It's Been A While...
Phew! I’m finally back to writing another one of these. I meant for these posts to be a sort of “weekly update” as to what was going on in Production 2, but everything was so hectic the last few weeks that it’s just been slipping my mind because of other work. Well, now I’m back! And I have a lot of cool things to report about. Without further ado, here’s a summary of the last two weeks or so of Production 2 and what myself and my fabulous team has been up to!
Sprint C: The Best Thing Since...
…sliced bread? Yeah, that’s right. We made a game about bread. Not just any bread, mind you, but sentient bread. That YOU, the player, controls to jump on top of sandwich ingredients to make sandwiches! And guess what, there’s three other slices of s e n t i e n t bread being controlled by three other players and they’re all gunning for each other. They all want to be the best sandwiches that every bread slice could ever hope to be a part of, and whoever has the most (and the best) sandwiches at the end is the sandwich champion!
The Pitch (but a little more formal this time)
The Best Thing Since is a 3D, top down “couch competitive” romp in which up to 4 players take control of a slice of bread with small arms and legs and compete to make the most, and BEST sandwiches as possible before the time runs out! AI creeps that wander around make up sandwich ingredients (slice of lettuce, tomato, burger, ect). When close to an ingredient creep, players can absorb them to add to their sandwich via jumping onto them. After stacking several ingredients, players jump onto bread creeps and move to the dinner plate to complete the sandwich and earn points. Different sandwich recipes earn different amounts of points. Monster sandwiches can also be made using unwanted combinations (think mayo and jam sandwich) these monster sandwiches then attack enemy players, this can be used as a distraction or for self defense. Monster sandwiches do not count for points.
Prototype Takeaways
This prototype went substantially more smoothly than the previous two, both for myself and the rest of the team. For this sprint, I focused my efforts mainly on designing the systems with Emmett (since the concept was originally his idea) and implementing a demonstration UI and scoring system that showed off how scoring would look. When we presented this prototype, we got a ton of positive feedback because people really enjoyed the wacky nature of the concept and the resulting gameplay that game out of it. We also got a lot of good feedback about the core mechanics that were in place because they were able to clearly convey what the game would be and how it would look going forward. Oh, and we also had some really fun concept art that Riley did a terrific job with! Check em out below!
Sprint D: Decisions, Decisions...
Almost immediately after we had the presentation for The Best Thing Since, the five of us pretty much unanimously agreed that this was the game we were going to take to MidMortems the following week (in which every team presents their game to make a case for as to why it shouldn’t get cut and continue production for the rest of the semester). With only 10 additional days to polish up the game and prepare an engaging presentation that vouched for the viability and feasibility, the production cycle went into overdrive. We began formulating a plan to tackle the next ten days, created corresponding tasks, and also created a brand name for our team: “Simple Sandwich”.
With a little more than a week to polish the prototype to be presentable, make a strong presentation that would convey not only our intent but why our game is worth developing, as well as a gameplay reel, we all got to work straightaway. My first major goal was to create the main sound effects that the players would hear in the game to give the prototype some juicy gamefeel goodness in an auditory sense. I focused on making the bread pitter patter footsteps, jumping, and stabbing sounds. After looking for some bread related samples online (result; there are no bread samples online, why would there be?), I busted out my microphone setup and starting recording various bread foley that I layered into the sounds. For example, I used some barefoot footstep samples for the little feet that the bread slices have and mixed in some quieter bread foley sounds to make it sound kinda crumbly and bread-like (whatever that means). I implemented the sounds in a temporary fashion using Wwise so we could get reception on if they fit the visuals. Testers liked the sounds so I’m heading in the right direction.
As midmortem loomed ever closer, a light crunch began to kick in. The team met in the labs frequently to get the remaining main mechanics working, namely multiple players, controller support, a timer, menu, and full game loop. During this crunch I helped Josh out alot by getting the sandwich finishing mechanic in a working state so players could make multiple sandwiches. I also refined the UI and scoring systems some more and added it for the other 3 players. I was also given the responsibility of making the gameplay demo reel with Emmett, since him and I have a lot of experience with Premiere Pro and After Effects. We managed to get it all done by the night before, with Emmett and I completing the video reel a mere 16 hours before the presentations started.
Day of Reckoning: MidMortems
The day finally came when every team in Production 2 gathered in the auditorium to present their hard work to students and professors alike; the MidMortems. After a nerve racking day of last minute quality assurance checks by all our teammates and an hour or so to practice the presentation, we presented our game and a demo reel to show off the prototype. Oh, I forgot to mention that I made some funky music for the menu screen of the game that we ended up using in the demo reel! (Please excuse the horrendous mix, it was a very quick/rough mix just so we would have the song ready).
We got a really great reception to the presentation. There were lots of laughs from the audience and cheers and applause after we had finished, which made all the stress and hard work worth it in my eyes. After the full three and a half hours of presentations were finished, meetings were held between my professor and the students in their two sections to determine which games were going to go forward based on their viability and feasibility. I’m happy to say that our game was one of the two games from my section that made it through the cuts!
After a few days of well deserved rest, we acquired four new teammates! All of them have been awesome to work with and have their own unique skills that will certainly help us deliver a quality vertical slice at the end of the semester.
Introducing...
…our new team members!
Adam Streeter is one of our new artists and focuses mainly on props. He worked on Covert Custodian before MidMortems. Adam is currently making friendly and vibrant level props to help Riley create the environments of the game! He also made our new team logo…which I’ll get to in a bit. @4damAvenue
Kaylee Sharp is our second new artist and is working on general areas of art for the game, namely characters, UI, and environments. She worked on Ferals before MidMortems. Our game is rather art heavy so there will be no shortage of work for Kaylee to help us with! @kayleeosharp
Cameron Belcher is our new programmer and is mainly going to work on all our artificial intelligence needs. He worked on Ferals before MidMortem as well. His main focus will be on the AI for the ingredients roaming around the levels, monster sandwich behaviors, and other programming tasks that Josh needs help with. @DrabbyPage
Brian Harney is our second producer and will be helping Austin manage our now much larger team. He worked on Ferals before MidMortems. In addition to managing the team with Austin, Brian will be helping with marketing for the game’s viability and assisting with documentation.
Genevieve Guimond is a narrative designer and is acting as a freelancer for our team and a few others as well. She worked on Covert Custodian before MidMortems. Genevieve will help us with any text and writing tasks our game needs, such as a recipe book for the sandwiches. @gencguimond
As you can see, our team has now doubled, which means we’ll have plenty of help to make this game the best it possibly can be by the end of the semester!
What's Next
Now until the rest of the semester, we’re going to focus on getting the rest of the planned systems and mechanics into the game in order to make a polished “vertical slice”. I learned a lot about the importance of designing for a specific player experience these past few weeks, and that’s what I intend to focus most of my systems related work on for the rest of the project duration. In addition, my other area of focus will be on all of the game’s audio, including sound effects and music, as well as its implementation through Wwise.
We also decided to rename our game and team: the game’s name is now Simple Sandwich, which was originally the team name, and now the team name is Fellow Humans, which is named after a little inside joke among some of the Fall 2018 Montreal students. Check out the logo for it below that Adam made!
Hopefully I’ll actually be able to keep these blogs weekly from now on. I’m going to try and focus them on any systems related designs I do as well as the audio creation processes I undergo. Until then, I’ll be working hard on the new tasks for this sprint.
See you next time,
-Karl
