Overview
It was a very busy week for the team with our halves presentation and the completion of our first full build of the game. We spent the majority of the week together working on our presentation on Friday, Oct. 14th. Around the middle of the week, the first fully playable build of the game was completed. In this build you can play through the game from start to finish, this is more of an Alpha build of the game. Work has also continued on the environment for the game. We also have a proof of pipeline for the character art which includes a working rig for our character models.
First Full Build
This week we finished the first playable build of the game. This means it is playable from start to finish. While there is still a ton of work to do on the game, this represents an important milestone for the team and includes much of the work we’ve done so far contained into a single experience. Going forward we plan to focus playtesting on the full experience of the game.
To see the game in action please visit the Future Forger’s media page, just scroll down to the bottom of the page. Please note that this gameplay video does not reflect the current build but is instead comprised of some gameplay sections completed before the full Alpha build was completed. The art is also still very much WIP and does not reflect the final product. (Note: This video has now been replaced by a short summary video)
Art
Character Art
Another major milestone was reached this week in terms of the game’s characters. Yukti finished the bipedal rig for our characters and created a proof of pipeline animation to show the rig in action. Check out the video below and please note that this animation is meant for demonstration purposes and is not meant to reflect the final animations in the game.
Environment Art
Both Hagan and Danny have been hard at work on the environmental assets for the game. This week they did a lot of UV unwrapping, began texturing, added some simple materials to the environment, and adjusted the various skyboxes in the game. Take a look at some of the images below.
Halves Presentations
On Friday we had our Halves presentation. The purpose of this is to show the work we’ve done so far, give the rationale behind our decisions and show our plans for the future. Over the course of the week, we practiced and iterated on our presentation and slide deck with various faculty members. This was invaluable to our presentation in that it really helped us hone in on what was important to convey to the faculty. We have a large game and a lot to cover so we broke our presentation into sections based on each “department” (art, story, gameplay etc.) and tied each to tactics from the IGDA Environmental Game Design Playbook. This helped give meaning to our choices and gave an overall structure to our talking points. While we haven’t gotten our feedback from the faculty just yet, we are expecting to when we return from fall break next week. If you are interested please take a look at our presentation below.
After Break
Next week we have our fall break so there won’t be a blog post. We will return for regular posts on the 28th of October. Meanwhile here are some plans we have as we return on the 24th.
- Begin playtesting the full game at ETC Playtest Day on the 29th
- Build a new timeline for the rest of the semester
- Meet with faculty members and assess halves feedback
- Fully integrate FMOD for sound
- Create “Elevator Pitch” Video for the website