Producer Blog #1

Hello all, my name is Preston Farris, and I am the Producer for the game Dojo Busters. I am very excited to work on this game with my lead Game Designer, Chris Hunt! Under us, we have 12 amazing developers who will be working on our vision for this game throughout our semester. These developers consist of two programmers, two 2D artists (one of which has skills in animation as well, which will be utilized more in the upcoming sprints), one sole animator, three 3d artists, one audio engineer, and three level designers.

Our plan consists of 7 sprints which last 2 weeks each. Over these 14 weeks, I will be catching you up on the progress that we have made at the end of each sprint.

Last Thursday we finished up the first sprint. Since this was the first sprint, we had a bit of a slow start, therefore we only really finished up content such as concept arts and blockouts. Now I will go over some of the awesome work our developers pushed out.

Our programmers started off strong this sprint. Firstly, the GitHub was a top priority since we need it for all our developers to work together. This was handled immediately and went fairly smoothly, with only a few issues with the gitignore.

During that process, we put our other programmer on the player controller. This was done expertly and feels very crisp and precise. There have been many additions past simply moving the character, such as grabbing, throwing, adding multiple players at once, and more!

Once the GitHub was done, the next task for that programmer was to move onto the camera controls. He set it up to follow the player when they moved, the way that our game designer wanted. Finally, he began working on the enemy AI class maps which were completed by the end of the sprint.

Next, we can talk about the 2D art which was mostly in the form of concept art. Our primary 2D artist focused on making the enemy concepts so that the character modeler could get started on that soon. After that they worked on completing 2D for the actual game art, including an amazing icon for Dojo Busters. We all love the way it turned out! The other 2D artist was able to give a concept for the first dojo. After having these concepts and art, we were able to get our 3D artists on a good start.

We have three 3D artists. One is focusing on character modeling, another is focusing on prop art, and the last artist is focusing on modular kits for the levels as of now.

This sprint our character modeler was able to get a blockout for the main character so that we are not just using a capsule for the early playtests. After that, the enemy concepts were complete and he was able to start working on the first enemy model, which was not completed by the end of the sprint.

Our prop artist was able to get the models for a table, a horizontal sword rack, and a bokken sword by the end of the sprint. These turned out well and will be great additions to the dojos!

Our environmental artist started working on the modular kit for the dojo. He was able to get several pieces done, but the kit was not quite complete by the end of the first sprint.

Our level designers all worked on annotated maps for the sprint and have done a great job. One was tasked with creating the legend for the rest to use in the maps, so they all have a coordinated key.

Our audio engineer was waiting for his mic to be delivered for most of the sprint, yet he was able to get several sounds done by the time the sprint concluded. He started with the footsteps and worked his way through some of the hit sounds.

Finally, our animator did not have much to work with until the end of the sprint when the blockout was done, so he was only able to do a basic rig and doing a small, concept animation. His rig for the blockout turned out great and will be very helpful with the animations in the future!

By the end of the sprint we completed 64 points out of the 143 assigned. You can see our burndown in the chart below.

Keep tuning in for a review of each sprints’ work as we move forwards in this project!