First Post! New Year, New Group, New Game!

Noah Van Nest – Blog #1

                And so it begins. Here we are, another year, another group, and another round of classes. My expectations are high for this year as I move through my final half of my university career. Here we go.

Environment Concept – Joshua Liew

                First: I learned a bit of Unity over the summer and familiarized myself with some more programming concepts. I quite like Unity with its ease of use and its excellent interface however when doing some tutorials on how to work the various functions of Unity I found myself doing a lot of copy and paste simple work. I then realized I had no idea what was going on underneath the pretty face I was looking at and wanted more. So I then looked into making my own engine and realized I had nowhere near enough programming know-how to accomplish such a task. That being said, I am optimistic that this course can give me the push I need to get my programming up to snuff and do it.

 

Boss Concepts – Mark Spolitakiewicz

               

Second: I have a new group this year. Intermediate Graphics broke the spirit of 3 out of 5 of my group members. Sadly they are no longer with us (They’re not dead, they just dropped out) however this does mean that I get to work with some new people for the first time in a long time. The last 2 years I have mostly stuck with the same group throughout and it is nice to get some new people in the mix who have new ideas and a fresh mix of talents that I have not worked with before. I have a very programming intensive group which can be both good and bad. On one hand, our game will (hopefully) run efficiently and use many features but on the other the art may suffer and our direction might get lost. As the producer it is my job to guide them and though I may not be the strongest programmer but I need to know what needs to be done to meet deadlines and meet expectations.

Concept Stage Design – Liam Svirk

Third: The game my group is making this year is a 4 player, 3D action platformer in which all players must work cooperatively to take down a large scale boss in an arena. Our main inspirations are Shadow of the Colossus for the gameplay and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for our art style. This will involve a large effort to achieve the balancing in the game in regards to the gameplay and a strong knowledge of shaders and colours to achieve the art style we want.

Concept Visual Styles – Joshua Liew

Lastly: We have made some progress already. Myself, I have been working on gameplay and design decisions in order to make our game achieve the feel we want. Our lead programmer Kenny has already make our camera system we want to carry into the final game and has been able to load in textures all in the 2LoC engine. Our artists; Josh and Mark, have been working non-stop on concept art. The lead level designer, Liam, has already made a concept level map for our players to explore and has been working with me to make design choices. And finally, Nemo has been writing some music for our game that will help set the tone of the game.

Boss Concept – Joshua Liew

                So all in all I am very optimistic for this year. I have a solid group who is passionate about making games and I have a new found drive to succeed in both programming and game design which I believe I can carry throughout the rest of my time at this university. I have also littered this blog with concept art and other things involving the game.