Today has been a very heavy on discussions, more so than usual.

We started the day off with a meeting with the sound designers regarding what they will be doing during the day as well as giving them feedback on what they had done the day before. We also supplied them with some references as to what direction they should take the sounds and music.

Afterwards we had a short meeting with the programmers regarding some things we hadn’t properly defined in the GDD. These mostly concerned the augments that they had begun implementing and was quickly dealt with.

Then we had a meeting with the Character Art Lead regarding some setbacks that had been made. We had a long discussing regarding how to dilligate the other character artists to make the most out of the various competences they have. Thankfully we managed to get to a solution that should work without us having to cut further content from the game.

With that over, we took a lunch before continuing to playtest the latest build of the game. Most of the programming has been done and now it’s mostly polishing on the AI’s part. There are also a few minor bugs, but all are things that the programmers were already aware of and in the process of fixing.
Most of my time playtesting was spent on trying to get the enemies to a good state, speed wise as well as how far away they should stand from the player. Though the enemies aren’t quite finished, as they still require animations to give better feedback as well as attacks.

Then we got to finally deciding on the last upgrade we should add to the game, as we had put it on hold due to our lead designer being sick.
What ended up getting chosen was the upgrade I created upon specific parameters being required. This upgrade let’s the player stay in combat longer due to enemy attacks being weaker as long as the player continues to attack. We needed more melee focused upgrades, which led me to making this upgrade to make the player want to stay close to the enemies.

That was it for today. It was quite eventful compared to most other days lately and tomorrow we have set out to make individual changes to the variables in the latest prototype. We are going to do this as a means to see what works best based on what each of us come up with.

So ends yet another day and we are progressing slowly but surely.

Us designers discussed a lot things regarding how to proceed today. In the morning we talked about how things were looking from the standpoint of our current build. Mostly we discussed what parameters were wrong and bugs we found whilst playtesting. Before lunch we had a discussion with our design teacher regarding AI, specifically how to improve ours without adding too much workload. This discussion delved into us finding other ways to vhange combat for the better, to which we have had a few ideas to playtest. We were also given directions to some reference material, specifically Hexen II to help guide us in a good direction.

After lunch we discussed a lot regarding sound and animation. We had a long discussion with the sound designers and had been given some new material to listen to. We really enjoy the main track that the music designer is making and only have some minor things we might want tweaked. One of the sound designers also sent a test for the dash sound yesterday and improved upon it today after we gave feedback on it. It sounded more like a bow being released rather than a dash, but the new one sounded more in the right direction. We also brought in one of the sound designers to have them listen to a reference for the dash sound that a fellow designer found.
As for the animations, we discussed which of the artists we could change over to the animation department to help speed up the process a bit. We found one artist who was nearly done with their current work, so we directed them towards the lead animator who would help and be helped by the artist.
As such, we now have a lot of things finally going as planned, but unfortunately the programmers are having issues with getting things to work with the Playstation 4.

But that is an issue for tomorrow and this is the end of this entry.

After a 4 days long break, we’re back in business. We have been able to playtest and sniff out some of the more obvious bugs as well as incorrect values. There was a particular issue where we kept killing the enemies in singular attacks, which me and another designer investigated. I found it out to be something with our stat boosting through clearing levels, whilst the other designer pinpointed it to the stat boost remaining through each new run. Luckily this was just an issue of a component missing and was easily resolved from our side.
Other than that we have mostly been playing around with the stats when it comes to playtesting.

We also had a meeting with the sound designers which we are collaborating with, considering the matter of us not really having proper communication and how to resolve that. They shared our concerns regarding communication and we agreed upon having a daily meeting with them regarding the things they’re working on to get a better view of how they’re doing. There was also the issue of us being unable to convey our vision properly to the music designer, which has led to many misconceptions and possible hurt feelings. As such, we have talked with him regarding how we should proceed. He will move onto creating the main theme for the game to take a break from the elevator music he was working on for us to gather our thoughts better. He will also be getting the help from one of our artists, who makes music as a hobby and has a near perfect vision of our game, to help him get on track when he continues his work on it.

But that pretty much sums up the events of today. It was quite eventful, but tomorrow will be more work heavy when it comes to playtesting the game.

Today has been quite the mess for us designers, due to difficulties with our repository. The issue we had was that we couldn’t push nor pull anything to and from the repository during the morning. This meant that we couldn’t get our fixed versions of the game to playtest with.

Thankfully the repository started working during the afternoon, allowing us to finally do some proper playtesting. Yet there are still some issues in need of resolving, like collisions, before we can have a proper view of how the combat should look.

Most of our time has been spent on looking for further things to do as we wait for the programmers to fix the things in need of fixing.

It has unfortunately been less of a productive week than we wanted, which was in part due to Easter. But nevertheless, we expect to come back at full force next week!

Today we got the news that we will henceforth have to work from home, due to the situation with the virus developing for the worse. Luckily most of our group has already situated themselves at home and are managing to work without any major hurdles. Though there are still a few who will have to situate themselves with working from home and getting the necessary equipment up and running.

Aside from that note, we managed to get a working version of the game to playtest and see what was working and what wasn’t. There were a few major things that weren’t working as intended, enemy projectiles going through walls for example. But we have talked with the programmers as well as the environment artists regarding how to make it work as intended, so from now on we have things in order. Most of today was spent on setting things up in the project so that we can have a good base to test from. The things we set up mostly related to stats of both the player and the enemies, so nothing is radically overpowered in comparison to each other.

