Month 2: Game Systems Integration
A video showcasing a few of the action blocks we completed this month.
Overview
Now that we had defined our core pillars it was time to start brainstorming setup ideas and interlacing the systems that we had individually worked on last month.
This month saw the introduction of action blocks, short setups of any difficulty that were to represent possible final build setups or to showcase any interesting interactions that we could derive final levels from.
Personally, I felt that this month was also a month of huge learning experiences: learning how to problem solve not only design and scripting problems, but also how to tackle team communication issues and the importance of project organization.
Responsibilities
Implementing new state based Character Controller
Adding obstacle analysis for correctly setting positions to vault, climb, and mantle to
Make the controller more designer friendly to be able to quickly add states and implement changes
Add Warp-Strike Affordances
Assist in various scripting tasks
Lots and lots of bug fixing
Character collision resolution on second character controller
Warp strike positional bugs
Milestone 3
With any Game Development cycle, the team must learn how to adapt to any unforeseen obstacles and work around any bumps in the road. We learned this as a team when the first scheduled week of this milestone was interrupted by the threat of category-5 hurricane Dorian possibly making landfall in Orlando. The campus was closed and we prioritized the entire team’s safety and hurricane preparation over our game’s development.
Once the threat of the hurricane had passed, we reconvened to work out a new schedule that which would eventually see us working two 14-day milestone sprints as opposed to the original three sprints in order to still meet our scheduled release date. This meant we had less time to trial brand new mechanics and systems as we focused on expanding and refining those that had already been implemented and complemented our core design pillars.
Action Blocks
We decided to split up our efforts and set a goal of two action blocks completed each milestone per person. These action blocks were to showcase expanded-upon mechanics and systems as well as simple setups which could be used in our levels. What was great about this system was that we had several different approaches to the design of our game as well as cutting down on idea debating by showing the team what was great about a design rather than just telling them. If this wasn’t enough to convince you of how good this system of design can be, take it from the experts! This same system was also used in designing Titanfall 2’s single player campaign.