studio-gameOn

After 2 weeks in our glass fishbowl Day 12 required us to make a complete change - moving into a place of darkness, artificial light and great floors for racing on chairs with wheels. An external group had booked our fishbowl so for the day it was next door in The Block we needed to reside.

There were definitely some advantages, other than said floor for rolling along. Numerous huge projectors were hooked up to the programmers’ and artists’ computers so we were aware of their activities without moving (not that it stopped us abusing the wheely chairs). Also, because of the unusually high ceiling (about 3 storeys tall?) we could hear every whisper in the hall. There was one major problem though - a severe lack of internet ports meaning the day was filled with running between teams with flash drives and sharing what few internet ports we had. Not even the hubs would work.

In the end we’re back in the fishbowl and missing the freedom but with a brand new table and computer setup - the artists somehow managed to get 5 2-person tables for themselves and a nice rearrange in our design section means we all have a nice amount of room. The programmers are also now grouped with our producer Rory.

Now, I haven’t mentioned what actual work was done yesterday but there was quite a bit - finishing up ALL documentation, diagrams, lists and explanations for the for first chapter to the point where no further changes would be made.

And now onto chapter 2…

Alex B

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)

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)

After our morning meeting, in which each department was soundly thrashed for their benefit. The art department, broken and bleeding was hurled into the back of a mysterious black van that smelled suspicously of old carpet. Bound, gagged and spun around three times upon disembarkment, we were thrust blinking stupidly into the blinding sun. It seemed we had arrived at the State Library of Queensland. Here we were chained like filthy apes to our sketchbooks and cameras and went about taking photos of mondo grass (which is cool) and identical rooms (which although modern, not as cool or interesting as mondo grass). I’ve uploaded some of my sketches from the SQL. it’s actually quite futuristic for a library and does not smell in any way like moldey books and knowledge. pity really.

the stairwell that looks like insane lego

from the lego stairs.from the balcony.