Trapped Dev Blog 1:

Hello Everybody,

My name is Zachary and I am the lead game designer for Trapped. In these blogs I will be telling you about the progress of my team from my point of view. My producer, Oliva Yee, will also have blogs about the production view of our progress. I'm excited to share our progress and am looking forward to sharing this game with the public as we make our journey towards a finished product.

Sprint #1: 

Looking back onto the first sprint I believe we were quite successful. My producer took on my vision and understood it very well which I was extremely thankful for. To get started I wanted to create a vision board for my project to help portray my theme and idea to the rest of my team. I ended up creating one using pinterest. I'm planning to use the board for the rest of the project and add references to it as needed.

I believe my biggest struggle this sprint was with my modelers. I wanted to create modular walls that my level designers could use to build their levels in 3D. It took me a while to figure out how to describe this correctly to my modeler and eventually we came out with what I wanted. I want to quickly thank Shawn (my modeler) for being patient with me while we got on the same page.

The other aspects of 3D modeling came out very well. I was super excited to see some of the aspects of the game coming to life. We got some other great assets from our other models based on some pretty basic references that we gave them. I can't believe the quality of the stuff we got done and I think they are going to look great in the game. Here is one of the highlights from the 3D modeling team. These are power ups that the player will be able to find in the maze.

For 2D art I really wanted to get started with the UI of our game. The reason for this is it's something the player will see constantly at all times while the player is playing the game. Hopefully by getting it done early will help us get it in the game as soon as possible. That way we can get feedback on it so we can make any changes if necessary. After getting our UI back from the 2D art team I was pretty awe struck and impressed with what we received. I really feel like they hit the nail right on the head with this one.

I decided in a quick last minute decision to make a concept for the main character personally. I figured this would be the best way to get my vision across to the 3D modelers. I am not the best 2D artist but I knew if I spent a little extra time working on it I could get it to come out at least half decent. I was pretty proud of myself when I finished my concept.

For the programmers we got them started with a class map to help them understand how their scripts  would interact with each other. After that I wanted to get the basic movement started because I figured that would be the most difficult task of the game as well as the most important. If the movement does not feel right or is uncomfortable to use then the game really cannot be fun. After some work we got a good first iteration of movement done for the first prototype.

We also got our basic enemy into the game as well as some menus (main menu, pause menu). I feel it's very important for our prototype to have a complete loop from the main menu to the finish so we can get an overall feel for the game. That way we can tell if we need to make any dramatic gameplay changes we can know at the start of our production process. But so far I'm very happy with the programming processes we have implemented so far.

For the level design we had each level designer work on 1 annotated map for the level loop. That way we can have at least one completed game loop for the players to play through for the prototype. I created a general key for the level designers to use while creating their levels so we could keep a good consistency for our annotated maps. We got all three of our annotated maps done and they looked awesome. The level designers also took some routes that I did not expect. Originally I was thinking the maps would all be similar to the idea of pac man filled with hallways and no open spaces. But some of the level designers added some open spaces to their map and I think it will add a strategy to the game I was not expecting. Here is the finished cube map for level 1 (ignore the squished cone).

Also we had the level designers block out their levels so we could see what the 3d cubes will look like in game. I had a last minute idea to have them block their levels out in maya so we could get them to consistently snap the wall pieces together. In unity the systems for level building can be a little more difficult to use. After presenting this idea to the level designers they seemed to agree. Here is the level 3 blockout. It came out pretty well. I'm very excited to see our player run around it.

Conclusion:

I could not be happier with how this sprint turned out. I believe we are on such a good path. We got a lot of key elements done and they all do a really good job of presenting my vision. I also learned a lot about being a lead designer this sprint. Being super clear on what I want is so important and I will work on being as precise as I can possibly be describing the game elements of the game to my team. That way I can minimize the amount of cards I have to send back due to miss communication. I am super proud of my team and am looking forward to what we create in our future sprints.