John Frankel, Week 10 Journal PPJ, Blog post 9, GMAP 378

Content with hours

Playtest 1

I was at the first playtest with the other group and we got a handful of playtesters to come and play our game.

(1 hour)

Playtest 2

I was at the second playtest and kindof had to manage people who wanted to go on the ride.  I played the aliens when we had no one else and I sent them to the survey after riders had completed.

( 1 hour)

Bug fixes and improvements

We had a list of bugs and improvements that we wanted to do in the transition and two of my games.
In the Transition:
I updated the controls, added background music, added a floor to the tent (although I think there might be a problem with it.), I changed where the controls on the slot machine were and that was it.

In Tic Tac O Noes:
I added a lookat script that had the Xs and the Os look at the player, I also increased the time by 1 second. I also updated the controls.

In Crazy Ball and Chase ball:
I made the crazy ball look at the player so that it would look like it was chasing them. I diferentiated the two games so they looked different.  Hopefully that will be enough.

Here is the code for the look at script.  It can be pretty useful.

 public GameObject player;
    public float offset = 90;
// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {

        transform.LookAt(player.transform.position);
        transform.eulerAngles -= new Vector3(0, offset, 0);

}


Total Hours: 4

Post Mortem

This was not my favorite project to work on.  In fact, if we are being honest, it actually is in competition for my least favorite projects and I will explain why.

While we did reach our goal of adding a large quantity of micro games and I was able to work on the framework which had some interesting programming involved the project suffered from two pitfalls.

Negatives

First, the project had a weak or really no leadership.  At the beginning of the project it was blatantly apparent that no one wanted to lead the group.  David lead the team last term and this term he did not want to.  After that Xavi was the one to be asked to be the leader, but he was reluctant at best,  some parts of the programming leadership fell onto me but I knew nothing of the game so at best I would give it a shot.  I used Trello a lot at the beginning and logged all of the tasks we came up with, but as the term went on no one used the trello so I gave up on it because it was a lost cause.

Now the second problem really hit the team hard and there are a variety of things around it.  The second problem was the loss of morale.  The group became less and less interested in the success of the project and just wanted the class to end, or at very least I did.  Without a group morale, and with no real leader to push everyone forward the group began to stagnate.  Work was only good enough from most of the group, with a few over achievers who still liked the project (props to them for hanging in there with the rest of us).

There was also problems with communication, that others have talked about and there was some problems with everyone going off on their own direction.

Positives

We did end up making a lot more content then I expected.  We started with 5 games, and ended with 22 games.  That is a large amount of progress.  We retooled the frame work to make it work better, and continually improved the art for the game.

The art has always been the saving grace of the game.  And the artist always stepped up their game, especially Angela, to produce quality art.

Tj Heiney, Week 9 Journal PPJ, Blog post 9, GMAP 378

This week was a lot of clean up. Refueled still needed some tweaking in the form of balance. To further balance the game, I shrunk the play space. This meshed well with the slow speed of the Alien ship. Ryan and I fixed the sound so it would loop when you were draining fuel.

Hours: 1 hour



Shooting Gallery had to have the alien cut out replaced with the 3d model. I finally got instructions in for both games.

Hours: 1 hour

Total Content Hours: 2 hrs

Post Mortem:

The project went well enough but there were many issues with project management. We never really had a firm leader and thus no one ever really knew what was going on. I ended up asking Ryan Crim what to do most weeks. The work load was really unbalanced as well so there were some weeks where things didn't get done or done on time. Time was a big issue as well since most art wasn't done in time to be implemented for the work. Usually the programmers would do the work over the weekend and art wasn't done until Tuesday. It was hard to find the art as well. 

Joseph Santos Week 8 PPJ

This week I finish textures for the tent and create transparencies for the ufo textures I did the previous week. Also, since we are rapiding approaching our final weeks, I took the time to check all the other fbx models. In the last couple of weeks, I've noticed a bunch of fbx models that weren't uv or modeled properly that I had to fix. Hence I wanted to check which models needed more tweaking. Fortunely, the ones that needed fixing were the ones I fixed already. While I got tent in, the I missed the deadline to get the modified ufo textures in on time due to another meeting that went overtime. However, I was able to complete all my tasks.

Pros:
finished all tasks
not all fbx models needed fixing which I was worried about

cons:
missed deadline to get ufo texture in on time
given that I worried about a problem that really wasn't there( fixing anymore fbx) wish I could done other art assets from back log

Hours:

tent texture:
2 hours

ufo texture:
1 hour

Going through project to see if any fbx models needed fixing:
2 hours

total hours: 5

GDC Vault: among friends uncharted 2 by Richard Lemarchand
being a huge fan of the uncharted series, I watched the post mortem on the the second entry in the franchise. After watching it, I'm still surprise that they run into time crunch and problem despite all the pre-planning they did to try to avoid such problems. Richard has said in the talk about how Naughty Dog cares about their employees and try to not over work them. The pre-planning was to help over work them yet they still ran into those problems.

