Meeting Monday September 22th

On Monday my team and I had a meeting in which we discussed the current state of our game and what we are going to focus on as we move forward. Since the story is pretty much established I started exploring the Unreal Blueprint system to create the game logic. From information that I took from different tutorials I created the Blueprints for a character from scratch and added some functionality to different objects. I also started developing the user interface for displaying the health and energy of the character as well as the logic behind the inventory and item pick up.

During the meeting Jon presented the level layout that he has been working on in unreal. He made a big green mountain, started to play with the water and lava textures and made a preliminary sketch of how the world is going to be organized. We also discussed new mechanic that could add survival aspect of the game, to me survival experience more real.

Meeting Monday September 14th

Today my group and I had another meeting at Dirac. We discussed the story further and also planned the level layout. As I'm in charge of the story I presented my draft of the game introduction to my group and the new route I was taking in regards to the theme of the game. I thought that Greek mythology was not a good theme for the game because it didn't fit with the fact that we were trying to make a game where the main character was the member of a tribe, my team agreed with me.

We also talked about the layout of the level. We landed on an island that had a big mountain in the middle. The first "stage" would take place on the beach, then you would move up to the forest and then you would get to the fiery top. We discussed which game play elements could appear in each zone and we discussed the way a player would progress through the game. Here I attach a photo of the general sketch that we did.

The crook and the stairway

This is the story for the video game that we are making during the video game class

James Johnson, a multimillionaire crook that rose to the top by doing nothing other stepping over everyone without hesitation. He has it all apparently, the big house, the fast cars and the exciting parties. He thought that he had done everything right. To show off all of his success he organized a party in his new transatlantic yacht. He invited everyone he knew to show the expensive food, drink and entertainment his lies and exploitation had gotten him. He ordered the boat to be taken to open sea so that they could be as loud as they wanted. But in midst of all the alcohol, fun and euphoria the Captain got drowsy with his man and the boat lost its course and stumbled into a great big storm. Everyone flew through the air as ten meter waves reeled the vessel. Everyone drowned swallowed by the raging ocean. “I wish I had been that lucky” thought James, as he sat in the tiny island where he had ended up in. He was the only sad survivor. All alone surrounded by nothing but a palm and some sand. Angry and frustrated James screamed to the heavens, “God, why have I been forsaken in this lost piece of land!” Then God answered, “You were never kind nor honest, you never worked hard or helped your fellow man, why should I show mercy to such an awful man”. James’ expression dropped from a furious grin to a face of fear and desperation. While sobbing like a baby he supplicated “I’m sorry god! I’m sorry! I’ll do anything to prove to you that I’m not a bad man”. Then god said, “Then you shall show your determination by climbing your way through heaven”. Then God’s voice and the light in the sky suddenly disappeared and a hole in the clouds open right above James. Hundreds of platforms then formed out of thin air and arranged like a stairways that reached the sky. 

Source: https://aprendelapalabra.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/naufrago1.jpg

First team meeting

On Thursday, September 3th my teammates, Jon Woods, Kaleb Dall,Yao Linhui, and I had our first meeting. Our goal was to get to know each other and talk about what type of game we want to create. We used the questions of our second video game class assignment to guide our discussion. We started by deciding on what type of game we would be creating. We threw around ideas until we landed on a survival type game that encouraged exploration and discovery. We had a very lengthy and productive discussion in which everyone had an opportunity to state their ideas on what the game should consist of. We also set preliminary roles related to the design of the game. This was done to focus everyone's efforts so that we start working on the game individually as soon as possible. Overall the meeting was a success and I'm very exited to embark on this new adventure - I feel that I'm well accompanied.