WK 7

by Gregory

Being a midterm week, the last 7 days were quite pressuring - and not just for me, but for everyone in our team. Juggling multiple long-term projects coupled with smaller assignment is not easy. Nonetheless, we have made a lot of progress! I mean, what else could we do anyway, giving the approaching Alpha Code's deadline :) Personally, I was working further fleshing out our first level, as described in the team journal. My job for the next days is to model my sketch and make the level actually playable, which will require a lot of work doing both modeling and interaction coding but hopefully it will be manageable. Overall, this is the moment where we are making our game looking more or less close to the original intentions that go all the way back to GDD. It's concerning, though, that I probably won't have enough time to make AI behave in a satisfying way, but at least I should complete at least one physics puzzle (it happens where there is "river" to cross on the sketch), so the game would have somewhat "sophisticated" feel. Considering the user interface, we are going to follow the industry trends of today and try to make it as minimal and unobtrusive as possible, utilizing the Unity powers to create both on-screen and spatial (situated in the game world) representations. However, we are not after a fully diegetic UI, since the UI appearance carries an important part of the overall look of our game, and that would require some sophisticated player character animations for which we do not have enough time. All in all, we are looking forward to playtest our next iteration with real people and get a feedback from an invited game industry professional - although, right now it sounds a little scary, to be honest :')

WK 5

by Gregory

It was an interesting time for our team last week because we finally made our first real in any sense manifestation of our game - the First Playable. Even though it is not like a demo of the game yet, but rather a proof of concept (proof to the class and ourselves that we are able to pull off a 3D open-world), it was a satisfying milestone overall.

Thanh continued to be our project manager and facilitator and his contribution was invaluable as he facilitated three playtests which were necessary for us to find out what people think about our game, even in this raw form. Some points the playtesters brought up were expected (such as their complaints at the lack of engaging gameplay, as currently, we have just a probe terrain, combat system, and a couple of dummy enemies). However, some others were not: for example, some players did not like the jumping that felt too floaty to their taste, and some did not like the projectiles being too huge. This stage helped us to learn that playtests are, indeed, a crucial tool, no matter how ready your game is (I've heard sometimes designers prototype just a paper thing!).

Meanwhile, Kibi continued to work on the character models in Blender, and I was surprised she was able to rig them already and even draft a walking cycle for the Athikterians! Wildan was working hard on polishing the story, taking out extraneous elements which is going to be crucial for managing the scale (and, therefore, keeping us sane). The introduction of Noah, our new team member, was also very timely and nice, since he made a beautiful second world with the giant mushrooms from our very first concept arts (as I had time to do only a small terrain). Unfortunately, I could not merge my Unity project with his scene due to incompatibilities of the Unity classic renderer he was using, and the newer URP I was using. I will figure it out this week.

All in all, doing the prototype was fun and less scary than I thought. Amazing that by 2021 game engines reached the point when you can just dig yourself into Youtube tutorials (famous Brackeys' ones being one of them) and build up a working game with decent graphics and mechanics just in a week or two. All of this feels very inspiring.

WK 3

by Gregory

We finished the first version of our Game Design Document this week and presented it in class. My role was mostly in contributing ideas and refinements for the core loop. I also started working on a prototype in Unity (unfortunately, the prototype was not ready enough to show in class, but it was not required). The presentation went smoothly and we got really useful feedback from the class. However, during the presentation as we spoke about our game and heard responses, I came to the realization that our game needs a better focus. Our team member Kibi came up with super cool character designs, and team member Wildan wrote a really intriguing story, but it does not connect yet into coherent gameplay, I think, and we should work on it. I think, so far we all have been drawing elements and mechanics from various games we know and love, but after the lectures, I realize it is the "core loop", the essence of gameplay feels pretty vague so far in our game. Not to say there is anything wrong with that, consider we have finished the ideation process, and now need to converge further, before moving on to production.

My other concern is possible overscoping which may be a time bomb. So far we have multiple Athitkos creatures, multiple bosses (and their animations!), weapons (and their animations!), environment, not to mention the protag itself (and the UI, and the sounds, etc, etc). Even in low poly, this can be an unfathomable amount of work for us. That is why, I realized, it is so important to prototype - to learn by doing. This week I am going to test out making various rough assets and find out how much we should worry about it.

