November 19, 2023 - December 2nd, 2023
Over the Thanksgiving break I had done some work on designing a simple map based from our previously built one for the GamePlay video. Using a scrap piece of paper I had gotten from the kind staff of the Hampton Inn in Huntington, New York, I had pencil drawn the map I made in Unreal Engine 5. After redrawing our map I had then proceeded to adjust it to add more hanging “vines” and small stairwells to add more interactivity to the map. I did have fun adding new things on the paper map, though in the end it will not be used due to how “blocky” it ended up still being.
After that I had initially planned to work more on the slides and setting up a new scene for our mock-up gifs for our Final Gameplay Mockup, however on Monday afternoon I had suddenly fallen ill with a bad stomach ache with it occurring after vomiting. Starting the week before, I had begun to feel constipated which I had initially thought to be a phase of my IBS until I was unable to use the restroom after Thanksgiving dinner. When I told my family of this, they had suggested for me to buy Pepto Bismol from the convenience store nearby my hotel, unbeknownst to them and especially me, Pepto Bismol is used to harden stool, not soften it. (Which may play a part in the issues I had this week.) Thankfully, this error was quickly corrected on Tuesday after my girlfriend had informed me of our error which led me to start taking laxatives prior to seeing a Doctor on Thursday where they had discovered using an x-ray that I had a bad build-up of stool that was about to cause a blockage in my intestines. I am now using stool softeners to break up the stool and after using the restroom a few times, my earlier fatigue caused by the build-up had started to subside. Although I have been having some terrible flare ups due to some of the stool being still in my system at this current time. However, the answer to my unknown illness was answered after three days… “I was full of shit.” (Quoted from my roommate, Edison Li, Moments after I told him that I was blocked up.)
During the Workshop 0 class on Thursday, I was able to get on a Discord call with my team to catch up on the design changes they’ve been working on this week and introducing myself to our new team member, Aiden. Through this meeting, we had decided for the mockup that I was going to try to recreate the new Rot Lantern mechanics for our gameplay mockups by recording the backgrounds through a screen recorder in UE5, before then adding assets and UI elements through the magic of video editing on Vegas Pro 21. I had also submitted my team’s lower-thirds as my team was uncertain if anyone had done so earlier. I was unsure of the deadline for this assignment(?) due to being absent, but I made sure that it was sent to my Professor Will, before continuing work on the project Thursday evening.
After that I had initially planned to work more on the slides and setting up a new scene for our mock-up gifs for our Final Gameplay Mockup, however on Monday afternoon I had suddenly fallen ill with a bad stomach ache with it occurring after vomiting. Starting the week before, I had begun to feel constipated which I had initially thought to be a phase of my IBS until I was unable to use the restroom after Thanksgiving dinner. When I told my family of this, they had suggested for me to buy Pepto Bismol from the convenience store nearby my hotel, unbeknownst to them and especially me, Pepto Bismol is used to harden stool, not soften it. (Which may play a part in the issues I had this week.) Thankfully, this error was quickly corrected on Tuesday after my girlfriend had informed me of our error which led me to start taking laxatives prior to seeing a Doctor on Thursday where they had discovered using an x-ray that I had a bad build-up of stool that was about to cause a blockage in my intestines. I am now using stool softeners to break up the stool and after using the restroom a few times, my earlier fatigue caused by the build-up had started to subside. Although I have been having some terrible flare ups due to some of the stool being still in my system at this current time. However, the answer to my unknown illness was answered after three days… “I was full of shit.” (Quoted from my roommate, Edison Li, Moments after I told him that I was blocked up.)
During the Workshop 0 class on Thursday, I was able to get on a Discord call with my team to catch up on the design changes they’ve been working on this week and introducing myself to our new team member, Aiden. Through this meeting, we had decided for the mockup that I was going to try to recreate the new Rot Lantern mechanics for our gameplay mockups by recording the backgrounds through a screen recorder in UE5, before then adding assets and UI elements through the magic of video editing on Vegas Pro 21. I had also submitted my team’s lower-thirds as my team was uncertain if anyone had done so earlier. I was unsure of the deadline for this assignment(?) due to being absent, but I made sure that it was sent to my Professor Will, before continuing work on the project Thursday evening.
Through the evening on Thursday and through the majority of Friday I had worked on three mockups based on three of our core Gameplay scenes: “The VHS playing to Pause,” “Enemy Chasing Player,” and “The Lantern being on around the Player.” After resetting the map to be lit up by floor candles (From Warren Marshall’s Asset Pack) over the Rect Lights I had on the ceilings of the scene. I had then recorded one scene of the Player being chased by an enemy and then recorded another short segment of gameplay of the Player walking around with a lantern on. The lantern effect was created using a SpotLight on the Player camera being made into an orb that floated in front of them to create a “round” light effect. Once the video was in Vegas, I had added an image of a video game lantern in front of the “light orb” and manually placed an animated glow to the light.
After recording both of these scenes, I had then clipped and adjusted them within Vegas. For the VHS mockup I had used Meg’s image from the previous week’s VHS footage and adjusted it to appear like a short video is being played on a fictional VHS tape player. Towards the end of the clip a “Rotted Monster” appears from the darkness of the hallway where it is implied a player will stop the footage to observe and research what will be happening next in the game as an insight of the upcoming horror. Using the Time Code effect and the TV Simulator on Vegas I was able to give the VHS mockup a more analog feel to it. Also, as a last minute addition I added Meg’s UI for our PowerPoint slides to emulate playing and pausing the VHS tape in GamePlay. Once I got all of the videos set up in Vegas, I had used ScreentoGif to make the .mp4 files into .gif files to display in loops on PowerPoint. Although I was unable to do much in terms of the MockUp assignment until Thursday, I am impressed with what I was able to do in about a day. Hopefully for next time I am to make MockUps I would be able to work on them for a full week rather than a day, I still find what I was able to accomplish to be pretty cool.
For this coming week I plan to try my hardest to help make our slides the best they can be and functional with all of the gifs we’ll be adding for the upcoming Shark Tank this next Friday!
After recording both of these scenes, I had then clipped and adjusted them within Vegas. For the VHS mockup I had used Meg’s image from the previous week’s VHS footage and adjusted it to appear like a short video is being played on a fictional VHS tape player. Towards the end of the clip a “Rotted Monster” appears from the darkness of the hallway where it is implied a player will stop the footage to observe and research what will be happening next in the game as an insight of the upcoming horror. Using the Time Code effect and the TV Simulator on Vegas I was able to give the VHS mockup a more analog feel to it. Also, as a last minute addition I added Meg’s UI for our PowerPoint slides to emulate playing and pausing the VHS tape in GamePlay. Once I got all of the videos set up in Vegas, I had used ScreentoGif to make the .mp4 files into .gif files to display in loops on PowerPoint. Although I was unable to do much in terms of the MockUp assignment until Thursday, I am impressed with what I was able to do in about a day. Hopefully for next time I am to make MockUps I would be able to work on them for a full week rather than a day, I still find what I was able to accomplish to be pretty cool.
For this coming week I plan to try my hardest to help make our slides the best they can be and functional with all of the gifs we’ll be adding for the upcoming Shark Tank this next Friday!
November 12th, 2023 - November 18th, 2023
I started this week by working on a general layout of designing our Gameplay Video. Although this process is more for movies, I had chosen to create a storyboard for what we should do while filming “Castle Decomposition’s” Virtual Gameplay video. After laying out this storyboard, I had presented it to my group, though I had made a major communication error at this stage of developing the video.
As I was showing my groupmates the storyboard, I had told them I had made it so that the Player would move to another part of the Castle whenever they interact with a “RotLight Door.” When I asked them what they had thought I had received a thumbs up from my teammates which had led to me believing that they approved the adjustment and I continued to produce the video. I had forgotten to double check that change with them which led to confusion on Thursday when I was showcasing the GamePlay video. A mistake that was quite preventable if I had double checked with the team more than once on the design choice I had made while working on setting up the video.
