Post 17 - The Real Ghostbusters

The Real Ghostbusters

Physics, physics everywhere

The final week and showing off of our prototypes. We have our background art complete, thanks to Nathan for his great imagery, because I feel it really represents our game's feel.

The image shows a man relaxed in a lawn chair, wearing bunny slippers, and holding a rocket launcher. I think this shows our games playfullness, but relaxed nature. I think it is great!

The game doesn't feel perfect, but it does feel fun. We received great feedback on the idea that our game could be played purely without direct interaction. More like, setting a mouse trap and watching to see what happens. An interesting idea for future game iterations.

Similarities

I found that all of our games had some interesting similarities. One game had you playing as the ghost, hunting down these people adventuring through the level looking for you. You could freeze them in place, and then would have to run if you were spotted, because your energy would run out.

The other had this little paper character, which looked a lot like Sack-Boy, that could push enemies away, as well as propel itself upward from the ground. The game focused on pushing enemies off of platforms, while you attempt to stay on them. Propelling yourself upwards allowed you to reach higher locations, and prevent yourself from falling off.

I felt that both games had this fixation on enemies, while ours was more like a plague prevention. Our game had goo (Goobles), one had pushing spawning stapler removers and giant paper monsters away from you, while the other had you take on the role of the ghost and survive.

I feel that if all of our games came together, it might be something similar to Ghostbusters. Sounds like a good outcome to me.

Semester Thoughts

In these last few weeks, I have realized that we have a lot to learn in our field, but we have so much potential with differing opinions and ideas on multiple topics. This will allow us to really reach out for different game ideas, focus points, and will allow us to grow.

Our last group, in particular, showed to me that we could work on communication (positive/negative feedback), as well as realize a timeline. I think we did great work, but I don't feel we had a head engineer, and we could have used one.

That being said, I know personally I have a lot of programming knowledge to learn, and I can do this from these people in the cohort.

I want to say, that I believe everyone did a wonderful job in the program. Let's see where it takes us.

Post 16 - Next Step In Evolution

Next Step In Evolution

How do we destroy it?

With major limitations in function and scale, the team was split up into several groups. We have three producers focusing on time management, scrum process, and other tasks of general help. We have three engineers focusing on camera movement, weapon implementation, user interface, and general play. Finally, we have three engineers focusing purely on level design. I was one of the members that focused on level design.

The base idea of our game had goo falling through the level, so I thought it might be interesting to mix it up. I suggested to Chris Rawson that we have a level that forces the goo horizontally, while gravity still affects it's vertical movement. The goo will have to fill into a bucket at the end of the stage, instead of directly at the bottom. We focused on the use of force generators, to push the goo to the right. We have an entire level mocked up and are waiting to implement its use.

Is it our enemy?

The current hurdle we have now is time. We are spread too thin on multiple tasks, while the end of the semester is here, and we don't have as much time to focus on the game. This is normal for most projects, but with group members being gone for vacations, and communication not being perfect, we are doing our best. We have so much time removed for the open house, we have basically lost two days of work at the school. We will have to make it work.

Everything will be done by next week for presentations. I am excited to have everyone play our game and to see what the others have developed.