Me and my fellow level designer also placed some spawn points to test things out. Though the system behind the spawn points isn’t fully finished, so we couldn’t get a clear view of it working just yet. The current issues in this case are the facts that all of the spawn points are activating, which they shouldn’t. Also all the enemies are alerted by the player rather than just the room they’re in, which ends up with the player getting easily flooded.

All in all, it was a slow day, but at least we had a lot to do finally.

Today has been a very slow day due to us designers having to search for tasks just to have something to do.

This was mostly due to our programmers having continued issues with getting a proper build of our game up and running. But some good news is that they will have it up and running tomorrow. With it comes the task of adding spawn points to each of the rooms before we get to start properly testing out the combat.

Besides that, most of today has been spent on testing out what movement speed feels good in the game as well as discussing naming conventions for the augments. We have also been discussing feedback a lot to come to a good solution to what we want in our game.

Meanwhile our artists have been hard at work continuing their progress on both the enemy models and textures, environments, visual effects as well as animation.

That about wraps up todays work, not that much happened from us designers part, but we will finally get to do some playtesting tomorrow.

Another week starts and with it comes new challanges as well as opportunities.

As for today, us Designers sat down and finished our selection of upgrades to bring into the game. Our decisions were made by evaluating each augments strengths and weaknesses before then picking out those with good scores but also that fit into sub-catagories. These sub-catagories were based on the abilities and stats in the game, with us making sure as few of the chosen upgrades as possible are similar to one another. Also, we wanted to try and have the augments synergize with one another to some extent.

As well as that, we have been doing some minor playtesting to see what our current gameplay looks like and what may need fixing. So far the game feels responsive with some minor issues, but those are to be resolved sometime tomorrow according to the programmer who’s on the job of fixing that.

The artists have continued their work on the enemy types and weapon models, so that we can eventually get them animated and into the game. The level artists have also worked diligently to get the rooms ready for texturing as well as ready for playtesting.

Programmers meanwhile have been fixing bugs, continued to build upon the AI and player movement scripts as well as sacrificed a goat or two.

But with that ends the first day of week four, with this coming Friday being a day of. This resulting in us getting less time to work on the game, but we will make the most of it. Ahead of us is a lot of playtesting now that the prototype is almost up and running as intended.

So, misfortune struck and I got sick for a few days, losing plenty of time that I could have spent working. But thankfully the other designers managed without me, which is always nice to hear. I did do some work on Tuesday morning, though most of that time was spent on further specifying music and sfx to prepare for the meeting with the sound-designers.

That aside, today was our Alpha presentation where we showed off what we had managed to make so far in these three weeks. We got a lot of good feedback and the presentation as a whole went very well. Me and the other designers have also begun sifting through all of the augments in order to come to a decision of which ones to proceed with.

Other than that, that’s most of what we’ve done today. Mostly a lot of talking and discussing. But I look forward to next week when I will not be sick for the majority of it and can do some proper work.

The third week starts and with it comes rejuvinated people ready for another week of work!

Unfortunately due to difficulties, the prototype we were supposed to have didn’t build properly. As such, we didn’t have much to do today whilst the programmers were trying to fix the issues presented. Despite this unforseen obstacle, we managed to work on other things instead.

Us designers have been working a lot on sound design to prepare for when we collaborate from people who go to a music school. We sat down and discussed for a long time about what type of music and sounds we wanted, elements to the music and things of that nature. We ended up with wanting synthwave music for the levels that would introduce additional musical elements to make the music more complicated and energizing the further the player got in the game. We also want elevator music for when the player is selecting their next augment as well as loading the next floor. These two tracks we wanted to work together

We also discussed enemy designs with the character artists to help make decisions on what designs to proceed into production with. There where a few issues regarding people disagreeing and critiquing others works without being very constructive about it. But things were resolved and we have managed to make plenty of final decisions regarding the designs.

It has been a relatively slow day, but I expect tomorrow to be more eventful due to our meeting with the sound group regarding our game and vision for it.

We are now on the double digited amount of days spent on this project and it has already been quite a ride.

Today I have mostly been researching feedback for our game, trying to figure out what kind of feedback we want and so on. Other than that, I have also been fixing with my rooms to get them onto our repository properly. We also had to change them a bit as their pivot wasn’t centered and it became a whole thing. But we managed to fix it, so now they are in the prototype for the game and working as intended. Our programmer also managed to fix the rotation of rooms now and has built a prototype of our game.

Us designers have also been discussing the UI for health and Energy, but have decided not to settle on one of the two options yet without being able to test them in-game.

Both of the UI’s have their strengths and weaknesses, but in the end we couldn’t decide which design works the best.

This week has been less chaotic than last week, but that has also made this week feel a lot more sluggish in comparison. It is now that we are at the end of pre-production and about to begin production that it feel like we have very little to do as designers. But since we have a prototype ready for next week, I presume we will get a whole lot more things to do then.

All in all, today and this week as a whole has felt a lot less productive than last week, or at least from my own contribution. But for now, I will take a break over the weekend to think things over and relax to come back to make next week more productive!