Dev Log #1

7 Weeks of development progress

Tanner:

Throughout the first seven weeks of our development on this game I've been mainly focused on Production, Gameplay Design, and Modelling, however I kind of just help with a little bit of everything depending on what people need help with or what we're behind on.

The majority of my work through these beginning weeks has been dedicated to working on our player model and getting animations to work in a way that doesn't make my physically suffer. I'm not much of an animator so it's been quite the challenge getting different animations to both look nice and work well for our intended gameplay loop. One of the biggest issues I've fought with has been getting our limb-swapping animations to line up properly. While I have found somewhat of a solution, I do plan on taking a different approach in the future, after our first major milestone (when we will have some downtime). On top of this, Unity, the engine we're building the game off of has also presented challenges with its animator controllers. These have been easier to deal with, but we have found issues with humanoid rigs, which is requiring us to put in extra work with each iteration of our player model which makes rapid prototyping difficult.

Another aspect of development that caught me off guard was managing a project with multiple people working on it. I'm very used to working on solo games, or projects with at most 2 others. I've never really officially taken a production role before so it's been interesting to say the least, seeing what works and what doesn't when trying to move development along smoothly.

Most recently I've been working on getting the player's animations to a state where they feel smoother, getting the player textured and remodeled so it's not a blank canvas, and beginning work on our Art Bible, so that we can maintain a consistent art style throughout development.

Alfred:

Throughout the first seven weeks into the development of our game, I have been tasked with Narrative Design and Sound Design.  Though I am willing to help in other areas if needed, and I'm always open to learning something new. 

Most of my work consisted of creating the narrative elements for our game.  The setting, time period, environments, conflicts, etc.  Despite my enthusiasm, writer’s block has been commonplace.  I do my best to write down whatever I can, but there are times where my mind isn’t able to come up with anything.  There is also the worry I may start to trail off with the main story.  Despite these worries, I'm excited to see things come to fruition.  Recently, I have been tasked with sound design as well, which I was eager to take on.  I am no professional audio designer, but I know enough for the kind of project we’re working on.  This can even be a learning experience.  I’ve heard and witnessed the difficulties that have popped up when it comes to Unity, the engine we’re building out game off of and they don’t inspire hope.  But we’ll be able to work through them. 

Something that I've noticed as development has progressed is how easily we can end up with idle hands sometimes.  At least during the early stages, I've sometimes felt like i’ve run out of something to do at the moment.  But quickly that’ll change since I've been given my second role as Sound Designer.  Speaking of which, sound will be some of my new focus for the time being alongside the narrative. 

Lin:

My main tasks for the last seven weeks were mainly backend coding, specifically the enemy interactions for the player. This will slowly transition to front end development once we have a direction to take UI design and more development on visual design.

The main work was focused on making sure the enemies can actually seek out and target the player character. With the decision that the game was going to be in Unity 3D, this lead me to look into the functionality of the NavMesh feature to streamline the work. Thus the biggest aspect in enemy AI is to actually make sure both the player and the enemies can actually interact with each other.  Of course all of this would be meaningless if there wasn't some sort of visual indicator, and I am hoping to put more work into the HUD so that it is easy to understand but also fits into the aesthetic of the game.

Moving forward there's going to be more focus on visual clarity so that we can reach a more hands off demonstration of the game.

Ostap:

As a programmer for this game, my work these past weeks has been mostly setting up systems that control player movement and implement Tanner's animations for the player. I've also set up some backend features to make interacting with objects possible.

A significant challenge with my work has been getting the player movement to feel right, especially with a Rigidbody system, which we will need for future physics-based abilities with the player. While the movement feels appropriate so far, we feel there's work to be done on making the sliding mechanic feel polished and fun to use, which is something I'll focus on in the future weeks alongside with other feature's we're developing.

Another challenge was wrestling with Unity's editor and overall engine systems to make my systems work. Since I've never used Unity, there were multiple features that I've had to learn about, like prefabs, scriptable objects, and the overall Unity hierarchy. Because of this I had to think about modularity and how I can set up my work in a way that others can mess around with without breaking the game.

In future weeks, I want to focus even more on the modularity of the systems I'm creating, so that future development can be easier for the whole team, as well as refining player movement while adding new systems to the game.

Caleb:

Modeling/Level Design

The last few weeks I've been working on 3d modeling level assets and level design, making a mock-up of our first level, adding bits of exposition through level design-- protests in front of corporate megastructures, police activity can't handle influx of riots as they blockade exits, upper-class hotels overrun by the collapsed/ rioters, etc. --to get the player up to speed with the state of the in-game world without them having to read a whole lot (but reading is fun so read the lore logs).

Through these next few weeks, I'll be UV mapping and texturing the existing models, as well as building the final layout of the level.