studio-gameOn

Tis supposed to be young Pixel’s entry today but I suspect he forgot so here I am picking up the slack!
The majority if not all of the design elements for the first three levels of the game have been completed. Good news for all designers to now bury it and move on. After working on the same idea for so long gets rather… Well you get the idea.

On my end I got to go to the city today to rep studio game on in a fancy new shirt. Mainly volunteered to get outta the studio for at least a few hours and see day light and fresh air. But also to play Rock Band. Which in my opinion is fail the guitar doesn’t work properly. But hey now im ranting.

Ian.

Hi again all,

Today has involved a variety of tasks in design from interface concepts to environment and interactions ideas to incredibly blocky level design. The art team requested 2D level drawings made entirely of blocks so they can pretty it up while still getting all the key dimensions right. It seems we were  making our drawings for them too messy and random, so now it’s being replaced with precise blocky fun.

I worked more on the interface again and pretty much got it decided, before continuing on to conceptualising and working out the basic mechanics of the second ‘movie’ for B-Grade. Here’s a sneak peak: it involves NINJAS! How could it possibly fail?

Gemma went to the Queen St Mall to promote the studio in the GameOn showing there along with B105 radio, and rumours suggest she spent the entire time playing Rock Band and Midnight Club: LA they had set up there.

Well, it’s almost 5pm which means time for most people to leave except for what seems to be growing into a new ritual: UT2004 with Rory, Toby, Liam, Pixel and myself. We have yet to best Rory, who we suspect uses hax. Or at least we like to tell ourselves that.

Alex Baldwin (AJBaldwin)

Well, since I’m here at the SLQ (the State Library of Queensland), I thought I would do my blog for the day, since it is rightfully my turn. Well, what to say?

Currently, I feel like my brain has been amputated, since Ian, Alex and Pixel are back at the studio, doing their designing. Without me. *sadface* I really would like to be back with the guys. The studio is a great place to be working.

So I’m here at the library, updating Twitter every ten minutes (mostly with “I wish I’d kidnapped Ian like he asked and when I still had the time to”), working on the design and interaction for level two of the stunt man game (a lot more interesting), listening to Jekyll & Hyde (Ha! NOT Phantom of the Opera Alex! NOT Phantom!) and enjoying talking to small children. None have yet decided to contribute to the game, but it’s early hours yet.

Still, here I sit, doing up the blog and keeping up with the online chatter and important news regarding the studio. As it is, Pixel has not defected to the Art Team, but given the webcam feeds, you’d be forgiven to thinking that that is what has happened. In reality, he is working hard with the animators to get our western level done for the board by friday.

Ian and Alex are busy at work completing the required documentation for the levels (special thanks to Ian, who has done the bulk of the writing for us, lovely lad that he is!). Alex must have a special mention for taking my “stand on it or break it or do it simultaneously” approach to the level and incorporating some excellent in-level interactions.

And, as usual, I’ve rambled on for far, far too long. Back to the catacombs with me!

~@ Phantomess_Jekyll (Gemma)

Well.. It’s like 10pm and I just remembered I owe the public a blog. So I will put down my epic Pokemon battles down for a few minutes and tell you about day 6 in the life of a designer.

Documentation…documentation.. ummm documentation…

That word repeated over and over sums it up for myself. But I don’t mind as it is my favourite part of the process (brainstorming aside).

Just progression as usual today I guess, fleshing out actual movie ideas and stunts etc. Should be great if we have our first movie done (on paper) by end of tomorrow and let our artists and programmers run with it!

Gemma has been stolen away from us once again for marketing, our lead Rory has been helping out the programmers alot, young looking but old aged Pixel has been producing some good storyboards/basic level layouts and Alex has been assisting with the documentation.

Progress. Progress.

Ian.

Fellow citizens of earth let me tell you the news

As I sit here distracted by an argument between the finer elements of halo 3 and half life 2 I find myself comforted that I’m surrounded by idiots. Half Life hands down.  HAH who has the last word now?

But I digress, maybe just a little bit on purpose for we have our game and while I am ecstatic I feel that a little bit of soul was put into the project that I worked on all this week. But in the end it was decided by all that Golem was too much for 5 weeks. I will miss it like a friend who has moved to another country. You wish them well but a little bit of you is sad.

But putting that aside we truly move into the hectic world that is last minute game development. We even started to get in to the nitty gritty such as sound lists and scripting writing, something that I might be doing from now on.

