PHASE 4
Friday, November 29th - Friday, January 10th
In this last phase, we are to play and prototype our project, all while putting together the Game Project Proposal and some form of Game Design Document.
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As a team, we have decided that we need to focus on the gameplay design, since that is the most important thing in our project. Before polishing it, we need to make sure the experience is what we want it to be, and meets our audience's needs. We are also about to start writing the final GPP, each of us adding elements to it.
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During our team meeting today, we decided it was time to choose the roles that we will have in the second semester. This will make it more clear for us and we will know what we are supposed to do:
Rylan: lead designer and sound designer, since he has the most knowledge about music, and the game is heavily based on this
Daryl: art director and animator, as his skills recommend him for the roles
Andreea: programmer and UX designer. I want to improve on my Unity skills, and developing and testing will allow me to also focus on the user experience
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We have decided that starting from now, we can do more individual work, each of us starting to assume our roles. So, there won't be as many team meetings in the next few weeks.
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With that being said and done, I want to start thinking about prototyping, which is a big part, considering our idea and the uniqueness of our project. I am a bit scared about this, as rapid prototyping is not something I'm really good at, since I'm still learning Unity. I plan on taking it day by day, planning what I need to do and asking for help and advice before wasting hours thinking I can do it by myself.
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To help make sure we all have access to the documents we need, we set up a Gmail address and a Google Drive. We can now share our work here and make sure we don't lose it, as well as allow each other to see and use assets/whatever we need.
Sunday, December 1st
Today I decided to have a quick look at the games that were mentioned during out presentation feedback on Friday (see Feedback Games Research). I can see why they were mentioned. All three of them are unique in their own way and there are plenty of things we can take from them. From Speedrunners, it's interesting to see how they dealt with the second player being left behind, what happens to them in that case and what happens with the screen, and this was one of the questions we were thinking about when we came up with the game idea. Do we want the players to have a single screen, or have a split screen, etc. Form the second game, it is interesting to see how they combined two different game genres and how they work together. The third game is very similar to ours in terms of art style and protagonist's character. There are things we can learn from each game.
Monday, December 2nd
In the next few days, I want to start prototyping for our chosen Game Idea: the musical instrument (see Game Idea no. 5). I want to start researching how I need to do stuff, think about the best way to do it, and quickly prototype. My only issue is I don't know how quick I can prototype, considering that I'm still learning Unity.
Also, I will be missing the end of this week due to the fact that I'm taking a trip to Stockholm. I talked to Jasmine Idun Isdrake and she recommended some museums and places to go, related to Games Design, so that will hopefully make up for the time lost and not spent working on the project.
Tuesday, December 3rd
Yesterday and today I only managed to get a bit done for the prototype. Yesterday I felt more productive, since I actually got something working in Unity, but today I spent more time researching and trying to figure out what we need for the combo system and how to go about the whole system (see Final Game Idea Prototype 1.x). I don't think I wasted the time though, since now I know what I'm supposed to do and how (at least theoretically, I'll see how I can translate form English to C# later).
Monday, December 9th
Today, Rylan and I had a discussion and went over what he's done over the last few days, while I was away. He told me how the team's meeting with Adam went, and that the conclusion was to come up with modes of playing, after which we need to pick one. To do this, we need research in music and parkour. Since Rylan had already started researching experimental music, I said I will research parkour movements and see what I can find, since I know almost nothing about this subject.
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Due to the fact that we need to know the rules of the game first, as James said, we will need to do the research first, before I will be able to prototype. This means I have a bit less responsibility on my shoulders, at least until I have what to code in Unity. So, I will also start working on the Project Proposal Document.
There's not much else we need to do for this week. At the beginning of last week, we thought we have to start prototyping immediately, but there's no point in that before we have the rules of the game, so this is what we will be working on for now.
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Today I also looked into parkour (see Parkour Research). If there is one thing clear to me, is the fact that we will need obstacles to do parkour, so I'm not quite sure how that will work with the first player, which supposedly has nothing in front of him, will do parkour. We will need to address this issue. One solution might be floor exercises from gymnastics, but I will need to talk to the guys for that.
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Wednesday, December 11th
Today and yesterday I decided to work on the Game Project Proposal, so I did some research for the User Experience part (see Target Audience Research and Competitive Analysis Research). Having studied these topics, I was able to create some audience profiles with what kind of people would play our game and why. I don't think that narrowing the audience down to a certain age and gender would help us in better designing the game, so these profiles seemed the right way to help us keep on track with our work and initial intent of the game. The Competitive Analysis research helped in two ways: the first one, it gave me some ideas to enhance the quality of the user experience, and it also helped me identify the unique selling points of our game (see User Experience in Game Project Proposal Document).
Wednesday, January 8th
Today we had a team meeting to see where we are at, and to make sure we are prepared for the presentation that will take place on Friday. We will present the GPP along with a Powerpoint presentation to clearly show our game idea and what we have so far for it.
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During the Christmas holiday I confirmed to myself that I cannot work while I'm home in Romania. Both the atmosphere and the resources available are not suitable for a work environment. I managed to get most of the GPP done, however, and to catch up with my blog. But not much more than that. I am glad that I got to spend some time with my family, after being apart for 6 months.
Friday, January 10th
Today we had our final presentations for semester 1. I must say that we came a long way, and from the first presentation where I was freaking out before because I was nervous, today I felt much more confident to present. It might be because it was a group presentation, but I also feel much better about my skills and my presentation content. Who would have thought that being forced to give presentation would help haha.
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To ensure we are prepared for the next semester, today we sat down and listed the things that we will need to develop in the second semester. We had a look at the timetable and we made a rough schedule based on that. We have 8 weeks before Easter Holiday. This doesn't seem like a lot of time, so we need to make sure we are always on track. Adopting and Agile design development technique will make sure we have enough flexibility but are also on track with the whole semester. We have also made a Gannt Chart (see Gantt Chart) to better visualise the semester and keep ourselves on track. Because of the nature of our game, we will need to play test a lot. This is why we want to have a playtest every two weeks. Two weeks seems to be a fair amount of time for me to analyse the feedback from the previous prototype and develop something new.
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For my part of the schedule, I decided to identify the most important parts that need to be developed and tested first, in order to have a good foundation for the game:
2 players input + catching
spacing system
dropping obstacles
overcome obstacles in different ways
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I will focus in these in the first few weeks, and depending on how the development goes, I will start adding more tasks along the way.
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We had a good day, and we got some feedback from our peers for the GPP and the presentation. I looked through it and I made sure our GPP and blog answers the questions that people had, which maybe we didn't touch during the presentation (see Phase 4 Presentation Feedback reflection).
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We also decided to create an Instagram account, so that we start promoting our game. We want to showcase our development here: @impro.exe. Until now, we haven't really focused on the promotion of our game, because we wanted to make sure we have the foundation of the game down before going towards promotion, so that we now have what to promote. We also haven't focused on the branding due to the same reason. We know that a product must provide quality before it looks good. We will focus on these aspects in the second semester.
