Game Project 1: 21/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated

Hello!

Today we presented our game for the first time for the whole school. And it turned out much better than we thought. Even though we still had regrets, we are proud of the game we created in the end.

The game is now up on the school's website and is accessible through this link: https://www.playgroundsquad.com/projects/mansion-stealer/

It has been a long journey, but now the journey is finally over.

Thank you for following! Me and my associates from Rock Soft Studios wishes you happy holidays!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 20/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated

Hello!

I was sick yesterday, hence no chapter was written for my blog. But today it was our very last day working on the project and even though our artists had nothing to do at all, we designers and our programmers were busy all day making sure everything with our game would work in time for our presentation tomorrow.

Our game has never before felt as finished as it did today. We fixed all of the bigger bugs that has been troubling us for weeks now, and also some visual errors in the game. But since we did not have the time, we could not fix everything that is currently wrong with the game and we will have to accept our game as it is. Even though it still lacks a lot in the visual department, the game runs smoothly and is indeed fun to play. At least for us.

We got the opportunity to invite our first playtesters from outside the team, and the general feedback was positive, mixed in with things we already had considered earlier and skipped, or simply did not have the time to add.

All in all, it seems our team is very proud of how our very first game came to be and we all learned a lot from working on it.

It should also be noted that our game is the first of its kind to be done as a first 5-week-project on this school. No one has ever done a first person perspective game nor a game of the stealth genre before us. Most groups start out with creating brawler and party games as their first one.

I will make my last blog submission tomorrow concerning this project. Bye for now!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 18/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated

Hello!

Today a lot of our members were gone and we had to make due with a team of 5 people with a team originally consisting of 8 people. 1 artist took holiday early, another artist was sick and one of our programmers slept until 4 on the afternoon before finally coming to school.

Our artists did not have mush work left to do anyway, so they only had work until 14:00, which was with distributing some additional props into the level and making of the final evidence.

In contrast, our sole programmer was busy all day solving bugs with the json config file and also fixing the menus and implementing some sounds. At the end of the day our second programmer finally appeared and proceeded with making our game compatible with 3D sounds.

I spent most of the time today with trying to fix all the textures in the level, since some of them was not correctly displayed in-game. Since we did not have the time to figure out what the wrong was, I eventually settled with copying a different tile to replace the floor and ceiling tiles to avoid having wrestling with the problem. Afterwards I did various playtesting and implemented the rest of the evidence in the game, making sure that they were represented correctly inside of the game.

Meanwhile, my co-designer also did some playtesting along side with making our presentation for tomorrow morning, where we will practice our presentation which we will have on Friday.

We are finally getting the feeling of completion, even though there are a lot of things with our game that we had wanted to make better. More than half of our wrongdoings were because of either miscommunication or carelessness. Because of this, we have learned a lot, but it does not come without disappointment.

Tomorrow, we might actually get done with the game for others to playtest, if we are lucky.

Until next time!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 17/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated

Hello!

A new week is starting for our project and we are slowly getting towards our goal of completing our game in time. We wanted to work some over the weekend as well, but it turned out that we could not, as there was some complications with the alarm system at school. This lost us a lot of potential time, but at the same time, we all needed a long weekend to rest.

The programmers continued working with the sound system and also added some variables to the config files.

The artists finished working on the missing props and also started working on the menus for the game. They also helped some with cleaning up holes in the level design and make them less visible for the players.

My co-designer worked with playtesting and a mock-up for the 'How to Play'-slide, while I finished the collision level to disallow players from going into props in the game.

Now, we only have tomorrow to finish the game as we must have the remaining time to play test the game more thoroughly and make sure that the experience is fun and consistent. On Wednesday, our work will be evaluated and tips will be given for our final presentation which we will do on Friday.

Wish us luck!

PS,

We have finally decided upon a name. Now there is no turning back!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 14/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated, Patient 47 or Lab Rat (Hmmm)

Hello!