An interesting thing they brought up was the marco design sheet they created instead of an actual game design doc. the marco design sheet was just a spread sheet with broad details about levels and characters. The reason this document worked so well for them is that with a regualr game document, there are lots of pages with the all the details about everything. Obivously, to change anything would be to go through all those pages and rewrite a page or 2. With this macro design document, they wouldn't be locked down with details that would work best as they added along.

Another interesting they did that I don't see much with the game classes at drexel is they used previz. A lot of times when creating a game, people start greyboxing the game, which at this stage could change. When doing pre-viz in maya, they were able to do a rough animation to show what gameplay could look like. It's something that I think some game teams can use even if we are on a 10 week schedule.

Since this Uncharted was a sequel, I thought the code would be only polished but not completely touch. To hear them they say they made their programmers redo some script completing from scratch to fit the new vision for the series made me realize some things could always use improve, even if you have a solid foundation.

Vincent Slifer PPJ week 08

This week was fairly good for me because I was able to reconcile aspects of my games that were either too complicated or I did not receive feedback on how they played.  While I was aware that the games were flawed, I needed the feedback provided to push the games in the right direction.  Because of that feedback, I was able to edit Ram the Planet to be more of the crazy situation, meant for a laugh, type of game it was envisioned to be.  I was also able to provide better visual cues for the players for the other games I developed, Popcorn Popper and Item Dodge, allowing both the aliens and humans to clearly see what is happening on screen.  Without proper feedback, I would have been lost in not knowing what flaws my games needed immediate fixing.

Positive Content

• Added background music to Popcorn Popper, Ram the Planet, and Item Dodge micro games
• Altered the games to reflect better controls & playtest responses

Negative Content

• Was not able to fully test out the newer versions of the games
• Will need to fix for next week
• Was not able fully complete the Item Dodge Variant
• Needs better art from artists for the controls

Work and Hours

Alterations (~3 hrs)
- Added music to Ram the Planet, Popcorn Popper, + Item Dodge
- Edited games to be easier to play + understand

Variant Creation (~1 hrs)
- Finished creating the variant of Item Dodge

Total Hours: 4 hrs


GDC Vault Post-Mortem Reaction
Presentation: Far Cry 4: Gameplay Team Workflow, Iteration and Philosophy - By: Marc-André Saulnier

The first thing that struck me with this post-mortem  was that a single department for the game had a diverse set of skills collaborating in close proximity to each other.  In contrast to us, from the perspective of someone in a similar position to Saulnier, we separately developed parts of the game that was then put together in the end.  This includes the fact that the group itself was split into two core teams of art and programming.  The difference being the Far Cry 4 developers had people with various skill sets working in the same team, unlike us that divided ourselves because of our skill sets.
The second key item I noticed was how Saulnier kept talking about how the players were important to the game making process.  He talked about how the team developed ideas that would give the player a variety of choice where they can accomplish something cool.  Feedback would be given to those ideas, be it within the team, from other departments, higher ups, or testing; the department would receive constant feedback on the ideas, features, and the design of the game as it is being developed made.  The difference compared our team is that our primary feedback was from playtesting, after the feature was complete.  Parts of the feature would be shown, but it would, more than likely, not receiving as much vetting as a complete feature.  Every feature was tested at every stage and was given feedback with every iteration, where features were either pushed further or scrapped.
The final topic that caught my interest was the communication within the team.  It was not just the fact that members were constantly talking with each other, it was that ideas and troubles that someone might have were dealt with help from other members.  The core difference, that was already said before, was that the teams worked together, in the same building.  Not only does this allow for better communication, but it allows members to be more proactive with each other.  Our team was able to ask for parts from each other, that would later better be integrated.  The difference there being the Far Cry 4 developers were able better and more quickly develop ideas for the game on the fly.  Beyond that, having the close proximity with each other would allow for more ideas to be thrown around and aid from peers to be available.  Saulnier presented a few items that describe how successful games are made by teams whose members are effective at working with each other.

Angela Buchanan, Week 8 PPJ, Blog Post 8, GMAP 378

2D art, interface, texturing

This week has been about refining assets and updating the interface to make it easier to understand or to reflect changes.

My big focus for the week was placed on updating the human instructions to add icons to their dash.This can act as an additional visual aid to let the humans know that the bottom instructions belong to them.

