Hello from the Production Side of Trapped!

My name is Olivia Yee and I am currently serving as the Producer for the game Trapped! In this series of Production Blogs and Game Development Logs, the Game Designer of the game, Zachary Nussdorfer (Zach), and myself will be showing you all the progress from our team as the game develops. Before we begin, I would like to give you a brief introduction of the team and the project.

Our team is comprised of 12 students at California State University, Chico all aspiring to be future game-makers in the industry. As a part of the Computer Animation and Game Development Department, our task this semester is to publish a game starting from the ground up. Trapped, born from the brain of Zach, is an infinite runner game in which the player must break-out and stay out of an inter-dimensional prison; think the maze running of Pac-Man, but add an attack, more types of enemies, an isometric perspective, and throw in some Risk of Rain elements. With that in mind, let's get to what we have accomplished this Sprint!

2D Art

Traditionally, when it comes to 2D art, character concepts are the first on the task list, but Zach and I decided to take a different approach to what we wanted to start off with. Since we would be building the game about 5-6 times, we thought it would be beneficial to have some UI art that would show off the feel of the game. The 2D Artist on the job was Atley and we were able to get some beautiful things: the art for the HUD, some animated buttons, as well as some player progression (as seen below).

On top of that, we had another one of our 2D artists from the 2D art team, Sadiq, working on the concepts for our enemy characters. We are planning on having 4 different enemies throughout the levels: a stationary wall turret, a roaming enemy (think Pac-Man ghost), a regular prison guard, and a higher-level shielded guard. Though the concepts are not 100% completed yet, they communicated the basic elements that we were looking for and gave us some options to choose from:

Another thing that happened in the 2D art land was that we got a concept for our main menu screen. Again straying from traditional 2D menu screens, we wanted to see something 3-dimensional. Before that point, though, we wanted some concept that we could pass on to our 3D modelers. David from the 2D art team was able to give us some concept that he had been working on and found it a little bit easier to block out the concept in 3D space. It still needs the final polish, but we wanted to show it off to show the direction that we were going with it:

Last and certainly not least, Zach and I were able to dip our toes into some concept art as well for the game! We needed something that we could quickly pass on to our 3D artists, therefore, Zach was able to get his vision of what he wanted to see for the main character onto a canvas and I was able to design the power-ups that the player can pick up in-game. Whereas the player model might not be done yet, you will be able to see the power-ups already made if you read a little further down.

Needless to say, we were super happy with everything we got for 2D art and we hope to keep this train rolling!

3D Art

First of all, we wanted to preface that we have some kick-butt 3D artists on our team. They were able to get everything that we wanted to get done and more. In terms of the art style that we were going for, we wanted to get a low-poly design with flat colors. Zach and I knew that the low poly mixed with the flat colors would not only expedite the process for our 3D artists, but also achieve the look that Zach wanted to see for the game. That decision really paid off, especially for this sprint.

One of the biggest things that Zach and I wanted to see for this first sprint was the walls of the levels so that our level designers could begin blocking out their levels for the first build of the game. Within minutes, I kid you not, our 3D artist, Shawn, was able to get those walls modeled and textured to modularly fit within all of the levels. Shawn, being the rockstar that he is, was then also able to get 3 other assets done that will be placed around the levels for differentiation: a light, a sci-fi themed crate, and a vent. Finally, he was also able to model the currency pick-up that the players can collect around the level to use in the in-game store.

On top of all of the work that you can see above, another one of our 3D artists, Ryan, was able to make some differentiating assets, a computer panel and modular pipes, as well as design the button that the players will need to hit on each face of the cube before they advance to the next level.

Then finally, our last 3D modeler, Vanessa, was able to take the quick 5-minute concept that I made for the power-ups and model the pick-ups for the game as well as texture them. This sprint, she also started the character model for the main character, we just do not have the progress shots from that yet.

Just like our 2D progress, we are very ecstatic to see all these great things coming together from our 3D art team. Zach is quite happy to see his vision coming together and I am very proud of all the amazing things that these 3 individuals were able to accomplish.

Level Design

For the first build of the game that we will have after next sprint, Zach and I agreed that we wanted to have at least one loop of the three levels that the player can get through. With that in mind, we put all three of our level designers in charge of making an annotated map. We will have 3 different permutations of each of the three levels that will be randomly selected in the group so, at the end of it all, the level designers will be able to get their hands on one level of each type. For this first one, Trevor was on Level 1 (a 15x15 map), Jacob was on Level 2 (a 19x19 map), and Parker was on Level 3 (a 25x25 map). 

Additionally, we had the level designers block out their maps in 3D space with the models from Shawn. We only have the progress shot from the 3rd level from Parker, but it was super exciting to see the level designers excelling in the tasks that we gave them for this sprint.

Programming

Just like the rest of our team, we saw some excellent progress come out of our Programming Team as well! Zach, being the programmer that he is, was able to get the things that he wanted to see in his game out of his brain and onto paper that could easily be communicated to the programmers in the team. After chatting with him about what we wanted to see in that first build, Zach and I prioritized the tasks that the programmers could accomplish.

From that, here is what we were able to get and who was on the job (and it is no small feat):

The ability to gain score (Christian)

The ability to die and see the score that you accumulated (Christian)

A working wall turret enemy (Chrisitian)

A proper player controller - hooked up to a controller (Dylan)

A main menu screen and pause screen (Alex)

Working buttons that the player will need to press (Wesley)

No programming can ever be done without a few bugs (or many), but we are very happy with the progress on our programming team. They were able to get some other things in progress and we cannot wait to show them off in the next sprint and allow you to play them in the build.

Game Progress

In this Sprint, we assigned 175 points to our team and 127 of those points were moved to To Verify. At the end of it all, we were able to get 112 of those points verified and moved to Complete and 63 points were left in In Progress. That being said, we are currently ahead of schedule and we are hoping to stay that way!

Next Steps

On that note, we will now conclude our first Production Blog for Trapped! From the entire team, we would like to thank you for reading through our progress and we cannot wait to show you more. As far as the next Sprint goes, we are going to be getting the first prototype of our game out, adding some key features, and moving forward with more assets/levels that will be put into the final version of the game. We hope that you will stick with us through our journey and play along with us as the game grows!

We shall see you real soon. :)

-Trapped Team