Production Blog 1 - Sunshine RV

Hi, welcome to the first production blog for Sunshine RV. My name is Bryce Becerra and I will be speaking about the production process and I will also be sharing what our team has been creating. Sunshine RV is composed of eleven members and the whole design of our game comes from our designer, Grant Stewart. I am excited to announce that our game will be released on May 9th, so let’s get into it!

Let’s first start with what exactly is our game. Sunshine RV is a first-person simulator where players manage specific and time-sensitive orders from customers by buying wares and harvesting ingredients to brew various sunshine concoctions. Essentially, players will be playing as Bill E. Bob, a stay-at-home sunshiner who sells sunshine to his neighbors in the trailer park where he lives. The player is limited to the interior of the RV and his backyard. Players will only move by clicking on the intractable elements in the scene to go towards them.

Now that you understand the basic concept of the game, let’s get right into showing off what our team has completed during our first sprint!

Programming

I first want to start with our programming team because our game is very programming-heavy.  Our programmers worked on the system that revolves around the camera work. So, as I said before, players will be clicking on the screen to move or interact with an object. We thought this would be a good start because we have a menu screen, the still screen, the backyard, and the computer screen. Along with that, we figured that we should complete the basic start screen first because it is an easy task to complete and we felt that later down that line, we don’t want to worry about the start menu, we want our programmers to focus on more complex code.

Westen Smith

James Munguia

Modeling

For our game, the player will be placed in an RV lot, but they will mainly be in Bill’s dirty RV. So, we plan to have the essentials such as glassware to serve the customers, dirty trash lying around, and the essentials to live, like food, and a living space. We also want players to see what’s in the background and have things going on such as cars driving by and people walking by. So, we will have cars, trees, people, and possibly even animals. We first started with the glassware because our programmers will need it to fill up the glass later on. Along with that, our modelers modeled some basic props such as a satellite and ruler.

Marco Antonio

Andrew Olsen

Jerrod Luster

Level Design

When it comes to level design work, it is very minimal because the player will only be moving around the RV and backyard. So, for now, our level designer made annotated maps along with their corresponding blockouts. When most of the props and the RV itself are done, we will have much more level design work. As for now, we are lucky to say our level designer is the goat of all trades since he can do programming and modeling work.

Nathan Davis

2D Art

Our 2D artist has worked diligently because she has made the icons that will be clickable to the player. These icons pertain to the flavors, colors, and glasses that will be used to serve the Sunshine. When it comes to harvesting, players will pick to harvest either the flavor or the color. Also, the color, flavors, and glassware be shown in the inventory so players know how much they have.

Lillian Burgess

Sound Design

Sound work is a major factor of our game and we are lucky to have a member of our team who is dedicated to making astonishing sounds. We will have various sounds playing throughout the game such as cars driving by, birds chirping, music playing, and thunderstorms. Our sound designer worked on various sounds this sprint, such as the thunderstorm. The thunderstorm sound will be used to alert the player that the lighting tree is ready to harvest.

Kai Le

Animation

Another major factor in our game is animation. As I said before, we want things to be ongoing in the background so our animator has worked hard on making blockouts for animations that pertain to people doing various things such as receiving their orders, cars driving by, and cockroaches going over Bill’s computer screen. Animation is a rigorous process and I can say, I am still learning it, but it is quite interesting.

Jeru Parayno

Conclusion

With our first sprint wrapped up, our team was able to complete 112 points out of 143 points assigned. For our next sprint, our goal is to have a polished electronic prototype where we can conduct a playtest. As we continue production, our team will be working diligently on getting more props made, along with other systems. We are excited to say we are moving right along. Looking forward to future posts about the production and design aspects of our game. We hope you enjoy it! Thank you!