graveaffairsgame

[graveaffairsgame]

Dev Blog Week 14

25/10 - 1/11

Finally, we are wrapping up with the production of the game! In the last week of work, we have all put together our efforts into working on the marketing production and write-ups to organise our game to be published. This included continuation of working on the trailer, working through team BIO, and putting together a graphics package. This project was an exciting way to spend the past year and we are all happy with the end result of our efforts. Thank you for staying tuned!

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

I have spent the last week working through the steam mock-up page. Working with the provided details from the team, I put together all elements to prototype how our final product would look like when posted online.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was spent reanimating the cutscene introduction for the game. There were a number of issues and revisions needed from the previous version of the cutscene, in addition to a GitHub error meant that I thought it would be easier to completely redo the scene from scratch. This time it was much easier and efficient to animate now that I had a clear vision of what needed to be done taking from both my previous experience and also the notes given to me from the group.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I worked on finalising our press release materials for our submission, I worked with Nathan with him getting the written component done and me doing the design part of the documents. We created a fact sheet, a FAQ and a meet the team. I wanted the meet the team page to be a bit more personable so I created some small characters illustrations to go with each team member.

Teresa (Test Lead)

Spend the week trying to record some gameplay and in-game footage for our trailer with OBS but quality was really inconsistent. Ended up using Unity's in-built recorder to record all the footage from scratch. For the recording process, I had to set up new cameras, edit the level and script some gameplay for the final edits. I had bit of issue with the rendering quality in unity when the original setting at 1080p came out at 480p. The only workaround for this problem was to record all of the footage at 4k resolution at the cost of the game view fps when it is active. Having a low preview fps doesn't affect the final render, but it did mean that I had to do extra takes to compensate for some janky animations. Since our game camera is set up in orthographic view and the in-game footage is in perspective. I had to edit the entire level to hide the out of boundary spaces and clipping walls that doesn't get seen up close. It was a pretty exhausting to set it all up, but the final results was worth it.

#devblog #graveaffairs #grave affairs #Youtube

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Dev Blog Week 13

19-10 - 24/10

This week we have begun preparing for our final submission of our game, we have been going over it in close detail with Teresa our test lead looking for any possible bugs that effect gameplay. Lewis has been working on bugfixing and implementing the final features into the game. Kris and Evie have been working on the marketing materials for the press release package and also storyboarded the trailer for the game. Nathan has begun to collect copy for all of our marketing materials which will we combined with the designed documents over this week.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This week my main concentration was on the development of marketing content. This included some review of current content and beginning of work on the teaser trailer video mock-up. Working with Evie, we broke down what needed to be included into the trailer and how we can show it in an efficient and successful way. In the upcoming week, I will be working on steam mock-up page for our game release and continuing to work on the production of the trailer.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was pretty straightforward for me as I was in charge of organising parts of the media package for our team. I wrote a number of descriptions of the game to be used in public releases such as steam pages and general marketing purposes. In addition I began collecting testimonies for our teams biography page to also be used for our media package. This week I will be focussing on updating the cutscene animations with feedback from my team.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I worked on creating concepts for potential marketing materials we could make (if we had the money). I really wanted to create a concept for a plush toy, it's something that would work really well with our games branding and simple character design. I also worked on creating some t-shirt mockups, these feature Kris' artwork from our PGF poster, it works really well on a black t-shirt because it highlights the sihlouette design that Kris created. I also finalised our studio logo, I created a vector design with two variations that can be used for different media.

#devblog #graveaffairs #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 12

11/10 - 18/10

With 2 weeks left before the submission of the game, the team has been working hard to improve the visual aspects of the game. Main concentration was the creation and implementing of 2D live animations and on the side, tiding up the 3D interaction animations too. The game also seen a fix up of the currently existing levels and making sure that all levels worked sound between each other. In the upcoming week, polishing of the game will continue and we will be moving onto bug testing to ensure that the game works and flows well.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer and Marketing)

This week I have been working hard to finish off the rest of the cutscene illustrations with Evie. I still had some colouring to do after last week, and then onto shading of 4 panels assigned to me. In order to finish the shading on time, it was broken down to be simplified into a flat cell shading with the maximum of 4 tonal values for each object. Some depth of field was given to several shots through the use of gaussian blur and field blur to make the image more “3D like”. I am quite happy with the result of our work and think so far, the animations are turning out awesome. In the upcoming week I will be working on the press kit and the game trailer for our game’s final submission.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent working on implementing the mini cutscenes we plan on having between levels. Using the illustrations drawn by Kris and Evie, I added them to a number of sprite renderers in 3D space and using a parallax effect in order to achieve the different draw distances between certain elements in the cutscenes. Instead of having the individual sprites move, I instead opted to have the camera move and keep the sprites stationary. Due to how the sprites are layered, different elements will move faster than others and give a cute puppet show effect.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

I was working on shading the storyboards with Kris this week. Kris gave me a guide of how she'd like the scenes shaded and I worked in accordance to her instructions. This week wasn't super challenging for me, it was just very time consuming doing all the shading. I also forgot that because of the parallax effect we're using for the animation that art behind other objects would become visible so that meant I had to go back and fix some scenes. Overall though, I'm happy with the final outcome of my work this week.