Today was the roughest day we have ever experienced in our team and we all felt too tired, sick and discouraged at the end of the day. Because of this, none of us had the will or energy to do overtime today. However, for those that still wants and have the necessary amount of energy to work, we decided that we will gather up and work this weekend on Sunday, starting at 11.

The cause of our distraught came from the fact that the level is a complete mess everywhere and we have fundamental problems with getting the animations to work correctly. We have also discovered that a lot of objects can not find their texture, or simply does not have a texture at all. The game therefore looks horrible in its current state which puts us under a lot of stress. Hopefully, we will solve it next week. The things is: we only have 2 days: Monday and Tuesday, before the project is supposed to be done. If things does not turn better for us, we will not be able to finish our game, and it will in the end be nothing but trash.

Our artists finished with all the additional props they were tasked to complete and our animator worked on the same piece of animation the whole day. After getting numerous errors and devastating results, he supposedly solved by the end of the day. I used "supposedly" as the programmers did not have time to try it out before quitting.

Our programmers did some more tests regarding light, refined some of our mechanics and also started working on a system for implementing sound files. Speaking of sounds and music, we have not heard anything from our sound designer and composer since Tuesday afternoon. We tried to contact him, but he has not yet replied. We are getting a little worried about that.

We designers spent the whole day playtesting, building the collision level and refining the visual level. We were therefore constantly busy and had trouble acting as the messenger between programmers and artists.

That is all for now! Be sure to stay tuned and see how that goes!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 13/12-2018

Project Name: Laborated, Patient 47 or Lab Rat (Hmmm)

Hello!

Today we were still one programmer short and had one of our most hectic days of the project. Our goal was to get a fully playable version of our game to show to our teachers tomorrow on the sprint review. However, there proved to be a lot of problems with major parts of our game including clipping of meshes and holes in the level, missing or skewed textures, long loading times, slow fps count, and even implementation of the animation for the guard character. At least now we are able to work with the real level even though it needed some major amounts of refining.

We once again only had one programmer who was forced to do all the heavy lifting today. He mostly worked on solving bugs and kept on testing how well the level and the mechanics worked in the game. Because he also worked overtime, he even started experimenting with the lighting of the level.

The artists worked on the level until 14:00 today and otherwise worked on the remainder of props and textures. Our animator got a lot of problems with the joint system and exporting their animations into Tengine as he got several errors from doing that. At the end of the day, we also found out that we had a game breaking bug relating to the animations,  which we are still unsure of how to fix. We have decided to consult our teachers about it tomorrow and use our old animations in the meantime.

 I worked on refining the level all day, looking for visual errors that might break the game experience for the player and clean up all meshes that feels unnecessary to have at all. I worked with this all day yesterday as well and I did the same today too. We keep finding more errors and sometimes it felt like I corrected the same error over and over that kept coming back. I am unsure if it was something I did or if there was something wrong that happened while exporting the file.

Meanwhile, my co-designer worked on writing out all of the guards patrol paths and playtested the level to help me find visual errors. As we were both extremely busy, we did not find any time doing much documenting at all, mainly because we did not find it as important at this time.

Our game is nearing its final state, but bugs and visual errors hinder us from experience the game as it is supposed to be played. As of now though, we are closer than ever before. Even though we will probably not impress any of our teachers tomorrow, I think we are still able to get done with the game by next Friday.

That is all for today, thanks for reading!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 12/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Hello!

Today we had a lot to do. Even though we had all artists present, our other programmer called in sick in the morning. Lucky for us, there is not much job left to do for the programmers as of right now anyway, as all of core mechanics are fully implemented in the game. Therefore, we gave our programmer the task of implementing one final mechanic to the game, which we at first thought we would scrap, namely: opening doors.

The programmer worked on implementing the list showing all the items the player is tasked to steal and also making it possible for the player to open doors. He also did some bug fixing, but these fixes was very minor ones as we did not have time do any playtesting today at all.

