Our goal as a team with this most recent Thus far was to develop our world a bit more. This of course meant to bring it together and begin to breathe life into this game from all disciplines. From every person on our team we were able to see great results that made incredible strides in the right direction. After completing this sprint I was clearly able to see the fun in not only our game but the process of building it. 

Starting with the modeling this sprint, we were able to complete a powerful icon to represent the player castle as it is moving across the map. Rolling in as a mobile stone command center this monstrosity of a model really made me excited to play the levels and command this around the map with determination and joy. Although not quite finished there are some details to be added I could not be more happy with the start of this model and its potential.

Next we were able to complete the enemy headquarters, in the game, I have called it the enemy Stronghold which still needs textures and to be placed in the game but the model of this building was the only thing as a player that would make me nervous to compete against which was the point. Testing the might of the allied forces and the enemy strength.

After seeing the outcome from these models I was only more excited to see what was going to come out of the rest of the models and to see what these would look like all together. The rest of the models included environmental assets such as trees, rock and some miscellaneous objects that would be stacked around the maps to provide better immersion for the player.

Continuing this low poly concept throughout our models was definitely a challenge as we wanted cohesive models that consistently brought the same look and feel from completely different assets but in the process of observation of these models I could begin to see an appeal that was present through all of the models and certainly more prevalent in others where it was deserved.

With Programming the challenge was to have the necessary mechanics in the game that we needed to and have them feel good in unison. This meant having the camera movement and the castle controls as well what AI was present feel like it made sense and meshed together well. The most important of this was to ensure that the player was able to understand what is going on to allow them to apply the strategy necessary to win the game.

The Programming in and of itself is a daunting task having asked a number of programmers to do some things they may not have been comfortable with before or have ever done in some cases and being able to fulfil the needs of the vision and cohesion. I can say with confidence that, of what we have that is working, is done very well and what is still under construction is going in the right direction to being completed. As a learning experience for all involved there has been much improvement with the unknown as we made our way through this sprint and there is only more improvement to be developed as we continue forward.

From the perspective of the Level design there were a lot of issues as it pertained to scale and conceptualizing however we were able to come to a solution by scaling the assets up to match the scale of the other objects in the game to avoid any complete loss of time and work. 

Above is the image of the 4th level of the game that shows us a first real glimpse of the dynamism that we want to achieve within the levels. Having the map overlap itself in certain ways allows the player to use more spots on the map as strategic locations in combating a singular position.  With this in mind the maps then get both more challenging and provide more opportunity for the player to be creative.

Finally in conclusion in working with the 2D artist and the Animators it is clear to see the vision is more than shared and the concepts that we are looking for within the game are coming easy to these members as well as many other members of the team creating a strong dynamic with our development environment that shows the connection from one model to another mechanic, together in unison on a well crafted level.