I had then worked with my teammates on setting up a map for the video to take place in, which at first was based on a layout Dom had designed based on the Clue map. However, when we were reviewing it, the map seemed to be too linear and there were several texture errors on this original map. We had then elected to have our display map to be based on an “Abandoned Hospital” Map I had bought previously from a Humble Bundle package weeks before. After gutting one of the wings of the hospital of props and textures, I had redesigned the area to look more like an abandoned castle using the debris of the Hospital pack and props from the Detective Scene asset that we had used for a previous prototype.
As I was showing my groupmates the storyboard, I had told them I had made it so that the Player would move to another part of the Castle whenever they interact with a “RotLight Door.” When I asked them what they had thought I had received a thumbs up from my teammates which had led to me believing that they approved the adjustment and I continued to produce the video. I had forgotten to double check that change with them which led to confusion on Thursday when I was showcasing the GamePlay video. A mistake that was quite preventable if I had double checked with the team more than once on the design choice I had made while working on setting up the video.
I had then worked with my teammates on setting up a map for the video to take place in, which at first was based on a layout Dom had designed based on the Clue map. However, when we were reviewing it, the map seemed to be too linear and there were several texture errors on this original map. We had then elected to have our display map to be based on an “Abandoned Hospital” Map I had bought previously from a Humble Bundle package weeks before. After gutting one of the wings of the hospital of props and textures, I had redesigned the area to look more like an abandoned castle using the debris of the Hospital pack and props from the Detective Scene asset that we had used for a previous prototype.
Once the map was set, I had placed in the BluePrints from last week’s prototype for the Tape Pick Up/Drop and Enemy AI to the hospital map. There were some issues resetting the NavMesh to the new layout, but it was implemented on Wednesday where I had then rehearsed on what I would be showing in the video several times before recording the video on Thursday morning. I did attempt to change the enemy’s mesh to be based on Meg’s model, however we had learned that we needed the skeleton of the model to be fully functional before you can animate it in Unreal which led to us reusing the same “Human Male” model from previous weeks for the GamePlay.
On the Presentation, I did adjust the images and text on the Gameplay, SWOT, and USPs slides Thursday morning before checking in with Dom who had previously written a script on the slides that directly conflicted with what he had written down. Although I should have talked with him before I had made changes, me and Meg were confused as to why he had written a script on all of the slides before we were able to adjust the ones we said we’d work on. This was likely a miscommunication on everyone’s ends as after our meeting the Friday before, we likely deviated from what we said we’d do. In the future, we will need to for sure communicate more clearly and more often to avoid further misunderstandings between the three of us moving forward.
Lastly, using Vegas Pro 21 I had edited the OBS recording of the Gameplay I had set up in Unreal to feel like an active Game Session. I had recorded my voice over the Gameplay after setting up the timeline in the editing program and timed my commentary to fit with the events occurring on the screen. After that, I had received the Pitch Video recording that Meg and Dom took over Zoom and normalized their audio so that the video was clear to hear without peaking in decibel level.
On the Presentation, I did adjust the images and text on the Gameplay, SWOT, and USPs slides Thursday morning before checking in with Dom who had previously written a script on the slides that directly conflicted with what he had written down. Although I should have talked with him before I had made changes, me and Meg were confused as to why he had written a script on all of the slides before we were able to adjust the ones we said we’d work on. This was likely a miscommunication on everyone’s ends as after our meeting the Friday before, we likely deviated from what we said we’d do. In the future, we will need to for sure communicate more clearly and more often to avoid further misunderstandings between the three of us moving forward.
Lastly, using Vegas Pro 21 I had edited the OBS recording of the Gameplay I had set up in Unreal to feel like an active Game Session. I had recorded my voice over the Gameplay after setting up the timeline in the editing program and timed my commentary to fit with the events occurring on the screen. After that, I had received the Pitch Video recording that Meg and Dom took over Zoom and normalized their audio so that the video was clear to hear without peaking in decibel level.
In the process of editing our video, I had made another blunder this week on checking to see if the GamePlay made sense and was fun. I was too focused on getting things set up for the video based on the storyboard that I did not check on the most important part of Game Design. Although the environment and functionality of what we are displaying is there, the perception of what others would think of it was lost in development. This is a part of the iteration process that does happen sometimes however, which is a harsh lesson that I’ll be sure to remember for the next GamePlay video. I also need to ensure that my teammates are understanding of the things that I am doing in Unreal Engine before fully implementing them as there were decisions that I had made that I had forgotten to ensure that my teammates knew about.
This realization makes me go to one final mistake I had made this week which, in my opinion, likely led me to be quite forgetful of the background work and communication that is needed to develop good Games: “Task Management.” Upon doing my burndown chart this week, I came to realize that including the Thursday that the pitch was due, I had spent 25 hours outside of class working on our GamePlay video. Which is too much time to spend on any student project in a week which had caused me to have a burnout towards the submission time. Although I should have lessened my tasks by talking with my teammates to spread out the work, I had felt like it would make me appear lazy if I had done so and would have put added pressure on my teammates who were already stressed with factors outside of Workshop.
For the upcoming Thanksgiving Break I plan on adjusting our map and gameplay based on the feedback we’ve received from our Professors Will and Rush, as well as incorporating the future feedback we’ll be getting from the Sharks who’ll review our videos! Shark Tank is around the corner so these next three weeks I plan on staying focused on getting communication to be more set between myself and my teammates, as well as not overdoing my own tasks. This process will be challenging, but acknowledging a lot of this unneeded stress had come from a lack of communication, I plan on improving my own workflow to help make our project be the best it can be.
This realization makes me go to one final mistake I had made this week which, in my opinion, likely led me to be quite forgetful of the background work and communication that is needed to develop good Games: “Task Management.” Upon doing my burndown chart this week, I came to realize that including the Thursday that the pitch was due, I had spent 25 hours outside of class working on our GamePlay video. Which is too much time to spend on any student project in a week which had caused me to have a burnout towards the submission time. Although I should have lessened my tasks by talking with my teammates to spread out the work, I had felt like it would make me appear lazy if I had done so and would have put added pressure on my teammates who were already stressed with factors outside of Workshop.
For the upcoming Thanksgiving Break I plan on adjusting our map and gameplay based on the feedback we’ve received from our Professors Will and Rush, as well as incorporating the future feedback we’ll be getting from the Sharks who’ll review our videos! Shark Tank is around the corner so these next three weeks I plan on staying focused on getting communication to be more set between myself and my teammates, as well as not overdoing my own tasks. This process will be challenging, but acknowledging a lot of this unneeded stress had come from a lack of communication, I plan on improving my own workflow to help make our project be the best it can be.
November 5th, 2023 - November 11th, 2023
This week I had started a bit slower than usual before going into the engine as I had chosen to focus the beginning of my week on housekeeping tasks to build up practice in task management. Although the chart was not adjusted to be correctly tracking the burn down of tasks just yet, I began to log in my hours for this week onto the graph. Instead of having our weeks be based on Tuesday being the start of the week, I had chosen to move it to Thursday after we turn in our latest prototype as that will make it so we focus the charts on our weekly prototype tasks. This new BurnDown method also works for us as after the results of a “When2Meet” I made on Sunday showed that our most available day of the week for meetings are Fridays. From that result, for meetings outside of class we plan to try to meet on Fridays whenever possible. I still need to learn more on how to fully run BurnDown Charts for task management purposes, but that can be further looked into as the Semester progresses.
In terms of work in the prototype I had given myself three major tasks this week: “Make are Enemy AI Follow the Player regardless on where they are located,” “develop a pick up/drop item blueprint for the VHS Tape,” and lastly “Piece Together Meg’s Art Screenshots and Dom’s Sounds to our VHS tape videos.” All three of these were to test out the incentive to not get touched by the Rotted: “The more you are touched while holding a tape, the more damaged it will get.” In our game, the video tapes are left behind by the player character’s brother where he records his experience in the Castle and talks about the background of the Castle as well as ways to escape the curse. If these get damaged, the visuals and audio will distort causing for the videos to be harder to understand.