I added a gradient to the UFO to also help the humans feel more threatened when their spaceman approaches the enemy color.

The spaceman itself has an animation to allow him to look more panicked.

Positive Content   

-  Human players are represented by icons instead of number now

- UFO time bar implemented the green/pink seperation

- Human animation will add more panic to the time bar

Negative Content

- Finals are approaching. This will affect work for the remaining weeks.

Work and hours

Human Instruction screen update (1.5 hrs)

Instead of using P1 and P2, the players are now represented with a human icon with a number on his head. Visually, this is more interesting and will aid the player in knowing that these are human instructions.

.

Time Bar Update (1 hrs)

UFO now now has a gradient. As the space man moves up he will approach the green. Because green is the color of the enemy for the humans, they will see this is a bad thing. 

The space man has a "panic" animation now as well, to better convey the feeling of urgency.

Instructions Update (.5 hrs)

Just a general update on instructions that were needed for new games. 

Alien Gets Emotional (.5 hr)

The alien has emotions to help convey when he has been hit or is about to perform an action.

Also makes the character more interesting.

Icon Update (.5 hrs)

Icons for a couple of new games. One is for a dance game and the other is for a crazy ball variant game. 

Total Hours: 4 hrs

GDC Vault - Designing Without a Pitch: FTL Post-mortem 

I chose to watch postmortem of an independent game for as a student, I find them more relatable to my own projects. FTL’s post-mortem was especially relatable as they chose to jump straight into the construction of the game without having a clear end goal in mind.

I felt this is a common approach for student projects, so it was interesting to see how Justin Ma and Matthew Davis managed their workflow and design process to find their way to their end product. They didn’t intend for FTL to be full-effort project, therefor I felt this was a good way to start for them. They note during the presentation that the project was harder than what they had anticipated, and I feel that their lack of initial planning may be to blame.

Alternatively, I felt this method of design also benefited the development of FTL. Because they had a loose image of what they wanted, they were more prone to experimenting and attempting alternative mechanics and features.

However, once they launched their kick starter and they had expectations to fulfill, it became more important for them to decide on an end state. During their kick starter they wasted time trying to get features to work that were not necessary, out of scope, or did not fit well with the design with the game. After they were faced with feature creep, they knew that they needed to solidify their ideas.

Overall I felt they handled the project well, especially considering they did not intend for it to be a commercial product. Personally, I value having a well-established vision before diving straight into a project, but this isn’t always possible when given time restraints. I feel some of the lessons learned through FTL’s post-mortem can be applied to my own projects.

Xavier Smith, Week 9 Journal PPJ, Blog post w, GMAP 378

Cleanup – 4 hrs
Fixing up games – 2hrs
Poke Games – 3 hrs

Lots of work done this week! We saw a lot of things that needed improving during our group meeting so I went ahead with all the tasks I assigned myself. Firstly I fixed up the Controller Select scene, and then Angela improved the art for it and made it look way better! Then I noticed the animations were pretty laggy in Stello Says, so I sped up the animations to match the game speed, as well as switching the background to a less noisy one and removed some of the obsolete text. After that I did a little tweaking for the balance in QWOP and did a fair amount of cleanup on Crazyball. The overall game should be a lot smoother and coherent now!

Finally, I started working on the PokeGames that we’re going to implement. I’d say they’re about 80% done right now, but here’s a quick preview as to what it’s going to look like. Player 1 will move left and right, Player 2 will launch the finger (foot for now) and the aliens have to try and avoid getting shot.

Content Positive:

- The game looks a lot better and is a lot less buggy!

- The instructions are a lot more consistent and coherent!

Content Negative:

- Didn’t quite get to finish the PokeGames

Total Time Spent: 9 Hours

GDC Vault  Postmortem Breaking Into The Game Biz

I chose this postmortem as it was a topic I am personally invested in. 

The presentation detailed how professionals within the video game industry got their start before Video Game programming was taught in schools. The first individuals, Randy Smith spoke about how he had a list of companies he wanted to work for upon graduating and would cold-call companies. However he advised that this is not a good approach for the modern day, however the enthusiasm behind the decision is what is important. 

The second individual,  Tess Snider spoke about how she taught herself and built up a resume on her own over the years, and eventually just sent her resume around to employers and found a job within a week

The third speaker, Ralph Koster spoke about how his first game was an unsuccessful board game project with one of his friends. He then proceeded to receive tests from Eldin online whereby he improved the system until he was eventually brought on to the team. He stressed the importance of creating a portfolio, regardless of what level you are currently at. 

The final Speaker, Gordon Walton spoke of his time before games were sold commercially, but advocated the previous speaker's point of putting your games out there. 

