Month: March 2018

[caption id="attachment_128" align="alignnone" width="660"] Yidi-in'[/caption] This week Team Prism presented our progress at the halfway point to the ETC faculty and fellow students. After weeks of working away in relative privacy, it was super exciting to share our work and vision with the community at large. Above, programmer Yidi Zhu is talking about our dialogue system and how it advances our forest-crisis narrative. The team discussed everything we'd done up to this point, including an overview, research on autism and autism awareness efforts, our design process, the prototypes we've been working on, the technical challenges of creating a 3D game that's capable of being played on relatively-weak PCs, audio philosophies and difficulties, playtesting, and more. We had to cover a lot of ground in 15 minutes, and it took a…

[caption id="attachment_120" align="alignnone" width="660"] Road Showin'[/caption] While 3/5 of our team was out west at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the other 2/5 took our progress thus far and brought it to the people—namely, the children who will actually be playing this game when it's all done. Pictured above is the 4th grade class at Beech Bottom Primary, who played through the partial fruit of our labor for the first time.  The initial reactions were generally positive; our earlier focus group sessions paid off as the children responded favorably to the art-style and forest setting. They loved the sounds of the forest and liked the peaceful music, and mostly understood the concept of the fox "letting off steam" during periods of intense sensory overload. There is some…

[caption id="attachment_116" align="alignnone" width="660"] Designin'[/caption] We're in the thick of it now. With the core of our design complete, we've begun to turn our focus towards major production of our game. When last we spoke, dear readers, the team was hopeful that by this week we'd develop the in-game scenarios that would form the backbone of our forest-in-crisis story. Indeed, we've identified and outlined the major story beats that our fox protagonist will go through as it wrangles the animals together to build the dam of dams: The Fox will encounter a bear during the daytime. The bear will be hungry and uncooperative until you help it satisfy its cravings. As a nocturnal animal, the fox will be uncomfortable with the bright sunlight and chipper chirping of diurnal birds and…

[caption id="attachment_112" align="alignnone" width="660"] Workin' (hard)[/caption] It wasn't a very glamorous week here at the Prism office, but it was a productive one. With an established design and a prototype that by all indications was on the right track, the team forged ahead and continued to refine and iterate, building on what was already working and starting to layer in some complexity. Story continues to be a focus. With the forest facing an impending crisis due to climate change (what hot-button issue WON'T we touch?), the wise owl and the majestic wolf reach out to the earnest fox about inspiring all the forest animals to come together and build a dam. (Where are the beavers, you ask? We are asking the same questions.) The catch is, of course, that the…