It’s the top of the hill we crawled up to the very tip this week and we shall be running (and sometimes rolling) to the bottom over the next 5.

Thank you to the board who came in and gave us there expert opinion. They even said my ideas were… unique. GLEEEE

As Allways

Signed the ever illustrious Pixel

Today involved much laughing, crying, screaming, and more mud-wrestling. With the imminent arrival of the industry board tomorrow all work was focussed on polishing up the two concepts to maximum shininess (all the moths had fun).

With two concepts, the studio was split down the middle with each half working on one of the concepts (except the programmers, they had a hard enough time getting Flash to do all the stuff us non-coders kept demanding from the program). More pretty art was spat out in rapid succession by the artists and continued to shame our hastily scribbled design diagrams on the whiteboards.

Design documents are now ready for tomorrow and presentations sorted (speakers for Idea 1 are Ian and myself, with Pixel presenting Idea 2). The sad truth is half the work will be lost tomorrow as we can only continue with one concept. There’s a clear leaning towards Idea 1 as it’s more accessible for the player but you never know.

Oh yeah, and we just had to hand in our contracts so we’re locked into the design cage for six weeks. It would be fine except I can very loudly hear Gemma’s mp3 player blasting the Phantom of the Opera theme into her head along with various opera songs and I’m afraid it will drive me insane by the time we escape on February 20th.

Alex Baldwin (AJBaldwin on the forums)

Day Three and we are all still alive… just.

After much deliberation (arguing and mud-wrestling), the second game idea was finally nutted out and drawn up on the whiteboard (much to the delight of those with the markers).

The design team (that’s us!) were then sent away to do our jobs: Ian and Pixel got busy with the game synopsis(es) while myself and Alex got stuck into describing characters and working out the first game idea’s more intricate details as far as game mechanics and actions went.

The second game idea underwent some major changes by the time it finally came back to us (at which point we were happy to see something that didn’t involve B-Grade movies) and has proven to be very popular with everyone at the studio. The most impressive change was the shift from a male to a female protagonist (finally, a game where you DON’T save the princess!).

While Alex contemplates the fascinating mechanics and Ian grapples with the hardships of the synopsis (aided and abetted by our beloved Pixel), I have been concentrating on the character descriptions. Today, I have made the acquaintance of Ima Starr, Chester Chestington, Clee Shayd, Ava Ridge and an interesting young lady by the name of Agatha Gideon…

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

What kind of game will we end up making?

Will Pixel defect and join the Art Team?

All of these questions will be answered in time. But for now, I’m returning to the catacombs beneath the opera house…

~@ Phantomess_Jekyll (Gemma)

Allo people!

Today has been a huge day for the design team consisting of myself, Gemma, Pixel and Alex with a solid five to six hours of brainstorming.  Game concepts discussed were weird and wonderful! Varying from adventures with our good friend 50cent and a crystal skull which people were attracted to in a lemmings fashion. Contrary to what you now may think the day has been  very constructive with many great concepts being produced by our design team (with our lonley artists joining in sometimes). We hope to have at least two to three great concepts ready by Friday for the industry board.

But hey who’s hoping we are that good.

Ian

the whiteboard is fleshing out:

The team are busy working on 2 proposals - these boards show some of the brainstorming that has been going on … catch some of the ideas over on youtube

Greetings and salutations fans of the electronic age.

This is Pixel signing in to you give you an update on the design antics that has occurred on the first day of Studio - GameOn for here on out referred to as The Studio. Straight from the get go we knew that this was going to be a challenge. Here is a short list of what happened.

Started by setting up the desk and running metre after metre of cable. (Previous experience as a cable monkey came in handy)

Soon followed by a lecture on safety and the Scholastic system (Won’t bore you with the details).

Interviews and photographs taken (Majority of the time spent dodging trigger-happy photographers)

Settled down to the nitty gritty and started to brainstorm. This was probably the most intense and we came up with quite a few abstract ideas for tommorow when we will settle down for the day and work out a few concepts that might or might not come into play in the development of a couple of protoypes. It’s early days still and things are heating up as we circle in on what will become the Studio GameOn interactive experience.

Signed Pixel Esq

Explorer 2nd Class

P.S on the forum:

Contrary to popular belief Ian is Ian

AJBaldwin is Alex Baldwin (ALEX, not ALEC….shut up….)

Phantomess_Jekyll is Gemma

and of course Pixel is humbly Pixel.