11/21 Class Minutes

Today's is a big update! Our game is coming along nicely and nearly finished. We have some heavy texturing to do, some sound changes, and polish - but we're nearly there. We presented an early version of our final sell presentation today, along with our newest build. We got great feedback and positive input, and it felt really great to finally hear that our product is become impressive.

Here's the notes I took today on both our sell presentation and our game demo.

Sell feedback (The number corresponds with the slide number)
2. Make the 'imagine' parts pop up one at a time
3. after 'you hear noise', jump to 'now you're on a spaceship'. Not straight to Game Start screen.
4. After 'on a ship', then game screen.
5. ??
6. Blend art and story here, don't separate. Incorporate screenshots. This goes for other slides too
7. Intended audience is good, just put intended rating as well
8. Introduce character > story > what player doing > intended audience (in that order)
9. Don't list individually. Maybe ditch slide. As we put images, we can mention some of these things. Demonstrate these, don't list. Video?
10. Include this on the story
11. Include this after story? Gameplay slide? Can go into small detail as to how the creature is finding you (heatmap)
12. Great slide. Maybe get scale, get better pose of Henry. However, this is a little deceptive to in game - creature seems smaller in game than this screen. Reared up pose in game to demonstrate size and fear?
13. don't break this out. concept art is great, try to get matching screen shot. This doesn't need its own slide, should be in gameplay explanation
14. This screen shot could go with story. don't title 'Demo Scenario'
15. good, same as above
16. this shouldnt be seperate slide. incorporate these slides throughout
17. get updated gun model. ditch concept art. this goes with gameplay, doesn't need its own slide. Have gun pictured with energy pickups, show they work together.
18. have gameplay demo, then Question?

- Less lists and back and forth
- Video right before game screen? Want to give them sense of fear before game screen.
- Too much back and forth between story and gameplay, have it flow better.
- If we show Henry, needs better poses and look.
- Introduce Henry before explicit story. explain why he's the only one. show game screen, then talk about Genry and why he's only one there
Demo
- Audio/visual clue when pickup ammo
- More monster audio
- Make generator spin, turn on lights? make it more obvious that its now on. give more payoff, a clue as to what's next? cliffhanger!
- Footsteps frequency needs to be upped
- More scares! valves and pipes bursting? lights that were on turning off?

Oct 17 Class Meeting

Today Cory presented our Week 4 scrum presentation which can be found here.

Our presentation overall was good, and we got a few tips on how to improve it. I took some notes.

• Compare what we said we'd do vs what we accomplished (relate it to the previous week)
• How successful were we, self reflection
• Art
• Show concept art vs prev week vs current
• Art asset checklist overview (show overview, table)
• Gun concept as player would see (player perspective)
• World assets need to fit the theme better
• Programming
• Basic ideas of scripts that were made that week, what they're based on
• "For Next Week" section
• Organize by category
• Programming, art, audio,
• As a whole section

We also had some discussions about our game and debugging menu.What we have so far is a great start, but we need some debug options for the enemy, including speed. For our debug version, we should also show the player's HP.

Lastly, we also really need to hash out our monster, and what makes it scary. It's possible we'll have to do some redesigning of it if players don't find it scary.

Next week we'll have our first playtesters play through our prototype level and give us basic feedback.

Oct 10 Class Meeting Feedback

Today we presented our first 5 minute sell presentation, our prototype, and scrum presentations from the past two weeks.

We got some valuable feedback for all of them, which Jon wrote down and I'm recording here.

Feedback on our Sell Presentation

• Have a more interesting, not all-black background
• Include more images
• Have some kind of teaser in the beginning
• The title slide should have a tag line
• Realism - it isn't unique
• Be careful with setting the bar in relation to big-name games
• Go more in-depth on sound and light
• "Story" instead of where & when
• Character portrait sketch
• Research station sketch
• Paint a consistent mental picture for each person in the audience
• Relate 'who it's for' with fans of other games
• Why we are making it/marketing, why people will buy
• What does the player...
• do?
• know?
• see?
• how do they know it?
• why is it fun?
• Potential design idea: monster consumes energy orbs, gets energy/speed/power
• Perhaps in the dark, player's cant tell the difference between colors, possible puzzle?
• Whole team participates in next sell

Feedback on Scrum Presentations

• Background has same problems as sell
• Role-specific tasks (who's doing what)
• Don't jump back and forth between things (Don!)
• Sufficient detail on how things were done
• Videos of animations
• Psuedo code
• Pics of models
• Give enough detail for critique

October 3 Class Meeting and Feedback

Today we had a class meeting where we presented our five-page pitch, and received a lot of valuable feedback.

