Paper Wings: A Postmortem

It's funny, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the type of postmortem I would eventually write for Paper Wings. I'm not even sure I think of this as a true postmortem as we're talking about continuing production and getting ourselves known as developers. I would say this is a postmortem about what we did right and wrong during capstone, to be used by students that are coming after us and for other curious about how we approached development as students. I'm also going to focus more on the overall team aspects, as well as design, as that falls under my category as the team's producer and lead designer. I'm going to leave art and programming to the other three, as I'd probably just look like a fool. Let's get going, there's some ground we have to cover. 

I want to start out by saying that if anyone, back at the beginning of the year, told me that capstone would have gone this well then I would have responded by saying they were crazy. For the most part, the games that came out of all the sections this year were really well done, covered a broad variety of genres, and really just looked super fun. As far as my own team was concerned, I knew we'd be pretty okay because I knew the people on my team were at the top of their game, it's the reason I asked them to be on a team with me. However, even I didn't expect everything to go as smoothly as it did, as we managed to hit deadlines and builds each week, showing off new tech, features, levels, and art on an almost constant basis. I'm going to go into more detail on this during the "What We Did Well" section, but I wanted to open with how impressed and proud I am to have been apart of such an all-star group of people. 

Why Paper Wings?

Let's open up with this, why did we choose Paper Wings? Well, as members of capstone know, we initially didn't come in with this idea. In fact, we didn't come in with any ideas, which surprisingly enough put us in the minority. We had general ideas, such as we wanted to make a game that couldn't really be defined as one specific genre of game, something that would turn heads, and would utilize a new mechanic, but nothing solid. As a team, we wanted to make a game that we'd be proud of, something to headline portfolios, and something that showed off what we had learned the past four years. As the producer, I wanted to be able to proudly say we stayed in scope and were able to ship a completed product.

Paper Wings, like many of our other ideas, were born on a whiteboard. We had a huge whiteboard filled with ideas and arrows connecting these ideas together. As a team, we found about twenty ideas that we liked, and narrowed it down to a couple that we pitched. One was a labyrinth game that still gives me chills as to what could have been done, if we maybe had a year to work on it and a larger team. The other was a better scoped project about paper airplanes and running around on the top of them to control steering. After some internal struggle and convincing, as well as resounding encouragement from the class, we chose what we dubbed #ProjectSky. 

What we did right, or so we'd like to believe.

Iterations

As a team, we did well at making new iterations and prototypes each week. We had a goal we would set for each week, such as building levels or getting new flight mechanics in. Once we had something we liked, such as a fun looping area or turning that felt better, we'd improve on it and determine that by the next check-in, we'd have another iteration that felt better. In fact, I'd say our entire game was built on that. On the design side, the courses were built off of fun things that I enjoyed doing while flying around. Things such as weaving or taking two sharp turns into a third long bank were first smaller iterations that we transitioned into the final level. Even our final levels were built of iterations that started as small as how a flower looked. 

Recognizable Icons

Initially, we scoped Paper Wings up way to much, thinking we'd have time for many different levels and perhaps if none of us had other classes, we would have, but alas that's a different tale. The final product is a mystical area with a bunch of rolling hills, vines, and humongous plants that looked a lot more in theme with the characters that had been created. However, what led us to that was our initial level, which was Chicago's Millennium Park. After taking a team trip to look at the sights and map the land, we built what was a pretty accurate representation of it. However, we didn't like it all that much and our professor, Brian Schrank, told us that he felt like we had put the Player in a prison. In fact, we had, but instead of rebuilding the level we decided to iterate on what we got and create a mystical, organic based city that looked like maybe Chicago, but we kept a lot of the iconic recreations such as our own interpretation of The Bean. This turned out to work in our favor as everyone still says "Hey look, Chicago!" but they also enjoy the world that we've created. It's the Chicago we would love to see, but probably never get. 

Team Accountability/Communication

What worked well for keeping us on tracking was everyone being accountable for each other. Everybody saw what everyone else was working on, and we all did a good job of checking in with each other to see where tasks were at. Sometimes this lead to the same question being asked twice, but we all would be reminded of what we needed to work on. Communication was also open, as we all used the web app Slack quite frequently, to talk even when we couldn't work in person. Even if it was a simple "How'd the weekend go?", we kept dialogue open so that we could gain confidence talking to each other about different things. I honestly think this is part of the reason that we created a good project is because we cared about making a game not just for us, but for the teammate next to us. 