Early in the morning we had a meeting with all of the artists discussing tasks that needs to be done by friday next week which includes additional props and UI elements, such as menus. Because of this, the artists could work at their usual pace and always had stuff they could do to contribute to the game.

We designers had the most amount of work, unlike any other day during the project, where we have had very few things to do. Because of the modules being inaccurate, the labour of getting a cohesive level was left to the designers, which means us. We divided our workload as following: one was tasked to begin building on the collision level and the other polishing the one that is visible. The latter proved more arduous than we had ever imagined and left us in a tangle. Without the level fully playable, we would face difficulties optimising the game and find bugs in it. The level must both be functional and somewhat cohesive and also pleasing to eye. It is one of our most important things about the game as it will set the overall move, next to the lighting. It was I who was left with this task and soon figured out that I would never be able to right every wrong with the current level. Tomorrow, we will have to make due with the level we got and start the playtesting the level as it is and write out all the guards patrol pattern, so we can finally start playing the game as it was first intended.

I feel tired today, as I worked overtime another 3 hours today,
I feel afraid that our game will end in a complete failure, either thorugh aethetics, or through gameplay. Or even both.
I feel disappointed that the modules turned out the way it did because of misscommunication within the team.

I will however do the best of my ability to make this game a success with the slim amount of time remaining and use it as effectively as humanely possible.

That is all for now, thanks for reading this! Even though it is only text without pictures!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 11/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

 Hello!

Today, we still worked with one artist short, but since we finally managed to get our level up for polishing, we felt that we had reached an important milestone in our project.

We once again made our artist build the level, focusing on making a rough level design, rather than a detailed and polished one. This is because we designers need the level to playtest in and our artists does indeed have other things on their plates. However, a lot of things was wrong with the level when we got, which by most would consider it too rough. We designers will cover that role and polish our level up as much as possible in order to improve performance and look of it. We only managed to make really minor changes though and we will continue working on this tomorrow.

The programmers have completely ran out of things to do, as most of their tasks today consisted of fixing bugs and implementing mockup menus, UI and animations. These turned out to cause minor to no problem at all and at the end of the day they felt a little lost on what to do. As a consequence (and to our delight), this meant that we had time to add an additional mechanic to our day, which they can work on in the background. Namely, cause doors to open, or even force the player to pick up keycards in order to open doors. They will start working on this tomorrow.

The rest of our artists worked on assets and all assets we have agreed to have made for the game has now been ultimately made with textures and all and are ready to be placed out in our game. We will have a meeting with the artists tomorrow discussing additional things that needs to be made for the game, including additional props. But since we need to place out and see how the current assets looks in the game first, we are not really sure what more we should add before seeing the game as a whole in its final form.

I was in charge of documentation today while my co-designer did playtesting. From now onwards, we designers will have a lot of work to do including making a collision level, refining the current level, playtesting and of course the constant updating of all the documents.

Overall, today was highly productive and made up for yesterday, which was utterly terrible, and it also seems that all members had an unusually high morale. There are still some concern regarding how well our game will fare these upcoming days though and most importantly; if it will be fun to play at all. We are all excited and afraid of the answer to this question. But good or bad, we will soon find out the answer to it. 

I worked overtime close to 3 hours today in order to start with the polishing of the final level and also write this blog entry.

That is all for now!

// Samuel




 

Game Project 1: 10/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Hello!

Today was one of the worst days we have ever had in the project. One of our artists called in sick early in the morning. Of course, it was our fastest artist who was in the middle of working on our final model design using modules. This meant that we had to assign one of our other artists to continue working on it. This also meant that there was no way we would be able to finish building it today. We can only hope that our missing artist will be fit for work tomorrow and finish what he started.

One of our artists also ran into some trouble while animating as it crashed the program whenever we tried implementing it into the game. He worked on this all day and in the end found out that it was all due to naming a mesh wrongly. Specifically, he named a mesh called "light" for "Lights". After finding this error, nothing seemed to be out of place and everything worked perfectly. So much work time lost because of such an insignificant detail.

