Week 1
Start of Project:
Project Kickoff, Pitched with major technical difficulties, then held a vote.
Democratically we decided to make "Svigda", one of the concepts I pitched.
We discussed how game mechanics worked and which ones we wished to keep thereof.
We discussed different ways to make the gameplay more engaging, and how to make the concept more manageable;
Added failstate by player-death, Fleshed out ingredient system and removed the delivery system.
At the end of each meeting I provided links & files with the concept's relevant information, as well as a list of things to consider for the next meeting.
I suggested we choose a name for the group before week 2, I then held a democratic vote where we ended up with "Goulash Goblins".
Day 2 and onwards-
Held a meeting with the programmers and designers while the artists had a separate meeting to delegate tasks;
Programmers wished for a better explanation of the serving system, of the attributes and how to implement each. I spent the better part of an hour drawing examples on the whiteboard in onyx (see attached)
I was then asked clarify how the camera & camera panning worked, which I explained with the help of a video clip showing "Inscryption" gameplay.
With the removed delivery-system for ingredients, we discussed what layout we wanted. Eventually deciding on using the layout I suggested; where meats/fish are located on the left with vegetables/herbs to the right.
Before we concluded the meeting so the programmers could start working on a flowchart, I asked what tasks they thought could be done in the first week. They chose to split it like this:
Controls/Interactivity & gravity - Rickard
Villager and Ingredient classes - Reymond
Dialogue System - Jonathan
Adding to stew/starting cooking timer - Linnea
By the time we got done with the programmer x designer meeting, the artists had finished their discussion. They had gone through the asset-list I originally provided with the concept and had some comments, improvements and concerns they wished to bring up.
- 6 Individual models for the villagers, each with their own set of animations, was simply not realistic.
I wholeheartedly agreed with them, and asked if they wished to cut some characters or if they had another solution;
They intended to make 3 different villagers, each with their own animations and then make 3 alternative versions of them. So they could cut the workload in half.
I thought that was awesome and asked how they wanted to go about designing the characters.
(I had provided concept art of the entire original roster of characters. Not to force anyone to make them that way, only to give a sense of the theme I was going for.)
To my surprise, they seemed really keen on making some of the designs (Mainly Erkisi and Hrothrugr),
alongside a character Gabriel had drawn as concept art whilst trying to figure out the style they wanted for the game.
I held a vote(see attached), with the final 3 being:
Erkisi
Hrothrugr
"Geoff" The Gremlin (Taking on the profile of "Eyjolvarg")
with the 3 alternates being chosen PURELY on their radical names;
Freyruna
Jotvy
Astrilda
With those decided, they brought up two remaining issues with the villagers.
1.) How do they exit? Do they stand up and leave?
2.) Do they need legs?
I explained that in the concept I provided, they did not walk around and therefor would be fine without legs, I asked if we wanted to keep it that way. The artists agreed, but still wanted an answer for how the exit.
After some brainstorming, we decided to either have it fade-to-black or to simply have the villagers perform a sorts of "magic stairs" trick. Gliding down, under the table and then de-spawning.
To see which one we would like to proceed with, I went to fetch the programmers, to get their opinion on it.
With the programmers input, we decided on the latter. To have them "slide-down" and out of view.
Here the programmers and artists asked how we wished for the chopping to work, how many models we thought we'd need and whether or not the Ingredient would split into separate entities.
I asked what each discipline would find the easiest to implement and we settled on these parameters;
Each Ingredient needs to be cut in order to be added to the stew, and each ingredient has to be cut twice.
The models change/split, but stay as a single entity to pick up.
Before heading out for the day, I checked with the artists to see what tasks they thought would be manageable for the first week.
They divided it thusly;
Scene Blockout - Malte
Trimsheet & Moodboard - Gabriel
Ingredient Models - Esther
Erkisi blockout - Agnes
Sending over & altering the new asset list / Miscellaneous Props - Hampus
+ Oscar and I
(Fabian had to go home early due to a migraine, I sent him the notes I took from the meetings.)
had a quick chat about our own tasks this week / what we wanted to get started on.
I would start writing more dialogue / adding the dialogue I had already written for the concept in my free-time. (Just in case the concept got picked! I didn't want us to be stressed about writing dialogue whilst working on the game.)
Oscar decided to take on the herculean task of re-making a GDD for the game, since the one I had originally provided was not only REALLY difficult to work with, (I am so sorry, team. I have since learnt.) but had also changed a huge amount since it was picked.
Wednesday - Next Monday
I was MIA due to being unable to walk as I had crushed my knee whilst biking my way home and was ever-so-slightly high on pain killers. :-)
I alerted my team to this, and tried to sort out a temporary solution to my absence by sending information, notes & questions to Oscar (Since he held SCRUM's)
Not the most elegant solution, but it got the information where it needed to be.
After getting answers from Oscar, I started setting up a document to write the dialogue into (That's what the version history is for.), and after getting confirmation that Fabian would like to work on the dialogue as well, I prepared profiles for each character, providing examples of how I'd written them, what I wrote their personality as, alongside what their relationships to each-other were. So that Fabian would have the necessary information to start writing.
Since I couldn't really walk & my painkillers were making me drowsy, I mainly spent my time copy-pasting my pre-written dialogue into the document and answering questions for Fabian / coaching him through the dialogue writing.
Working alongside Fabian on the dialogue was lovely, though quite a few grammatical errors did occur rather frequently. I mentioned this in person the monday after and showed a couple of examples.
(I am so sorry for all the screenshots, but this is the evidence I've got of me giving feedback and engaging with the team, even whilst away.)