Taking Feedback Seriously

One of the reasons we were able to keep iterating on ideas is because we constantly sought feedback from both the class and from external sources. We made sure to check in with all of our advisers, seeing what they had to say on the game, and taking feedback seriously. Same with when we would present to the class. Our artist/designer Ashley would take notes while I ran the feedback sessions and we'd focus on areas of the game that we were unsure about, as well as opening up the floor to all feedback. We understood that the class, as well as being designers, were also gamers, so we wanted to get their opinion on how our game was coming along. Every time we asked for feedback, we'd get a mixture of great advice, and other advice that just wouldn't work with what we already had, but we took it into consideration and chose to make changes on what we thought was the best advice given. I honestly think that if we ignored everybody, we would have a much different game and probably a game that wasn't as good. 

Scoping Back 

This one is really production based, but something we did well was scoping back on our idea. One of the reasons we chose Paper Wings was because of it's small scope, but somehow we managed still get out of scope. Between wanting three levels, free-roam missions, AND a minigame, we wanted a lot from the end result of capstone. However, as we moved forward with production, we realized that we were out of scope, so as a team we were able to make the decisions to get rid of things that we hadn't worked on. Instead of giving out three meh levels, or features that didn't feel right, we scoped back to one level (with two different course variants), and completely cut out our minigame since we knew it wouldn't feel right and we'd be taking time away from other things. In fact, the decision to kill the minigame came down to either working on it, or reconstructing our menu system. We chose to reconstruct the menu and I still think it was the right choice. 

What could have gone better?

Scale

Man, from a design side, I'm never going to hear the end of this one from Ashley. Quite simply, we screwed up with our scaling and if anyone was to go into our scene, they'd be in for quite a shock. Everything is simple massive. We've tried to hide it well, but it's caused us some problems with both lighting, resources, and importing. We know exactly what happened too and it's squarely on my shoulders. When I built the prototype level that we worked from, I made everything bigger than it should be to help sell the idea that the airplane should be small. However, what I should have done was just get a scale model of the size we wanted for the airplane, make sure it looked fine in the camera, and then built a world with smaller assets. I didn't realize we were in this position until I got the terrain involved and as I was molding it/Ashley painting it, we realized everything was super massive. I should have also had the terrain involved early, to help give us an idea of the size of terrain that was involved. I have learned from this, but it's still something that I'm not proud of. 

Level Design

While I love the level we created, I still feel as though I haven't done it complete justice. There are still lingering aspects of the previous world that keep us tied too closely to Chicago, which we never meant to be the only place, and part of me wishes that I could have done more to get off of it. What I would say to teams in the future years is don't decide on three levels right off the bat. Find and pick one level that you'd be totally amazed with and then add on if you can. We started moving in that direction as we infused nature into Chicago, got a better terrain and lighting scheme, made everything appear for fantastical, but it took us an entire quarter to get there. 

Builds/Development Style

While we did a good job of iterating on features each week, from a Production standpoint I felt like we could have done more to stay on track and avoid rushing to find tasks that we had forgotten at the end of the week. We switched to a complete Scrum style about halfway through and our best work/movement came once we did so, but before that I tried looking at too big of a picture. We always were agile with our development, but we probably should have switched to a smaller scoped Scrum style much sooner. What I would say to future teams is to not focus on the end goal, beyond deciding on your M.V.P (minimum viable product), and then taking things in one or two week sprints, talking about things as a team and deciding what needed to be done by the end of each sprint. 

