Design Blog 4 - Sunshine RV

Hello gamers and thank you from Bootleg Studios for another wonderful sprint! For those that do not know, sprint 4 has come to a close and we have seen a lot of big changes in such a short sprint. The biggest challenge that we faced during sprint 4 was spring break. As such, Bootleg Studios was allocated a week-long vacation from executive management which was very much needed but cut into the time we had to implement progress into Sunshine RV. However, our team did an amazing job and was able to keep productivity maintained throughout the week. 

Another big challenge that we faced was a major design flaw made clear by the executives. For those of you who have played our game in the past, you most likely noticed that there wasn't much of a game to be played. This is because we had yet to fully implement a core game loop into the system. The reason for this is that, as a designer, I wanted to start strong and touch bases with every aspect of the game at once and provide you all with high-quality gameplay. What I failed to realize, and what every game designer should know, is that quality comes in iterations. After all, how could I know what is best for the player if the player has nothing to base their feedback on?

Luckily, Bootleg Studios was able to hop on the issue at hand and implement a core game loop that works smoothly. The tradeoff for this quick implementation was that, while the loop feels like I had wanted when designing the concept, it doesn't necessarily look how I envisioned it. But, like I said, quality comes in iterations. A huge lesson that I learned this sprint was to focus on quantity, and then make iterations towards quality. That being said, I am extremely excited to share with you all some of the work that we accomplished during sprint 4.

Engineering Department

As you can see in the image above, our lead engineer created a simplified version of the core game loop for Sunshine RV so that players have something concrete to play and work for in the game. This has made gathering feedback and finding problems with the design a lot easier. Since a lot of our developers and executives were able to play this upgraded version of Sunshine RV, we were able to find that the player can run out of money and be soft-locked in the game with no hope for progression. This happens when the player buys a tree using the last bit of money they have acquired but has no glassware in their inventory and no more money to buy some more. We knew something had to change in the game but that we only had a month to implement the change so we came up with a relatively simple idea to fix this issue. The original idea for a solution was to take out loans so that the player could go into debt and slowly lose reputation over time when in debt but that implementation seemed far too large to take on this late in production so we went with a smaller implementation which was allowing the player to sell their Sunshine goods. Being able to sell flavoring and coloring that are harvested from trees as well as reselling glassware at a fraction of its buying price, the player can make quick money to get them out of a situation that previously had them soft-locked.  With the amazing work that the Bootleg Studios engineering department is doing, we should be able to share that experience with our players by the end of sprint 5. 

Another big step in the development process is our implementation of the UI menu system in Sunshine RV. Previously, our game did not have a main menu or a pause menu. But with the hard work from our Engineering department, we are now working on changing that so the player can not only pause the game and enter a screen as seen above, but they will also be able to access settings for the game to accommodate players with their preferences as well as be able to start the game from a main menu. The great thing about these UI screens is that they do a great job presenting the game's aesthetic to the player which is more of a trashy feel. This is largely accomplished by the cardboard and sharpie theme for each of our buttons followed by a trailer park background so that the player can get a feel for the environment. 

One thing that I found fascinating that others might not is that our level designer was able to create a multi-sheet Excel document that acts as a prototype for the player's income over time so that he can optimize, not only the price for the glassware and trees, but the types of orders the players will receive relative to the amount they have already sold, and the timing in between orders as well as the timing in between tree harvests. Where some people might see a bunch of numbers and letters, I see the backbone of Sunshine RV's design.

Art Department

The biggest challenge in the Art department is the fact that none of our amazing developers in Bootleg Studios have any specialization in character modeling so creating a customer model that can be rigged and animated to walk and pick up orders of Sunshine was been a difficult process. Nevertheless, our 3D modelers and animators have worked together to create a simple version of a model that will be the female customer that walks up to the player window when a new order is made. What I like most about this character is the outfit and how it looks trashy but in a way that makes the character seem like they are trying to look nice. Other than the issue of character modeling, our Art department has been smooth sailing from the get-go. Below is some of the work that our artists and specialists were able to complete during sprint 4: