Weekly Sprint 2: Gathering
I’ll admit, my progress this week was a little slow. Every once and a while you get those crazy hectic weeks where everyone needs your attention, and it feels like you get nothing done. However, I had worked ahead because I knew that this was an eventuality. I just hoped it wouldn’t come this soon!
This week I had planned to sketch each level out and get the characters together. I am usually used to sketching with fine details and lines, so making characters in this 2D ‘pixelated’ design was a little challenging. I have two of the three characters ready to go, the panda bear and the polar bear:
I have two more characters to work on over the next weekly sprint, the orca whale and the robot for the mini-game.
Also over the past weekly sprint, I have finished the level sketches for each of the three main levels in the game. (To be posted on my thesis website) When designing each level, I took into consideration a comment that a classmate posted on my Trello board. They said that I should be mindful of making a game that is educational but still fun to play. They mentioned that when people make educational games, sometimes the actual play gets lost in the background. So, when I was making each level, I tried to make them difficult, but fun, and not beat the educational aspect to the ground. I will keep this in mind when I am actually building each level as well.
So, to summarize over my goals for the next week (more for me than you, reader):
- Get forest assets prepared and ready for the level: all of the preliminary work prior to building.
- Start building the forest level: I have set a personal due date for this level to be completed by March 1st.
- Start filling in my game design document (documentation will save me in the end!): This document is going to accompany my game at the showcase and will serve as a “user guide” more than a design document. While the deadline for this is going to be the showcase, I would like to plan what contents I want to include, and start getting the content for the document together for next week. (ex. information about the habitats, the animals, etc.)
That’s all for now!