In terms of work in the prototype I had given myself three major tasks this week: “Make are Enemy AI Follow the Player regardless on where they are located,” “develop a pick up/drop item blueprint for the VHS Tape,” and lastly “Piece Together Meg’s Art Screenshots and Dom’s Sounds to our VHS tape videos.” All three of these were to test out the incentive to not get touched by the Rotted: “The more you are touched while holding a tape, the more damaged it will get.” In our game, the video tapes are left behind by the player character’s brother where he records his experience in the Castle and talks about the background of the Castle as well as ways to escape the curse. If these get damaged, the visuals and audio will distort causing for the videos to be harder to understand.
The first task of my three I had expected for me to take longer as I am not too knowledgeable on how to design a moving AI. Luckily for me, Unreal Engine’s built-in Components have a lot of tools to help with both movement and behavior of the AI, especially its PawnSensing Component. Using that, I had increased the viewport of the Enemy from being a limited Peripheral Vision Angle of 90 degrees to 180 to sense the “Player Pawn” from any direction of the Enemy when activated. This simple fix had taken me less than an hour to learn, test, and put into our prototype when I had thought it would take three times longer to do, which made me reconsider the time table I should give myself for tasks.
For the item pick up and drop I had based my blueprint off of a tutorial from Gorka Games to make it simple for the prototype we currently have. In the future, I would like to explore making the item pick up a trigger for enemies to pursue the Players but for the purposes of our current tests I chose to keep it to only picking up an item with the left-mouse click. After replicating Gorka’s blueprint, I had discovered that the pick up was not working as intended so I had spent thirty minutes rewatching the video multiple times to learn of what step I had missed to find that I had accidentally called a Multiply node instead of an Add which was an easy replacement to make in the Blueprint.
For the item pick up and drop I had based my blueprint off of a tutorial from Gorka Games to make it simple for the prototype we currently have. In the future, I would like to explore making the item pick up a trigger for enemies to pursue the Players but for the purposes of our current tests I chose to keep it to only picking up an item with the left-mouse click. After replicating Gorka’s blueprint, I had discovered that the pick up was not working as intended so I had spent thirty minutes rewatching the video multiple times to learn of what step I had missed to find that I had accidentally called a Multiply node instead of an Add which was an easy replacement to make in the Blueprint.
Lastly, for the four videos of the VHS tape’s condition I had used Vegas Pro 21 to edit Meg's mock-up images of the brother’s videos and connected them with Dom's sound prior to class playtests on Thursday. To enhance the VHS effects of the videos, I had used the built-in TV Simulator VFX in Vegas to make the look of the image to be like an old cable television having signal errors to sort of emulate a “corrupted tape” look. We plan to further explore with the visuals and audio of deteriorating VHS tapes in later iterations of our project but from our playtests many people thought these visual effects looked great in appearance.
This week Peter, Aiden, Tre’, Travon, and Rush played our prototype and our main feedback came from how a lot of our Testers felt that the mechanics and controls felt good but the aesthetic was still slightly off. Aiden had said that the setting and music do not mesh well as he felt it was too orchestral for the location that felt like a cave, a similar critique that Tre’ had given us, although he thought from the textures that were used in our map that he was inside of intestines. Travon had commented that the videos should be cut up to show frames of the tapes had been destroyed after being corrupted as Peter and Rush believed that the enemy was too predictable as it followed them the whole time. They did not feel too scared by it after realizing that if they kept moving, the enemy would never harm them.
A suggestion that Rush had given us to the enemy issue is to design a map that would let it so the Players would be able to think that they evaded the enemy for them to accidentally run back into them after wandering around the castle. A comment that was also made by our Professor, Will, in regards to the level design. For the next few iterations we will try to find a map in the Epic Games store to place our player and enemies in as we work on figuring out what a possible map would look like later on in the game’s development. We were also told by Rush that he believes that there should be one more additional loop within our current Gameplay loop as he said that there needs to be something that will better connect the Enemies chasing the player and the possibility of the tapes being corrupted if they touch them.
My hypothesis for next week is to look into an additional mechanic to the tape collection and enemy avoidance by having the Players only being able to watch/rewind/fast-forward the tapes at a limited time before an enemy breaks into the room they are watching the tapes in. This will allow for the Player to be more rushed to review the tape before an enemy catches them, and it could open up the possibility of making the Player choose to either keep the tape to try to watch more of it in another room or to abandon it to be destroyed. This addition to the gameplay will be the focus of what we’ll try to showcase in our Gameplay Video due next week. I also plan on discussing with my team further on where we should reintroduce the concept of our “RotLight” mechanic as we had pushed it to the side to focus on our enemy movement and the VHS videos these past few weeks. I would like to see what we can explore with it with our current concept for the game although I am unsure on how we should scope a use for the light.
This week Peter, Aiden, Tre’, Travon, and Rush played our prototype and our main feedback came from how a lot of our Testers felt that the mechanics and controls felt good but the aesthetic was still slightly off. Aiden had said that the setting and music do not mesh well as he felt it was too orchestral for the location that felt like a cave, a similar critique that Tre’ had given us, although he thought from the textures that were used in our map that he was inside of intestines. Travon had commented that the videos should be cut up to show frames of the tapes had been destroyed after being corrupted as Peter and Rush believed that the enemy was too predictable as it followed them the whole time. They did not feel too scared by it after realizing that if they kept moving, the enemy would never harm them.
A suggestion that Rush had given us to the enemy issue is to design a map that would let it so the Players would be able to think that they evaded the enemy for them to accidentally run back into them after wandering around the castle. A comment that was also made by our Professor, Will, in regards to the level design. For the next few iterations we will try to find a map in the Epic Games store to place our player and enemies in as we work on figuring out what a possible map would look like later on in the game’s development. We were also told by Rush that he believes that there should be one more additional loop within our current Gameplay loop as he said that there needs to be something that will better connect the Enemies chasing the player and the possibility of the tapes being corrupted if they touch them.
My hypothesis for next week is to look into an additional mechanic to the tape collection and enemy avoidance by having the Players only being able to watch/rewind/fast-forward the tapes at a limited time before an enemy breaks into the room they are watching the tapes in. This will allow for the Player to be more rushed to review the tape before an enemy catches them, and it could open up the possibility of making the Player choose to either keep the tape to try to watch more of it in another room or to abandon it to be destroyed. This addition to the gameplay will be the focus of what we’ll try to showcase in our Gameplay Video due next week. I also plan on discussing with my team further on where we should reintroduce the concept of our “RotLight” mechanic as we had pushed it to the side to focus on our enemy movement and the VHS videos these past few weeks. I would like to see what we can explore with it with our current concept for the game although I am unsure on how we should scope a use for the light.
October 29th - November 4th, 2023
I began this week in setting up a Burndown Chart for the team’s task management. At first, I had attempted to set it up directly within Notion so that we do not have as many outside links within our blocks. However, in order to have it so we have an updating burndown chart within the program, I would be required to pay for an outside plug-in to be attached to our teamspace so I chose to link a Google Form with our charts to our Notion. Using a template, I was able to set up a simple BurnDown Chart for me, Meg, and Dom to log our hours and remaining tasks into. I still need to add a projected hours line to our graph so that it will be a complete chart but I got it working to be able to log hours based on a weekly schedule starting on Tuesdays.
I had then begun to work on attempting to make it so objects will appear/disappear when the “RotLight” is “On/Off.” When the light is on, the objects will appear, meanwhile when the light is off the objects will “disappear.” I had planned to make this occur through toggling their object’s visibility, however I do not know enough about Blueprints to get this effect done at the current moment. On Tuesday however I had changed my hypothesis to be focused on our idea of the enemies to move towards the Player when the “RotLight” is on.
