Spring 2014 Week 8

Hi everyone!  We have been super busy trying to get new content worked on while also cleaning up the old content that we already have in our levels.  One of the big things about this week was that we want the UI to get fleshed out a little, so Jeff is starting all of that with a clean plate because the previous UI frames were off.  We presented at Dragon Army and also Trip Wire this week.  The whole team was at Dragon Army, but only Alex was available at the Trip Wire presentation, so we would like to thank him for committing his time to show off our hard work.

AJ Spent a lot of time going in and cleaning a lot of issues with the game and making lumi's guidance feedback more easier to read when grabbing objects. We had a really bad bug that wouldn't trigger our memory shard speed boost script when the game was created into an exe.

Tian (me) started the layout for the website, but it isn't finished yet.  Once the layout and information is laid down, I will post the link for everyone to see!

Spring 2014 Week 7

This week has been a lot of work for Nicole and Tian for texturing.  Brice is working on new landmark concept art for Beach 2.  AJ went back and fixed a lot of issues we had that affects gameplay.  One of the big things he fixed was a jumping issue where the player would jump at different heights at odd times.  This was brought up a lot during our playtest night on Thursday.  Jeff went in and placed a lot of sound effects for the environment.  My favorite is the boat creaking and the waves hitting land kind of sound.  It is really bringing the environment to life!

We have a guidance mode now that allows the player to hit tab or L trigger on the xbox controller and then the camera targets lumi and follows him while he moves around.  There is a set distance limit so he is able to venture far enough for puzzles, but doesn't travel the whole level by himself.

We finally have two versions of the memory shards!  One has the speed buff, and the other doesn't.  This way we can use according to what the puzzle requires rather than only having a speed buff memory shard.

Spring 2014 Week 6

For this week, we were suppose to meet up with Eyes Wide Games and present our game, so we wanted to polish our game and also fix a couple of bugs.  One of the big things that we got in feedback was that the orb and counter HUD was really hard to see, so I (Tian) went in and increased the sizing of all those prefabs, and then even made a simple layout for it so it would look interesting.  I will be creating a website layout for Dissonance this weekend so we will have a running website by next week with all of our social network links and also a link to this blog.

AJ went in and fixed the lumi light so that the blurry circle is more solid, so the player can see the different in light and darkness better.  He also added in the music for the environment and also for the memory shards, so when you walk into the memory shards, it plays this ringing glory music.

The particles for the fireflies around the memory shard were increased in size so you could notice it better.  Also, we went in and added a rumble script for the controller so when the player gets closer to the memory shard, the XBOX controller would rumble as a feedback for the player.

I helped guide Alex to fixing the circle area for our memory shard safe zone.  This was an issue at the beginning because the bubble would pop in front of the terrain, so we went back and flatted the sphere to be more of a flat circle.

Alex's development of Beach level 2 went through a lot of changes and play testing, but it has finally come to a stage where we can start building the terrain for the map.

Here is also the tutorial level design that Alex worked on.  We will have billboards in the background that will help guide the player as to what controllers are and the goals of the game.

Spring 2014 Week 5

For this week, a lot of the production end was geared towards the 3D modelers UV mapping.  Alex had to rework a bit on the cave level because that is our priority for next Tuesday when we go visit Eyes Wide Games.  Because three of the members were busy getting ready for Out 2 Launch, a SCAD Atlanta hosted event for student showcasing, we didn't get as much done as we wanted too, but because the event is finished, we can now focus!

Here is Nicole, proudly displaying some of the Dissonance concept art that she has worked on throughout the project.

Here is I, Tian, showing off some of my works on dissonance.  most of my Dissonance work were in slideshow on the computer, and also in my flatbook.  On the screen is an actual render of one of the island props from the beach environment.

Here is Alex showing off his level design diagrams for Dissonance.  He also had our game displayed on his computer for others to play.  From this experience, we realized how many people thought the game was actually difficult.

 Olsen worked on the stalagmite and mine cart, plus the shroom rock as main landscape pieces. They came out really good!  I think he is getting better and better at grasping the stylized look which is great!

 I (Tian) worked on this bounce shroom for the last week.  More models will be uploaded for week 6 and also samples of the models with textures will be included.

Spring 2014 Week 4

We have been working hard on the Cave level this week. Level design, concept art, and models are all in-progress.

This is a work in progress painting, but the color scheme is finalized. The Cave environment has gone through many color scheme variations. These past few weeks has been a lot of conversations with team mates over color scheme of the cave and the central monster. Such discussion has brought up questions about the props in the background and how they will change between Cave levels. I (Nicole) am also working alongside Brice as he completes a more formal painting of the monster featured here.