Our programmers worked with bugs all day and also added some simple variables to the config file. They work really efficiently though, so much so that they are starting to struggle finding things to do.

I playtested all day long, tweaking numbers and generally making sure all of our implemented mechanics works as intended. Meanwhile, my co-designer worked on concepts for future mechanics to implement for the wishlist and made them more clear in order to have keep our programmers busy and plan for our future and final version of our game.´

Overall, people worked as they should, but being one team member short and working on a sinlg  error for such a long time made this days work extremely unproductive. Which is of course nobodys fault, but sad nonetheless.

That is all for today.

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 7/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

 Hello!

Today we had our third sprint review where we generally got positive feedback, where the game lacking art assets being the main problem of the criticism. Our whole team remains confident that we will be able to make our game in time for the deadline, however. I hope we are right.

We were able to show close to all of the mechanics which we plan to have in the final version of the game and they actually looked impressed, considering we lacked art assets apart from the guard model being fully implemented. Next week, we plan to have the whole level inhabited with all the prop assets done, the flashlight fully functional and the whole game completely playable for playtesting.

One of our programmers worked on the guard AI and tried to make them face the player and stare directly at them if they step into their range of hearing, but even though they worked on it the whole day today, they were unable to solve it today. They will continue working on solving it on Monday next week instead.

The other programmer made some additional changes to the config, adding some variables and fixing some bugs, but also had time to implement some other minor things too, such as guards spawning on random locations of their constructed path. Next week, they will do a lot of implementations of the artists work, which will take most of their time, aside from fixing bugs that is.

The artists were a little slow in their production today, partly because of being distracted by outside causes, but also because of their noticing their asset breakdown is shrinking rapidly. This is supposedly because of they thinking they will soon be without stuff to do, which is true, but they will surely have a lot to remove and change to make the style consistent in the game next week. This worries me a little, but I think they keep this in mind. They worked mostly on props, but also started on doing animations for our guard.

We also assigned one of our artists to build the final level using modules, since we designers felt that we would not be able to complete it as fast. Since we need to start playtesting the level as soon as possible, this was a logical decision to make.

My co-designer worked on playtesting the mockup level by playing around with the config and making sure that all mechanics work as they should. Personally, I took care of updating all the documents and just did general management of the project, making sure everything was running smoothly, and helped out where needed.

I just hope all our work these past weeks prove fruitful. We will find out next week.

That is all for this week! Until next time!

// Samuel

Game Project 1:6/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Hello!

Today we all got a little worried for the presentation we are doing for our teachers tomorrow as we have not yet stress tested our game with all the assets we have for the game and not even started on building on the final level which is made fully with modular pieces, which we started working on today and also some play testing with the json config file.

The artists had one of their most productive days today and spewed out dozens of props, so much so that they are struggling having stuff to do. We have only been able to add in placeholders as of now, but we plan to import all assets we have now into the game next week and do a stress test to see if the game can handle it without crashing or causing lag.

The programmers mostly fixed bugs with the guards but also a few major faults with the json file. Although, they also found the time to fix some simple UI elements (highlighting of objects and crosshair) and also the guard being able to turn around if the player gets too close to him.

Personally I spent the whole day playtesting and when I did not do that, I took a lap around to see how the others were fairing and helped them out in making decisions. I do this regularly to keep tabs on everyone.

Meanwhile, I left my co-designer to start doing the final level design using modules. In the end, he made most of the hallway in the level.

At the end of the day some of us chose to stay and work overtime to continue working on the game in order to have more to show for the teachers tomorrow morning. Hopefully, we can implement the final version of the model of the guard.

That is all I had to share today.

// Samuel 
 

 

Game Project 1: 5/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Hello!

Today we had a stand-up as usual, although we were one programmer short from the get-go so we did not get as much done as we would have wanted with the game in terms of code. The artists however, did make a lot of progress and already have a library of prop assets for us to try out in the game, which we will be able to do soon. However we could not do it today since we ran into some problems resulting in us having to delay play testing a bit. Half the day our sole programmer was busy finding this error and eventually found it come the afternoon. After that, the game started to run smoothly once again and we designers could use the config file handed to us by our programmers to start distributing guards and their walking path and even place out items for the player to pick up.