Final thoughts

We nailed all of our goals, creating something that we could only make after taking every other course that we could at DePaul, and I would say all of us are proud of this. Every showcase we had people smiling, laughing, and enjoying our game, which was a super goal for us. We even got Paper Wings approved for Desura (which right now is shaky), but we will have a shipped product shortly after capstone ends. After looking at all the games the were produced and then go back twenty-two weeks in time, I'd still want to be on the Paper Wings team. This crew was awesome to work with and I think they in fact All-Stars. We're going to continue focusing on our Desura release before switching gears to focus on the Nintendo Indie Store, which is exciting to think about. If I could offer one word of advice to incoming teams, it would be don't worry about making capstone a competition. Worry about just setting your game against your goals and making it. I don't see any games that could really compete again each other, which means that I can be excited for every game that has been finished, and smile to think about the company that our game is in. Cheers guys, we made it. 

Public Showcase!

So we may have disappeared off the map last week, and we're terribly sorry about that, but we did have a good reason! This past Friday, June 5th, we showed off a public version of Paper Wings at our Capstone Showcase. This was the first of two showcases, meant for the public to come in and see the games we have been working on. For those of you that came out, we really appreciate you all taking time to play Paper Wings and for bearing the heat with the rest of us. I saw a lot of people smiling at the showcase, which was a great thing to see. We got a lot of great feedback and found some more bugs (I don't think those things will ever go away), but most importantly we got a chance to see what people really thought of our hard work. Many people at the showcase had never seen Paper Wings before, so I was nervous that our point or purpose of the game wouldn't get across. However, I couldn't have been proven more wrong. Everyone who played the game had a huge smile on their face, said that they thought the world was adorable and the characters were great, and that flying felt fun. Not everyone could fully grasp the concept of playing the game, but even if they didn't, they said they felt like they really wanted to at least watch other people play the game.

Coming from a Production standpoint, I wanted to see how the game would fair with our target market. Most of our testing has been from college students and older, but our market is for younger kids that are looking for these fun casual games to play. We got a great opportunity to see this market in action, and almost all of them were able to get the concept of Paper Wings immediatly! They understood flying and figuring out how to control the air plane, and by the time they put down the controller these new pilots were pros. To me, this is a sign that we did the right thing and we're focusing on the right group. I still think we're going to have the re-tune the courses when we make our eventual switch over to a new and exciting platform (details coming soon), but for now we've done a good job.

What's next? Well, we're now prepping for our final showcase, which is private and by invite only. It's pretty big for us and so this week is going to be spent polishing the game more and fixing all bugs that we've found. Then, in almost two and a half weeks, we'll be launching on Desura. I'm sure by now, plenty of people know what is happening, and I'd like to say that we are going to move forward as planned, until told otherwise. We're now going to also be launching in itch.io (more info soon). We're going to also be announcing some news in the near future, so please keep an eye to our facebook and twitter pages for that coming soon!

Paper Wings is Desura approved!

We've got some really cool news here at Studio Hullabaloo. If you've visited the website between yesterday and today, you may have already seen it. Yesterday, we received via email that our submission to Desura was approved and that Paper Wings will launch on their store on June 27th, at 2pm Pacific Time! For those of you that know the developers, we've been pushing for this for a while now, as one of our primary goals with the game. When we started developing Paper Wings, with the end of our senior capstone in mind, we wanted to also have a shippable product that could be played by everyone, which has now been achieved. What's even better is that we will be making Paper Wings even more accessible by launching the game as a free to play title! You can pre-load Paper Wings starting today, by downloading the Desura Desktop Store, or download the raw executable on June 27th. We're super excited to have a launch date, and as the day gets closer we'll be announcing more goodies and surprises.

Want to get ahold of our press package? Our presskit is available for viewing on our website and a full press package can be requested by emailing studiohullabaloo2015@gmail.com. Keep flying!  

Paper Wings V0.85 Build Notes

Hey guys! So it's been a while since I've done one of these, but I know it's something that I need to get better at, especially if we're going to be announcing some big news soon.

Paper Wings V0.85 Build Notes

Details: We're working towards polishing our showcase build, so there are no new features to add. All of our levels are in and all of the menus works.

Changes:

• We've updated the Boost Regeneration Collectible to now have a particle play, to clearly show that this item is meant to be used. 
• We've updated the collection of Boost Regens and Hidden Items to now fire off particle effects when they are collected. 
• The wind current effects have changed from leaves to petals. 
• Free Roam now offers less hidden collectibles, as part of a two step update which will include more reason to explore and more things to do during gameplay. 