In addition to this painting, we have officially started drafting narrative for the game! I am the main writer. Besides in-game dialogue, we plan to have animated cut-scene as an introduction to the game's story. Tamarind, our 2D animator, is working on storyboards for it. Here's a sneak peak:

Spring 2014 Week 3

Hey guys, here's the breakdown for this week!  We have been super busy with getting in contact with our programmers and getting a lot of the bugs fixed for our game, and also the music designers went to PAX, so they didn't meet up with us, but hopefully they will have the reiteration of the new music for us this upcoming week.

Concept Art:
Nicole has started progress on a color scheme for the cave environment that is a reiteration of Brice's color palette.  This will be posted up next week, but it is definitely going towards a blue/green tone which is something we have been looking forward to for our cave.  Brice also has gone in and fleshed out some concept art work which are posted below:

Level Design:
Alex has finished the cave layout on unity, which Olsen and I (Tian) had to give him some feedback on how to improve the level beyond what Olsen had sketched out.  He has also been working on the tutorial level, which is shown below.  For the other beach levels, he has been sketching out some layouts so we will be able to see those in our next week, and have them posted up for the next post.

Programmers:
We talked to AJ this weekend on a Skype chat that really helped follow us up on our cave level.  We gave him the proposal of doing a picking up and trigger mechanic, which he said would be possible.  We were so glad to hear this, because one of the issues is our game lacks complex mechanics, so this was going to allow us to expand a little.

3D Art:
3D models are being modeled by Tian, Olsen, and Dantrell, which we definitely have less assets to model than our last environment.  We will be getting some work checked out this Saturday, so hopefully Tian will get some photos up for this blog and also on facebook for everyone to see.  Tian polished a lot on the two levels for the beach environment, because there were props that were still missing from the unity scene, but they were already uploaded into unity.  Models that are meant to be animated have been sent to Kim, so we have those in progress.

Spring 2014 Week 2

New work this week! Here's the breakdown:

Sound:
Caitlin and Stephen put together a couple iterations of a piece they've been working on for our Beach levels, which can be heard in the link below. This was made specifically for the first level to take off of the jungle theme. We'll be having a unique track for each level, but this will serve as a placeholder for all of the Beach levels until the others are composed.

Explore Loop
Intro to Explore Loop

Concept Art:
Brice came up with the initial environment art concept for the cave environment, as seen below. It focuses mostly on establishing feel and general environment as well as color. Moving forward, he will be working on individual asset concepts and, if he needs it, Nicole and Tian will help him so we can get our modelers moved into this new set of assets.

Marketing:

Jeff started up the Facebook page for Project Dissonance as the first step in our marketing campaign for exposure. In the first day, the page had nearly 100 fans and it continues to grow as we add more content. Nicole has also finished her Kickstarter research, so we may start drafting up our own page as we go along.

Narrative:

Nicole has been busy lately, as she set up the new outline for our narrative and has established the characters' personalities, what they know, what their roles are, and how we're going to get it all across to the player. We'll be focusing more on trauma than anxiety from a narrative perspective so that we can give each level variety in its story and not be restricted so much on what the memories need to be.

Spring 2014 Week 1

Hey readers! This week we came back from Spring Break to break in the new quarter and move on to "Post Production." What this means for Dissonance is, now that we have our pipeline firmly grounded for the content we've been producing, we will continue to be developing more levels and environment art as well as exploring new areas. We will refocus our efforts in the departments of sound and narrative as well as trying to integrate more of what we've already been gathering.

Speaking to that, the group got to formally meet the sound designers/musicians that we were put in contact with by Professor Tseng. Caitlin and Stephen, students at Berklee College of Music in Boston, have been communicating with us since the end of last quarter and we'd been communicating with email, documents, and sharing references for music, but our Saturday meeting was when we got to officially see them face-to-face (through Skype). Welcome to the team!

This next quarter, we are looking at developing a tutorial level, a new level for the Beach set, and creating a new environment set entirely with one or two levels for that. The new environment, based in a cave, will be developed in concept by Brice, with Nicole and Tian on standby for support. Once some work has been prepared, Olsen, Dantrell, and Tian are going in to model our assets. In the meantime, Alex is working on the tutorial level first and moving on to blocking out the first cave level after that. Jeff is working with the sound design people to establish our sound treatment and working on collecting sound effects and will be revisiting the UI after that. Lastly, AJ and Colton, our programmers, are working on fixing up some of the areas that we have already, such as the timer, to try to get them feeling the way we want.

Another focus of the quarter is learning how to market our project, doing our due diligence to figure out appealing to our demographic, researching our competition and market trends based on them, getting the word out, and, most importantly, how to secure capital. Many of us are interested in figuring this part out, but Nicole will be the first to take charge in it by looking into Kickstarter and taking notes on how successful campaigns construct their page, what kind of incentives they give, etc. We'll all be working together in some capacity to get these goals down as soon as we can.