The speakers then talked about the most self-destructive behaviours within candidates. Behaviours mentioned were talking about never having played the company's game, generic programmer resumes, and finally speaking about where they want to be in the company rather than how they could help solve the problem within the job description. They then advised to look up requirements and learn the things consistently listed in them. 

Afterwards, they spoke of the things that stood out within no-experience candidates. The most pertinent points seemed to be passion and having a portfolio that displays interest and skill within the field. 

Finally, they discussed tips for candidates to work on and get noticed. The advice from the panel was to aim for a job that you really want, having an attitude where you are willing to improve, creating projects, networking with individuals regardless of their position, and finally having a passion for creating/making games rather than playing them, avoid getting typecast 

Cory Zicolella, Week 8 PPJ, Blog Post 8

Fixing up Survey - 2 hrs.
Faces for Poke Games - 2 hrs.

This week I hadn't anticipated a large problem: that the video edits I wanted to do to our final trailer in fact were impossible until our Wednesday large playtest.  There, I plan to capture new footage for our trailer in a much more quiet location hopefully) where the volume is normalized and it is easier to understand.

In lieu of this, for my other work this week I focused on firstly the playtest survey (since plenty of people (hopefully) will be taking it), and the faces for the poke games.

For the playtest, I had to figure out how to insert pictures into the questions that needed them so testers had context if they didn't know the name.  So time was taken first gathering the pictures, which took more time than it should because of the slot machine system; constant trial and error until I got the games I needed pictures for.  Then I reworded things that I thought needed tweaking, and removed a large amount of questions that either weren't relevant anymore or that we already got a large amount of data for.

For the faces, I wanted to start with something simple, then add more as I felt was needed, sort of like a template.  The part that took so much time was that I tried many different combinations of faces and the like before I settled on two that I enjoyed.  These can obviously be improved, with shadows or whatnot as needed.  They might look a little weird or creepy for what we are going for, but these are simple enough where they can be easily changed:

Content Positive:

- Fixed up the playtest survey for our big scheduled testing day (2 hrs)

- Made some faces for the poke games that are easily editable (2 hrs)

Content Negative:

- Didn't realize the scheduling conflict with the playtest date until mid this week, so I couldn't focus on the trailer like I wanted to.

Total Time Spent: 4 Hours

---------

As an additional thing to add to our PPJs this week, we were asked to go to GDC Vault and look up a post mortem of our choice, watch it, and discuss it here regarding how they handled it and our reaction.

The video I watched was entitled "4.5 Million Players in 100 Days: Lessons from Dying Light" ( http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022816/4-5-Million-Players-in ).  The video was ~30 minutes in length, and I believe nicely sums up the process that the company went through from production pre-release to work post-release.  The speaker went into detail as to how everything was created and handled with anticipation of release day, and the features they definitely wanted included in the final release (along with their priority).  For Dying Light in particular, there was an emphasis on choice: they wanted the player to enjoy killing zombies, so melee combat was their first priority.  This was quickly followed by the choice to not indulge in violence at all, instead being able to run from zombies using a parkour system they designed to be very fluid and intuitive to a player running through unknown areas.  I find this aspect to be perhaps the most important take away from the speech, even if it was work done technically before the release, as it highlights that having a goal in mind is extremely important, and you want to keep a certain vision for your product by the time of release.

Nowadays watching post mortems are pretty interesting, because games do not so easily 'die' as they used to.  Updates, patches, and DLC keep trickling in, at least for a few years, and so to get a true post mortem is difficult (particularly for successful games).  Dying Light is now exception; the conference was held about 3/4 of a year after its initial launch, and the speaker talked about how it is very important to keep the audience engaged in the product, so they keep coming back.  According to their stats, which they track meticulously (for patching reasons - i.e. if very few players use a certain trap, they might patch in a subtle way to show people they can use that trap), they had about a 35-40% retention rate on the game.  This was referred to as a 'good thing,' because not all players on release keep playing, and to have nearly half of all people play it a year into its life is amazing.  But the speaker stressed the importance of player content, and how using the Steam Workshop added life into the game, with nearly 150 user levels.  They also engaged the community on Youtube with various challenges, and set up Skype pre-recorded message centers for little easter eggs having to do with the game.

When applied to Alien Arcade, I think it is important to keep in mind the audience we are trying to attract as well, and to keep them occupied with our game.  Obviously it is really different as this is a small college assignment with a team of 11, which won't be continued in any way past this term - unlike Dying Light which is patched still.  But being able to realize if we kept our initial 'vision,' not only though this term but through all 20 weeks of development, and if we considered our audience enough will be a large portion of the personal postmortem for me.