While working on this mechanic, I had learned that you cannot have two input actions be the same key. I had tried to make it so the Flashlight would turn on alongside triggering the enemy to move by pressing “F,” however the Input would not allow either to work as the key function had seemed to be conflicting. I may experiment on seeing if the Enemy AI would only function if the light is on but the function works as intended if we require the player to press both “F” and “E” at the same time to create our intended concept within a Prototype setting. However, the enemy AI will only move based on if it perceives the Player being in front of it due to the “PawnSensing” component added to the enemy. Something that can likely be fixed through Navigation Meshing.
On Thursday, we had decided to test out a new way of incorporating enemies into Gameplay as our original idea was too similar to “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” by making it seem too much like every other survival horror game. After showing our Prototype to both our Professor, Will Emigh, and our IU Alumni visitor, Ian Sundstrum, we had decided to try testing out a Narrative based mechanic of collecting old tapes from your brother that went missing a decade or so prior. And instead of the enemies chasing you when the “RotLight” is on, they automatically go after you once you have a tape in your possession. They are invisible unless you shine the light on them, but the light has limited power. If the enemies touch you, the tape you have will be damaged. After over three times of being touched, the whole tape will be destroyed leaving only fragments of sound and image being displayed in the video playback. This way, we can find a way to make the tapes connect to GamePlay as the Enemies will hurt your tapes which can make the videos your brother left behind more difficult to understand.
My Hypothesis for this next week will be to make it so the enemies follow the Player if they are holding the tape and to create them to navigate around the map Dom and Meghan are designing. I also plan on adding a counter/UI system to describe the Tapes condition based on how many times the Enemy manages to touch the Player as they attempt to go to a “Safe Area” on the map once they collect the tape. My last task for this week will be compiling the images and music from my teammates into a video editor and creating four short videos to show the differences of the tapes the Players would get depending on how damaged their footage gets.
While working on this mechanic, I had learned that you cannot have two input actions be the same key. I had tried to make it so the Flashlight would turn on alongside triggering the enemy to move by pressing “F,” however the Input would not allow either to work as the key function had seemed to be conflicting. I may experiment on seeing if the Enemy AI would only function if the light is on but the function works as intended if we require the player to press both “F” and “E” at the same time to create our intended concept within a Prototype setting. However, the enemy AI will only move based on if it perceives the Player being in front of it due to the “PawnSensing” component added to the enemy. Something that can likely be fixed through Navigation Meshing.
On Thursday, we had decided to test out a new way of incorporating enemies into Gameplay as our original idea was too similar to “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” by making it seem too much like every other survival horror game. After showing our Prototype to both our Professor, Will Emigh, and our IU Alumni visitor, Ian Sundstrum, we had decided to try testing out a Narrative based mechanic of collecting old tapes from your brother that went missing a decade or so prior. And instead of the enemies chasing you when the “RotLight” is on, they automatically go after you once you have a tape in your possession. They are invisible unless you shine the light on them, but the light has limited power. If the enemies touch you, the tape you have will be damaged. After over three times of being touched, the whole tape will be destroyed leaving only fragments of sound and image being displayed in the video playback. This way, we can find a way to make the tapes connect to GamePlay as the Enemies will hurt your tapes which can make the videos your brother left behind more difficult to understand.
My Hypothesis for this next week will be to make it so the enemies follow the Player if they are holding the tape and to create them to navigate around the map Dom and Meghan are designing. I also plan on adding a counter/UI system to describe the Tapes condition based on how many times the Enemy manages to touch the Player as they attempt to go to a “Safe Area” on the map once they collect the tape. My last task for this week will be compiling the images and music from my teammates into a video editor and creating four short videos to show the differences of the tapes the Players would get depending on how damaged their footage gets.
October 22nd - October 28th, 2023
This week started with me attempting to figure out how to fix the GitLab repository issues. On GitKraken, I had slowly attempted to introduce files to the repo by Staging and Committing about 200 files at a time rather than trying all 1,900 files at the same time. However, I had forgotten to Push them after Committing the files which had created a file space error that caused me to backtrace into a separate “Test Branch” in order to try again.
Sadly, the test branch had not worked like I had expected so I had to create a second repository to attempt pushing the files over again and learned that the normal file sizes for the repository pushes exceeded the maximum sizes Git allows. I had attempted to use a plug-in LFS to GitKraken to try to condense the large files however it also did not seem to work as planned. Deciding it would be best to consult my Professors regarding this issue, I chose to delay figuring out how to work the repository after going into it over the course of seven hours between Sunday and Monday.
I then turned a majority of my focus on remaking the Gameplay and USPs slides as well as adding a Market and SWOT Analysis to our presentation. I enjoyed looking into the current trends for Analog horror and finding that two games with an “older video game aesthetic” like David Szymanski’s “Iron Lung” are growing rapidly in popularity, especially with Szymanski’s game being adapted to a theatrical movie directed by Youtuber, Mark Fischbach, that’ll release towards the end of this year. I had also found that within two years, two different horror webseries on YouTube that are designed to look at instructional videos from the 90’s have received millions of views per video within two years. Millions of viewers on a singular video on YouTube is impressive in itself, as someone who’s been making videos for over ten years, the highest I’ve gotten was barely half a million within five years.
The success of these series and games were very inspirational to me as I continued to work on our presentation slides. I had also gotten into how our newly named “RotLight” mechanic will be mixed into the Gameplay as both the action Players need to do progress but also being the same mechanic that will trigger our enemies, “The Cursed,” to pursue Players. There will need to be work to incorporate the Narrative to this mechanic which will be discussed further as a group as the game continues development.
After doing finishing touches on the slides on Tuesday evening, me and Meghan had filmed our first pitch video for Shark Cage. I had recorded our video using OBS as well as the Discord call I was in with her. After several takes, we were able to complete our presentation and I had remuxed the recording and adjusted our video to fit closer to the seven minute time limit for this Pitch. After editing I uploaded our video to YouTube and submitted our link.
Sadly, the test branch had not worked like I had expected so I had to create a second repository to attempt pushing the files over again and learned that the normal file sizes for the repository pushes exceeded the maximum sizes Git allows. I had attempted to use a plug-in LFS to GitKraken to try to condense the large files however it also did not seem to work as planned. Deciding it would be best to consult my Professors regarding this issue, I chose to delay figuring out how to work the repository after going into it over the course of seven hours between Sunday and Monday.
I then turned a majority of my focus on remaking the Gameplay and USPs slides as well as adding a Market and SWOT Analysis to our presentation. I enjoyed looking into the current trends for Analog horror and finding that two games with an “older video game aesthetic” like David Szymanski’s “Iron Lung” are growing rapidly in popularity, especially with Szymanski’s game being adapted to a theatrical movie directed by Youtuber, Mark Fischbach, that’ll release towards the end of this year. I had also found that within two years, two different horror webseries on YouTube that are designed to look at instructional videos from the 90’s have received millions of views per video within two years. Millions of viewers on a singular video on YouTube is impressive in itself, as someone who’s been making videos for over ten years, the highest I’ve gotten was barely half a million within five years.
The success of these series and games were very inspirational to me as I continued to work on our presentation slides. I had also gotten into how our newly named “RotLight” mechanic will be mixed into the Gameplay as both the action Players need to do progress but also being the same mechanic that will trigger our enemies, “The Cursed,” to pursue Players. There will need to be work to incorporate the Narrative to this mechanic which will be discussed further as a group as the game continues development.
After doing finishing touches on the slides on Tuesday evening, me and Meghan had filmed our first pitch video for Shark Cage. I had recorded our video using OBS as well as the Discord call I was in with her. After several takes, we were able to complete our presentation and I had remuxed the recording and adjusted our video to fit closer to the seven minute time limit for this Pitch. After editing I uploaded our video to YouTube and submitted our link.
On Thursday, I had visited my Professor, Will, to discuss our repository issues where he had suggested changing the clients that I was sending the files online through from. The client I chose to test was GitHub Desktop which was able to locate the file that was causing the issue that I had encountered at the start of the week. Luckily, it was only one file that was too large for our repository so after following the path to the problematic texture pack file in our Unreal Project, I was able to remove it from our project and I was able to push the repo without any issues. From now on for “Castle Decomposition” we will be using GitHub Desktop to push and pull our files since unlike GitKraken, it does tell you the direct path of the files that cause errors.
