Hello Whale

In an attempt to organize my team and force have them post their progress this first week of the project, I realized that we did this sort of backwards.

In the words of Jonathan: This week we formulated a project proposal, and finally narrowed down the name of our game though it will definitely change. We also met in person (almost all of us) for the first time since forming the group and had a lovely heart to heart conversation to make sure communication was open and we were all together moving forward.

And well. Here is our semi-fleshed out Gantt chart.

Our Gantt chart currently has the major milestones that are common to most game development cycles. Included is also our production cycles.

At the beginning of each cycle, the tasks for the entire cycle or two are released. Within each cycle is a sprint where the team works on tasks they specify deadlines for. We will be reviewing our progress after the first week of the sprint and debrief at the end of a sprint. We then repeat for the second sprint! In documenting the cycles, we were able to better see how many times we'll be able to review our progress along side the milestones.

Anna Nguyen

Whale Mary

This week we formulated a project proposal, and finally narrowed down the name of our game though it will definitely change. We also met in person (almost all of us) for the first time since forming the group and had a lovely heart to heart conversation to make sure communication was open and we were all together moving forward.

Accomplishments

I didn't do much until the end of the week, I reviewed Henderson's work and helped schedule a meeting for tomorrow to add in story elements that inform art design. 

WIP

(none)

Next Steps

Improving our project proposal and making sure our GDD reflects the current state of the game. There have been some changes the design team made over a month ago that people are just finding out now (our bad guys). I will also make sure that the appropriate concept are is complete to allow for the rest of the pipeline to fire up.

Debrief

I had a seminar this weekend which took up a huge amount of time and energy but has given me tons of motivation and momentum moving into this coming week and this project as a whole. I forsee some issues coming up with regards to marketing the game and polishing gameplay. I want to commend the stellar performance everyone who attended the round-table discussion had, not only did you all show up and actively listen and want to work with and hear from one another, but you did so with a surprising amount of honesty and consideration. For those who didn't show up, it was a great time and is indicative of many similar talks in the future which I hope you'll be able to make. As for progress, we need a kick in the pants but I think we all recognize this.

Jonathan

Paper please??

Accomplishments

• Went through game design and mechanics with Cory in order to hash out a paper/board game version of our game
• Attended meetings with my group.
• Talked about the art direction
• Met with our advisor, Stefan, and went through the process of the game in words with my team members (Had trouble explaining the game which allow us to know what we should work on)

Works In Progress

We are still at the early stage of developing this board game. Cory and I went through the mechanics, jotted down things for the game and did a bit of testing on the white board. We are planning to have a print out version done by Wednesday.

Next Steps

• Finish up the first version of the board game with Cory and Jon by Wednesday
• Show it to Stefan on the meeting at Wednesday
• Research/Improve rigging skills
• Write a documentation for exporting animations from Maya to Unity3D
• Improve on the board game if needed

Issues

• Ran into game mechanic issues when making the board game
• Not sure about how we are going to implement the resources to the games
• Solution: We disregarded resources for now
• How to convert real time gameplay into a turn based gameplay
• Solution: We decided to go for a traditional style where one player goes first with placing all the moves he/she can do for that specific turn and then the other player goes next and the turns repeat.
• How far can towers be placed and how far can units walk
• Solution: We set the towers can be placed 3 units from the Gygan at max. Units can move at a pace of 3 units at a time.
• How to have paths drawn without the opponent see each other's path
• Solution 1: Have a mini map for each player that is similar to the main map. Players will draw their paths on the mini map and prevent their opponent from seeing the mini map. Players will then move their units accordingly to what they have on their mini map.
• Solution 2: Have the players just move the units to where ever they want each turn.
• Need to talk with Jon to get a better sense of the gameplay to fully have the board game be exactly how we want it to be

Last Minute Comments

I feel that things are going nicely. There are still quite a lot of questions that needs to be answered from meeting with Stefan and from out meetings among ourselves as a team. The scope of our game is large but I am confident that we will be able to reach our goals. 

Kai-Lin Chuang

Whaling it up

This week everyone from the team came back from co-op. Now that we are all back on campus, we began to finalize details relating to our production cycle, the game, etc. We're ramping things up with the intention of creating assets next week.

Producing Things

• Create asset list (2 hour)
• Create blog and post template (1 hour)
• Create Gantt chart in Google Sheets (1 hour) 
• Create Google Account for Whale House and reorganized files (1 hour)
• Finalized details of production cycle and disseminate information to team (1 hour)
• Scheduled meeting with advisor Stefan Rank
• Set up notifications to post reminders to Facebook about weekly events
• Established team expectations through a heart to heart meeting (2 hours)

Proof of Progress

Foreseeing the Future

• Read NGUI Documentation
• Fix the notification script as it stopped emailing when deadlines were approaching
• Start developing website for the game/our studio
• Find a sound designer

Some Other Comments

The biggest issue I experienced was our progress in developing the game slowing down as co-op came to an end. We were all moving back on campus and had other priorities. I fixed this by drafting up several documents, such as the asset list, questions for specific team members, etc.

Another pressing issue was establishing team expectations and goals. Some members of the team were not being hold accountable towards their work. Therefore, some team members were taking on and completing higher volumes of work compared to the rest of the team. We held a late-night heart to heart meeting to clarify the team expectations. We are all on the same page now!

