Angela Buchanan, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 5, GMAP 378

Texturing, Concept art, GDC Preperation

I new this week would be busy for me and that I would not be able to get much done. Therefore I took up easier tasks that I knew I would be able to handle. 

One of the artists requested that I make an orthographic to make it easier for them to make a model, so I put most of my time into that.

Additionally, the mech game needed color codes for the targets that are being shot so that the two players know who should be shooting what.

Positive Content   

- Orthographics if a alien is useful for concept purposes and modeling 

- Mech game got a much needed texture update

- GDC selection competition was stressful, but fun.

Negative Content

- GDC selection competition took more of my time than expected.

- Week was busy, other classes and tasks had a higher priority.

Work and hours

Alien Orthographic (2 hrs)

I didn't want the models for this guy to be overly complicated, so I kept the orthographic simple.

I didn't include the back, for it was not necessary. 

Mech War Texture update (3 hrs)

It took me a bit to decide the best way to go about doing this. Right now the colors represent the shades of lipstick (as already seen in-game).

I'm hopeing the two colors are different enough for the player to distinguish in-game, but that will be determined through playtesting.. 

GDC Preparation (4 hrs)

Mostly focused on polishing the presentation, getting/interviewing play-testers for footage, and rehearsal.

Total Hours: 9 hrs 

Ricardo Yanofsky, Week 1 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

Team integration: I spent time setting up perforce,slack, trello and more. I also read the design documents to get myself better acquainted with the game from inside.

(1 hr)

The biggest thing this week was the Sunday meeting, which consisted of discussing assets needed for the current games. I was a little worried about making new games so I took the initiative of starting a group-wide brainstorming session which went well. We have some good ideas for more games, but I wish John and Ryan could have been there since they are both new and have great ideas. Hopefully we will be able to have another one in class.

(2 hrs)

I worked on storyboards for the launch game idea, better detailing the game flow of that micro-game idea.

(2 hr)

Positive 

• I am part of the team now.
• Brainstorm gave good ideas for new games.
• Storyboards look good.

Negative

• Broken arm slows down my workflow, doctors appointments take up time.

Total Hours for the week: 5 hrs

Angela Buchanan, Week 6 PPJ - Blog Post 3

Angela Buchanan, Week 6 Journal PPJ, Blog post 3

Concept art, Interface Design, Flowchart

This was a lighter week in comparison to previous weeks. For the most part, my tasks could be considered completed. I would've liked to go a bit more in-depth with the interface design, but what I have currently is sufficient and likely won't have to be revisited. This week it was hard for me to participate in a good, quality group meeting due to schedule, so there are some things I would like to go over more thoroughly with the team. I also took care of the Status Report this week, since I knew I would be making a later post.

Positive Content

- The interface design is available to the team now, which helps convey the game more.

- I made icons for the flow chart to make it more exciting and easy to understand visually.

- The icons used in the flowchart are cute and work as nice decoration for other things.

Negative Content

- Meeting was difficult for our team this week due to do schedules.

- I wanted to be more in depth with the interface design, but I spent too much time focusing on other projects.

- I felt my production was a bit low this week.

Work and hours

·         Flowchart – 2 hrs

• I made a more exciting visual representation of our game’s flow. It didn’t take too long, for I stuck to simple representations for the chart.

·         Interface Design - 5 hrs

• I worked on making concept art of how the menu interface would look when choosing a game. I also designed how the score and time would look during the mini-games. I made multiple versions of each (with fairly minor differences), but I’m only going to post my personal favorites.

·         Status Report & Sell touch up – 30 min

• I did the status report this week since I knew I would be making a later update. I also did some minor editing to the sell.

Total weekly hours: 7.5 hrs

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 PPJ - Blog Post 2

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2

Art template, Concept art, Website design

This was a hectic week for me, but I managed to complete or mostly complete the goals I set for myself this week. I wasn't able to finish the concept art until the night before class, so it didn't give my team mates any time to look it over. 

Positive Content

-I got a lot of concept art done for the aliens, the ships, and the environment. So now our game is starting to develop a solid image for itself.

-Because I already had sketches, I knew the direction I wanted to go in ahead of time. IT also made it easier to discuss art direction during the group meeting because I already had examples to show.

- The concept art was able to be used to flesh out the art template. I also used the concept art to make the website look more personalized to our team. 

Negative Content

-Once again, I wish I could have gotten the concept art completed earlier in the week so that it have been easier to put together the sell pitch 

-As of right now, the concept art isn't working too well with he website background. Even though I modified it, it still doesn't fit the way I want it to.

- I also would've liked to play around more with the website's design.

Work and hours

• Concept Art - 8 hrs
• Most of my time this week was spent on designing and making concept art for the game. I feel like the concept art does a good good job representing the game, so hopefully it helps lead the artist for the upcoming week,

Art Template - 1 hr

I compiled all the images together and added brief text descriptions.

• Website - 30 min
• Most time was spent modifying the concept art in an attempt to make it fit better.