Bugs Fixed

• The options menu now works no matter how many times you navigate to it. 
• Pausing and restarting will no longer freeze the game. 
• Players now restart from the last ring they passed, even if it was a miss. 
• Collecting all of the hidden collectibles now properly turns on Schrankify Mode. 

Design Dev-Log #8 - We've got a new UI!

I'm really overwhelmed by that blog post from Bryce. Let me try and compose myself here. Top quality stuff, right? Anyways, I'll elaborate here since he and I have both been working on the UI the past week, him on the engineering side and myself from the design aspect.

So last Thursday, I was taking a loot at our UI and couldn't help but feel that something was off. We were dealing with scaling issues, which prompted me to take a closer look at in the first place. What I noticed, while looking at the UI, was the it didn't match our updated art style. For starters, the skybox was completely different, and the menus didn't show off any of the phenomenal artwork. I believe that a good menu sets the pace for a good game and if we can show off how beautiful we're making our game, we'll gain more players. So I sat down with the rest of the team and we took a look at the main level, figuring out how we could show it off in the menus, and then it hit me. Why not transform our main scene into one huge menu zone as well? We have the menus in different sections of the level, and the camera flies to the selected menu. After a quick chat with Bryce about how to make it work, and the okay from the rest of the team, I got to work designing it.

Essentially, the menus were already built. We've been using the Unity 4.6 UI tools to build our menus, so a lot of the work was copy paste from the old scenes, into the new one. However, we previously had the menus locked to the camera, so now I had to unlock them from the camera, which inadvertently solved our scaling issues! Now, since we had an entire scene to work with, I started messing with placements of objects to make the buttons feel natural.

As seen in the picture, the vines surround the buttons and make it look like they are "portals" to the new zone. We also have the characters dancing on top of flowers, for the character select. This has helped our menu to feel more organic and less forced, while clearly showing off the cool new art approach. 

I'm going to be honest, I have no idea what Bryce did with the engineering side of the menu. I sat by him today, as he worked on finishing it up while I did other things, and every once in a while I'd glance over and see something working, such as the camera panning, and get real excited. About twenty minutes before we planned on presenting, Bryce tapped me on the shoulder and said "It's done." Sure enough, he was right. Everything panned and worked, looking very cool and showing off our art style. We've already gotten some very positive feedback on it and I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone when I say that we made a good decision in switching to this. Check for a video of it in action on our Twitter channel, or go download the latest build and test it out for yourself. 

Programmer Blog

I've been told I need to start doing this. Up to this point I have done all programming aspects of the game.

This week I worked on the new menu UI.

Design Dev-Log #7

Hey guys! We've got some great new design changes that I'm thrilled to be sharing with you. So as I mentioned in my last post, we got some new models from Alice and I started playing around with them. After adding in a couple of colored lights, I decided to go ahead and change the level to night time. It was mostly as a joke, and to just make the plant lights pop, but after making the change, I found myself really liking what I was looking at. With a purple hue, everything looked a lot more mystical and a lot less Chicago, which is what we've been trying to get to. With that direction in mind, the new models we've been getting into the game now reflect a more mystical look. Currently we've added in vines with blue lights at the top, acting as street lamps, and have plans for other vegetation to mimic human creations.

This first change also prompted me to give the course a complete overhaul, and approach how we've been handling course design. Instead of a complete string, I decided to break the course into segments, and let wind currents carry the Players from segment to segment. I've also been using the nature models as obstacles, which is being well received and leading to people playing the game longer and having more fun. We're now currently testing different plane speeds for the different characters, to give the players some more drastic options when choosing different characters. It's getting pretty exciting, with only a couple of months to go.

#ProjectSky V.0.5 Build notes

Project Sky Version 0.5. 

What's new!

We've changed the level to nighttime in order to help amplify the mystical environment that we are going for. The lighting scheme may change again, but the initial feedback for this change has been very positive. The different characters now have different flight speeds, to cater to different play styles. Try all the new characters and see the different speed changes. We've updated the course as well, to keep in line with the addition of the new level. 

