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Last March of the DodosThis was an excellent week for nailing down distinct plans. Our team lead (Jesse) and I walked through every step of the game together to determine the specifics of what needed to be updated, changed, fixed, or added to make the game feel like it is really supposed to. This list has become or newest backlog, and we are prioritizing it as we speak so that we hit the most important pieces early on. Some of those prioritized tasks and features include the implementation of a countdown at the beginning of every level ("10 seconds till the Dodos march!") to give the player time to scope out the stage; a redesign of several pieces of the UI and certain menu screens (making elements that appear on multiple screens fall in the same place on each different screen, balancing spatial relationships, adding placeholders for necessary points of information, etc.); making the stages visible behind the buttons and mini-map; and much more that will really help the game flow.
As part of fulfilling my own tasks from the backlog, I helped with the UI redesign, designed the countdown feature and exactly how it will behave, spear-headed effort to correct the level visibility and camera-control issues, and designed some new aspects of the title screens and menu contents.
Also noteworthy was that this week we were introduced to our new production consultant, Amy Adkins. I'm not entirely sure of her official faculty status, but she was a producer at EA for years, and she has been hired to help us all polish and publish our games. She has jumped right in with great advice, insight, and expectations. She asked us to compile and send her a group of documents for our project, including our backlog, design document, schedule, publishing plans, etc. This request proved quite helpful to us, as it forced us to really sit down and hammer out details to a degree that we simply had not done previously. I ended up compiling the package for her (and creating whatever documents that did not previously exist), and it helped me visualize and understand the process we'll be driving through much better. We now have a much clearer vision of what we must do--and what we will do--over the next three months.
Amy played our game and said that she definitely felt like she could get people to play it. She projected a target audience of children based on the aesthetics and feel of the game as it stands (slightly younger than we originally intended due to the complexity of the game and the issue of killing/extinction), so we're now figuring out the best way to shape the rest of our development based on these reactions and our original goals. She opted to withhold any further feedback until she speaks with Mark and Craig to better understand their expectations of our game from the academic side, but she seemed genuinely excited by what our game can be and what we can do with it over the next three months.
The Leonardo ProjectThis was a good week for pre-production. Roger appointed me to be the lead producer for the team, and I was immediately put to work. I scheduled two meetings with the team--one of which was our first meeting with Alex Johnstone, our contact from The Leonardo--and we have really gotten the juices flowing for coming up with our game design.
I created a Google Drive and Google Calendar so that we would have a common place to look for any and all assets and communication needs that might arise. Thus far, the tools have been quite helpful in keeping us all on track together and making sure everyone can access whatever he or she might need. Further, I set up a Kanbanpad.com project for us to track our backlog and scheduled development tasks; the service is free, and it's online so we can all see and edit it from any device. We may end up using Hansoft if we get licenses for our forthcoming workspace in The Leonardo, but we'll stick with Kanbanpad for the time being.
When we met with Alex at The Leonardo, he gave us a tour of the space, and we're excited to be associated with so many cool exhibits. The venue is perfect for a public game like the one we'll deliver, so we look forward to generating buzz with a transparent development process.
I'll hold off on delving into design details at the moment because we've simply thrown around too many to list, and it would be difficult to make much sense out of such a collection at the moment. However, feel free to investigate the image of the whiteboard and try to decipher what it might all mean... Suffice it to say, the experience is going to be awesome and thought-provoking. I promise.
You'll notice that the title of this game changed from last week; that was no accident. We spent several hours considering what our point with the game is, and in an attempt to come up with a suitable slogan for our pitch and design document, we finally hit upon it. After evaluating the focus of our gameplay and the hook of the experience, we determined that revealing the unknown (or the "difficult to interpret," at least) is what our intended experience hinges on. By using a couple abilities that can manipulate the existing bioluminescence in the world or generate light independently, the player can discover the secrets of the environment and determine how to eventually escape from the lurking dangers. Thus:
Title: Reveal
Slogan: Master the light
Based on this approach, Andrew Witts, Jason Thummel, and I spent about 30 total hours (between the three of us) creating the official design document that we had to submit to Ubisoft this week as part of the GameLab competition. We're pleased with how it turned out, and we're confident that we can develop an awesome game from the details outlined within it.
It feels like the whole team is definitely on board with this new interpretation of the original prototype and pitch, and we've started putting things in action. The engineers met with members of the first EAE:MGS cohort for some tutoring on using the UDK and getting the core features they had built using Unity into the new engine. In addition, our artist, Isaac Kellis, cranked out some awesome new concept art, which you'll be seeing in future posts.
Now that the document is written and submitted and we all have some idea of the tools and process we'll be using, we'll kick production into high gear starting this coming week. We can't wait to create a killer game that will win this competition!
Progress continues with The Macromancer. The team had a meeting on Friday (which, sadly, I was unable to attend because of my meeting at the Leonardo) in which the engineers got handheld controllers to work with the game (no longer bound to mouse and keyboard controls). Getting the game to work with the Ouya is still proving to be a nuisance, even with all sorts of online investigation for a solution, but pieces are snapping into place and functioning properly bit by bit. In other words, it feels like the same process as every other time we are presented with new tech. We're confident that we'll have everything working with the Ouya Development Kit (ODK) by the end of the coming week.
Design-wise, the game is in the same place it was since our public pitch. We'll likely trim down the story and narrative plans we had, but the gameplay remains. With the positive response we received about our core mechanics from the presentation, we're happy with how the game feels, and we're stoked that the team is still dedicated to pushing forward with its development. Ouya officially releases in just a couple months, and we plan to release a solid game on day one! Wish us luck!
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Have a good week, and keep tabs right here. I guarantee you'll be interested in what's to come!
- Troy
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