This is the end of week 1. Today we've had a sprint review and a general planning day. So this seems like the perfect time to bring up the overall planning!
To begin with, this is a nine week long project. Last week is going to be a lot of preparing for the presentation, so less production/polish. On top of that, a lot of us are looking for internships at the same time, mailing companies, having interviews, and doing tests. With that in mind we've set our internal deadline for the project at the end of week seven, giving us plently of leeway for internship-related activities. First week(This week) Ideation & Design
We've been focusing on discussing ideas for features, what we want, what's feasible to then try to form that into a design. So the other designer, Samuel, and I have started discussing those ideas the last couple of days, to the point where we're in agreement of what's good design.
Learning Unreal Engine 4
While Sam & I have been trying to design from the ideas of the entire team, the rest of us have been focusing on trying to learn the engine. Using Discord as a communications channel, we're trying to pool good tutorials and tips for UE4. Due to the dependency of a written down design however, the designers are postponing UE4 research to finish the Game Design Document(GDD).
Prototype
One of the graphical artists are already profficient enough in UE4 to prototype, and do so quickly. So that's what's he's doing right now so we can try out mechanics super quickly.
Week 2
Design
The foundation of the design needs to be discussed and decided, and iteration 1 of the GDD needs to be finished. Sam is going to focus on the GDD while i start to talk level design with the environmental artist. My hope is that dialogue will strengthen the pipeline between art and level design.
Art
The next step for the graphics team will be discussing and exploring the setting/theme. Finding references and making concepts will be the main activity. I would like to make sure we are also quick to get really rough iterations in engine quickly. Last project i worked on didn't, which resulted in scrapping the concept work because it didn't work as well as we hoped in engine. Concepting and iterating needs to work in tandem.
Code
The programmers have taken on specific roles now so that they know what to specifically research pertaining to the Unreal Engine. They need to research how to make enemy AI, how to make a systematically designed gun where different upgrades affects how the entire gun functions, as well as general gameplay programming and integrating C++ with blueprints in UE4.
Week 3(ALPHA WEEK)
This is when we're supposed to have a bigger sprint review, the alpha presentation. For this milestone we would like to have a level blocked out, the setting decided and concepts to back it up. We also need a first itteration of most art in the game as well as all the most important features in game in some shape or form.
As a treat for you who read all that, here's some mood boards!
