Thursday, February 28, 2013

New Game

It's been a bit since I last posted. I had hoped to continue something of a regular series of posts as I work on projects, but honestly I've been far too busy to stop and write.

Since the last entry, I was able to get a higher-poly version of the character put into the game without much fuss. The framerate didn't dip significantly, even with all the particle effects from the traps I made (flame gouts, arrow traps, etc.) going off all around the character. I also refined the walking and added a jump animation. I went for something akin to Mario with the fist pump in the air and the character's front foot propped out front. I feel confident that I could delete it all and do it again in about 20 minutes. Same with all the rigging. I know because I've had to, hah.

I was about to add the obligatory /dance animation as well as one of my faves from the DAoC days, /beckon (Think Neo from The Matrix), however that project has been put on hold.

Come at me, bro.

For the past few weeks, people have been kicking other ideas around. I spent countless hours prototyping 2D and 3D concepts. The directions were to come up with something simple and fast, but fun and engaging. Oh, and new & innovative. Finally, one night last week, Matt and I sat down and wrote a game design doc for an idea we've had for a few months. It was definitely not something that could be done quickly, but it was a game we would actually play and really liked. We stayed up til about 2am working on it. I stayed up another hour or so drawing concepts and wireframes. We presented it the following day.

While it was received very well, the higher-ups were looking at a really short turn-around time on development. So we went and cut about 80% of our ideas, leaving one core gameplay element and a little bit of flair. This concept was accepted, and we've begun work on the new game.

The assets are mostly 2D, and some 3D elements are going to be displayed as 2D. I think the game should be fun, and will hopefully pave the way to doing the full-blown concept we had originally mapped out. We have an internal wiki set up so that we can share the design bible and keep everyone on the same page. We can also use it to track bugs when the time comes. I'm having meetings with the design team today to go over my concepts for creatures as well as the UI layout. I'm really looking forward to working on this new title and I think it will be fun.