[Explosive Dawn] Fall, Week 6 - That-a-Way!

Greetings,


Week 6 of Hogwart's School of Gamecraft and Artistry is now through, and we are on the verge of Week 7. Our next milestone is Week 9, Prototype. As promised, I am updating to discuss the results of our very helpful meeting with our professor.


We came into the meeting having several different mechanics and 4 different art styles. We had no direction, no plan for how we were going to progress, no team name, and little idea what to do with what we had. The meeting progressed very well, and we solved almost every one of those things. The only loose end at this time now is with the mechanics. We don't have a full decision on the finer details of the mechanics. I'll share what we do have right now though.


First, we picked our new team name. El Citrap is gone, and we are now Explosive Dawn. This was just something we came up with by mixing words around that we'd all written down. It's sort of a filler name until possibly we come up with something better. However, it's actually kind of cool to me, and I rather like it. It may stay. 


Next, we chose our art style. We decided on going with a pixelated, retro style. It was the easiest for our dev's, and it's one of the easiest styles for me as the artist/designer as well. The sounds to go with it are easy as well thanks to sfxr, an awesome free program for generating sounds. We also know someone who may be able to provide us with chiptune music, which would be excellent. 


Then we started getting into mechanics. There was a lot of back and forth between us as to what the game should and shouldn't have. We're all coming into this with rather different experiences with these kind of games. My experience is mostly with Geometry Wars and Everyday Shooter. One of the dev's is coming from a more 1945 kind of experience with shooters, and our other dev is coming from a different experience than both of us. However, we managed to nail down at least a few solid ideas.


1. Our game will feature a safehouse in which the player can buy/sell things.
2. There will be at the most four different weapons which can be mixed.
3. There will be a health bar, as opposed to 1 shot being insta-death.


There are other finer details about the safehouse and mixing of weapons that we're still working out, but everything that we have now is incredibly helpful. After getting these things set, we worked out our plans for what we need to do for the Prototype Milestone and got a look at what we'll be doing after that for First Playable.


The best thing that came out of the meeting was just having a direction, both concept-wise and working-wise. We know what we're doing, and we know what we need to be doing to make it happen. It's a really good feeling. So, I should probably get on to doing some things now! See you all at the end of Week 7. Peace.


Sincerely,
Alicia.