing the game on Ouya. Spencer, our team lead, recently received his early Ouya development kit, so we have already begun working on making sure our Unity project plays nice with the new platform and controllers.

We're in a great place so far, with our hook firmly present and playable, so we're happy that the team is still committed to developing the game on our own time.
***

Other than that, I'm still hard at work designing a few other independent games that will also receive some face time in this blog. Having also started on the companion document to our thesis game (heretofore known as my thesis paper), I'm keeping plenty busy. Which reminds me, we took the first part of our comprehensive exams on Thursday, and I feel like it went very well. Part 2 (the essay portion) was postponed until Monday due the the University calling a snow day on Friday, but I feel confident that I'll do very well on that portion as well. Either way, wish me luck in all of this!

- Troy