He Thinks He Can Design Things

The presentations are done and the wrap-kit is out to the Treadport clients. You know what that means... it's post-mortem time!

I have taken a break from playing games pretty much this whole week and have more thought about games that I want to make. How do they play? What is the player suppose to feel? How can I manipulate those feelings in the controls? I find it easier to thoughts on design into questions about game design and let my game idea revolve around that. It's something I picked up a few weeks ago and has just stuck with me.

While my design cap has been on this past week, things have been shifting around on Evenbloom with the rest of the team back in SLC. Uh-Oh!

So since the last time I checked in, we've been pushing forward on the project with some great graphical work. Cody managed to program grass to lay on top of the terrain and sort of blew us all away with having it sway in the wind as well. It's really cool looking and brings the world to life, which adds to the alternative aspect of the game where the patient can just roam the land and enjoy the environment that is unfolding in front of them. Because this feature isn't really a game in and of itself it has sort of snowballed into the problem of the week.

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!

This week my team and I begin production on our new game, and boy are things getting interesting. Our clients this round consist of Neuroworx - a physical therapy clinic and a professor from the University of Utah who is one of the many working on a new device for physical therapy - the treadport. You can read more about the treadport here, but the jist of it is that it is a experimental treadmill with a pole/arm and harness that simulates natural forces from walking outside that normal rehab devices cannot do. Oh, and it also has 3 8ftx 8ft screens to immerse the patient in a virtual world as they walk.

My first reaction? I get to make a game for this thing! Yes!