CAGD 470 - Video Game Production

 I am the designer in Group 1, and the game we are making is called Vampiric Checkmate. Our production rate has slowed down slightly due primarily to the fact that a large chunk of this sprint was spent trying to adjust the experience of the game based on what we learned during playtests. However, other than the downtick in cards completed this sprint, we were able to have a fairly successful sprint and solidify a lot of features in the game as well as put up an Alpha build. Functioning pause menu. One of the issues that we encountered as a group was that the balance of work has grown more and more over the course of several sprints, but there is not a lot that I am able to change about it. What I mean is that at the beginning of the production of this game, every one of us in the group had plenty of work to do with a multitude of things such as sprites, models, programming, and whatnot. However, as the sprints have progressed, my group completed everything at a much faster pace ...

 I am the designer of the game Vampiric Checkmate. This sprint, although we were able to complete a similar number of cards as we did in past sprints, it feels as if our progress slowed down due to a multitude of issues stemming from the complex nature of the game’s design. I personally was frustrated with myself because over the course of this sprint, I had many revelations about ways in which the core design of the game could have been improved, but I was unable to think of it prior to actually starting development. The game was on the brink of needing to cut core features in order to create a reasonably complete product by the end of the seventh sprint. My programmer, Heath, had come into this sprint with a bug that did not allow him to properly scan generated maps to see if the player could make it to the end. However, just when Daniel and I were preparing to shift the focus and cut the feature of procedurally generated maps, Heath was able to fix the bug and move onto other pr...

I am the designer of Group 1, the team making Vampiric Checkmate. So far, this sprint has been the most challenging one for a multitude of reasons. The work that we set out to complete during the Sprint Kickoff was as follows: Implement skills, implement items, implement the acquisition of said skills and items, test the level generation so that it was functional for the player to navigate, and have a workable prototype to give to people so that we could obtain playtests. Despite these goals being an extension of the past sprint goals, in which we were fairly successful at completing, we struggled to meet our deadline for these goals.  Part of the issue that inhibited us from getting to a comfortable point with the development of our game was that the overall concept of the game contains a lot of different moving parts. By the very nature of the game, I knew this from the start. I wanted to include procedural generation in the level creation so that once it was complete, it had...

  I am the lead designer of Group 1, and the game we are making is Vampiric Checkmate (formerly Feeble Vampire). The process of working with an even ever so slightly larger group is interesting and new to me, because of how the allocation and distribution of work has gone. In my prior experience from 370 and 377, the smaller groups meant that I as a designer would usually be taking on multiple roles such as overall design, level design, modeling, and art/UI assets. However, due to my group having five people, I no longer have to worry about doing several things at once and spreading myself thin.  In fact, I now have the opposite problem–the larger group means that my team is able to complete a lot of work much more efficiently. My main role as of late has been expanding on the game’s ideas and trying to make sure that there is enough work for everyone so that the game is fully fleshed out by the time we reach Sprint 7.  Development has been progressing fairly well, with o...

  I am the lead designer of Group 1, and we are making the game Feeble Vampire. The process has gone moderately well at this point, with my team beginning to make a decent headway on the digital prototype. However, I am hoping that over the next sprint and the next coming sprints, we are able to increase the rate at which we all complete work, and snowball our momentum into having a finished and enjoyable game at the end of the semester.  Even though the group is not that much larger, something that I had a bit of an issue adjusting to was the size of the group being five people rather than three (like it was in 377). This was not an issue that I had anticipated would affect things, but the reason that it makes development a bit more difficult is because it means that we as a team and I as a designer need to be all the more transparent and clear on communication. The way I communicate my ideas with two other people is not necessarily transferable to how I may communicate wit...