Newsletter #7 : February 27th
Overview:
This week was a period of constant work where the team started building out and tuning the various mini-games into playable prototypes. We have been able to make the Bromeliad game as well as the Acacia Tree game. While these games are still in prototype phase and still need to have finalized art and UI.
As usual we have provided links below that can be used to download the builds and installed on a tablet device to play
Current Build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0gyQphBXokCWUNoc3Q3QjlsUUU/view?usp=sharing
Bromeliad Game:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0gyQphBXokCWUNoc3Q3QjlsUUU/view?usp=sharing
Acacia Tree Game:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0gyQphBXokCM3AydjgzRnhNZ1U&authuser=0
Design:
The Design team have been churning out various mini-games off of interesting relations that are found in rainforests all over the world. While some of the ideas are still not fleshed out into a presentable manner, we have been fleshing out a re-skinnable game that can be used to show and teach the prey and predator of an animal. We also have been ‘ideating’ on other interesting relationships and behaviours that we have found:
Dominant Species Card Game:
Other Mini-game ideation:
Art:
Our artists have been working on getting finalized artwork that matches our artistic style into the games that are being built. Currently the new background of the photo taking game has been implemented. In the meantime we have also created UI mockups. These UI mockups help us to formulate a structure to place our content in an unobtrusive manner that collaborates with the game to enhance the experience rather than conflicting with it –
UI mockups:
https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/A92BRW5TB#/screens
Programming:
This week has been a busy one in terms of programming and implementation. Our programmers have successfully implemented two relationship type mini-games and have also polished the existing photo taking mini-game. With these games in hand we can start moving forward and begin thinking about having playtests and formulating a plan to have iteration of these implemented games flowing alongside the implementation of new ones.
Production:
On the production side we have successfully signed up for an ETC-led playtest on March 28th.We are also looking into getting some of our classmates and maybe teachers to take a look at our current work both games and UI and give some feedback on that. We have gotten some feedback on the current state of our photo taking game from one of our classmates but we hope to get more in the coming days.
We have also been in communication with the people upstairs in legalese in order to create documents necessary to go out and playtest on site at Mountainview Elementary School. We have also been finding out if we can have a playtest in nearby school districts who would be happy to either host us or let us bring in kids from their school. At this point it is important for us to have feedback and most of our process will be shifting in that direction.
We have also been looking into and have gotten the contact details for a content expert thanks to Jesse Schell, with whom we will be following up with and hopefully will be able to set up a face to face with in some way soon.
Also the website has been updated with our team information and over the next few days a lot of the process of our work will also be going up on the website so as to give visitors of the site a look into our design and iterative process.
Moving Forward
We need to finalize a date and meet with the content expert. We also need to get some initial user testing to our current state. With next week being Game Developers Conference week and the week following being Spring break our productivity may not be as high as it was leading up to today. We hope to get some housekeeping in terms of website and legalese done, as well as some initial playtesting. We also hope to get into contact with some local school districts that may be interested in playtesting for us. On Monday we will be mapping out a plan of action and see if we can get some small things done in what free time we can extract.