With that in mind, this week I believe that I was able to successfully implement both of the hypotheses I proposed last week. I was able to fix our repository issue so now we can push and pull from our branches, as well as finding ways to incorporate our formerly named “BlackLight” mechanic to our game’s core gameplay. I did propose that I would find a way to incorporate the light to our narrative last week, however at the current moment we have decided to assign Dom to do more Narrative tasks for this week so I can focus on getting our Notion to be more put together.
For this coming week’s Hypothesis I will be testing two things. One will be connecting and designing a first draft of a burndown chart on our Notion page with the other assignment being to get the “RotLight” to work in our Unreal repository. Both of these are more housekeeping tasks for this coming week but as we wait for our responses for the Shark Cage, this is a good time to get these tasks done.
With that in mind, this week I believe that I was able to successfully implement both of the hypotheses I proposed last week. I was able to fix our repository issue so now we can push and pull from our branches, as well as finding ways to incorporate our formerly named “BlackLight” mechanic to our game’s core gameplay. I did propose that I would find a way to incorporate the light to our narrative last week, however at the current moment we have decided to assign Dom to do more Narrative tasks for this week so I can focus on getting our Notion to be more put together.
For this coming week’s Hypothesis I will be testing two things. One will be connecting and designing a first draft of a burndown chart on our Notion page with the other assignment being to get the “RotLight” to work in our Unreal repository. Both of these are more housekeeping tasks for this coming week but as we wait for our responses for the Shark Cage, this is a good time to get these tasks done.
October 15th - October 21st, 2023
This week we have fully transitioned from Unity to Unreal Engine 5. At the start of the week, I had connected our GitLab repository to GitKraken so that we can push and pull our changes with the software. This process was one that I learned through working with the “Go! Save the Queen!” team as their Freelance Sound Designer. I am still working on helping my team learn branching, pulling, and pushing changes to the repository which is also something new for me as well as this is the first time I am the leading Branch Manager for a repository.
My first task was to begin going deep into the blueprint programming for the scene we were planning to create. At first, we were working on creating the slow build-up to a scare within the game though we had later learned that we needed to focus only on the scare rather than the build up. Although we had ideas for three scares with one being Programmed Design, one being Art Ambiance, and the last one being based on Musical Stingers, we had chosen to condense them down into one as one Jumpscare scene in Unreal Engine 5. This decision was a great way for us to scope down a bit since we all have not had too much experience in Unreal development.
Prior to the adjustment, I had begun work on creating a Flashlight mechanic with a Pick Up/Drop for an object. These were there as our original scene was that we were going to pick up the BlackLight and turn it on to see text that’ll give the Player an ominous warning before a jumpscare occurs outside of the doorframe of the room they were in. In a project outside of the main prototype I made a sample hallway with a working flashlight that was made using the “How to Make an Interactable Flashlight in Unreal Engine 5” tutorial by Gorka Games on YouTube. After implementing the flashlight, I had then used the “Pickup and Drop System with Physics on UE5” tutorial that LocoDev created to have it so the Player can pick up and drop the BlackLight at the end of the hallway using the “E” button.
I was able to complete these tasks before Tuesday when we learned that we needed to focus on creating a scene that would show the horror of our Game rather than the Gameplay build-up to that horror. So, with that in mind, I had chosen to omit the discovery of the BlackLight leading to the “scary moment” and focus solely on developing the scary moment that shows how our Game can be scary. As Dom worked on creating spooky orchestral music for our game and Meg on designing the room that the Player was going to be in during the scary moment, I immersed myself in learning the technical end of the Blueprints for Unreal Engine 5 to create a scene that will lead to the player briefly seeing a scary thing occur from the corner of their vision. Rather than going for an approach for being in the Player’s face for scares, we want our game to have background elements that make the Player double guess themselves if they have seen something scary or if they believed they had. This sort of feeling is one that will help us create a horror game that will make players be in suspense.
The tutorials I had used to create the animation of the game’s “jumpscare” was RubaDev’s video, “How to Create Jump Scare,” on how to create a quick and simple jumpscare to spook players after interacting with an invisible trigger box. I had used one of the models from the “Scanned 3D People Pack” that Meghan had found to then be rigged with a walking animation from the same package. To make the enemy look more scary I had changed their skin texture to that of a business suit’s fabric which gave them a spooky, distorted look. I had then applied this jumpscare technique to the “Build a Detective’s Office Game Environment” asset that Meg had redesigned and then added Dom’s music to sink with the scare and room ambiance.
My first task was to begin going deep into the blueprint programming for the scene we were planning to create. At first, we were working on creating the slow build-up to a scare within the game though we had later learned that we needed to focus only on the scare rather than the build up. Although we had ideas for three scares with one being Programmed Design, one being Art Ambiance, and the last one being based on Musical Stingers, we had chosen to condense them down into one as one Jumpscare scene in Unreal Engine 5. This decision was a great way for us to scope down a bit since we all have not had too much experience in Unreal development.
Prior to the adjustment, I had begun work on creating a Flashlight mechanic with a Pick Up/Drop for an object. These were there as our original scene was that we were going to pick up the BlackLight and turn it on to see text that’ll give the Player an ominous warning before a jumpscare occurs outside of the doorframe of the room they were in. In a project outside of the main prototype I made a sample hallway with a working flashlight that was made using the “How to Make an Interactable Flashlight in Unreal Engine 5” tutorial by Gorka Games on YouTube. After implementing the flashlight, I had then used the “Pickup and Drop System with Physics on UE5” tutorial that LocoDev created to have it so the Player can pick up and drop the BlackLight at the end of the hallway using the “E” button.
I was able to complete these tasks before Tuesday when we learned that we needed to focus on creating a scene that would show the horror of our Game rather than the Gameplay build-up to that horror. So, with that in mind, I had chosen to omit the discovery of the BlackLight leading to the “scary moment” and focus solely on developing the scary moment that shows how our Game can be scary. As Dom worked on creating spooky orchestral music for our game and Meg on designing the room that the Player was going to be in during the scary moment, I immersed myself in learning the technical end of the Blueprints for Unreal Engine 5 to create a scene that will lead to the player briefly seeing a scary thing occur from the corner of their vision. Rather than going for an approach for being in the Player’s face for scares, we want our game to have background elements that make the Player double guess themselves if they have seen something scary or if they believed they had. This sort of feeling is one that will help us create a horror game that will make players be in suspense.
The tutorials I had used to create the animation of the game’s “jumpscare” was RubaDev’s video, “How to Create Jump Scare,” on how to create a quick and simple jumpscare to spook players after interacting with an invisible trigger box. I had used one of the models from the “Scanned 3D People Pack” that Meghan had found to then be rigged with a walking animation from the same package. To make the enemy look more scary I had changed their skin texture to that of a business suit’s fabric which gave them a spooky, distorted look. I had then applied this jumpscare technique to the “Build a Detective’s Office Game Environment” asset that Meg had redesigned and then added Dom’s music to sink with the scare and room ambiance.
Lastly, Meg had sent me videos by Elemental Studios on how to create a VHS camera filter on Unreal Engine to give our game a PS1/VHS tape look. This effect gave even more of a scary look to our game as it allowed us to show within our prototype the specific style that our game will have from the start. We plan on working further on perfecting the look of our game, but all of us were proud of the ending result of our prototype to which many in our class had seemed to share a similar sentiment.
