CAGD 470 - Sprint Blog 1
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 with four people, because it might be harder to understand what my ideas mean when there are so many smaller things that each role needs to manage.
Although I entered this class with far more preparation than 377, having a completed Game Design Document as well as a written and revised Treatment for my concept, the scope of the game is larger and therefore the foundational mechanics that the game lies upon need to be as close as possible to what I envisioned in order for the rest of the game to be engaging.
The work that I completed was primarily centered around creating a paper prototype, making sure it was functional, and getting playtests for it. This was somewhat of a slightly new experience, not because I have not made a paper prototype before–which I have, many times now–but because it was not something demanded by the class. That meant that the manner in which I approached creating the prototype and testing for it was slightly different. I placed a major emphasis on making sure that the mechanics made sense and were balanced. Normally, when I make paper prototypes, I am only focused on whether the game is fun, but I wanted to make sure that the mechanics functioned well because the game would be much more difficult to develop and subsequently much harder to understand as a player if I was not able to reduce the mechanics down to a simple system.
Fortunately, The prototype and playtests went fairly well. Alongside the playtesters being fully engaged and enjoying themselves to a great extent, I was able to figure out what was difficult about the mechanics and what was the best way to alleviate some of that tension. The map and the range of the enemies is what made the game difficult–once I adjusted the range of the enemies, it became much easier for the Vampire player while still providing a challenge in the form of Humans having the advantage in terms of numbers and time.
The work that I was unable to get to during this sprint was mainly focused on the digital prototype. More specifically, I was not able to spend time creating concept art for some of the models that my modeler, Carl, would be making. I will still be making the art, however, because Carl wanted to make different variations of the enemies for visual clarity for the player, and it would be much more helpful for the overall aesthetic if he and I shared a vision on what I want the game to look like.
Other than that, I also created mockups of different level tiles that will be used in the level generation system on the digital version of the game. The game is meant to have uniquely generated levels, and the method by which we are carrying that out is to have “tiles” that generate in a random order that form a level. While Heath, one of my programmers, made that generation system, I was in charge of beginning to design the level tiles so that the tiles would fit together and create maze-like levels that offer a lot of replayability.
Comments
Post a Comment