Hello everyone! I’m Justin and welcome back to another production blog about Menacing Mansion! For those of you who missed the first production blog, Menacing Mansion is a horror game that uses procedural generation to create a maze that will give the player a different experience each time they play. The main goal during sprint 2 was to create a working digital prototype in which players could experience the aesthetic and atmosphere we are trying to achieve. This production blog will discuss our approach to creating a digital prototype and any problems we encountered along the way. If you’d like to know more about the design process you can check out Cody’s designer blog here!

To begin the prototyping process Cody, our programmer Weston and myself had a meeting to discuss what we felt would be needed to create a successful prototype. While there were a lot of features and mechanics we would have liked to be in the initial prototype, the scope needed to be narrowed to a list that was achievable in our time frame. The list we narrowed the scope down to was; one room, two scare events, props, a working flashlight and sound and lighting to create atmosphere. Narrowing down our scope for the prototype allowed us to meet our prototype deadline on time.  

Modeling:

To help put as many variations of rooms in the game as possible we’ve broken each room into a list of all the props that will be in it. All the modelers are then assigned props from a particular room so we can begin putting completed assets in the game as soon as possible. The first three rooms we’ve been working on are the Master Bedroom, Bedroom, and Mortuary. We’ve also prioritized all the items that the player will be using. During this sprint our team has been able to create some amazing props! For the bedroom our modeler Justin Wagner has been able to create some amazing pieces including a bookshelf with books that have various titles and references to the story. From the Mortuary room Jacob Hedderson has been able to create some amazing medical props including different variations of a blood bag filled with blood and one without blood. The player will use various items throughout the game and our modeler Logan Fabiani has created some outstanding pieces for the player including the flashlight and a lighter. Check out images from the work our modelers have completed below!

Level Design:

Our level designers have the difficult task of creating a daunting variety of rooms with limited props. The level designers have been creating annotated maps for each of the rooms we have planned for development. With annotated maps it allows myself and Cody a chance to review the idea’s the level designers have and make suggestions to improve the layout of the rooms or give instructions because of features we have planned for the future. Our level designer John Ye has been working at an incredible pace creating our annotated maps and helping bring the design of the game to fruition. Here’s a sneak peak of future rooms that are planned from John’s annotated maps!

Programming:

Our programmers had a particularly difficult task during this sprint. We had a limited amount of time to create a prototype that would include systems that have been completed and many new systems that would have to be implemented. After deciding the scope of what we wanted to have in the prototype our programmer Weston Campbell began the process of creating it. There were a variety of new systems that were needed for the prototype including trigger events, player inventory, interactable objects, enemy ai, particle effects and visual ui to name a few. On top of creating new systems the programmers were also in charge of implementing all the props and art created by other members of the team. We would not have been able to create a successful prototype without the tireless effort of our programming team. 

Conclusion:

During this sprint our team was assigned 176 user stories and completed a total of 142. With our team working so diligently we will be able to add more features into the game we didn’t initially think we had the time to implement! For the next sprint we plan to create a new build of the game with our procedural generation in place! The work displayed in this blog was only a fraction of the total work completed for this sprint and I would like to thank my team for the consistent hard work toward making this vision a reality. I would also like to thank all of the people who tested our game and filled out our game survey to help provide data toward future iterations. Finally a special thanks to Super Space Squid for leaving such a kind comment and video! Please look forward to future blog posts about Menacing Mansion!