Production Blog 2

Hello, and welcome to the second production blog for The Warfront From Intercepts! I’m Natalie, and I’m here to show you all the work our team completed for our second sprint. The Warfront From Intercepts is a puzzle, strategy game where the player sifts through papers to find the enemy’s battle strategy. Our main goal was to create a prototype for the game so that the core loop could be playtested. We also planned to finish the AT Machine and chemical station features in time for the next prototype. If you would like to hear more about the design process for the game, you can read Justin’s blog.

Some temporary features needed to be added in order to complete the prototype, a point system and a true or false selection. The core loop of the game is determining whether a message is true or false, so until we have the mechanics for the battle simulation completed, the player will simply select true or false for each message until they reach a certain point level or run out of time.

Level Design

Our level designer, Miguel Antonio Fuentes, focused this sprint on putting together the environment of the game. His main goal was to bring all the elements created in the last sprint together in a playable scene. Miguel and our designer Justin also worked on message templates so the messages that are generated don’t all look the same, giving the player more variety to work with. The templates are really important for message generation, because it allows the programmers to simply plug in values rather than create an entire message in the code.

Justin Lam

Miguel Antonio-Fuentes

Programming

Our programmers have been working on the message generation, chemical station, and AT Machine functionality. Rodrigo Lopez-Patino’s main goal this sprint was to complete the chemical station functionality, and Mario Garcia was able to start work on the AT Machine. For the prototype, Mario created the true or false selection and point system features, and he put together the prototype with Bryan Ramirez, who worked on message generation and important information generation. The true and false selection is what makes the prototype simulate the core loop, giving the player the ability to actually determine whether the message is truthful without needing the battle simulation to reveal the truth.

Prototype: Bryan Ramirez and Mario Garcia 

Bryan Ramirez

Mario Garcia

Rodrigo Lopez-Patino

Modeling

The modelers completed a lot of work in this sprint, with the main focus being on creating the unit models for the battle simulations. The player units that were worked on are the M4 Sherman tank, modeled by Andrew Olsen, and the DH.98 Mosquito plane, by Sarah Youngdahl. The enemy units assigned this sprint were the Panzer IV tank, by Jax Potmesil, and the Mitsubishi A6M Zero plane, by Peter Gahl. Jax also completed the player and enemy general infantry models.

Andrew Olsen

Jax Potmesil

Peter Gahl

Sarah Youngdahl 

2D Art

We were also able to complete some 2D art this sprint. Andrew created some junk mail that will serve as an entertaining distraction to the player when they are sifting through papers. Peter completed a poster that will hang in the war room that indicates the different units' advantages over each other, which is a very simple but important player indication for certain strategies that need to be taken into consideration. Sarah was able to complete some UI icons, as well as a real and fake seal, giving the player another thing to pay attention to when looking through messages. If a message seems fake, but there’s a real seal, then it is undoubtedly true.

Andrew Olsen

Peter Gahl

Sarah Youngdahl: Real - left, Fake - right

Sound Design

We were lucky enough to have a guest star sound designer this sprint, Colby Herbison. He worked on our main game theme and battle theme. They’re both instrumental marches with different pacing. The battle theme will create a more investing battle simulation. The main theme will serve as an indication of time running out, because the next sprint will feature a sped-up version of the main theme, adding an extra layer of stress. You can listen to the songs through these links:

Main Theme | Battle Theme

For this sprint, our team completed 99 points of the 135 assigned. For the next sprint, we plan to have the war room and analysis room set up so the player can experience the game world in a more immersive environment. We also plan to include the chemical station and AT Machine features in the next prototype so that more features can be playtested. We will also start working on the mechanics for the battle simulations so we can move on from the point system and true or false selection. Keep an eye out for future posts about the production and design of The Warfront From Intercepts!