Overview
This week was mostly a work week for the team with only one meeting happening outside of our normal faculty instructor meeting. At the beginning of the week, we created a Google Slide clickthrough of our game’s story and tested the opening emotional onboarding section of the story on Tuesday at Hunt Library. Faris has continued work on the programming side and is working on the 2030 chapter of our game where the player is asked to complete a short puzzle, the plan is to have that section of the game done this coming week so we can start putting together the rest of the experience. We did a graphical stress test within the Unity engine using our shader. Yukti is continuing work on rigging, she is currently at work coding in Python to help with the creation of controls for the character rigs. On the environment art front, the majority of essential and high priority models have been made, as well as a new whitebox of our environment. Next week they will be beginning to UV unwrap the models. Amber has done a full new pass of the story that includes changes based on feedback from the playtest and team. On Friday we met with Dave Cuylba to talk about the design and production of our game. Finally, our poster and half-sheet for our team are done!
Poster and Half-Sheet
Amber completed the poster and the Half-Sheet for our project. Take a look!
Story
Early this week we tested the opening story moments of our game with a few students at Hunt Library on CMU’s campus. This section of the game is meant to setup the structure of the story as well emotionally onboard the player into the experience. In this section of the game the player, as Mirri, will be able to voice their own opinions about the climate and one’s individual impact. They will then get unique responses from Asha, Mirri’s mother. You can play the clickthrough we tested here. Keep in mind that this is a very early WIP and changes have already been made.
Big takeaways from the plates were that people started to feel like they lost agency and a little interest in chapter 2.2.7, a part of the clickthrough where Asha is explaining to Mirri what she could do to make a difference. Some adjustments that could be made would be to add more interaction and characterization to this moment. They liked and agreed with the info given by Asha to the player but not how she was delivering it or how they were unable to interact with it. However the testers, all felt that the choices they were able to make reflected what they actually thought.
Next week we are hoping to test another version of our story complete with storyboards. We also hope to incorporate some of the changes Amber made to the script as well.
Art
Character Art
Yukti has been hard at work this week rigging the characters. She has been working in Python to create a system that will automatically create controls for the character rigs to be used in animation. She has also been working on the clothing and hair for Asha, one of our main NPCs.
Environment Art
The environment artists completed another iteration of our environment whitebox. Take a sneak peek at a few screenshots. They are broken up by chapter/year in the game.
Rooftop – 2015
Rooftop – 2030
Rooftop – 2045
They have also completed all of the essential and high-priority assets needed for the game. The next step is UV unwrapping. Next week they will also be doing foliage blockouts as well as making the sky box and models for the buildings in the city.
Gameplay
On the programming/gameplay side of things, Faris is hard at work creating the first version of the playable chapter in our game that is set in 2030 and includes the agrivoltaic puzzle gameplay. We play to have a build of this ready to playtest on Tuesday. Since this is the most programming and gameplay-heavy section of the game we decided to prioritize it first. After the first build is completed we will move on to other sections of the experience with the goal to have a full early playable version of the game done by the end of week 7 for halves.
Meeting with Dave Culyba
On Friday we met with Dave Cuylba to talk about the design and production of our game. We really wanted to discuss transformational tactics and the player experience goals of our game. Since we are leaning a lot on the Sensory Affect, the way the game looks and feels from an artistic and audio point of view, he wanted us to keep in mind that this all happens in the mind of the player. This means that it can be very subjective and difficult to test for. What we need to do then in this regard is just be thoughtful about the way we are designing the game and the art. Have intention behind it all, use research, and testing, and keep the focus on the idea that the game needs to feel inspirational.
We also spoke briefly about the production of the game. We have always had the goal for the game to be fully playable by the end of week 7. He really recommended sticking to that goal, that way we get to see our experience fully put together, rather than just all of our work being separate. This will give us the rest of the semester to refine and test.
Looking into Next Week
- Begin planning for Halves presentations
- UV unwrapping environmental models
- Continue work on character rigs
- Story and gameplay testing
- Setting up Fmod for sound work