One of the most prominent moments in our Playtesting on Thursday was the crowd of people at the start of class to see our newest build once I loaded Unreal Engine 5. We had not started playtesting yet and we were already getting feedback on how people liked the way we had used different assets from the Epic Games Store to sell our game’s look. Tre’ and Matt were concerned regarding the VHS effect until we had told them it was a stylistic choice to which they were both intrigued on how we plan to use these effects on later versions of our game. Daniel and Peter were spooked by the doorframe jumpscare, while Jason enjoyed hearing our use of musical cues as you travel around the level with him playing our prototype the longest to hear Dom’s song fully. After class that day, I had shown my prototype to my friend Donovan who had immediately closed the game as soon as he saw the doorframe jumpscare showing that we were able to make a game so spooky that we got a player to leave it before going any further.
One of the most prominent moments in our Playtesting on Thursday was the crowd of people at the start of class to see our newest build once I loaded Unreal Engine 5. We had not started playtesting yet and we were already getting feedback on how people liked the way we had used different assets from the Epic Games Store to sell our game’s look. Tre’ and Matt were concerned regarding the VHS effect until we had told them it was a stylistic choice to which they were both intrigued on how we plan to use these effects on later versions of our game. Daniel and Peter were spooked by the doorframe jumpscare, while Jason enjoyed hearing our use of musical cues as you travel around the level with him playing our prototype the longest to hear Dom’s song fully. After class that day, I had shown my prototype to my friend Donovan who had immediately closed the game as soon as he saw the doorframe jumpscare showing that we were able to make a game so spooky that we got a player to leave it before going any further.
We then showed our game to Rush who had spent a long time exploring the room as he immersed himself into the setting. As he had walked around, he briefly saw the doorframe jumpscare to which made him loudly ponder if that was his own shadow or if it was something else. That small bit of feedback was great for us as we heard verbal pondering of the feeling we were trying to receive from him. After playing our prototype, he had then proceeded to show us examples of movies, like “The Exorcist,” that build off of its unseen environments to leave people with uncomfortable feelings of fear. He had also brought up that we should now look into how we will tie this type of horror into our story of a Detective finding his brother in this decomposing castle, bringing up a concern on if we can connect the story to our current environment.
Our hypothesis for next week will be creating short three point synopsis of different stories based on core pillars from Meg, and then choosing to focus on one that will fit with our Prototype’s horror style and the “analog” environment we are trying to create with our project. This story that we will work from will be added to our upcoming Pitch Video presentation which will also bring up the element of the “BlackLight” we had explored in the first prototype that was well received by Playtesters. My other goal for this week will be to fix our current GitLab repository as the current build of our game is too large to be pushed to completion online. This will be an issue that will need to be worked on immediately as the project itself is currently too large to be pulled to anyone’s devices at its current state.
Our hypothesis for next week will be creating short three point synopsis of different stories based on core pillars from Meg, and then choosing to focus on one that will fit with our Prototype’s horror style and the “analog” environment we are trying to create with our project. This story that we will work from will be added to our upcoming Pitch Video presentation which will also bring up the element of the “BlackLight” we had explored in the first prototype that was well received by Playtesters. My other goal for this week will be to fix our current GitLab repository as the current build of our game is too large to be pushed to completion online. This will be an issue that will need to be worked on immediately as the project itself is currently too large to be pulled to anyone’s devices at its current state.
October 8th - October 14th, 202
This week I had continued work on making the first Prototype of Castle Decomposition’s Gameplay mechanics. Using the GitHub repository I shared with everyone, I had created a few different scenes so that we could work on making two of our major mechanical ideas: “The Suspense in Discovery” and “The BlackLight Vision.” To test these mechanics, we chose to create an Unity project as that was the engine we were the most comfortable with starting to test our ideas. We plan on switching to working with Unreal Engine 5 for next Thursday’s “Prototype 2” deliverables so that we can become familiar with the program early on.
I had chosen to build the Unity project with assistance from Meghan and Dom on finding resources to base the project files from. They were very helpful in assisting me to find the correct things to look into for this Prototype, but for this week I will admit that I had done almost all of the programming in Unity due to there being repository issues with our GitHub. Meg was working on the Blacklight programming on her computer, but there were issues with her original code that I had fixed when I rewrote her code onto the project as her push to the repository was failing to send. Things did end up working fine in the end and I did not feel overwhelmed with the workload this week. Outside of the Unity project, Dom and Meg had worked on the Design Document that I had linked in the repository for the “Documents” folder so they were also hard at work on the project as well.
I had chosen to build the Unity project with assistance from Meghan and Dom on finding resources to base the project files from. They were very helpful in assisting me to find the correct things to look into for this Prototype, but for this week I will admit that I had done almost all of the programming in Unity due to there being repository issues with our GitHub. Meg was working on the Blacklight programming on her computer, but there were issues with her original code that I had fixed when I rewrote her code onto the project as her push to the repository was failing to send. Things did end up working fine in the end and I did not feel overwhelmed with the workload this week. Outside of the Unity project, Dom and Meg had worked on the Design Document that I had linked in the repository for the “Documents” folder so they were also hard at work on the project as well.
For the Unity build I had assistance from previous codes that I had made for my “Pamlico” prototype from my earlier work for this course as well as a Night Vision effect Tutorial created by the YouTuber, James Makes Games, for our BlackLight effect. I did use some assistance from ChatGPT for cleaning up the code I had written to make it look more neat, however I was unable to save the conversations with the AI for documentation on this Dev Log.
After making our Prototype, we had gotten several students from our Workshop 0 course to playtest our game. Our playtesters were Jalen, Daniel, Jason, Matt, Tre’, Peter, and Jared. Although with Jalen I had accidentally informed him that it was the “right mouse button” to interact with the items instead of the “left mouse button,” an accident we have both continued to joke about outside of class, everyone was able to control the game without any issues with many of our classmates enjoying the Blacklight function. Tre’ did say that the prototype was very dark with Daniel saying that it was fitting due to it being in the horror genre. Jason also gave us several pointers on how to create spooky ambiances to make players feel uneasy while Matt and Peter jumped after seeing the final capsule appear behind them after picking up our last cube.
After making our Prototype, we had gotten several students from our Workshop 0 course to playtest our game. Our playtesters were Jalen, Daniel, Jason, Matt, Tre’, Peter, and Jared. Although with Jalen I had accidentally informed him that it was the “right mouse button” to interact with the items instead of the “left mouse button,” an accident we have both continued to joke about outside of class, everyone was able to control the game without any issues with many of our classmates enjoying the Blacklight function. Tre’ did say that the prototype was very dark with Daniel saying that it was fitting due to it being in the horror genre. Jason also gave us several pointers on how to create spooky ambiances to make players feel uneasy while Matt and Peter jumped after seeing the final capsule appear behind them after picking up our last cube.
After all of these playtests I had asked playtesters their thoughts on our horror aesthetic, and they all said that they thought the darker shadows of our game as well as the light gave them an uneasy feeling. Although it was a bit too dark, they all said it felt quite fitting for a game of the genre however for our next build many people said that they’d like for there to be more textures and objects around to get out of the “gray-box world.” I had also asked them if they enjoyed finding objects using the Blacklight to which an overwhelming wave of support for the idea of using the light came in response. From these two questions, we were able to find that Players enjoyed the limited sight they got in our prototype alongwith the use of the Blacklight to find different objects.
For this coming week I want to test out different ways to set up scenes of specific points of Gameplay meant to scare the players. Over the coming weekend, we plan on compiling thirty different ideas of scary moments in Gameplay and will elaborate further upon three of them. We will have two or all three of them including the use of the Blacklight to further explore the potential of the mechanic, and lastly ensure that our project is made in Unreal with assets we find online. Prior to making this Dev Log, I have created a GitLab project and added both Dom and Meg to it. Although it was a bit difficult for me to find out how to connect a ssh-key to our repository while setting up the program.
For this coming week I want to test out different ways to set up scenes of specific points of Gameplay meant to scare the players. Over the coming weekend, we plan on compiling thirty different ideas of scary moments in Gameplay and will elaborate further upon three of them. We will have two or all three of them including the use of the Blacklight to further explore the potential of the mechanic, and lastly ensure that our project is made in Unreal with assets we find online. Prior to making this Dev Log, I have created a GitLab project and added both Dom and Meg to it. Although it was a bit difficult for me to find out how to connect a ssh-key to our repository while setting up the program.