As I'm planning out the next year for our project, the team is becoming concerned about the scope of our project. The game has a high minimum amount of assets we need to make. I need to develop back up plans to address roadblocks in our production cycles.

I'm really excited about our project! Everyone on the team is showing great initiative. Stefan, our advisor, also asks us great questions about our game that we cannot answer. Our marketing person will also be interviewed during our next weekly meeting. Maybe I'll bake cookies for our next meeting!

Anna Nguyen

Only week 1?!

It's been a while since I've been in classes and this week has been hectic. Although, I am having a lot of fun with senior project so far. It seems somewhat challenging.

Finish Line

• Finished the first phase of concept art for the gygan, Augher. (3 Hrs)
• Researching different styles as well as looks for the Gygans (2 Hrs)
• Assigning deadlines for task for the next few weeks (1 Hr)
• Met up with our SPROG advisor

Progress

• Links for Augher Concept Art:
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRT3JGbDBCNzBTMUk/edit?usp=sharing
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRa09xWExpVGc2d0k/edit?usp=sharing
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRdUxRcXdtdGZySWs/edit?usp=sharing

Battle Plan

• Finalize a backstory for the Gygans in order to have a more clear idea for concepting
• Do the second and third phase of concept art for Augher
• Orthograpics for Augher
• Begin the concepts for Augher's spawns and towers

Damage Control

• Issues:
• trouble designing a character without enough backstory
• creating a character without much of a purpose. 
• Solutions:
• finish the backstory before going back to designing the characters more. 
• involving game play into the creation of the characters.
• Possible issues in the future:
• Making sure characters look like they're from the same universe since we have different artist working on different characters.
• Story is something we need to get done as soon as possible as it is critical in the character designing process.

-Henderson

It's been a slow first week, but this was required...

We met with our advisor and were asked questions on what makes our game unique. That path drawing was a start, but for Stefan, it wasn't enough. He wanted us to make a paper version of our game so that we can see how our game would play from start to finish to see how someone would play the game. The concept art team also worked on phase 1 for two of our Gygans and we decided that we need to come up with back story in order to justify why each character would look the way they do. Not to sound contradicting, but I feel this slight step back will actually make us move forward much quicker and am happy that this has been decided week 1 as opposed to week 3 or 4.

What I Did

• Assigned tasks for myself
• Decided to take on exploring the Particle Playground asset in Unity

What I'm Working On

• Creating a detailed guide on UVing in Maya 2015
• Reasearching/creating a detailed guide on texturing batching
• Exploring the particle system in Unity

Next Steps

Once the orthographs are finalized I will start modeling the creatures that I have assigned myself on the task list.

Debriefs Not Deboxers

When I started this week I was worried that since there was a lack of orthographs to be used for modeling that I would not have any real tasks to do. Thanks to Anna and her awesome suggestions I now have awesome research tasks that I am going to be doing over the next couple of weeks, and am really excited to start working on it.

Miguel

Concept Art Beginnings

Settling back into the class schedule from co-op and getting situated with the new term, I only completed sketching out a few designs for this week though I wanted to do more. I also was concerned with timely feedback and trying to design with gameplay and backstory still up in the air.

Our team met about 3 times for long meetings in which we discussed several topics such as finalizing the team, our expectations, and trying to work out some of the gameplay and backstory issues. We also met with our advisor for the first time.

For the next few upcoming weeks, we are planning to pump out concept art in order to start progress on moving along the asset creation pipeline.

Accomplishments

• Sketched concept art of Kail gygan and potential tower designs (4 Hours)
• Assigned tasks to self for the whole fall term (1 Hour)

WIP

Concept Art Phase 1 for Kail

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRRkRRYnY0dXV5Slk/edit?usp=sharing
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRd2xCT2VzellNeFU/edit?usp=sharing
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqRRE83UVZETlpOTnM/edit?usp=sharing

Concept Art for Kail Tower

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hGqy6-ONqReFVIOUdpTTJhVTA/edit?usp=sharing

Next Steps

• Complete concept art phase 1 and phase 2 for the following assets:
• Kail
• Kail Spawn
• Kail Tower 2
• Kail Tower 2 Spawn.
• Contribute on solidifying backstory and style sheet.

Debrief

With two concept artists and a backstory that has not been solidified, our designs for the gygans are still very unique from each other. The large difference in design is cause for concern over conveying a cohesive art style and displaying that are gygans are beings of the same species but also have some distinctive differentiating traits. Concerning the design of the gygans, we also ran into the issue of considering the gameplay into the design when the the gameplay has not quite been solidified either. 

After a meeting with the majority of the team, most of the concept artists' questions concerning gameplay have been answered and can start being working into our second phase of concept art for the gygans. We will also just have a meeting of the concept artists and Jon Ahnert who has taken charge of the creative inspiration to resolve the issue of a vague backstory and developing a detailed style sheet.

Anna also is really on top of creating helpful documentation to help track progress and allow for efficient team communication. She even created a task list to complete for the whole term that each art team member divvied up the responsibilities for and will use to continue on check up and deadlines. 

Desiree Ann Lim