- Updated Lighting Scheme

- New Models 

- New Course/Wind Currents

- Different Plane Speeds

Known Bugs/Issues

- Glitches/Z Fighting

Controls

Left Analogue Stick - Move character

Right Trigger - Boost

B Button - Break

X Button - Checkpoint Reset

Start - Reset Level

Select - Exit Game

Art/Design #2 - Spring Break/1st Week Wrap Up

So many things have happen over the past few weeks. So many that I haven't had time to even put them up here.  On the art side some new, more organic buildings have been made.  They have more emphasis on curves to help with our new nature taking over the city feel. They can be seen below and Nick has already implemented them in the level.

Over in the level design side of things, our main level is now fully painted. (So no more snow.  Winter has come and gone!).

Exciting new stuff!

So there's some pretty exciting stuff going on in the scene today. I'm working to implement the new models that I'm now getting from both Alice and Ashley. Let me tell you, it's like Christmas to have two amazing artists both working on models and getting stuff in at the speed of light. In fact, one of the models that we recently got was a bell flower. We decided to ramp up its size, put some lights on it, and suddenly the idea of having a night scene has taken hold. I'm now in the middle of some lighting tests, but then I'm going to be posting some pictures for everybody to see. It's pretty exciting!

EDIT:

Here's a picture with the flowers being tested within a night scene

Art Devlog: Introducing Amei!

The final member of our team has arrived! Amei is the most technically adept of the pilots, and enjoys precise and elegant flight - exactly as elegant as her dancing is not.

Half way point!

My goodness, we've already reached the half way point of this process! Project Sky has been in development for 10 weeks now and we've got a lot of work to show for it. So, this Friday, we'll be showing off our demo build at the DePaul Game Dev Mid-Capstone Showcase, along with the other capstone projects. This will be very exciting because it'll be the first massive public playtest for Project Sky. I'm nervous for the inevitable bugs that will appear, but am also very excited for people to play our game and see the hard work that this team has put in.

Art Devlog #3.5: Puck is here!

He now has eyebrows and some sick dance moves. Puck is more playful and mischievous than Mav or Chu - he doesn't care about fancy tricks or technical precision, he just wants to go fast!

Art/Design #1

Okay so this is just a quick run down of everything since the weekend.  So I've been hard at work making some new buildings to go in around the course.  We still want that urban feel, but with more organic shapes so I've been playing with buildings with a lot of curves and fluidity.  So far I have two basically modeled that just need some clean up on their verts to be ready for UV unwrapping.  I will also be making several more buildings later in the week.  Here are just some quick screengrabs of the buildings as they look right now.

In addition to this I also got a lot of playtesters to run through the level on Friday.  We got some really good feedback on various things including the difficulty curve, the trees needing some work, camera/movement controls, ring counters, missing ring consequences, and fairy boost/braking.  Many of these have already gotten addressed this week.

Mid-Capstone Build Check in!

Hey guys! So you've probably played (or are going to) be playing our current build of Project Sky, which is our mid-capstone build. I'm going to quickly post some images that our character animator/artist, Alice, sent us. They are three of the characters that will be seen in the game. So here's Chu, Mav, and our newest addition, Puck!

Production/Design Log #6

Hey all! It's been a busy week here at Studio Hullabaloo, but we are rolling right along to our next build, which will be up in just a couple of hours! Production wise, we ended our first production sprint (2 weeks) on Friday, and we made it! All of our goals for art, design, and programming were met. Now we are in a three week sprint that will see a lot of major updates to art, as well as our mini-game levels!

Speaking of the mini game levels, I spent a fair amount of time this weekend working on the first three, as well as polishing our intro level. For the mini games, here are some images as to what they look like. 

This upcoming week will be targetted at finishing off the main level, and adding in obstacles for the mini-game levels. I also got a chance to play more with the UI, which I will post images about next devlog.

Production/Design DevLog #5

Hey guys! So I just got back from GDC, where I had a wonderful time being a CA and meeting all sorts of wonderful people. I also got a chance to have industry vets playtest Project Sky, and get their feedback. Overall, everybody really liked the concept of the game, but found some design/programming flaws, including movement still being a bit too sensitive for first time players. These are bugs we are going to be researching moving forward. Also, in production, we are working on polishing our intro level, which we will be demoing off for the remainder of the quarter. While polishing this, we are moving forward with our character modeling and designing the main level. In class on Tuesday, we will be running a small competition, to see who can get the best time in the class.

