I was taking a look at the info that Seth sent to us. As I didn't really know how behavior design works I decided to start from the beginning: reading the documentation to have a better idea what exactly is this and how exactly works. So I was jumping from the index to the titles that catch my attention to have a better understanding of this as a whole. The basic idea is pretty simple: create complex AI from a bunch of task units. Similar to flowcharts, there are different types of task as actions, compositions, decorator and conditional. Seems appealing to me to be honest because I like flowcharts. I think they are pretty easy to read because its visual display, so hopefully I will be working on this later on.
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Just for references proposes I made a short Game Design Document using a traditional one as a model. The only things I need to state there were key features, short description, controls, genres and any other important link or info we would need. The idea as any game design document was to share my vision of the game we the team in the case anyone may have doubts about it. I also ended using it as some kind of repository for key assets. We also have a simple hierarchy of our priorities.
For the next Sprint, and because was directly related to enemies, I was asked to on the equation that will control the amount of enemies per wave, the interval of cooldown, enemies rate increase, stuff like that. As always the first thing I though was do a little research to find out how our references approach the problem. After a few minutes looking for Gears, Left 4 Dead and COD horde modes I ended up in Killing Floor official forum with a document that seems to good to be real. I found was look like the complete explanation of how exactly the game manage numbers, equations, behaviors and even full descriptions of the game modes and characters. The way the resolve these problems are way complex than ours but still it was a amazing reference with gave me an idea to how start.
Being a PO is a issue. It is not because you have to manage one big problem (the project itself) rather than the the overload of tiny details some over others. Although I think I have a very concrete image of the game in my head and I believe it is shared by the leaders (Christ and Andy at least), I still feel worried about how exactly deal with others teammate let's say. There is people who care about the project and people who just don't. I don't know how to deal with the second group. There also other people complaining about this situation. I will just want to deliver a product and keep working with the skilled people who want to. But I will also try to find a way to engage the people how is there because their parents.
For our first month of class we spent some time discussing how our 1500 pint army with flyers units were going to be. We had a few misunderstanding between Christ and Nikki but everything was luckily solve at the end. Because Christ wanted to use a new race, we have to update the whole units sheets since the beginning. That was what I worked on during our Monday meeting. The Aeldari race was actually pretty cool because their endless types of units, weapons and abilities, this army has a little bit of everything. On the other hand, we also had to work on our pitch for the race presentation. The idea of a "pacifist" army was prowling my mind for several weeks ago. Which I thought it would be interesting the idea of a army which battle against armies. So after a little research I found my prime reference: Blue Lanterns corps, starting from them I designed basics: background, characters, weapons and abilities in a simple 7 slices presentation.Sadly I lost as always in the poll.
Luckily, most people liked my first sketch of enemies design. But of course, there was feedback I need to take in consideration. Art team, for example, want me to stay with one model or another, I mean between make all the enemies animals or anthropomorphic. As I had one David Jones crew guy and one giant crab I had to change this up. So looking for any references for a human crab monster, the only thing I could find was "Him" from Superpower Girls. Also, they didn't want grabs attacks because they said it would be complicated both from an art and tech point of view, so I just send those 2 attack to the icebox. Let's see if everybody is happy now.
After my team proposed several ideas for Recess playroom and we discussed a little bit about it. I ended deciding to have at least:
1)Arcade machine (were you will be able to play our own version of a classic 8-bit game. 2) Dark window that every time you open it, you will be able to see a different landscape 3) Radio where you can change the environmental music and choose your own tracks if is possible 4) Video player like a tiny cinema inside the room, kinda big screen Youtube 5) Card game to play on a tiny table by yourself like solitaire (Not sure about this yet) So as the Arcade game should be the most important feature we started we brainstorming a little to decide how our old school game should be. Here are my proposals: This time I wanted to do something different. That's why I enrolled with environment team, to take a look how that works. Usually, I prefer to work on any kind of characters but this time I just wanted to change. So, the first thing I came out with was to do a little research, as always, to define a picture in our heads about how exactly the battlefield should look. with Eric's help, we fill out a list where we put all the assets we found that may match we our game art style. It's surprisingly hard to find relative simple landscapes with basic elements to play with or at least some kind of variations. In the end, we found a fair number but they all still need to be tested...
After a satisfactory but unfinished match last week. We want to know a little better our army in order to play with the abilities, psykers, weapons effects and commander points in mind. So we spent our meeting time rearrange the Harlequins to include the vehicles. Christ and Leo were helping me while I navigated through a sea of numbers trying to fulfill the budget (units points). Although we managed to finish the calculations successfully to our new Harlequins, Nikki pointed that we made several mistakes with the unit distribution. So I fixed the sheet one more time. I learned this: there are specific roles designated to each army, you can put any number you want as long you have points but these roles must be respected:
As last semester I designed the main characters, this time I wanted to try something different. Although I don't think there is enough room to innovations with those ones (mostly because Matt and the art team already have a very concrete vision), I took this card, either way, to see how is to be the bad guy. With David Jones Crew as our main inspiration, I started to dig for references for those guys and I don't know exactly why or ended up with William Blake paintings. Which I actually think is a pretty good visual reference for body texture at least. As I already have an idea of what kind of stats any video game character may need, I started to figure out provisional numbers, attacks, and even behaviors. At the end, I finished with 10 slices presentation which may be a little too much for the first sketch but I prefer excess than lacking.
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AuthorI want to study Video Games in a theoretical way. Archivos
May 2018
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