Post 25-08-15 : New Career Goal And Working Towards It

For a while now I knew I wanted to make games but I didn't exactly know the details. Today I have decided exactly what I want to do, become a World builder. As I have only recently discovered this job title I don't know much about it and it seems like World builder (after seeing a few job descriptions) focuses more on level design but from what Sean has told me and from what I've researched it focuses more on the details of the in game world (aesthetics, locations, creatures, genre, players, social aspects, etc.). Talking to Sean today put it more into perspective, he pointed out a book that should prove to be very beneficial called 'Designing Virtual Worlds'.

I know I have  lot to research which will be done over the holidays. I need to look more into the development process, social dimensions, story and level progression, virtual economy, level design, skill sets, character generation, combat systems, a lot of witch I can learn from this book. I should also research sociology, psychology, economics, and politics, I believe this book covers a bit on these topics but I will need to look elsewhere for a more in depth look at these subjects. Sean recommended this book to me so I imagine it's pretty decent and judging by its size I think I will get a lot of useful information from it, but you can't learn everything from one book.

I think story boarding may be the best starting point to get to the position of world builder so I want to start working more towards that goal, I've decided that I'm going to do story boarding as my elective (pretty sure it was a class I could do the last time I saw the classes).

I need to look up blogs and interviews from current World builders (or past) like Chris Metzen as well as companies who have made or focus on making MMOs. It's all well and good to have the knowledge but knowing what it's actually like in the industry would also be beneficial and would make starting out less scary.

I would be a good idea to also keep to my previous... research schedule? I need to get better at writing documentations (more detailed documentations) and leadership skills as well as getting better at pitching (the more I do the better I'll get). All this I can focus on in Studio 2 but I will also work on it over the holidays with Virion and personal projects. I also want to look at creating bestiaries and atlases for virtual worlds, another thing to research.

I currently only know how to use Unity and need to learn new software so over the holidays I will look more into the Unreal Engine to start off. I've tried using UDK before and wasn't too pleased with it, but considering I was rushing a bit there were probably things I missed.

So that's my preparation plan for this title.

Holiday:

• Virion
• Read 'Designing Virtual Worlds'
• Research World Builders (Chris Metzen, Jeff Grubb)
• Companies creating MMOs
• Level design
• Practice writing documentation
• Practice scripting (help be more useful in Studio 2)
• Learn how to use Unreal Engine 4 (blueprints)
• Learn new 2D/3D art software (e.g. Maya, 3DSMax, MudBox, Illustrator)
• More writing (fictional, fleshing out my worlds)

Tri 3:

• Documentation
• Project management (workflow, work allocation, time management)
• Art assets (what I'm currently good at, what I can give to the team)
• Level design
• Anything else that I learn over the holiday (including scripting if I'm confident with my ability or am required to do so)
• Fictional writing

Post 22-08-15 : Project 3 Lowering Scope, And Focusing On CIU And Planing Career Path

We ended up taking a lot out of Sugar Crash. Now there is no stashing, inventory limits and trading scene, dropped the amount of houses down to six, the amount of candy to three and lowered the overall candy amount (still tweaking the amount), trading is now done with a button press, and bullies are used as restrictions the player has to pass. The value tree and the moon timer are no longer necessary as the game ends when the player reaches the final goal and candy has no value, only liked or disliked, so they have been removed too. The goal is still to eat as much chocolate as possible but there are two goals to complete which are "treasure stashes" that the player needs to get to to finish the game.

I plan on starting a company so Sean told me it may be a good idea to focus on project managing, so I need to get good at documenting and hold the "vision" for future projects which is what I've been doing for Sugar Crash. I also want to try getting into concept art (as it was my original career choice and may still be what I want to do) so I've been thinking about doing something artistic for my elective, I was thinking about doing fundamentals of art but as so many people have told me I am apparently already a decent artist so maybe 2D animation instead.

