Post 20 - Close Call

We did it again...With lots of struggle.

We culled our five game ideas down to three.

Game Idea                               Title
Physics/Blink Game -          "Blink" 
Garbage Game -                   "Wasteland"
Sight Game -                        "Out of Sight Out of Mind"

At which point we expanded, discussed gameplay ideas, concerns about iteration, and confusion we had about these choices.

And that's where the trouble happened.

Then we had to get rid of one idea from the previous list, and make sure we were all okay with it. We rewrote all of our game documents as smaller groups of the whole team. The professors were then going to read over the documents and give us feedback.

 We had some reduced time in our meeting with the professors, due to other great EAE news on campus. But, it didn't help the decision making.

The professors gave us little feedback other than, "I think the Wasteland game is the weakest idea."

When it finally got down to the point we had to remove a game we tried to decide what game we were all in agreement on. I was very concerned about Blink. I really love the idea mechanically, but I have no investment in the game when it comes to design and thesis. I was honest with the group about it, and as we were discussing it, it was decided to be safe from removal.

Now to remove one from either Wasteland or Out of Sight Out of Mind. Out of Sight Out of Mind was my game pitch.

We could not come to an agreement on which game to remove from our prototypes. The professor's suggested making three prototypes, but we knew that was a bad idea with our limited numbers.

So, it finally came down to a vote. 7-6, Wasteland. Out of Sight Out of Mind has been removed.

I am throwing myself behind the Wasteland discussion, but I am honestly hurt to see my game go.

Onward and upward. Besides, I can always build it as a side project.

We have our prototypes due in one week, and we are starting this weekend. We are working on the objects that are interact-able as well as the character movement and control scheme.

Post 19 - Synergy

We have done it.

We were able to cull 100 great game ideas down to five!

We first developed 100 great game ideas last week. This process was pitched to our teams as an idea of coming up with candidates for the upcoming IGF competition. We had game ideas change, morph, mix together, and thrown in the garbage.

We quickly learned that we had to ban together to form our idea into a group effort, rather than have one person pitch their game idea. The mixing of mechanics, emotions, visuals, and edgy ideas allowed us to come up with games that would fit into the form that works for IGF games.

Then, we had to kill off many of these ideas. We had to separate our ideas down to five total. We first separated it down to 32. Then down to 20. Then 15. Then 6.

This is where I believe our team had troubles. We had to deal with a major time constraint in the day, as well as with our idea being fairly discussed. We finally removed the Portal Tower Defense game. I am concerned that some of our team is very hurt over the loss of this game. We will make it through, but it is going to make sure we can keep everything fresh, fun, and not personal.

The five games we narrowed it down to were:

Game Idea                               Title
Outcast Game -                    "Ousted Outcast"
Physics/Blink Game -          "Blink"
Grinding Game -                  "The Grind"
Garbage Game -                   "Wasteland"
Sight Game -                        "Out of Sight Out of Mind"

These previous games all dealt with an interesting game mechanic, or emotional idea. We decided that the person who had the original game idea should give the pitch, or at least head the game document creation. We had to agree on this quickly, and lacked good communication via Facebook, as was decided initially.

I honestly felt like I received useful feedback from maybe three team members, but only received actual help on the document from two people. This was stressful, and I let everyone know that I didn't appreciate it.

Aside from this, I believe our pitches for our games were good. Some felt more prepared than others. My idea was off the cuff, but it felt like a good pitch idea. It allowed the audience to view the game in their mind.

I received great feedback from Roger Altizer and Jose Zagal regarding my pitch, as well as the groups' pitches as well. We need to have our pitches feel like a team creation and collaboration, rather than a single person's idea being pitched. I am going to discuss this with the full team on Tuesday (1-21-2014) of next week.

I am not discussing other groups' ideas, because I cannot remember all of them. I will discuss them further when we move farther into the semester.

I know I learned a lot, and I look forward to the coming weeks. Let's do it.

Post 18 - New Start

The semester begins today!

A new group of people, who all seem fantastic!

We are all now working on our thesis game projects. More posts to come this week. Here we go!

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.

Post 15 - Real Goo

Realistic Goo

What makes it goo?

With limited discussion with the artist about animation and how the blob will look when it moves, we worked on a semi-phyics driven fluid model for the goo. The goo contains multiple spheres that interact with one another representing a fluid. They will break apart from one another when given enough force and will join back together when close together.

This caused a discussion that had our artist requesting us to remove the living blob, and the laughter idea. I believe they would like to keep the idea for a future project, and I completely understand.

So, now we are currently iterating on level builds, traps, environment conditions, etc. Weird stuff will occur.

Smaller Bits

With our focus on different interactions with the goo/level design, we are going to incorporate multiple ideas all at once. This will be interesting, but I see some major challenges leading into next week.

We may have more hurdles to overcome than we were expecting.

Post 14 - Creation from Goo

Creation from Goo

Slimy

We found that we have been split into three groups, rather than seven, as per usual. Our group consists of one artist, three producers, and six engineers. Crazy!

We were tasked with creating a game that is "Indie". What does this mean? We determine this to mean that our game shouldn't have standard tropes, and will need to do something different in the game.

We discussed ideas of guiding objects through puzzles, or using a character that laughs to taunt our enemy (Note, this does not cover nearly all of the topics we discussed), and we finally landed on this blob of good who might slide down the level, from top to bottom. Our objective is to split this blob of goo into smaller pieces, until it is small enough to be destroyed.

Changing Colors

What differences can the game contain? You can fire at the blobs of goo with a projectile (rocket, bullet, etc), place bombs in the level to blow it into smaller pieces, sticky tape to slow it's progress down or even stop smaller pieces of goo from moving.

This is our next step of creation and iteration. Onward!