I personally playtested most of the day and tried to get the hang of the json config file and learned how to make a pattern for the guards. Other than that I mostly discussed with my artists about colour and design choice of props and modules, helped my programmer to find bugs with the current build and updated the Trello Board to make sure everyone had something to do.

It is not much else to comment on today, so until next time!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 4/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Today we reached one of the most important milestones that we have ever reached, namely the ability to play test and tweak the game mechanics. Only the programmers have had accessed to it before, but now, we designers can make changes to the game, without messing up anything for the programmers. Although it took the whole day to implement fully, we are quite happy to see it finally work. The programmers has worked on implementing this program since Friday and now it finally works fault-free.

Other than that the programmers also fixed the leaning movement, changing it into a "sidestep" instead, where the camera changes the position but without tilting the view. They also refined player movement and started working on a mechanic that makes the guard turn towards the player if they get too close.

The artists had their hands full refining the modules (mainly fixing the topology) for the hall and building wall modules for the rooms and various props. They also work surprisingly fast, which they should as we would not be able to make it if that was not the case. 

I personally drew concepts of how the guards will patrol the level, where they will start and where they will go. We will have to play test that before we know that it will work for sure or not, however. Which we of course will be able to test tomorrow. I also made some changes to the GDD with my fellow designer, updated the Asset Breakdown and Trello Boards. Additionally, I divided the mockup level into sectors, which supposedly will reduce the work load of the computer when it runs our game.

Overall, I think today was one of the most morale-raising days we have ever had for our team. It felt like a well-earned victory for all of us.

That is all for now!

// Samuel

Game Project 1: 3/12-2018

Project Name: Experimented (Not yet decided)

Hello!

Today I got to speak with the principle of the school. He said that a student of a musical shool not far from here could join one of our projects in PSQ. Only two of the groups wanted a sound designer on their team though, so we decided it through chance. In the end, we were the ones who won, effectively adding a team member to our group. He will be the sound designer and musical composer of our team, even though he cannot always be on place here at the school since he still takes his own lessons on his own school.

Already a few hours before he got introduced to our team, he had already made music samples for us to listen to. We were undeniably impressed. We knew we had gotten a valuable ally.

We had our regular stand-up meeting with all of our members present. We designers started to noticed that we and our programmers started to get fewer things to do as we grow more and more dependent on art assets the further we get. For now, we have to quickly polish the assets we have (reduce topology) and get them into Tengine to stress test them before we make any bigger changes and see if the game can run without any problems. Otherwise we will have to seek council from Josef, the art teacher to helps us set up portals (something the artists have not yet learned) , which will help improve performance inconsiderate of how asset heavy or big the game will be. This is paramount for playtesting which is part of the reason it is so important.

While we wait though, one of our programmers is working on a program which we designers can use when we playtest. By using this program we will be able to change every important variable that affects gameplay without tempering with any code or hindering the programmers while they work. This will be a very important tool for playtesting and is said to be done tomorrow before lunch.

Personally I mostly spent the day communicating with my whole team (artists, programmers, designers) about important decisions and changes to the game. For example how the leaning movement works and how the flashlight will grow in size with the programmers, or how the game will actually look like when finished with the artists. Also about the game as a whole, what mechanics we can do without and if there is anything that can be cut away to allow room for something more important. I think we have good communication in our team, but apparently can sometimes be a little sloppy, as some misses out on important information at times. That is why I also tend to walk from person to person to give feedback on their work and make sure everyone is contributing to the game we are in the middle of making without straying away from it.

Other than that, I updated some points in the GDD, updated the Trello board and made sure everybody else did too. I only did minimal amounts of concrete work, like writing and level design, and instead focused mostly on management and communication, as that felt much more important.

That is all I had to share for now, take care!

// Samuel