[Explosive Dawn] Fall, Week 11 - Workin' It

Greetings,

We spent quite a while tending to our game this weekend, and it shows. We've got waves of enemies coming in that spawn according to a pre-determined schedule. The progression is one of the key design aspects to games like these, so it's something that I take special interest in. Getting the balance of predictability and surprise right while keeping the player within the lines of flow is not an easy task. It's definitely something that will take playtesting to get right.

We've also got animations in the works, so our game will be lookin' nice. Since I'm the one delivering the art assets, I've also learned how to create animations, and I created a basic explosion. I made a first draft 8 frame animation, but I wasn't satisfied, so I spent the rest of the day redoing it until I was satisfied. I now have a 16 frame animation that I'm quite pleased with.

My other focus is on designing how the UI is going to work for the Safehouse and the more granular details of how the levels progress in addition to how the game feels, including controls and visual appeal. Controls are the priority. In a game a simple as this, the basic controls have to be right, and that's something I want to make sure that we focus on. Next semester we're going to add in the use of an Xbox 360 controller, which will add a new, different level of control, but for now, we're focusing on making the keyboard and mouse work well with the game.

We've got Thanksgiving coming up. Some of us are going home; some of us are not. Either way, we're keeping our work expectations for this coming week very light. I'm going to use the time to get caught up on animations and try to show the game to family to get their opinions on certain design elements like the controls, the level progression, and the overall look and feel of the game so far. It's far from being a polished thing, but it's soon becoming a first playable game. Our next steps are to finally get the player to die, implement the UI, polish the weapons in terms of balance, and get some solid AI in. (Right now, the AI is just go towards the player.)

So yeah, hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving holiday! I may or may not have much to post by the end of Week 12, but I will report something nonetheless. Peace.

Sincerely,
Alicia.