Hello everyone my name is Alex Olah and this is the first designer blog for guilded fletching, so what is this game you may be asking well, guilded fletching is a first-person puzzle platformer. This game focus on archery as its main form of puzzle-solving as well as combat, this can be boring so we added different arrow types that allow the player to experiment much more. That the bare minimum of the game now what am I going to be talking about here well I am going to be showing off the work of the team and tell you why we made things the way we did. If you are looking for a  breakdown of how the work was created please refer to the production blog. 

Ok so let us start with the pre-sprint work. This was a quick section had about 4 days before we jumped right in. This game was an idea that I had with some small documentation written down going into this 4 day period I did not have a doc or anything of the sort I in my head knew what I wanted and just pitched that scope was not a factor in that pitch luckily I have done enough games in this major to have the scope of my game NOT FIT AT ALL. So part one was to downsize the scope a bit. Second, write a damn design doc, this is still a work in progress. Third, Tyler and I worked together to make a backlog for the team off of what I had is the design doc. 

Foundation 

So the core foundation of style in a game starts with 2D art so I think that is a good place to start so far we have the concept for the main player character as well as each type of arrow and I can explain what each does as I show them first let’s start with the player and his trusty weapon. 

I wanted to get an explore in his mid-years that you can tell has the experience I told my amazing 2d Artist to look at things like Indian jones for this concept. I also wanted two color pops which she did as well with the purple and blue. The gloves should also stand out right away as they are the only thing being modeled into the game we will see this later. For the arrow types, this is a big part of the game as all puzzles will revolve around them and we needed each to look different and distinct. 

First, we have the normal arrow this is just what it sounds like a normal arrow. It will also catch on fire if shot through fire. 

Next, we have the bramble arrow this arrow is used to bind objects in the world. For example, if there is a platform moving this will stop it from moving for about 3-4 seconds.

Next is the warp arrow, if you have played minecraft you know what this does if not it will teleport the player to its landing location. This only works on some surfaces as if you could teleport anywhere that would be crazy. 

Last is the airburst arrow this will move or destroy objects in the blast radius of the arrow’s landing location.

Using the 4 arrow types here we have the level design team drafting up some annotated maps. First, they had to make a key

I had the level design team do this and not me because I had written what everything does and I wanted to make sure that was clear to them luckily it was so after that they started work on the levels and I would show you all of them but there is only so much time I expect from yall and it would be to much so lets how off the first level the player will be interacting with as this is under the level the teaches movement and shooting the basic arrow.

Using the key above you can see that hight and many other factors translate well to the paper but our team did not just stop there. In the block out I will show you soon there is also a nice thing they are doing to start out it’s making the world feel the same as the paper map with materials let me show you what I mean. 

As you can see in unity the map transitions to 3d pretty well we are working on the controller still to make it feel perfect and for testing that is taking a little longer than expected but we have made some great progress towards that. Before we show the player controller I can talk about the art style I wanted for the game and the first “cut” that has been made to fit the scope better. 

For 3D art, I wanted a mid poly with sudo realistic textures and after the first sprint we realized that this was not going to happen so we have now transitioned to low poly with flat colors and I would like to show some of the first assets made for that as they look great first is the tent and I will explain a bit about that. 

The tent is not for the explorer but for the local population that is defending this temple that you are exploring they are ment to look like a quick set up and take down the reason for this is that the locals are not wanted to be seen by people so all of there equipment is very quick to make up and put down. Next, we have the hands I mentioned at the top of the article they are not textured yet but I want to show off that we are just using hands and a bow nothing else so here they are. 

They do look like real hands and the rig for it is almost completed cant wait to show that off and explain why the bones are there!

And finally programming we have a lot of random stuff done I will just show off some of the best parts

First, we have the arrow physics working so when it’s fired there is a charge rate and an arc on the arrows. Note this is working in the first person it is just jarring to look at so that is working amazingly. Next, we have some of the arrow types working the best one to show off is the bramble 

This is showing the camera movement and ads(aim down sight) functionality as well as you can see that when the arrow hits the object the object stops in place for a moment before resuming this can be used in a puzzle to allow the player to get the position that they need to fire off at a target. 

Overall

So are the first part of the development has been going smoothly we just have been a little scattered on what we are making because I was not ready for day one. We are slowly getting back in place and working towards a grand puzzle game. That is all I have for you today I hope you will check back in two weeks when I will be posting the next update until then I am going to keep working on the design doc thank you and have a good rest of your day!