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.