Production Blog #1 - Shapeshift Dungeon

Hello world!

My name is Arjun Gambhir and I am so excited to be Producer for the Shapeshift Dungeon team in CAGD 495! The Shapeshift Dungeon team is lead by myself and my fantastic Game Designer, Kilan 'Sky' Larsen. Together we have a full time team of 13 people and are sharing a rigger with the other CAGD 495 teams. We are all working remotely this semester due to the COVID-19 global pandemic and not letting that slow us down in any way. For more information about our game, Sky has written a fantastic designer blog here.  We will be creating a one room dungeon action roguelike game with monsters, traps, and all sorts of awesome mechanics! Each time the player clears a level, the room shifts around and they get to fight all new monsters in an all new level. 

For a closer look at our production process, I invite you to come take a look at our Backlog and our Trello board to see how things are going. Each of these tools are living documents which receive daily updates during production according to the needs of our team and our players. We are using the Agile methodology to rapidly iterate new builds every two weeks. That way we can add features to our game and get them directly into the hands of playtesters so that we can always make informed decisions on the development of our game. Every two weeks is a Sprint and we will be doing 7 Sprints this semester to create this game for a total of 14 weeks of development time. 

Our team is divided into specialized squads of Modelers, Programmers, Level Designers, and 2D Artists/Animators. Each of these squads is composed of 2 or 3 people, each with their own specialization inside of their role. All members of our team are CSU Chico students majoring in Computer Animation & Game Development and had to apply for their roles to be on the team. Without any further ado, let's take a closer look at all that was accomplished in Sprint 1!

Modelers: 

Our modeling team this semester is composed of Chance Vilavicencio, Devin Spencer, and Jose M. Vasquez. Chance is taking the reins on props, Jose is focusing on environment, and Devin is specialized into characters. Each of them volunteered for these roles, but ultimately they are each other's greatest resources and there will be some overlap as they work together to create the 3D assets and textures that go into the game. Something we really appreciate was the effort that Devin took to sculpt a skull, retopologize it, and then to texture it so that it can be rigged and animated in the game. He is the only sculptor on the team so we'll be making good use out of his skills for the rest of our organic models.

Here are some of the pieces they made in Sprint 1:

Spike Traps (Chance)

 Floating Skull Enemy (Devin)

Crystal Enemy (Devin)

Dungeon Walls (Jose)

Programming:

Our programming team this semester features Alex Lopez, Joe Warren, and Justin Donato with both myself and Sky coming from programming backgrounds. Over the semester, Alex will be working on the item progression system, Joe will be working on enemy artificial intelligence, and Justin will be working on core level mechanic and the environmental effects that are procedurally generated. In addition, Sky will be working with the team to create the player character and I will be programming the game's user interface. As with the modeling team, the programmers will be working collaboratively and will be each other's best resources when problem solving and troubleshooting. While all of our programmers excelled this Sprint, the highlight for me was Justin's willingness to learn a new technique by creating a C# interface called IDamageable that can act as a flexible damage and health system in the game. I also really appreciated the class maps created by each member of the programming team to ensure that all code written is as designed to function and to scale.

Here are some of the highlights from the programmers in Sprint 1:

Player Data Class Map (Alex)

Enemy AI State Machine (Joe)

Level Systems Class Map (Justin)

Level Design:

Our level design team this semester is made up of Branden Kelly and Marc Billones. Both of whom I have worked with before and really appreciate for their ability to break down game mechanics and convert them into player motivations to be interacted with within the game levels. Both level designers also volunteered to help out with VFX particle effects later in the semester. For Shapeshift Dungeon, there is only one 19x19 tiled room with 30 possible levels that are encountered in random order in three batches. The first ten are introductory, the second ten are intermediate, and the final ten test mastery of the game. Every fifth level is an item shop and a moment of reward for the player. In Sprint 1, the level designers mainly focused on annotated maps and blockouts while they familiarized themselves with the gameplay loop of the game.

Here are some of my favorite maps from Sprint 1:

Levels 1, 3, and 5 Annotated Maps (Marc)

Blockout (Marc)

Blockouts (Branden)

2D Art / Animation Team:

Our 2D art & animation team this semester are made of Alexis Gutierrez, Armando Legaspi, and Tanya Medina. All three come from the animation side of our major and are new to Trello and the Agile process. I am especially proud of how they have adapted to the work flow and really come together to create some exceptional art pieces for us. Alexis will be prioritizing our item system, Tanya will be prioritizing game UI, and Armando will be solely focusing on animation. Their shared expertise, however, has allowed them to work with each other to create references and concept art for our whole team. In addition to the work below, Armando and Alexis recorded themselves in action with a sword for animation references. Alexis captured the feeling of our character and Armando really nailed the weight of the sword swings in action.  While we are very proud of their work, I have omitted those pieces of work from this blog out of respect for their privacy.

Some say art should speak for itself, so here are some thousand word speeches of grandeur from Sprint 1:

UI Wireframe (Alexis)

Health Potion (Alexis)

Character Concepts, Coloration, and Weapons (Tanya)

Rigging:

Some skills are in high demand and short supply in this course for the various student projects. This semester, that skill is rigging. We will be sharing a rigger with the other teams named Eder Ayala. In order to maximize his utility, we made sure to get our first Skull enemy to him right away so that he could get started almost immediately. Although not a full time member of our team, working with Eder has been fantastic so far and we cannot be more proud of the work that he has completed this Sprint. His contributions to our game are valued.

Here is the Floating Skull enemy rig in action from Sprint 1:

Overall for this Sprint, we had assigned a total of 130 points to the team. 80 points were moved To Verify and were marked as Complete. At the end of the Sprint, we had 19 points currently in Progress and 31 points Assigned but not moved. This was an excellent opening for the first sprint and sets us roughly on pace to complete our 750 point scope on time. For our next Sprint, our goal is to have a playable action demo with a functioning level system and assets that set the mood of the game. There is a lot of exciting work in progress and even more planned so stay tuned to check it out! Thank you to the Shapeshift Dungeon team for a fantastic Sprint 1 and thank you, reader, for joining us along for the journey!

Arjun Gambhir
Game Producer.