Transitioning into design, this week has been more level and UI focused for me. I'm now working on development of our complete level, which we will be ready to show off at the start of next quarter. We're taking a new approach to Chicago, infusing nature into it and including a lot more organic architecture. We're taking Millennium Park and putting it into the Maaite's homeworld. It's exciting for us to be moving the game in this direction, and we can't wait to show off what we have. On the UI side, the menus are pretty much done and now it is going over to our programmer to connect everything together. I've always found that menus seem to be left until the last minute, so we are taking our time to produce a great structure for this, which should increase the overall player experience.

Art Devlog #2: Meet Chu!

He frowns! He walks! He... well, right now he doesn't do much else. But he's Maverick's teammate, and he's incredibly serious about flying. So serious that he wears a flight suit at all times, and only soaring through the wide-open sky can put a smile on his blue face.

Art Devlog #1

It's not quite the end of the week so much as it is the beginning of the next week, but better late than never, right?

I've been working on texturing all of the assets in our tutorial/vertical slice level. This includes the Pritzker Pavilion and all of the trees and foliage that will be in the game, as well as terrain and skybox textures. Nearly all the 3D assets are textured; only the Pritzker beams and 3D planes of grass are left. The skybox is a bit empty for now, but it will soon be full of clouds.

Production/Design DevLog #4

So it's the end of the week, which means that it's time for another weekly check in from us as to what's been getting done. So this week, on the production side of things, we're into our final spring of the Vertical Slice/Demo phase. At the end of this phase, I'm going to be leaving for GDC, where I'll be showing what we've got to fellow game developers, and seeing what they have to say. We had to make some changes to our production schedule, which look like they could be for the better. We initially talked about doing three levels, as well as mini-games and a menu system. However, we decided that we'd rather like to see the different characters in the game, and balance things like multiplayer, so what we've decided to do is focus on the level we currently have, and get that completely polished. In addition, we are going to focus on getting our menu system done first, at least as far as art and design is concerned, before thinking about any more levels. We'd like to get a second level in, which is our stretch goal, but it's now officially a stretch goal. 

On the design side, I've been focusing on getting the smaller things into the game, such as particle effects. We are now also focusing on applying all of the textures, shaders, and lighting to the scene, to get it looking beautiful. I've also been making edits to the intro level course, making it flow even better and making sure that the difficulty isn't ramping up too quickly. In addition, I've now added in a beam of light that is attached to the rings, and will be active for the ring that is marked as the target for the Player. All in all, a lot of good stuff this week!

Come, Fly With Me

So I booted up the game today and grabbed my controller, because Bryce told me he just finished the upgraded flight mechanics and that they felt really good. Our previous version had some issues and people really couldn't play the game, so it's been an issue that had to be resolved quickly. I'm very happy to say that within a second of playing the latest build, I immediately noticed a difference in the way the plane handled, and how much more control I now had over the plane. Maneuvering felt fun and very realistic, and tight turns are now very possible. What it means on the design side is that some very exciting changes are starting to happen with the course. Quicker turns are going to be a thing now, and we're going to be able to create some fun challenges with this. This weekend should be our best build yet. Stay tuned for the dev logs that will be posted.

Production/Design DevLog #3

Okay so my numbering system for these DevLogs has gone out of wack, I think I'm just gonna start combining both production and design together, for ease of mind. Anyways so this week has been huge for Project Sky, on both the design end and then the overall production end. In the design area, most of the level is complete and the course is feeling better. What I've spent most of my time doing this week is working with the course itself, and only making minor tweaks to the level. This is because Ashley is going in and doing the terrain now, so I don't want to make any drastic changes on here. We've also gotten feedback saying that the level looks a lot like Millennium Park, so too may more changes might stray from that path. As far as the course goes, there is still a bunch of work to be done there. I've been adding in more wind currents, creating VFX for them (which the implementation took longer than I thought), and adjusting where rings are. One of the biggest feedback notes has been that the course is too hard, with people not being able to finish the course. So I've been looking at that and how to make the level easier. I also worked on adding in a prototype GUI, which will get better as we move further into production.

