Overview

This week the team carried over the energy from the end of last week and worked closely with our East Coast teammates to further develop the four idea concepts we had selected.  We also continued to iterate on the methods we used to communicate between our two team locations, and the structure of the team for decision making and production.  At the end of the week we were excited to present our ideas to our game concepts to the OCCO, who selected the two they felt were the best fit for the project (We were pleased to see that they favored the same ideas we did).

Production

Production this week focused on communication: Communication within team Thunder Egg, with team Legato, with the client, and with our advisors. Asides from communication,  Goksu worked with programmers from both Legato and Thunder Egg to establish the lead and set up a shared version control.  Christian worked to coordinate Thunder Egg’s efforts for developing the game idea concepts and the beginning steps for production.

Design

Christian and Jimin spent the week sharpening two of the four game ideas, and communicating closely with the Legato designers to make sure everyone was on the same page.  Following the advisor meetings both teams had on Wednesday, they went over the feedback and continued to examine the ideas.  Thunder Egg’s designers realized that a main mechanic of one idea, Ghost House, felt underwhelming, and that another idea involving a racing game, felt like it had been done before.  Undeterred, they quickly brainstormed and came up with a drawing minigame mechanic to cast spells for Ghost House, and then coordinated with Legato to adjust the racing game so that it would be similar to a hybrid of simultaneous pet raising and ridiculous on screen animal antics (Think Egg Baby meets Japan World Cup 3).

Art

This week Lilian continued to work on branding material, and focused on tying the focus of our project into the poster.  The art team also communicated to discuss what roles each would focus on for the project, and sat in on meetings to discuss the art approach for game ideas.  Towards the end of the week, Lilian assisted the designers to clean up their slides in preparation for the pitch.

Programming

This week the programmers communicated between teams to continue to establish the team’s work flow, and decided on having Sudhanshu from Legato serve as the programming lead.  They also setup shared version control through a Unity Asset Server instance that will be hosted at the ETC.

Next Steps

In the upcoming week the team will be initially be focused on two things. First, the team will be discussing our feedback from the pitch, the two ideas that we are considering, and our approach for further developing this ideas and establishing which we will select as game we will be making for the semester.  This process will likely involve further development of the ideas, more in depth concept documents, and possibly paper or digital prototypes. Secondly, the team will set up our workflow and the beginning steps for production, as well as beginning the programming for connecting devices.