Winter 2014 Week 10

Hi everyone!  We presented our Beta build to our classmates this week, and that was a great success!  The tasks that were given this week was terrain building, finish texturing assets, importing assets to unity for chapter 2, UI tweaking, and also level tweaking.

For chapter 2, we finished the terrain, but didn't have time to go in and create correct collision for it, so we kept the prototype platforms that was used at the beginning.  Of course this level will be cleaned up and the grey terrain will be taken out.  Jeff went in and finished our Main Menu by using NGUI and importing the UI elements that I had tweaked from Brice's first pass.  Because we were running out of time, a lot of the puzzle meshes weren't placed into the Unity scene.  I think from the last quarter, our progress this quarter has been much better!  The results are great, and the pacing of everyone's work progress is definitely improving.  We also have two sound designers that we will be meeting up with on Skype this Saturday to go over the game's music.

I (Tian) also went in and created a game play video that includes me talking about the game's mechanics and aesthetics.

Here it is:

Dissonance Beta Gamplay 2014 from Tian Chen on Vimeo.

Winter 2014 Week 9

We conducted our final playtest session this Thursday and got our last batch of feedback from our playtesters. With the addition of our second blocked out level (which was redone from the diagram that Alex put together last week) people were able to see more of what we were going for with the nonlinear and puzzle components of our gameplay. Even with the placeholder programmer art, feedback was much more positive in for our game designers.

The programmers also made some serious nice progress this week, polishing off a lot of the physics for the character controller to make it feel a lot better. There were still a couple issues with a glitch that allows players to hug and jump from walls, similar to Mega Man X games. Although unintentional, people seemed to enjoy this "feature," but we don't have any plans to make this a legitimate mechanic. They'll be moving forward with some ideas they came up with to make the timer component more interesting that will also solve the problems we have with the "darkness" mask. More details on that soon.

UI, sound, and particles are the next focuses for our designers and artists. We still have things to concept for level two as we start to address the concept of enemies, but for the remainder of our winter quarter we are adding in some more of the "post-production" stuff that makes it a more polished, complete experienced. Brice and Jeff have been working on putting together the sprites and layouts necessary to construct our UI screens and AJ, one of our programmers, will be adding in any scripts we need to make them functional, particularly with the pause screen. Dantrell is working on some particle effects to show when the player has gotten their power-up boost from the memory shards. Tian is developing a method to make the memory shards stand out more so the player notices them.

The one thing we've been missing is a way of teaching the player how to play and what they're supposed to be doing. Alex has been working on tutorial level to show a completely linear way of introducing them to the memory shards and what they do. If all goes well, we'll be putting that into the build this week as well.

Winter 2014 Week 8

This past Saturday was SCAD Day, a sort of "open house" for prospective students and their parents at our school, so we set up a playtest session to be able to have people whom we've never met before and have never seen our program get a chance to play our game and get some feedback. We used the same build as we did last week so we could get a comparison of the kind of comments we received from last week with our fellow students and coworkers. Overall, from an outsider's perspective, our game is relatively strong from a design standpoint and quite strong artistically. It was interesting to compare the numbers of people noticing our first memory shard because the people who knew less about our game were more inclined to explore it. They didn't however, seem to take much of the narrative away from the game, but that's understandable because we're still not in a state where our narrative elements have been implemented.

The programmers have made some headway on the build. The Xbox controller has been fully mapped and integrated into the game with any the UI left to sync up to the new control scheme. The only reason why we didn't use it for the playtest is because the camera has somehow zoomed in really close to the player character, so the player would have been unable to see. More development on that soon, but Dissonance, from a technical standpoint, is progressing swimmingly.

Chapter 2 has a level diagram now and Alex, our level designer, is in the process of blocking it out. We also have Nicole, one of our artist, developing a tutorial level to take place before chapter 1 and show the player what the objective is in a more natural learning environment. Other members of our team have been working on their own level ideas, so our level design has had all hands on deck this past week.

Nicole, Jeff, and Brice have been working on UI layouts and illustrations to take the place of what we have so far. Still no pause menu yet, but we have a working main menu as a placeholder as well as a restart screen for whenever the player dies or finishes the current level. We're expecting that we'll at least have placeholders for every screen we need within the next two weeks with final designs to be integrated sometime in the spring.

Lastly, production has begun for the sound design on Dissonance and we have reached out to the people at Berklee College of Music in Boston to develop our soundtrack. Jeff has been building our sound library and will begin mixing and integration in the spring.

