Game Development Methodology 2019

Hi! Last friday I finished the collisions completely (fixed some bugs) and tested the hitbox (it seems ok so I'm not sure why I said it was buggy, it's not). Furthermore the healthbar now changes color when you can capture the monster and I plan, in the weekend, to program the bat usage and monster attacks, and also work on the updated design documents. Finally, we're still waiting for the fixed character model (no-weapons) and the background and other elements of the map, as well as the animations for the player (and in a less near future, the monsters). Stay tuned ✊ ~evoll~

Hi! This week was a good run! We have successfully presented our game with its main functionality working and are now programming towards making the game more interesting. We're grabbing the suggestions John E. Williamson and Professor Carlos gave us and implementing the ones that both we and the focus group liked most. We have also joined and adapted some of the ideas to this extent, all explained in the report we delivered this wednesday. Furthermore, we are also waiting for the static elements design (background, houses, trees, bushes) to implement effects on these such as alpha-mask filtering on collision for example. Stay tuned! ~evoll~

This week i programmed the the shooting action gameplay (crosshair, bullets & nets movement). I also tried out the Matter JS physics engine, but we finally came to the point of dont't using it and coding the collisions ourselves (Joao accepted the challenge). Philipp

This week we have showed our prototype to the teacher, the guest lecturer and players. We have gotten a lot of positive and constructive feedback which is motivating to continue to work on our prototype. The prototype has changed a lot since the low-fi, we have been able to use content from the artists and add more functions. There is now several monsters, the weapons, health bars, etc. //Melanie

The prototype is now at a point where we can present it to the players. We have worked very hard in the past weeks to deliver this so we're proud of the result. Despite this, we still want to make it way much more functional than it is right now because we haven't implemented a challenge yet besides shooting thin air. We'll work on the colliders, monster damage and items' damage soon. For now, the player presentation/controls are mostly ready, and some collider code has been started but we had some problems with these so we had to rollback this. Stay tuned! Tomorrow will be our Player Feedback session where we'll test our control and presentation options: "Do you like it?", "What can be improved?", "What would you like to see more in our game?", etc. ~evoll~

We are supposed to deliver User Controls and Presentation working the best we an this Wednesday. We have implemented walking (the first tech prototype had this), an healthbar, cards and item-pick controls (using placeholder sprites because we're waiting for the animated sprites from the artists) and a pause screen. The only thing that's left to implement in the controls is the "holding" control that would show the item description while pausing the game and the "use-item" mechanism, which doesn't make sense right now because we don't have the monsters and colliders implemented yet to take the damage or the animations to implement, but we and the artists are working on it. Stay tuned! We're working hard to bring you the best experience we can :) ~evoll~

This week we got our first character work from the artists, looking good. in the next days i will try to implement them in the game. Apart from communication i couldn't do a lot for the project this week. Philipp

We implemented a simple character animation and map bounds until now. We don't yet have the player models with the items so we can't still implement those in-game visuals yet, but we are going to implement shooting the pistol and netgun using image placeholders. Also, UI is being created and should be finished until Saturday. ~evoll~

Hi! This week we haven't been able to work as much as other weeks as it is Easter break and we've been out of town. We have got new material from the artists which is good so we can use it for the prototype next week! Happy Easter :) //Melanie

Unfortunately this week i couldnt do much since im out of portugal and without my working computer, next week we have an evaluation about our prototype hope we can put every mechanic we thought/planned until wendesday. //Francisco

Hey guys :) Professor Carlos said that we could have a session this week to show him our prototype and discuss some stuff, but due to other projects we haven't been able to work too much on the prototype. It won't be finished until this wednesday when the professor would be available to see it unfortunately. Tomorrow is a GDM work day, and probably all days will be from tomorrow on so that we can deliver a good prototype next week. ~evoll~

We reworked and submitted the concept documents. In the lab we ended discussing about the angle of perspective, which should be set fixed soon, so the artists can rely on it! Apart from meeting and talking (skype) with the artists (distribution of trello tasks) i didn't manage to do a lot this week unfortunately, because of other university subjects. The first sketches from the artists looked very promising! Philipp

Hey :) This week we have had a workshop with our focus group to get some new ideas and feedback on things we weren't sure about in our game. We gathered all information resulting from the workshop in a document. We updated our design document, it had a lot of space for improvement and included the outcome of the workshop. This week we also had a meeting with our artists and we have set up a plan for what is priority or not. //Melanie

Hello! We have done our workshop this week with our lovely focus group and we had very good results from it: we were able to remove some game ideas that weren't needed and didn't make sense for our fast gameplay. We want the players to play for fun and not make them "backtrack" too much in our game. Furthermore, we have a lot of new ideas that ressurged from this workshop such as the whistle item, which you can use to call a pet of yours! And you'll be able to choose between different pets eventually as well! They're there to help you with your tasks! You'll see :) Our deliverable, which includes our updated design documents and our workshop report, is turned in and we're ready for the next one: the prototypes ! Will you help us? Contact me at joao.meira@tecnico.ulisboa.pt or in facebook if you want to participate in our player feedback workshop! As always, stay tuned! 😄 ~evoll~

This week we have another workshop to make, this one will definetly decide if there's anything missing in our game concept. We are going to analyze on the things that we are still not sure about (focus point: capturing the monster what should be done afterwards)and ask our focus group what would they do. Will update on workshop results after its done! //Francisco

We have now started the second cycle. In the beginning of the week we had a meeting with our two artists so they can begin to work as well. In the lab we talked about how we wanted to do our co-design workshop, what questions we want to ask and what methods to use. //Melanie

Hi! Today we went to the lab and finalized our plan for the workshop. We're going to test mainly the grab mechanic and the cure option. How should it be done? Also, we had a meeting with the two artists that are going to help us out this monday and they are currently working on some game design features! Soon, we're going to do the workshop and deliver next week's work. Stay tuned! ~evoll~

This week we had our first meeting with the two artists Laura and Ana, who joined us for the game. We decided to make the perspective isometric and 2D. They probably will start to work on the game characters and a first version of the game level. We granted them access to our dropbox assets folder, and i tried to arrange to get the build folder in dropbox as well. So everytime i build the project, the latest build will get updated in the dropbox automatically, so the artists can always play the latest prototype without being forced to perform a build on their machines. I reworked the Game Concept and Motivation sections in our document, and extended two of the scenarios. In the lab we discussed the co-design workshop. Probably we will do the card sorting and zen voting activities. Philipp