Weekly Update - 10/23/2007

This week we continued our quick march towards the alpha playtest. We now have 3 levels finalized with 3 more in the pipe. We also have 3 characters, including the main character animated and done, with 5 more in the pipe.
With those pieces in place, we put our character and a roughed in level into our engine. THat allowed us to really see what we needed in terms of interstitial artwork.
Our weapon designs are nearing completion, and we decided on a UI and a look-and-feel for the game. Also in our meeting this week, Leon was named Art Director. This is to ensure all the art is consistent where it needs to be.
This week we are working on more of the incidental art, getting our battle system into the engine, working on music for each level, a theme, and sound effects.
On a negative note, we do have one teaam member who rarely if ever shows up for meetings, doesn't email or check emails, and can't be counted on for work. This is a problem we are dealing with in house though.

Until next week,
Cody Out.

Crit Session 1 - 10/23/2007

In class today we saw 4 prototype presentations:

Mizu-
This game seems very interesting, the art look extremely cute, and certainly appealing to a certain segment of people, however I believe that they don't fully have a grasp of what their actual gameplay mechanic is. They know they want a cute a sidescroller, but that is really about all they told us. They cited games that they would like to be like, but they haven't shown, or tested, how they are going to be like those games.

Their concept is good, but it remains to be seen if they can flesh it out in a meaningful way.

Unnamed Prototype-
Co-op is always very good to have. But it can be difficult to implement and balance. Especially if you offer a single player and a co-op mode, that requires to completely different modes of balance to progress through the game.
The fact they are making their own engine is incredibly impressive. I am excited to see their result.
They have made their gameplay an action oriented version of Dungeons and Dragons. I can definitely appreciate that. Modify an existing gameplay mechanic, change the aesthetic if you will, and make it your own. A completely valid method.
I believe their testing method was good to test the balancing and progression through their given dungeon/world, but their combat testing was a touch flawed.

Turn based only sucks if you want real-time. There are ways to test real-time combat, you just have to be creative about it.

Antlion-
This game interests me and I'm curious to see how it turns out. The pretense of couching it as an educational game quite often sucks all of the possible fun out of the game by making education the primary focus instead of the game. This is tricky territory. To much information and the user feels like they are learning instead of playing.
Ensure you concentrate on solid gameplay, then worry about all the other extraneous factors.
I'm not entirely convinced by their testing method though. It just seemed like a chess board with two pieces on it. They didn't explain progression or character movement or anything.

Fins of Fury-
This game intrigues me as well. They have some excellent character models, and different gameplay concept that is very modern. It is reminiscent of the classic Odell Lake, without actually being a callback to it, and being a game wholly its own.
Their testing method was excellent, and as close as it possibly could have been to their actual game.
This game has definite promise, but seems ambitious in scope. Heres hoping they can deliver on that promise.

10/16 Inaugural Blog Post!!

This week in 410 was crazy! It was our first mini-crunch, and it was really insightful. Our paper prototype had to be tested, and we also had to put together the report, presentation, and media assets for our prototype.
(available here!)

We met on wednesday, and iterated on our prototype to make it ready for our testing session on thursday. Then, from the results collected from our session, we put together our presentation and design eval doc. Thankfully, our game tested exactly as expected, and we have a solid foundation to progress forward with.

Our goal this week is to get art in our digital prototype, and begin to integrate our battle system. We will hopefully also begin to iterate on our level designs.

We meet every wednesday at 2:30 in the mezzanine, and whenever else and wherever else it is needed!

ttynext week!

Cody S.