It has been one hell of a week. Also, an amazing week in development of Evenbloom. The team worked really hard in our first sprint and we had a pretty amazing and ridiculous. T'was amazing because we got all of the main functions of the game to work in a stable framework and ridiculous because as the player was literally painting a terrain whose texture was a tiled picture of a bunch of corgis snuggling in a blanket. Oh the hilarity!
For our next sprint, we want to expand on the basic mechanics by prettying them up a bit and also adding in the giants as well. Right now, they will probably be white-boxed or given a placeholder art model but seeing a figure roam the world will be quite cool to see in our next installment. Oh and we decided to up the challenge to the player by having the giants constantly patrol the dark areas of the game world rather than just sleep -waiting for the player to approach. We realized their was no incentive for the player to go near them. Why poke the sleeping giant, right?
In addition to the giants mechanic, we are going to explore some graphic aspects as well. The sun-timer mechanic is going to be worked on and one of the engineers wants to pursue the idea of having grass on top of the texture of the ground as well to immerse the player further. We are ahead of the production schedule in work hours, and this is supposed to be an Agile process, so why not?
As for me? I began modeling the terrain of the game world. Right now it consists of two hill areas which will be placed with lanterns (new game mechanic, I will elaborate in my next post!). Then a mountain, or bigger hill, which is complete with a ledge which the player will travel to at the end of the game to visually see the changes they have made to the world. I feel this is crucial to the win-condition as it will be aesthetically pleasing and provide a real reward for the patient playing the game. I can see someone playing the game for the first time and trying to get 100% completion but instead they only achieved 60%. Seeing that first hand could inspire them to "get it next time".
It turns out Maya is an intuitive program and you can get the hang of it quickly if you put in the time. I went to an open information session with one of the TAs on campus who was more than helpful in showing me the ropes of the program. From there, I logged into DigitalTutors.com and have been doing a lot of those modules to familiarize myself with the art of 3D modeling. At the end of the day, its my job to make sure that things are completed for the game properly and I feel this applies to my own work as well. I can't be excluded from the process just because I am the one conducting it. I feel as though I need to get in there and contribute to my team where they need me.
Sprint 3 is beginning in a couple of days and I'll definitely be covering it in two blog posts that week.
Until next time!
-Andrew
Round Two: Maya and Taking the Design Further
