Hello There! My name is Samuel Keeley and I am thrilled to be the producer for the game MARRED this semester in CAGD 495. The MARRED development team consists of me, our lead designer, Jen Davalos, and 8 other amazing developers. With classes being in person again, 9 of our 10 total team members meet in person with our last group member working remotely this semester. Our goal for this project is to have a playable, polished, and published game by the end of the semester.

MARRED is a fast-paced first-person shooter with an emphasis on fun movement abilities and intense combat. Deep into the Appalachian mountains, a greedy mining company digs too deep into the Earth and tears open a portal into hell itself. As the adversaries of the underworld spew out to corrupt the humans and land around them, only one person can stop them, the player. Being the only normal human left underground it is the player’s job to fight their way back to the surface, blow up and close the mine from the outside, and save the world. 

I was impressed with the work done in the first sprint and am excited to show off our progress! Within our team, we have 2 programmers, 2 level designers, 1 2D artist, 1 animator, and 3 3D artists, one of whom is also our lead designer. Now let’s take a look at all the work that was accomplished in sprint 1!

Programming

The three pillars of MARRED’s gameplay are shootin’, lootin’, and scootin’, so we wanted our programmers to get started on creating those systems early. However, we did not expect to get so much of these mechanics done so early. I had one of our programmers work on creating the game’s weapons and the other making the game’s movement abilities. 

There are 6 different weapons within the game, 5 of them being hitscan, meaning they use raycasts to detect hits, and the other being a projectile. Since 5 of our weapons were functionally the same but had different values they were created as scriptable objects. Creating the shotgun took more time though as it shot multiple projectiles. Originally, the goal was to have a basic gun working by the end of the sprint, but we were to have all of the weapons that will be present in the game coded within the first sprint! 

Our other programmer was working on the player movement system. This includes basic movement in a 3D space, sprinting, crouching, looking around with a mouse, jumping, and sliding. Since sliding was thought of as the hardest of these tasks we did not intend for it to be finished within the first sprint, but that was able to be implemented too. With the player movement abilities being finished early our other programmer began work on being able to press E to interact with basic objects. 

Within the first sprint, our programmers were able to get 2 out of 3 of the foundational systems of the game completed. 

3D Art

During the first sprint, Jen had to focus on design work such as finishing our GDD leaving only 2 out of 3 of our 3D artists available, with one of those artists working remotely. Regardless, I think the progress made in the 3D art category was still commendable. 

Like earlier, we wanted to focus on getting the systems that make MARRED fun completed early, one of those being the weapons. I am pleased to say that all of our weapons were modeled by the end of sprint 1! Although we are not focussing on texturing the weapons until future sprints I think they look great so far. 

The other thing that was being modeled in sprint 1 was the walls for the first level. MARRED’s first level will take place in the deepest parts of the mines so we needed environments that were indicative of that. These pieces were made as modules so when the time comes to import them into our levels we can repeat them wherever necessary. Despite not all of the modular pieces for level 1 being done this sprint, I am happy with what was completed. 

2D Art 

Most of the game’s 2D art will be part of the user interface. Being the most use of our 2D art we are focussing on having all of our 2D UI art done early. Within this sprint, our 2D artist surpassed my expectations and was able to deliver us lots of quality UI art within a short amount of time. This includes completing all of the ammo icons, hit markers, and all crosshairs for each weapon. Originally, we did not anticipate having unique crosshairs for each weapon, but the designer and I decided it was a good feature to add to better differentiate the weapons from each other. 

Level Design

The focus of our level designers in sprint 1 was to have all of our annotated maps done. This included all 4 levels in the game, 3 shop rooms, and 4 boss rooms. Needless to say, the level designers met expectations and delivered all maps before the sprint was over. All of the maps are detailed and labeled and were able to be completed despite some revisions to some sections as called for by the lead designer. Our designers alternated on who would draw what level, meaning 1 designer had levels 1 and 3 while the other drew 2 and 4. This was so that each designer could create both an introductory level and a harder level. 

Animation

We were a little slow to start on animation work since we did not have models immediately ready for rigging, so our animator backtracked and worked to research references for each kind of animation in the game. We do intend to have our animator start working with a basic human rig before the end of the second sprint since we have human enemies in the game. 

Over the course of this sprint, we had 111 cards assigned with 82 of those cards being completed,  6 of our cards are still in progress and 18 others have not been started.  Most of the cards still in progress were a result of our team members outpacing the work that I had originally assigned for them in sprint 1. The first sprint had a big question mark on it since Jen and I had not worked with half of the people on our team before, so we were not sure of everyone’s capabilities. By the end of the sprint, the amount of work that was done far surpassed my expectations and I am eager to see what we can accomplish in the second sprint. Our goal for the next sprint is to have basic enemies working, a playable first level, and the basic pickup system working in order to have a working prototype. I look forward to the next production post to more of the team’s progress!