studio-gameOn

Here is another blog for you peeps, and guess what; it’s done by the same person as yesterday. Again I have to say that everyone is doing a great job, but today I sort of kept to myself and worked as much as my tired blood red eyes could. So I cannot talk much on what the others have done except for that the overlays have been coloured from what I know of. Hopefully Toby will be able to post up the overlays tomorrow, because it’s pretty darn cool dudez. What sucks is that we can’t find a way to upload .swf’s to this blogging thingo-me-bob, so you won’t be able to see the awesome stuff Abbey as done. But it will be a surprise.

So below is a picture of the buildings that I’m working on, and I have to stop going into such details into these buildings otherwise the textures for them won’t be finished on time which means that it will be scraped from the game. So I’m going to have to stop modelling and start the texturing, YAY, not really… and once I finish the texturing I’ll start modelling again.

Wish me luck in completing this huge task I put myself into, and also wish the rest of the team good luck on their hard work.

Thank you,

Clyde.

Well, the title pretty much sums up today for the design team. =)

However, I don’t think I could get away with a blog post so short so I’ll go into a bit more detail, shall I?

Scene 1 is pretty much behind us except for tweaking and now the rush has begun for getting the train and mine scenes finished. Most of the day was spent for Ian and myself around with the programmers making hasty changes to level design and object positions as sections were tested, rearranged and tested again. I really can’t say enough how lucky we are to have such skilled programmers with us.

The breaking doors refers to the way the stuntman will open doors on the train - kicm them opn, or break them down? Looks like we might have both! There’s now even a dolly loaded with crates that smashes through 3 enemies, breaking through the train door behind it. Epic stuff.

There was also lots of discussion of the name of the final game, something we’ve neglected to think about until now. Needless to say it ended up going in one big circle and might end up being our project name.

The afternoon for the 3 designers was focus testing a brand new game at Halfbrick Studios. While our wonderfully complicated NDAs forbid us from releasing any details, I can say one thing…..no, no actually I can’t. So stop asking. STOP IT.

So that’s the story of today in the design team. Could have just read the title and gotten all that info in one bite-sized chuck but noooooo you had to read this entire blog post didn’t you? That’ll teach you. =)

Alex B

Our busy busy team has continued filling each level with content and updating functionality. Josh worked on updgrading the scoring system and cleaning up the appearance of level 3. Colin worked on Level 2, which is nearly ready for the final scenes. I worked on finishing Level 1, made various engine and framework upgrades and getting all the code ready for another major compilation.

Alex

Sooooo,

Once again design team falls behind blogging… Still aiming to finish the game by Friday then have a week to do tweaking. So yeah fun fun. Rory returned to the studio yesterday back from a week of being an intern. He fell back into the role of producer he left quite easily and I got knocked back to lead designer. In turn knocking Alex from being Lead Designer and returning to being Alex. Resulting in Gemma becoming Gemma again instead of being Alex. It would make sense if you were here…

Totally pysched to wrap this bad boy up  by Friday!

Ian.

Yesterday afternoon was the worst afternoon I have experienced  at Studio-GameOn. Not through any one incident, but from sheer exhaustion. I am struggling to meet my own work expectations of the paperwork side of Studio Manager, while being there for the team as well. I never anticipated that writing so many positive emails to the team would be so emotionally draining along with the long hours, all have lead to me hitting a brick wall. What I do realise now is that I have been neglecting to prepare myself. (Note to self: next time writing emails of encouragement- write one to self) It is so easy to fall into this trap.
I have been coming into uni early, and now even the cleaners know who I am and let me into the building. I find I get a lot more done before the team arrive and it allows me to spend more time with them making sure that they are doing OK. It would therefore be smart to go to bed early, however there is always just one more email or notes I need to make, which is not very productive while falling to sleep at 11 o’clock.
While it may be good writing these emails of thanks to the team, I am struggling how to say thanks to my direct reports (without as one member of the team has put it, as sucking up) Jane and Lubi have been very supportive and encouraging and I don’t think you could ever say thanks enough for all they have done, not only for the Studio but for QUT and the Gaming Industry in general. They are absolutely amazing women and are the best role models a person could ever look for.
What I can learn from how I feel is, I don’t want my team to feel this way. I want them to know that they are supported no matter what. They have all been working so well and I am proud of them and because of that, no matter what the outcome of the game I have even more respect for their individual qualities, knowing they have given their all. I will come into uni even earlier while I am awake and alert, if that what it takes to get my work done, but I will never leave them to deal with this alone. I just need to be more productive with my time and get some sleep.
We all need each other to work together, now more than ever. The bond between the team is growing even more and it is a real privilege to watch and  be apart of.
To those who think this is a ‘suck up’…wrong.
I am 100% dedicated, 100% passionate, 100% caring and 100% me and I make no apologies for that.