Total weekly hours: 9.5 hrs

Angela Buchanan, Week 3 PPJ - Blog Post 1

Angela Buchanan, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1

Early Concept Art 

Positive Content

-During the meeting there was good discussion about the narrative aspect of game, which helped direct my concept art decisions

-I feel that the images used in the concept art clearly communicates the direction I want to take for the game's theme.

-Not only did I find images for idea inspiration, but I manged to make a few sketches so that we can begin putting consideration into characters and environment.

-Overall the concept art will help the team define the narrative aspects of the game and the world it takes place in.

Negative Content

-I would've liked to get a wider variety of sketches completed.

-I also wish I could have completed the sketches earlier in the week to bounce more ideas off my team mates.

-There was a mix-up regarding who was doing concept art for one-pager.

Work and hours

• Organized files and structure of individual tech demo (1 hr)

 Restructured tech demo organization to make implementation easier.

• Discussed theme ideas with team (1 hr)

Discussed space alien theme park theme. Covered ideas such as the aliens' intentions and the humans' roles.

• Image search (1 hr)

Researched images to use as a starting point for determining style, theme, and color.

I mostly looked into retro sci-fi posters for inspiration. Vegas night life and Theme parks were added as inspiration as well.

A couple of examples

• Color analysis / Pallet creation.

I analyzed some of the images for color direction, then did brief research on color pallets being used.

•  Sketches (3 hrs)

to add more personality to the concept art sheet, I made a few sketches. One alien concept and a ship concept. I also did a colored sketch to test out one of the color pallets.

Total weekly hours: 8 hrs

Cory Zicolella, Week 3 PPJ - Getting Started

Website Creation/TroubleShooting - 4.5 hrs / 2 hrs

Website Content - 1 hrs

Rough Menu Art - 1 hrs

This week our group had a meeting where, together as a team, we discussed the general story behind our game and the driving force for doing what we want to do.  We each brainstormed for a bit, and had fun tossing around some ideas for some theoretically really concrete and fun mini games to add.  A few of us are including our prototypes from the last class meeting in the game and will restructure them to fit the current environment they need to be in.

After that, I volunteered responsibility for creating our team's website and essentially our project development's 'home base' -- Sadly, I don't want to put a screenshot of the website you're reading into the post, but I assure you this post's existence is proof that I (somewhat) did my job.  It definitely needs to look pretty still, and have more content, but that will all come at one point or another once we actually get our feet off the ground and have things to put in here.  For now, this site will do for my own sanity's sake.

I also volunteered to help Xavier with the very small job of creating prototype art for a concept menu.  It was nothing major, but I did have to revise it once.  The scrapped version is below:

The new version simply replaces what would be the buttons with the names of the games, and they are all separate images instead of one jpg.

Content Positive

• The website, I think, came together quite nicely. Right now it's simple but I have further plans. (4.5 hrs)
• I made a small push this week to get Riley to help me put some content on the webpage so it wasn't mostly empty, and it looks great so far (1 hrs)
• 'Hand-scrawled' art has been prototyped for a menu.  It does its job (1 hrs)
• My prototype from the last class meeting will be integrated into the game, which means I will be able to develop it further 
• Team Communication so far has been fantastic and it makes everything so much easier.

Content Negative

• Troubleshooting a handful of minor problems with the site getting setup was annoying and took time away from doing other, arguably, more useful things (2 hrs)
• Despite how glad I am our website isn't barren, I wanted to get more up there. Ah, well.

Total Hours for the week: 8.5 hrs

David Monteleone, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1

David Monteleone, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1

Idea creation, One pager, Elevator pitch, Mini game ideas

Content with Hours (Examples included):

This week the group had our first meeting where we discussed the general idea of the game and how we wanted to go about producing it. I was tasked with creating the one-pager document along with the elevator pitch. My role for the duration of the quarter will be to produce the needed documents for our game, GDD, one pagers, etc.., help the other programmers with production when it is needed, and coordinate between the artists and programmers.

The one pager focuses around the idea that both players are stuck in an alien carnival where the aliens send them on various mini game challenges. This week I helped collaborate with the group to make our final idea. This final idea can be found within our one-pager. A simplified version is in the elevator pitch.

 (4 hrs)

Alongside the one pager I created the concept art for the mechanized war machine mini game. This mini game is based off of Cory’s original idea. This concept is shown below.

(2 hrs)

My original game that I pitched, Slapz, will become a boss level within the Alien Arcade. Because of this, I had to go back and flesh out some of the bugs that I found from out demo build. This took some time, but I’m excited to be able to continue Slapz in some direction within our mini games.

(3 hrs)

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          The one pager came together well and has given myself and the team a good idea of where we are heading. (3 hrs)

-          The elevator pitch has shortened our concept into an easy to figure out 1 minute speech. (1 hrs)

-          The concept art gives myself and the team a good direction of what we can make. (2 hrs)

-          Slapz was further patched to become a mini game for us in our final project. (3 hrs)

Content Negative

-          Several of the controller bugs still remain within Slapz. I attempted to fix them so we can merge my project as a mini game. However, I couldn’t figure out why the triggers stop working every now and again.

Total Hours for the week: 9 hrs

Tags: Programming, One-pager, Elevator pitch, Week 3, David Monteleone, concept art