October 1st - October 7th, 2023
This week I had begun work on helping with the Gameplay Design of “Castle Decomposition.” After speaking with the team on Monday, I had created a GitHub repository and added my teammates as well as Professors to it from the start before we started work on creating the Prototype. As I spoke more with Dom and Meghan, I learned a lot more about the particular kind of horror that they were aiming to portray in their game which was “Suspense.”
Suspense horror can apply to a lot of different kinds of pieces of media, especially movies. An example of this sort of horror that I proposed to the team for inspiration is “Halloween” due to the build-up of Michael Myers attacking the film’s protagonist, Laurie. As we want the Players of the game to feel suspense of when their next “Rotted Corpse Encounter” would be, I felt like we could take cues from that movie for how we should base our build-ups. Meghan also suggested a great scene from the movie “It Follows” that uses a great build up to the sudden reveal of the monster, “The Tall Man.”
Suspense horror can apply to a lot of different kinds of pieces of media, especially movies. An example of this sort of horror that I proposed to the team for inspiration is “Halloween” due to the build-up of Michael Myers attacking the film’s protagonist, Laurie. As we want the Players of the game to feel suspense of when their next “Rotted Corpse Encounter” would be, I felt like we could take cues from that movie for how we should base our build-ups. Meghan also suggested a great scene from the movie “It Follows” that uses a great build up to the sudden reveal of the monster, “The Tall Man.”
On Tuesday and Thursday we had written down some ideas of different kinds of Gameplay to design to build our prototype based on the theme of “Suspense.” One of our large ideas was building from the “Analog Horror” concept and creating a prototype where the Player will first see an image slideshow of the “Brother” of the main character filming himself enter a room where he is attacked by a monster and drops a flashlight. The player will then have to go to that room to retrieve the flashlight, expecting the monster could attack them at any time. But once they pick up a flashlight, they instead open up a hallway that was previously blocked. In a fuller version of the game, we plan on having a mechanic where there'll be “vines” across the Castle that can adjust the layout and openings of the different rooms within the building. This is something that we are still developing in the prototyping process.
We are also exploring ways to implement a “Block and Seek” sort of mechanic with the “Rotted” so that while the Player is being pursued they can use the vines to block away their pursuers to give them time to run away as they work their way around through a non-blocked way to get to the Player. We were thinking of small indie projects like “It Steals” and “Ao Oni” for influences on these sorts of mechanics with “Alien Isolation” being an amazing example of a more complex game using a similar mechanic. All of these mechanics are things that we will be working on developing from this weekend all the way to next Thursday to make gray-boxed prototypes for Playtesting. To end this week, we all visited the “First Thursday” event as a class to see the current Workshop 2 Games in their more polished forms.
We are also exploring ways to implement a “Block and Seek” sort of mechanic with the “Rotted” so that while the Player is being pursued they can use the vines to block away their pursuers to give them time to run away as they work their way around through a non-blocked way to get to the Player. We were thinking of small indie projects like “It Steals” and “Ao Oni” for influences on these sorts of mechanics with “Alien Isolation” being an amazing example of a more complex game using a similar mechanic. All of these mechanics are things that we will be working on developing from this weekend all the way to next Thursday to make gray-boxed prototypes for Playtesting. To end this week, we all visited the “First Thursday” event as a class to see the current Workshop 2 Games in their more polished forms.
September 24th - September 30th 2023
For this week I had focused on creating a way for “Pamlico” to proceed to Koi Pond by creating Gameplay based on my previous pitch. Over the weekend I was thinking of different ways of introducing where things can be improved with my pitch, however I had not known who would be in my group while brainstorming on different directions we could go. I had wanted to make sure that the Pitch was equal in terms of ideas of both mine and the person who may be joining me as my partner. As I was doing this, I had looked into different ways I could design Gameplay for my pitch further. I was discussing with the class on things we plan on doing for our pitches but many people were unsure on if they will be continuing with their concepts or moving to another group… Until three days before the Koi Pond.
Although things worked out in the end, I am very unhappy with the limited time we had this year to work on our pitches with our teammates before presenting. I was told by students from previous years that they had at least a week with their teammates to work on their Koi Pond pitches. I feel like we would be able to flesh out our ideas more and elaborate on our games if we were given a similar amount of time to collaborate. However, I still had fun designing a game with my friend and roommate Edison, despite the many iterations we had created for “Isle of Rogues,” formerly named “Pamlico.”
Although things worked out in the end, I am very unhappy with the limited time we had this year to work on our pitches with our teammates before presenting. I was told by students from previous years that they had at least a week with their teammates to work on their Koi Pond pitches. I feel like we would be able to flesh out our ideas more and elaborate on our games if we were given a similar amount of time to collaborate. However, I still had fun designing a game with my friend and roommate Edison, despite the many iterations we had created for “Isle of Rogues,” formerly named “Pamlico.”
As we were working together, we had come to learn that we had different ideas for the games we wanted to create. As I enjoy creating games with simple mechanics and rich stories, Edison is more interested in creating work that have complex gameplay mechanics alongside a cool aesthetic. Although we had different ideologies, we had wanted to find a middleway to create a pitch we both can have ideas for. We both knew that our setting on the East Coast was one of our strongest USPs, but we needed to elaborate more on why we were there. As we were continuing to design the game based on the “diving” and “collecting” mechanics of the original pitch, Edison struggled to find ways to make gameplay interesting which led us to decide on changing genres so that we could find a way to create interesting gameplay for our pitch.
Once we chose to continue to work on a “turn-based strategy” game, I had gone into researching different legends within the area of the East Coast where I was able to go into the pirate lore of the East coast and decided to use that historic background for our story and theme. By the time we had our new gameplay and theme, it was hours before the deadline so we had a mad scramble to write things out for our new game. I will admit that changing our theme to match with a different style of gameplay was a risky move, but we made this decision so that we could design a game that felt right for the both of us.
While rocking out to the “Pirate Metal” music I was playing on my laptop, we were able to finish our slides an hour after midnight. Although it was a grueling and unforgettable experience, I was still happy that me and Edison were able to work together to try to make a game that we would both enjoy designing and making. Although it was completely different from what I first thought it would be, I feel like this was a better way for our project to proceed. I still loved what I was creating with “Pamlico” and plan on creating a version of the game one day in the future once I have more experience working on games. My apologies if this Dev Log is less coherent than the ones I have previously wrote, I had stayed up until 3am preparing for Koi Pond which is an issue of personal time management that I plan to work on, especially with my teammates, in the future so that we are of a healthy mind before presenting pitches.
Once we chose to continue to work on a “turn-based strategy” game, I had gone into researching different legends within the area of the East Coast where I was able to go into the pirate lore of the East coast and decided to use that historic background for our story and theme. By the time we had our new gameplay and theme, it was hours before the deadline so we had a mad scramble to write things out for our new game. I will admit that changing our theme to match with a different style of gameplay was a risky move, but we made this decision so that we could design a game that felt right for the both of us.
While rocking out to the “Pirate Metal” music I was playing on my laptop, we were able to finish our slides an hour after midnight. Although it was a grueling and unforgettable experience, I was still happy that me and Edison were able to work together to try to make a game that we would both enjoy designing and making. Although it was completely different from what I first thought it would be, I feel like this was a better way for our project to proceed. I still loved what I was creating with “Pamlico” and plan on creating a version of the game one day in the future once I have more experience working on games. My apologies if this Dev Log is less coherent than the ones I have previously wrote, I had stayed up until 3am preparing for Koi Pond which is an issue of personal time management that I plan to work on, especially with my teammates, in the future so that we are of a healthy mind before presenting pitches.
September 17 - September 23rd 2023
For this week I had started by changing the location of my game from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the Pamlico Sound. Although I would enjoy working on a game taking place within a submarine, I felt like for the purposes of scope it would be too high to accomplish. I had chosen to alter my pitch to take place on a boat within the Carolinian Sound where you jump on/off a boat in order to collect clues from within the sea.