Sean and I spent most of last week working on the CIU project. We chose to do a character creator simulator which I thought would be too over scoped for the amount of time we had. I managed to use an old model I made for the male and female body types (just changed height and width to make them look different) and I also created a script that allowed the player to change between these to models. Unfortunately (and thankfully) the work I did wasn't required because Sean found something called UMA which gave us models that we can alter and scrips to help us do it. We still needed to create the scene and UI which meant more scripting. I created the script to control the cameras position when switching between changing the body and changing the face. I also created the face UI adding buttons for each category (forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) and the sliders for each of those. After Sean created the function for altering the character's mass I was able to do the same fore the body height and all the facial features. Players can now change gender and body type, alter mass and height, and change arm and leg shape, head size, forehead shape, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, cheeks, and jaw. I was surprised and pleased that I managed to get the facial features to work properly, good to know that I'm not completely useless at scripting.

Over the holidays I plan on working on my scripting and art skills to make sure I can do more than documentation when we work on VIRION. It is also something I want to do for personal projects in the future. As I plan on making MMOs I also want to research companies that have made (or focused on) MMOs as well as MMO games to learn more about what goes into making one, the programming, currency, marketing, etc. I under stand I have a lot to learn and a lot of games to make before I can create an MMO but hopefully VIRION will be my first step in reaching my goal.

Post 12-08-15 : KPI, Pushing Play Test Back, Opening Day

Had my KPI meeting last week and got a lot of good information from it. For a long time I've wanted to be a freelance concept artist specializing in character concepts but for a couple of years now I have wanted to start my own company and have a larger end goal, creating an MMORGP. I understand that this will be a difficult goal to achieve and still have  lot of work to do before then. I still want to try my luck in the competitive world of concept art but it is no longer my final goal. I still need to research current concept artists and read blogs about game companies but lately I've been very busy with the CIU project and the current studio project to make up time for personal work.

Unfortunately we had to push the play test day a week ahead because neither team was ready, but it did give us an extra week to work on it. Since then we have made a playable game, we did, however, still have issues with communication. It took forever to get the assets we needed from the animators and we still don't have a few (tree, bully texture). Jo had made 14 different houses but because some of them have a lot of curves in them where we need to put in windows and doors it will be a bit difficult to work around, perhaps we will just use those ones for the background houses.

On Saturday the 4S1 team (placeholder name for the Virion team) attended the Opening day ceremony, first time I've been their as a presenter (can't speak for the rest of the team). Unfortunately Hayden couldn't make it because he had to deal with a possum problem, oh well. I was a bit nervous and anti-social at first but eventually got over it and started to help others and show off Virion. The Oculus was in the same room and everyone was into that making it a bit harder to get people into our game. Luckily we got quite a few groups playing and enjoying themselves, I never heard a single complaint about our game and ended up having a 40 minute match with one of them. It seemed like we have reached our target audience but we also noticed that the younger generations got hooked into it too.

I wish we could have gotten at least one audio student in on this project, I am not very good at making sound effects but still managed to make all we need before Thursday. The children now have voices, screaming, laughing, knocking on doors, footsteps, and eating sounds to go with their animations, sometimes making games makes me feel like God. I have also completed the bush, fence, and trading box models and added them to the scene, players can now properly stash candy and trade with the NPCs. I also completed the background and sides filling in the empty space with streets and houses, it now looks like a proper neighborhood. There are still a few things we can do before the play test tomorrow but I think we are ready with what we have now.

Post 01-08-15 : Project 3 Lowering Scope

We have dropped the scope of 'Sugar Crash' again by removing the fake candy. I never thought that the fake candy was really necessary in the first place so I don't see it as a serious loss. I still need to alter the GDD to match the changes made on Thursday but that will be done this weekend.

The animators have their jobs and from what I've seen have begun working, I have my schedule to do before Tuesday and made a start yesterday and Sean has done a lot on the scripting part of the project, I believe he just has the AI and candy values left. I am still a bit worried about whether or not we will have everything complete by the first play test (mostly audio stuff and maybe animations), but I don't think I'm the only one. Even if it isn't complete by Thursday it won't be the end of the world and we will need to focus more on work flow and communication (always the biggest problems).

I've started working on 2D assets (tree house, moon, candy icons, etc.) and should have them completed by tomorrow morning before working on some of the 3D assets and textures. Then on Monday I will begin getting audio assets and finishing the GDD. Hopefully we will be able to get someone from audio into our group to help complete the project before the second play test.

I haven't gotten any info on what the others have been doing since last lesson but hopefully I will hear from then soon to know where we are at and what should be done next. Until then I will keep working on what I the GDD and assets.