Winter 2014 Week 7

On Saturday, we met up with the programmers for the first meeting with them.  It went so well that I think the group is starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel!  Our new programmers, AJ and Colton, were able to set up a Unity Version Control server for us, so not more Google drive to update the build!  We didn't have a huge program with updating through Google drive, but with version control on unity, it will be super efficient and less of a time actually uploading the work.  This also prevents issues with accidentally going back a build and working on something that was already edited.  AJ is working on the player controls, camera, and AI.  The physics and player controls of the game didn't feel correct to players, so we wanted AJ to go back and clean up some of the coding behind that.  Colton is focused on Lumi, and also getting an animation sprite box implemented for the memory shards so we have something as a placeholder for Tamarind's art in the future.  We covered mostly what we needed to fix for this level from the playtest.  A lot of it was feedback.  Players were confused what controls, what to do, and the goals of the game.  So one of the high priority things that we need to include is the integration of Memory shard collecting count.  We were wanting it to be something that revolves around Lumi rather than around the HUD.  Brice worked on a lot of Concept art that the 3D art team has been modeling for chapter 2:

Winter 2014 Week 6

I am very happy with hour the art is coming out to be in our game.  There are some things that can be polished, but the overall art progress is pretty consistent, so hands down to the art team for making our first level look awesome!  Play test went very well and we were able to get a lot of feedback on our game based on how to aesthetically make our game be dark without actually covering up the artwork, and also making the game play more interesting.  Here are screen shots from our Play test on thursday:

We also presented to two programmers our game and they were really interested! This means we finally have programmers who mainly just program and don't have to wear like 4 other hats!  This lifts the rock off of Alex, because he was our main programmer, but his focus wasn't on programming.  This allows the team to feel more confident about the project too, so it is actually interesting to play.

Winter Week 5

So one of our goals was to get all the assets completed by Saturday (yesterday) for Chapter 1.  Well, we are like 90% there.  We are still missing a couple of textures, but models wise, everything is being uploaded.
Because we will have a lot of background objects placed around, there will be a lot of setting up for the background lighting to make those objects pop out.  We have Jeff looking up a water shader and also working on NGUI!  This will help tremendously to pull our game together in aesthetic and feedback/function.
I was a little worried with how dark the setting was because of all the darkness hiding the objects's texture.  I think we might need to brighten things up, and then go in and tweak the darkness timer so that becomes to real darkness that affects the player.  Otherwise, you can't see any of the beautiful artwork that the art team has put together!

Winter Week 4

Good news!  We finally have our chapter 1 level design polished nicely!  Alex is now working on the timer mechanics to get it set right for the chapter 1 of our beach level.  We have two animation students who are also pitching in the development for our game now!  This is going to help tremendously on getting tasks done for our character animations.  We have one that is mainly working on 3D animations, and we have another student who is pitching in with the 2D animations for our game.  Here is a wireframe of how our chapter 1 is set up.  Overall, we have most of the models done and UVed, but they still need texturing, and that will be done for this upcoming weekend.

Winter 2014 Week 3

Last week, we started on making assets for Level 1 Chapter 1. Instead of five chapters per level, we will now have three chapters per level. We are constantly keeping an eye on the deadline and limiting the amount of assets we need to create so the project doesn't get out of hand. This week we will be working on art and design for Chapters 2 and 3.

Our Level Designer is currently blocking out Level 1 Chapter 2 and the concept art for it is in progress. Models and textures for Chapter 1 are also in progress.

Here's a piece of concept art from each of our 2D artists:

Assorted props by Nicole S.

Grass concepts by Tian C.

Chapter 2 preview by Brice P.

Winter 2014 Week 2

For this week,  we ended up reworking a couple of the backlogs and asset list for the our game's goal this quarter.  Our first week back, we revised a couple of the game play issues.  We felt like the original first level had too much content in it and was too short for how much was needed.  This was because we had a beach, a lake, and a tree house all in one level map.  The puzzle and actual game play was too short for how much scope we needed.  Instead, we have resolved our problem to focus on 3 different levels, and each level will have 5 chapters.  Also, we had an issue with not having anxiety in our game.  We solved this out but including "time".  Instead of a number representing time, we will have a shadow around the player's HUD so "darkness" represents as time that is closing in on the player.  The goal is to go to the crystal shards, and light them up to brighten the level.  The shards will also make the timer go back up, so it will represent as a safe zone for the player.  We might implement buffs later on, but that is out of our scope right now.

Playtest allowed us to see that there were issues with the map being too short for what it offered.  There wasn't enough activity, but we did see a change in where people felt anxiety, which is our goal for this level.

Here is the level layout:
Some things will change, like the platforms, but right now we are modeling out the environment props that will fill the negative space in the map.  Our theme for Beach Level 1 Chapter 1 is dead maritime items.
We have other chapter themes settled for this beach level, but we will elaborate more when we reach that part in our development process.