So we are two-thirds of the way through our first Sprint. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a Sprint is. It’s a SCRUM thing. We have 4 Sprints this quarter. There are 2 quarters. This means we’re…hhmmmm…give me a second here.
This means we’re 8% done with our game. That’s not a whole lot, but looking at this number still terrifies me. There’s probably this irrational part of my brain that thinks everything is going wrong all of the time. Is that a good quality to have as a Producer, or a bad one?
Anyway, let’s get on to why you’re reading this right now. I’m going to tell you what all of us have done up to this point. You get a nice look into the inner-workings of our team, and we get the satisfaction of knowing that you care about this game. Everybody wins!
Coding
We’d probably mentioned once or twice before that we’re using Unreal 4 as our game engine of choice. It’s great tool, with lots of awesome functionality. Unfortunately, it’s not built and optimized to handle our camera system. It’s hard to blame them. I can’t think of any other game with the whole camera system we got. Fortunately, we were able to figure out a way to do it. Here’s a screenshot of it functioning for you. Don’t tell anyone we don’t spoil you.
Art, etc
We have a big art inspiration from a really cool looking game called Shape of the World. Unfortunately, their art style is proving to be, uh, difficult to implement. Our lead artist has been spending a ton of time trying to figure out how to get it exactly done. She’s getting close.
Another big part of our project right now is concept art. We need the concept art to more formally establish what exactly we’re putting into our game. The idea is that the artist sketches something out in 2D, then we try to decide what we like and dislike about it. Then the artist draws another sketch. We rinse and repeat until we get the piece of art that makes us cry from its beauty. Then we begin the gifting ritual. Each of us presents one gift to the victorious concept artist. If the gift is not to their satisfaction, then it is thrown aside and the guilty party must fight to the death and under forced servitude, gladiator style to regain their honor. Then someone takes that 2D concept art and turns it 3D. Then we put it in our game. That’s the entire process.
Design
Well, how do I put this? The designer’s job is to communicate to the other team members what exactly they want in a game. How do you communicate a game that has multiple cameras displayed as smaller squares that can move and change size dynamically depending on a set of triggers tied to objects and places? We have a pretty good system going, but yeah, we’re still figuring that out.
Producing
I sent some emails. I made a spreadsheet. I interviewed some artists.
And that’s a rock fact.
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