Finally the last week is here. There is going to be a mammoth effort put in by all teams this week to get the game to where we would like it to be. All the content is there and so is a vast majority of the programming. It’s pretty much a matter of tying up a lot of loose ends and finalising what we will be able to accomplish before the end of the week. All in all though the game is coming along well with all of the stages almost complete.

Josh

Hi all,

This is the beginning of the second last week till the game has to be finished and its coming together.

Everyone is busy with their tasks and working their buts off, which is good to see. Toby is busy with those overlays and they are looking great, Bowman did the FMV, Liam did cool little things to add atmosphere into the game, while I was busy away with creating the score/rank level thingy, yes I’m not sure what to call it.

Here is a picture of the level I am currently working on:

Thanks Clyde.

Towards the end of this week saw the tell tail signs that yet another impending milestone was looming. All hands were grinding to the bone, with the obvious signs of added pressure erupting and disturbing the quietness of continual work. While all of the team are now working hard and some others now doing additional hours in their own time, it is really important to look after the team and keep the cohesion of workflow while under the duress of pressure.
On Friday afternoon we had the opportunity of a vacated piano waiting in the halls, which managed to find its way into the studio. Then we had the pleasure of listening to some piano music by some of the team. While it may not have been productive to the game at the time, it certainly gave some welcomed relief and some laughter and reduced the tension in the air. I am always surprised when I find out more about someone, which just enforces my opinion of people that there is so much more than meets the eye.  It helped raise the team spirit and therefore makes a much more productive work environment in the long run. I have been really impressed with how the team have responded and I am a firm believer of telling them so. Many of the team went in on Saturday; I also went to catch up on my work and emails and to support the team. Afterwards I arranged a BBQ at my house, where some of the team got a chance to unwind away from the stress of the Studio. The more I work with these guys, the more I enjoy their individual ways. While we may be looking forward to the final deadline, I certainly am not looking forward to the end of working with them nearly every day.

Another week draws to a belated end, and all of a sudden, the team are charging headlong into the face of this project’s inevitable conclusion.  Six weeks, they said! At times, it feels like this project has lasted twice that length, but with the end looming and much to do … blink, and you might well miss it.

All 4 programmers again volunteered their Saturdays to bring us closer to the brink of success.  Josh continued touching up Level 3 today, and he tackled the remains of the scoring system and player feedback to make it clear and effective.  Christina continued to develop player state assets, particularly the canned animations and more map features, which has been invaluable help in setting up the levels and polishing up the player actions.  Alex again revamped some of the behind the scenes code to improve efficiency and make more of the game’s features easier to implement.  He put some finishing touches into level 1 that should hopefully see to it’s conclusion.  I completed the tutorial level’s functionality as required by the designers, and continued to put key features into Level 2.

So, for next week … there are still a couple of minor player states to add, and there are still some issues with the player states and controls that require fixing.  There are still some level features to implement for most levels … and most levels need their points systems fully incorporated and/or BALANCED so that the player has enough scoring opportunities in the game and will be properly rewarded for their efforts.  Much of this could not be done today as Pixel was the only member of the design team on hand and he is currently occupied with other task and Rory was not in, so we could not confirm certain design aspects.  Game playability will also need tweaking, with changes made to adjust the difficulty of various actions and to make sure the controls respond perfectly.  There are also several ideas the programmers are developing to enhance the ’stuntiness’ of the levels which we will put forward to the designers.  These are thing we’ve discovered we can easily incorporate that will add to the functionality and fun of each level.  These may be a lower priority, but assuming we manage to get on top of everything else that is thrown at us.  Last, but not least, this week entails a great deal of debugging, as we trawl through an endless list of bugs, from niggling animation glitches to frustrating “how did I get stuck all the way up here???” type errors.

Before I sign off, I have to congratulate the art team … these 4 levels are visually looking great!!!  We were all impressed with the visuals for level 1 (which we laboured over for so long while developing this game that we couldn’t wait to move on to later levels).  The final background for level 2 was put in today, and it’s looking greatly improved over the earlier version.  Level 3 looks quite spectacular … very beautifully coloured.  And then there’s Clyde’s Tutorial level … that boy just schooled the LucasArts team!

Colin

Today the team created a build for the industry team based on the Feb 5 version. It’s still a little buggy and needs fixing. Most of the fixing was done by lunchtime with player states still being tweaked and mended. More work was done on scene two and three. The actionbar has also been enhanced with the addition of the actionbolt now in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

Josh Taylor