There are a some core concepts we need to fix about our game, and define in our game design document, which is due Oct 10. They are the following, in no particular order.

• Define our HUD: We don't plan to have any sort of HUD, but we didn't make that apparent in our five-page document. Are we going to have even a small dot as an aiming reticle for throwing objects? (Yes, they will have a minor aiming reticle)  How will the player know how much health Henry has if he gets injured? (Red boarder around the screen that gets more intense as they player has taken damage). No minimap, no gui, except for aiming reticle
• What are the specific in-game objectives? How will we convey where the player needs to go and what to do? Unsure at the moment. In the demo, maybe small gui text will tell them they need to fix something at the start of the demo? Long term, I think it would be best if Henry had like a mental checklist the player could pull up of things he needs to do. What are the end game conditions? If the player is killed by the Creature, or if the player solves the 2 or 3 puzzles we have for the demo.
• What is the expanded vision for our game? If we could take it further, what would this game be, and what will the vertical slice be? Is there a possibility of a series? What is the lifetime of the game?
• Define Henry and the Creature: What are their individual strengths, weaknesses, abilities, size, and specifics? Compare the two in relation to each other. Who's faster? Who can see better and hear better?
• The Creature:
• What is it's origin?
• What exactly does it look like?
• How did it get on the ship?
• How does it move and follow Henry - will it always be in the same room as him?
• Can it see light through walls? Hear through walls?
• Melee only? Is it a one-hit kill?
• Does Henry have a chance to get away if he's spotted?
• Henry:
• How many hits can he take before he is killed?
• Concept art ideas:
• Player shooting a ball of light while the enemy is somewhere on screen - maybe with the Creature taking notice. Something in an open room, more representative of the environment a player would see in-game.
• Puzzles: We need more explanations on our puzzles. What are some specific examples? How will the LEG be used to help solve them?
• What are some specific scenarios where using the LEG will present a fair risk and reward?
• Checkpoints: Will we have them? Is it game over if you die? Unsure. Lets talk to the programmers
• Safe zones: Will there be any? I would say yes in the full game, but I’m not sure if our demo will have any.

September 30 Meeting Minutes

In attendance: Ryan, Jon, Cory, Dylan, Miguel, Don, Evan.

After we all threw around a few ideas, we agreed to keep the horror idea for our game, but with new mechanics and a completely different setting. It would take place aboard a space ship that has lost power, has been damaged, and is now stranded in space. The player's goal will to repair certain parts of the ship, while avoiding a creature. Light and sound will both play an important mechanic, as the creature will be attracted to both. The player will need to navigate the space stations using a gun that can create orbs of light, and also be used to solve puzzles.

September 29 Meeting Minutes

In attendance: Don, Jon, Dylan, Miguel, Evan
We met up today to further refine our ideas for The Unseen.

Miguel and Jon liked the idea of setting the game underwater. Their idea for the demo was this: the player would be controlling a diver in an old-fashioned style diving suit. The player would be tethered to a submarine, and exploring the ocean floor. Suddenly, there would be a violent pull from the tether, and the character would look back to see the submarine crashing down to the ocean floor and into a deep crevice. To avoid going down with the ship, the character would cut his tether which would seal his suit, giving him a limited amount of oxygen. The player would then navigate to the crashed submarine, and have to solve puzzles in order to repair the submarine.

While we liked the idea of setting the game underwater, Dylan and I were hesitant to try this because of our limited time to complete the game - we thought it would be difficult to give the game a realistic look and fill in such a short time span.

The team deliberated on our horror idea and tried to refine it by giving the game a theme and setting. We went through many different iterations for the setting, theme, objectives, puzzle types but we didn't settle on a single, solid idea. After two and a half hours of discussion, we agreed it would be best to give ourselves 24 hours to come up with self-refined ideas for a first person horror game, or come up with a completely new pitch for an entirely different game. We agreed to meet on the following day.