Amazing First Playable Presentation

The game has come a long way since prototype, and I am happy to see the changes. It's amazing to look at what our game was at prototype and what it is now. There is definitely a noticeable progression. Physics is better by far than it was at prototype, and the overall visual, audio, and design appeal have increased in quality dramatically. We have a lot to do for this game, but we have already come so far! Our team should have new content up at some point this week. I'll be making a gameplay video as well!

Best Words I've Heard Today

It's early, but hey, I just heard the best words from a video game yet. At least with what the game was shooting for. It told me straight out that "Do not play this game to win". The game is meant to be an experience rather than gameplay. Yes there is gameplay, but it is being use to accentuate the experience, rather than it being solely meant for the player to interact with things in the game.

I'm enjoying the fact that you as the player cannot fight the monsters in the game, rather, the player has to think about what they will did when they encounter enemies. Will they run, hide, do a bit of both. Slow down the monster so the player has a chance to hide? The possibilities of what to do are endless because many things are interactable in the game. It's almost like a modern day Myst. It's a 3D environment, but the player is experiencing the world, and trying to figure out what is going on with the character they are playing as. Very interesting stuff.

The name of the game is Amnesia: The Dark Descent and I hope to be frightened by it more when I play it again. I forgot to mention that the game has a very large horror vibe to it. It really plays on the "your own imagination is your worst enemy" and I really enjoy that type of fear. Especially since I do it to my self all the time. I just thought I would share my thoughts on the game. It's great, so far, and I hope to continue enjoying it!

Successful Prototype presentation!

We made it! Our prototype is amazing, and we were actually told by the game teacher that the game we're working is the best he's ever seen at the prototype stage! Wow! That is a really big compliment. The game was graded in 5 categories, each of them having a grade from 1 to 11, and our game received 3 11s and 2 10s! It's the highest we've had so far, and our game will only get better. We were also told that our game is getting close to being considered a mini-triple-A title.

We still have a lot to go to reach the polish that a triple-A game has though, and that is the stage that our team is in. Polishing the game. All we have to do now is tweak values, and experiment with different ideas for the game. First polish though. Then we'll experiment with the game, and see if we can find some more interesting gameplay.

I'll be sure to post a video of the game as soon as possible to show how far we've come since our summer tech demo. Thanks for reading, I'll try to keep you posted on any new developments!

Prototype is coming soon!

We're preparing for our prototype milestone next week! It's only going to get more and more hectic as we get closer. There are so many things that need to get done for this milestone. We basically need to prove that we have all of the basic functionality in for the core game. What this means for our game is that our car needs to be able to boost, glide, and jump, oh ya, it needs to go extremely fast as well. Everything is truly aesthetics.

What this means for me specifically, is that I need to finish up the game design document(GDD) and I need to build a level for the game. It's going to have to be in boxes, rather than our road pieces, and this is due to the fact that our physics programmer is working on triangle collision, which is some pretty nasty stuff I might add. On the side, I also need to find sounds for our game, and we have someone who is actually creating a music track for us! This is awesome because now we don't have to make music, which would probably turn out horrible anyways if we were even to try. I've also been drawing up concepts for our modeler/graphics programmer to have an idea of what each obstacle should look like in the game. That's it for now, thanks for reading, and I'll keep you updated on anything new that comes up!

More and more work

That's all there is to it. Our entire team is still working hard to get our game to a prototyping phase. The physics engine is having an overhaul to all of its systems, and just about everything else is being improved. Other things are just being implemented as well, such as the camera system, and lua scripting.

Game design is still in a flux, since I'm not quite sure about how to portray some things on-screen to the player. Because of this, I may have to change how the car ability mechanics work. I had the idea to have the car abilities on cool downs, but it may be too complicated to have the player tracking multiple cooldowns. Especially since the game is meant to be fast paced. The interface needs to be minimal and streamlined to be easily read and understood.

For prototype I'll be working on a song, the GDD, and a level for the game. Still not sure about the song, I'll have to tinker with the sound application I have. The GDD is roughly 13 pages right now, and there is still more to write about. I'm hoping to have it clear and concise for the programmers to read quickly and understand fully what they need to implement. Most of the explanations for why they have to do something will be in the appendix rather than the original explanation for them. I'll keep updating this blog, whenever something new comes up.

Engine Proof Presentation

Nitronic's, the team I'm on, engine proof presentation went very well. I'm pretty sure that we stunned a few people as to where we were with the game, and where we planned to go. We are very close to having a prototype of the game up and running, and we're only 5 weeks into the semester. Granted, we did work on the game over the summer, and it is most definitely why we are as far as we are, but we still have a lot to do to get to first playable. We need to get the physics to feel right for the car, and we need to improve the level editor so we can quickly prototype levels. All this is going well, and hopefully we'll be able to prototype levels soon.

Update

With the mention of making a game that is an interactive poem from my teacher for GAM 302, I came up with a concept for our game that would be in the vein of a poem. The player is a spark, they are essentially the "spark of life" and they are giving the world light where there is none. In fact, they are within a computer system that has been dead for a long period of time, and the player is bringing it back to life. More systems come on as the player goes through the game. Throughout the game the player will receive hints as to what happened previously; how the computer stopped working, or went out of use. That's the basic idea of the game.

Gameplay will be more puzzle-esque, and platform-based. The experience I want the player to have would be death in the beginning and life at the end. Sort of an opposite way of thinking, but it could be a profound experience for the player. Granted, I highly doubt my team will switch over to this idea, we are going with our current idea, especially since it is sound, and we already have a bit of the technology up and running. But, this could be a good fall back idea.

This is my third idea, and I actually just came up with it no more than a few minutes ago. Other than the idea, I have to create music for our game, I experimented with the sound program that I will be using and it seems pretty crazy, but I think I'll cope. Especially since I know some talented people to look to for help. Not much else to say about the development of our game. Our graphics programmer has created a texture that looks like a cityscape, and it looks like there are particles moving all over the place, but technically speaking they are not particles, which is really cool.