    Speaking of production, I mentioned it was a big week as well. We're well into the Vertical Slice phase, having completed two successful milestones already. The game is still on track, as I've been watching animations for the character come in and after a quick art meeting, I've got a better idea as to how long its going to take before the scene is fully textured. While we did suffer a very minor setback with the character animation, it looks like things are getting back on track and the production board didn't really get derailed, which is a relief to see. We also pushed hard on the programming side, getting Parse implemented into the game and setting up online leaderboards. While there are some bugs to work out there, we can track it on the development side and see scores. We've also been meeting with external advisers, getting the game into their hands and getting their opinions. We've also been blasting build announcements on Facebook, Twitter, and TigForums, and have been getting a lot of feedback from that. 

Design DevLog #2

Hey guys, Nick here. I wanted to post another quick Design DevLog, talking about what I've been up to this past week. So last week I was working on adding in the models that the art team sent over, and got a pretty nice looking Millennium Park. The only problem was that it was condensed and not to scale at all, which Ashley pointed out to me on Tuesday. So this week has been spent rebuilding the level, as a new iteration, bringing everything up to scale and making a better layout of Millennium Park, with the help of Google Earth. Now, the level is looking better and we have more areas to explore. I'm going to be crunching tonight to try and start in on terrain, so that a playable build tomorrow will help give a better idea of what the level will look like, three weeks from now.

The builds are running wild!

This is a team update for everyone. We just wanted to assure you all that the blizzard did not get us. In fact, we just got unearthed from the snow and our first thought was how we could build a flying aircraft from snow. Silly us, right? Well, we also wanted to post some pretty big news for you all. If you've been following our Twitter feed, you've probably noticed that we've started sending out builds for everybody to play. No, this is not a scam, we actually want all of your input on the game throughout the entire development process. So keep checking back to the website, we'll let you know what the latest build of the game is up, and you can go play it! 

Design DevLog #1

Hey guys, Nick here again. Aha! I tricked you, this is a Design DevLog, not a Production one! Okay okay, at least I thought it was funny. Anyways I wanted to share with you guys what I've been doing in DesignLand for the past few days. I've put the Vertical Slice level through it's first blockout. It's very rough, and only features major components, but it will be fleshed out towards the end of the week. There are some pictures up, but the big highlights are that the first past of our Course mode is up. I'm hoping to do a pass at Time Attack this weekend, but with Superbowl Sunday coming up (go Seahawks), I'm gonna have to put in some crunch work on Saturday. Okay, I've done the check in, and I'm super tired (its about 2:30 am right now) so I'm headed to bed. I'm still exhausted from Global Game Jam, which was this past weekend, but that was a blast and I'm super happy to say that my team took 1st place in the Judges Voting (the big prize), 2nd place in the People's Choice category, and 3rd place in the Spirit of the Jam category. 

Production DevLog #1

Hey guys, Nick here! I wanted to take a moment to bring you the first DevLog from our studio, with a quick update as to where we are at. Bryce, our programmer, and I spent the better part of our afternoon chatting and prototyping some of the main mechanics that will be seen in Project Sky. We decided to first go with the old fashion route of a paper prototype, so we got to building some paper airplanes! We crafted some well designed types, and some poorly designed types, turned on a fan in the room, and launched the airplanes at a target. While many of the videos are going to remain in our own repository for reference purposes, I'm going to share a few here for you guys. We even got some fellow students to help us out! Bryce is now going to be focusing on taking what we learned in the paper prototype tests and put them to good use in the Unity Game Engine. We're hoping to have a good protoype by the end of the week, and get ahead of our own schedule!

One of the fabulous guys from @PentaPodGames helps us prototype. 

Distance test

 He shoots and scores!

    Bryce and I also chatted about a lot more mechanics of the game. To take some words he said, "Through hell and high water, we will have local multi-player working". Rest assured, Bryce is on board with our idea of having up to four people try to control a paper airplane, and is very excited to get it into the game. Yes, we have our work cut out for us over the next 20 weeks, but we're ready for it.