The reason why I chose this location in particular is because I had visited Pamlico a few times while I was a teenager when I was in the Scouts of America (Formerly The Boy Scouts of America.) We kayaked in the sound for a week and I enjoyed it so much that I had gone twice, although the second time it felt more bittersweet as I had gone by myself to get a photo of the Ocracoke Lighthouse for my Father who was in hospice at the time. That feeling of melancholy was what inspired me to bring this game to North Carolina as the game itself will try to get Players to feel a similar emotion.
The reason why I chose this location in particular is because I had visited Pamlico a few times while I was a teenager when I was in the Scouts of America (Formerly The Boy Scouts of America.) We kayaked in the sound for a week and I enjoyed it so much that I had gone twice, although the second time it felt more bittersweet as I had gone by myself to get a photo of the Ocracoke Lighthouse for my Father who was in hospice at the time. That feeling of melancholy was what inspired me to bring this game to North Carolina as the game itself will try to get Players to feel a similar emotion.
Once I got my new setting and design concept, I went to work creating a PowerPoint for my game. I had chosen to focus on creating slides on some of the most important information that I believe should be mentioned in a Game’s Pitch: “Description/Elevator Pitch, Background, Story (Due to how my Game is Narrative Heavy), Aesthetic, Gameplay, USPs, Market, and a SWOT Analysis.) I had also added a slide to go over “Pamlico’s” gameplay loops as it gives a great visual on how the progression of my game would flow. When I wrote each of these slides, I had chosen to focus on writing a paragraph for what I want to include in the slides to chip down into simple bullet-points. After getting the text information, I had then gone to place my diagrams and market research before adding images and designing an aesthetic to my slides. I had run out of time finalizing my aesthetic this week but will be sure to work on finalizing this before Koi Pond this coming Thursday.
When it came to designing my Mock-Up I had chosen to take a screenshot from a small Unity project to showcase my game’s 3D appearance before adding in my game’s limited UI from the image editing software, GIMP. I chose to use GIMP to design my mock-up over Photoshop as the Adobe Suites does not have the option to alter the appearance of the app from its dark mode, which is hard for me to see due to an astigmatism in my perception of cool colours. This program is limited compared to Photoshop, but I was able to convey what the Gameplay of my game would look like. I do not have a complete concept of what my game will look like in terms of art, but I do know that I want for my game to be in first-person in 3D. From there, I plan on deciding if I want to make my game to be more low-poly in graphics or more realistic, which I plan on leaning towards the former as it will make my game stand out compared to other 3D mystery games.
September 2nd - September 9th, 2023
Of the two pitches I had proposed last week I had chosen to further elaborate on “Mariana” for my First Prototype. I wanted to explore how the order of object interaction can alter the story of a Game. Prior to starting my work with Unity, I had brainstormed how I would go about creating this project by considering whether I should keep “Mariana” as a 3D or 2D game as well as what was the most important element of the Game. I had decided that I wanted to pursue 3D development further for this project as I believe the discovery of items in a 2D world would be either too simple or complicated to design. I had also decided that the most important element of “Mariana” would be the item interaction altering the Narrative Progression of the rest of the playthrough.
In order to create this within Unity I had decided to design a simple set up of having a First-Person controller that can move via WASD Keys with the availability to click items within the world alongside two interactable objects, a Cube and a Sphere. If the Player chooses to Click the Cube then on a nearby block that is meant to represent a “Detective String Board” will have an image appear on it to display the story that came from that interaction. And then if they click the sphere next a new image will appear on the board to tell a story of what happened after the second interaction. However, if they click the sphere and then the cube, different images would appear on the board to tell a different story as the order of events had been changed.
This basic design of this was simple in concept, however in programming I had not expected to spend 8 hours working on troubleshooting and adjusting my code between Sunday to Wednesday this week. The process was quite annoying but it felt great to get everything together and to work in the end. At first, I had written up a simple code that was based on the script calling objects to appear based on their tags. I had tested it and the tag based system had not responded correctly to my script, so I had chosen to gain assistance from ChatGPT… Which led me into a four hour loop of asking questions, fixing my code, and for it to become more complicated and broken. I had a very interesting experience talking to the robotic individual that was trying to help me fix my code. The tool is useful to assist with code but it still definitely is flawed.
After trying to work with ChatGPT for hours, I had chosen to completely change my script and have the script run through a system of GameObjects being turned “Visible/Invisible” based on the order that Players click the interactable objects. After cleaning it up with ChatGPT, I was able to complete my prototype to the form that it is currently at now. While I was prototyping this project, the news regarding the changes to Unity’s pricing policies had occurred which had spurred me into downloading Unreal Engine 5 from the Epic Games Launcher. I plan on watching several tutorial videos this weekend on how the Engine runs as I begin work on my Mockup of “Mariana” with this new engine!
This basic design of this was simple in concept, however in programming I had not expected to spend 8 hours working on troubleshooting and adjusting my code between Sunday to Wednesday this week. The process was quite annoying but it felt great to get everything together and to work in the end. At first, I had written up a simple code that was based on the script calling objects to appear based on their tags. I had tested it and the tag based system had not responded correctly to my script, so I had chosen to gain assistance from ChatGPT… Which led me into a four hour loop of asking questions, fixing my code, and for it to become more complicated and broken. I had a very interesting experience talking to the robotic individual that was trying to help me fix my code. The tool is useful to assist with code but it still definitely is flawed.
After trying to work with ChatGPT for hours, I had chosen to completely change my script and have the script run through a system of GameObjects being turned “Visible/Invisible” based on the order that Players click the interactable objects. After cleaning it up with ChatGPT, I was able to complete my prototype to the form that it is currently at now. While I was prototyping this project, the news regarding the changes to Unity’s pricing policies had occurred which had spurred me into downloading Unreal Engine 5 from the Epic Games Launcher. I plan on watching several tutorial videos this weekend on how the Engine runs as I begin work on my Mockup of “Mariana” with this new engine!
August 21st - September 1st, 2023
This week I had focused on creating several pitches before creating this first entry for my Developer’s Log! As I was working on this document I had thought that it would be nice to have it be stylized so I had explored Google Drive’s many fonts in the program. I had also spent considerable time, mainly during my morning showers, thinking of Game Pitches for my five elevator pitches this week. I had chosen to use the ones below for my pitches this week.
Pitches:
1. In “Graduation,” become a student trying to escape their Professor’s traps in a catacombs-like school in a Survival Horror game.
2. “SlapSwing” is a Rhythm Game where you smack and get smacked by your friends in a “Slap Fight” to the beat of a song with motion controls!
3. Be the Owner of a dairy farm in this Tycoon game “The Milk Factory,” balance your farm’s finances, advance your machines, and make sure your cattle are healthy to keep yourself afloat.
4. Dive into the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean in “Mariana,” an adventure treasure-hunter that takes place over 10,000 meters underwater. Learn and discover what is in the depths of our very own Oceans!
5. “Just Die Already!” is a comedic stealth game where you and your friends all take turns being a Mad Scientist that the others have to try to assassinate before the Scientist escapes.
Pitches:
1. In “Graduation,” become a student trying to escape their Professor’s traps in a catacombs-like school in a Survival Horror game.
2. “SlapSwing” is a Rhythm Game where you smack and get smacked by your friends in a “Slap Fight” to the beat of a song with motion controls!
3. Be the Owner of a dairy farm in this Tycoon game “The Milk Factory,” balance your farm’s finances, advance your machines, and make sure your cattle are healthy to keep yourself afloat.
4. Dive into the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean in “Mariana,” an adventure treasure-hunter that takes place over 10,000 meters underwater. Learn and discover what is in the depths of our very own Oceans!
5. “Just Die Already!” is a comedic stealth game where you and your friends all take turns being a Mad Scientist that the others have to try to assassinate before the Scientist escapes.