He Thinks He Can Design Things

After an awesome award-winning excursion to Ubisoft MTL, I am finally back into the swing of things with The Co-Signers. The team has made some amazing progress on building the level that Chris, Jake, and I created a few weeks ago. Damean's art looks fantastic and we even have almost all of the features completed. But with our Alpha deadline and EAE day approaching, we are scambling to integrate all of the systems together. Will we make it!? Read ON!

So I just got back to Salt Lake City from a week+ stay in the Montreal/Boston area and I'm bringing back the first trophy for the EAE program in the form of a Ubisoft award for Best Creativity and Best Use of Theme for the Game Lab competition. Look at it in all of its glory! So how did it go at the award ceremony? I'll tell you..Read ON!

Earlier this week, the Reveal team and I presented..err..Reveal! It went fantastically and we met a lot of talented students from Canada and employees from Ubisoft. We stayed up until 4 AM re-working the presentation due to the stellar games and performances of the teams on day 1 (we were on day 2). Yes, we gave our presentation with only 4 hours of sleep but it went really well! Also, in case you aren't following them yet, Ubisoft Monteal tweeted this picture of (mostly) the team from Reveal. We missed you Nik and Max!

The first ever EAE submission into the Ubisoft Game Lab competition is complete, compiled and good to go. We are leaving in a few hours and before that happens, I'll have you take a gander of the game in action. Keep in mind that this is a prototype!

GDC - the Game Developer's Conference is something that I have always dreamed of going to since seeing a Microsoft event online in my bedroom computer back in 2001. I mean this is the place where all of my idols assemble and discuss the state of the industry and I just got back from that very same event. Want to know how good my experience was? Read ON!

Today was supposed to be a great day. The Co-Signers team met this morning to discuss the short amount of time we have to get to Alpha (end of the semester on May 3rd). That's not a lot of time for a 2-player asymmetrical couch co-op game. However, we got MASSIVELY roadblocked today... Want to know why? READ ON.

I just finished a Skype meeting with the whole team and they have come up with some great ideas from their new brain storm. I'm sure you are super excited to see what they've come up with and so... Read ON!

So I'm writing this from my hometown, on the outskirts of Boston after a massive change in my personal life. It has been one strange and life-changing week for me to say the least but some great things have been going on back in Salt Lake City with The Co-Signers. What are they? Read ON!

After torturing us for about an hour, we finally received the decision on which games are going through to full production. The Co-Signers  is officially in full production and I could not be more proud of my team. All of us worked so very hard on every step of this prototype's development and each person was incredibly motivated to build the best game possible. As I've said in previous posts, although The Co-Signers is sort of my brain child - it is not my game anymore. It is my team's game - Team Hack n' Hide. I look forward to seeing what the future has in store for this game: including what new faces will be joining us from the team's that were not selected. My main hope is for new people to join the team and make this game their own as well.

All next week the team will be brainstorming a few new features. I will not be there, unfortunately, because I have some personal matters to attend to back home during Spring Break. Do not fret though! I shall be calling in via Skype to hear all of the new team's feedback on the prototype and idea on moving forward. Truly exciting stuff going on!

Still waiting on the whole, "which game gets picked" thing from the faculty. In the meantime, I figured that I would post this awesome video that Chris put together which shows prototype gameplay of The Co-Signers within the respective platforms we are going to launch on. Pretty sweet stuff, we're super excited for the decision tomorrow!

The pitch is officially complete and I could not feel more relieved. It went fantastically! Zac and I killed it in our roles of the Point-Man and the Hacker. Our pacing was great, our videos played perfectly, and our demo went over really well with the crowd. We did have one hiccup though... Read ON!

Co-Signers team members A.J Dimick, Chris Rawson, and I worked together on making an intro which sets the mood for what our thesis game is all about. I worked on making the content of the video including the script and pre-vision work. Chris created the video within After Effects and A.J did the amazing sound work for it.

We are down to just a few hours now until the industry panel and it is stressful to say the least for all of us in the cohort. Tonight a bunch of the producers set up the room for our presentations and where the professionals were going to sit. We figured that it is best done the night before so any craziness that might occur with our builds and such during the next day would be a bit more manageable. I hope we are right. As for team Hack'n Hide, we just finished working on our pitch as a team. Yes, I know it's 11:45 PM. Read ON!

Jason T and I met up this weekend for a few hours to discuss the future of our Ubisoft Game Lab project. After getting some feedback from Ubisoft, faculty, fellow students, and some industry pros in the area - we decided to take the game into a new direction. A direction that makes more sense creatively, functionally, and one that we can build. Read ON!

As you can tell from the title and this photo, Team Hack N' Hide gathered a few classmates from our cohort and let them play the new build of our game. Things went pretty well! What did we learn? You'll just have to READ ON to find out...

Whew! It has been quite a week working on the thesis game. We made a lot of headway with the project and I think we are ready to go into full-on engineering phase, building the prototype. Oh and there is also concept art as well! Want to see it? Read on!

I battled with this for quite some time now. In the beginning, this game was about breaking a loved one out of prison, then it changed to somewhat of a heist game. Neither one of those ideas is a great hook for a student game though. Both of them are still in the ranged of AAA titles which is something that this project does not want to exactly be. After all, this is the opportunity for this team to make a game that we all care about. In previous meetings, I had everyone think about what they would want to steal in the current world. Read ON!

We got feedback on the design document! Overall, they are most concerned about scope with our game. In particular, they mentioned that combat may prove to be very difficult to build. Jason and I (designers on the game) thought this would be their reaction to our design document. We shall not fret though! He and I are meeting this coming weekend to look at reducing the scope of the game and finding the fun fast. 

Today was the deadline for our cohort to choose what games they want to work on and form teams. After a weekend of intrigue, the games have been chosen and teams are assembled. There are four games being prototyped right now. What are they? Read ON!

We did it! We just sent the design document to Ubisoft for our submission into the Game Labs competition. Just the like title, the name of our game is Reveal. Read on to find out some more about it.