Overall, it was a fun and rewarding week, and I am grateful to my teammates and the class for making it that way!

WK 4

by Gregory

This week was not a super intense week for me, because we were still figuring out what is going to go into our first prototype. I would say my contribution was placing the "first brick" - setting up the Unity project and Unity's team collaboration capabilities. I was also actively researching (by watching a lot of Brackeys' vids), as my previous Unity experience always involved the first person controller, and this time we are doing the third person one. This is just a little bit more challenging, though, and definitely more exciting.

My thoughts on the prototype I am going to work on tomorrow (Saturday Oct 9) is that we should start with the crash location, showing a bit of the spaceship and the debris - then try to make the first level the player goes into (without much detail, just with Unity Terrain and blocking). Our team member Kibi has done awesome work by modeling the protagonist and Athikterians - I plan to try to add rigs to them to have at least a walking cycle so the prototype feels more natural. In terms of gameplay, it is going to be the basics - selecting an item from the inventory; climbing; looking around; evading hostile creatures. I am not sure though it fully comprises the testable core loop - we need to discuss that during our next meeting.

WK 2

by Gregory

Happy to know that our game proposal was positively received by the teaching team, we began to slowly work out the game world (just on a paper, so far) and laid out a list of some core mechanics we could build the game around. We are going to stick to our open-world concept with multiple "biomes", or parts of the map each dedicated to a particular theme (such as ice, jungle, rocky, giant mushrooms). Hopefully, it will be achievable for us since we are decided to go with a low-poly style. Our mechanics are currently mostly exploration-driven, but we plan that there will be spots of short fights and other hard action, and also spots of more contemplative gameplay.

Conceptually, we are looking for inspirations, besides others, in works such as the novel "Solaris" by Stanislav Lem, or video game "Death Stranding" by Hideo Kojima, as well as classic superhero comics. What it means is that we are thinking of our planet, Athiktos, as a sort of an unpredictable "living organism" that periodically surprises the player with unusual events that keep the core loop from sliding into the repetitive monotony. For example, one idea we had during our meeting is to have a day-night cycle, so that the player would have to seek a shelter before the night arrives, as night brings with it extremely hostile creatures and other anomalies - so that even local flora and fauna tries to hide away from it. Overall, it is very nice to see our concept is starting to flesh out. It feels quite solid, so we just need to execute it well, keeping two main goals in mind: engaging gameplay and manageable scope.

My contribution was mostly in bouncing back some key ideas about the "lore" and its manifestation in the gameplay - I also participated in planning how the game world is going to be organized. On my own, I also started to refresh my Unity skills and roughly imagine ways we could execute our ideas there. Not gonna lie - it sounds a tad challenging, since I made mostly small-scaled Unity scenes before, and making a whole game world with a several subworlds is quite a different thing. It may require thinking about optimization from the start and extensive use of such tools as occlusion culling. However, I remain completely calm about it, as Unity is known for being an extremely versatile game engine, and there are lots of precedents done that utilize very big game maps (even flight simulators, if I am correct).

I also started to sketch some soundscapes and music which I hope will eventually develop in a distinctive ambient soundtrack that will help to bring a unique identity to our game.

WK 1

by Gregory

The first week of the course to me felt very creative and exciting since that is the time when we are coming up with a fresh game concept that we will work on for the rest of the course. I was very surprised, though, that we got plunged into this right away and were expected to propose (and present!) a fully formed game idea already at the 1st week of the class. It felt rushed and I was in doubt that it is all even possible.

However, not only I realized it is possible, as all teams, including us, brought cool concepts to the class - I also realized it was probably necessary and helpful, as I remembered that the later you are down the road, the harder it is to make changes. So, if we failed, it would be fine, since it's just the 1st week. However, I am still concerned that we are might be overscoping ourselves.

As for my contribution, I brought to a team meeting a collection of my game ideas I had before, and one of them, a space-themed concept about an astronaut's escape, been a starting point for Athiktos - and it is cool that the two have not too much in common at this point. I also drew some sketches for the game world and helped with preparing the graphic design for the slides.