Week 4 - DevLog

The main development this week was that we set up our first Sprint and we started to split off individually to work on parts for the game. Sounds obvious but it means that production has started on the game.

James put forward an idea of using portals to travel between rooms which is a really interesting idea that I think will be part of our USP for the game.

He had already set up a Git repo and a simple controller to work from so we now have the platform to start building.

We will need to agree on procedures for using GitHub and then access will be given when we get to the right stages.

Paul discussed Art style, he seems very eager to get into making and favours towards hyper-realistic style, my concern was that this could be time-consuming and if not done well it could show up throughout the game and so I raised this with the team for discussion. Paul then investigated different styles with a favourite looking something like Firewatch

It was decided that to try out the concept, Paul would make a set of assets for the living from different eras. This would give an idea of how long this would take and the complexities. Paul was up for the challenge and was pumped to get started.

Nick and I decided we would work on the Ten Page Games Design Document (Rogers, 2014).

“finding the right level of detail for capturing the game can take time to master” (Macklin and Sharp, 2016), there are still a few things missing such as the player Fantasy amongst other details, but Nick and I will work together to complete this over the coming weeks.

Elliot started to flesh out the Backstory for the Narrative, we agreed on giving the Player a name, Elizabeth was the agreed name and it felt good to start to build a story around this character as we all get to know who she is. I feel Elliot has a very difficult and yet highly important role in building the story, something I don't think I could do. Building the story will go a long way in creating a more immersive experience and something our players can relate to. The book How Games Move Us (Ibister, 2017) its refers to creating a “grounded setting” that player can form a mental picture and become emotionally attached to the character through experiencing real world, believable situations. Our aim for the game is to do this and a huge part of making that happen is through its narrative and character.

During the meeting with Matty, it highlighted concern from last week, although all the feedback was good. Matty wanted us to keep the 10 Pager loose for now and that we had enough information with our One Sheets and 3-page Design Document to start building from. He was keen for us to get to the first Playable state so we could playtest some of these theories and ideas. Matty also made a point that sound should be a key part of building the atmosphere. I like this idea, I think that using sounds will add to the immersive nature of the game and keep the player UI clean.

After the meeting, I raised my concern, that I felt what we were proposing to create in the time frame was unrealistic. The concept for the game is solid and would contain several chapters to it but if it is a pitch that we are working towards then we would need to concentrate on a much smaller version that would encapsulate the game as a whole. A vertical slice would indeed cover this, however, this suggestion did raise concerns especially over getting the narrative across and being able to create a realistic experience that we could sell through the pitch. 12 weeks is not a great deal of time and being in week 4 without a working blockout would mean that this could add unnecessary pressure to create something as detailed and complex in the remaining time frame.

This led us to discuss the module, the projects, and what is required as well as discussing what we set out to achieve for both our personal and team goals. As we were going to plan our first sprint this week we needed to be all in agreement that we had developed a sense of purpose in what we were aiming for and the approach we would take to achieve it would then allow us to split off into tasks with confidence in what we were doing as suggested by The Wisdom of Teams (Smith and Katzenbach, 2017)

At this point, we discussed what that vertical slice would be, and how this would work. I asked the group if I could put together an Objective Progression Chart that would help outline the what, where, and when of the game followed by a beat chart, and then this could be discussed in the next meeting to ensure that we were on the right page.

I created the pitch deck for the team to start their allocated contribution, and set up a Shared Drive using the Falmouth OneDrive space. The team all agreed on what they would contribute and we aimed to have something for our next meeting.

The final part of the meeting was dedicated to setting up our first Sprint, as mentioned in previous posts, Nick had set up Jira and Confluence. Confluence had already started to show its benefit in keeping all our formal documentation together and recording the meetings. Nick proceeded to go through how we would work using Jira. Personally, I had only used Trello before and so this was new to me. Also the use of the Fibonacci Sequence to estimate times for each of the tasks. Another concept is new to me. Nick explained that by using this method we would be able to reflect on the effectiveness of the team and it would enable us to plan more effectively.

Macklin, C. and Sharp, J., 2016. Games, Design and Play.

Ibister, K., 2017. How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. 1st ed. The MIT Press.

Rogers, S., 2014. Level up!. Hoboken: Wiley.

Smith, D. and Katzenbach, J., 2017. The Wisdom of Teams.