Teresa (Test Lead)

New animations for players when interacting with certain items in mini games. It was a lot of work to make sure that there minimal clipping when the player model are animated. Animations on some players are slightly different due to how the model was originally skinned. But otherwise, it's barely noticeable. I did rework the rowing animation for the boatman when he comes in on the rowboat, but the animation has yet to be implemented into the game.

#graveaffairs #devblog #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 11

5/10 - 18/10

This week we were preparing elements that we didn't have time to implement for PGF but we want done before the showcase in November. We were focusing on the first 2 level designs, UI elements, character animations and storyboarding for some cutscenes we are planning.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer and Marketing)

This week I continued to improve on the art elements for the game. In the first part of the week, I was working on illustrating the character select menu UI, which required 4 illustration and some design work. I worked closely with the rest of the team to receive feedback on the progress and make sure that the UI was clearly readable and easy to understand. This part also included me designing custom controller buttons based on the style guide colours that can be further reused for other elements of the game. During the second part of the week, I closely worked with Evie to create the first animation sequence for the game's cutscene. By Thursday, Evie provided me with finalised sketches for each shot and I began to polish them. My part is to line art and colour the shots, as well as make sure that each element is placed in a separate layer group so we can easily animate it in the future. In the upcoming week, I will be continuing work with the finalisation of the shots and provide them to Evie to shade.

Nathan (Design Lead)

I spent this week sorting out the updated lighting for our first level. Taking into consideration the feedback from my group I brightened and warmed up the overall level. Removing the glow from the windows also helped the emulate the appearance of daytime, in addition to a number of spotlight in place of sunshafts.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

This week I worked on providing Kris with some more detailed storyboard sketches for our first animated cutscene. I found it way more difficult than I expected because it became very time consuming drawing out the town scenes, regardless I found it very enjoyable and it was great to see how the scenes we'd visualised were coming together. I also made some mockup logo designs for our game studio, I wanted to incorporate different elements of our studios identity into the logo and keep it fun and youthful.

Teresa (Test Lead)

Spend majority of the week finishing the new player interaction animations. I still need to figure out why the constraints aren't working for the book model. Ferryman is the next on the animation fix list. Last thing to do would be implementing animations.

#devblog #graveaffairs

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Dev Blog Week 10

27/09 - 4/10

In the week 10, our concentration was on continuing to develop the game further for the showcase, which is coming up in 2 months. Now that the current level is polished, we are pushing through to develop and implement the next 2 levels into the game. The art team has also begun full development of the 2D animations that will be put in between each level to introduce world building and story context into the game. The game also got a furnace mini game introduced, that re-worked the current action of disposing plagued bodies and made it more challenging. In the upcoming week, we will be making the current level 1 and 2 playable and introducing working animations into the gameplay.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This break week I was away camping, so I had to move onto working with paper and pencil! This was quite refreshing and helped the flow of my ideas through. Through the week, Evie and I were discussing what we want the 2D animations to include and what the story should be about. After writing and reviewing the script, we broke up the work, so I did “story 1” and “story 3” storyboards. Calculating that each animation should last 10-15 seconds to keep the viewer’s attention, and each shot should be on the screen for 2-3 seconds, we figured out that on average we are looking at having 8 shots for each story. Now that all of the storyboards were sketched out, Evie and I will collaborate to create the first story animation in the upcoming 2 weeks.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent mostly creating the first level for the game. Level 1 is intended to be the first map the players will experience, meaning the layout design of the map had to be very simplistic, only having the hole mass grave burial as a means of disposal. After some feedback from the team, I am going to this week improve upon the level and update the lighting/post processing vfx to better emulate a morning daylight appearance.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

This week I worked on a couple of tasks for the game. First I searched for a blog theme for our Tumblr, Kris and I picked one together then I applied it and customized it. I also worked on the storyboarding for the animation. I worked on the 2nd story. I made a simple 8 frame storyboard, we decided that each frame will show for about 1-5 seconds and will give some narrative background to the game, I really enjoyed this task because I got to do some more artwork for the game and also got to think about how the animation would flow through storyboarding.

Teresa (Test Lead)

Back to working on the player interaction animation after the break. There's a lot of fine tuning just to make sure the transition goes smoothly. Here's just a WIP of the cleaning animation.

#devblog #graveaffairs #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 9

20/09 - 26/09

This week we dived back into production after taking it easy after PGF. We addressed some issues that we'd discovered through PGF playtesting as well as playtesting conducted by our test lead. We did some overhauling on how the levels will be played and structured and began building those levels.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This week my main progress was based on sketching and throwing around ideas for future development in the game. Firstly, I have done some sketches for character select menu for the team to chose from. I did not get a primary response based on one single vote, so I will be going with the third one. In the upcoming week, I'll be looking to start sketching up the illustrations for it. I also started doing the write up for the narrative and workd building of the game, which I will be continuing through this week.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent revising the second level to everyone's feedback specifications. I adjusted the lighting to emulate a sunset effect with an orange glow to the whole scene. A new flooring type was also modelled and textured by me to serve as the stone tile flooring to be used in the furnace rooms to add more variety and also slight realism as compared to the original wooden flooring. This week I will be going ahead and assembling the first level for the game and also doing some minor adjustments to the second level.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

This week I changed the level one design due to the changes we've decided as a group, regarding the introduction of features through the levels. In the new version the map will be much smaller and players will only be playing with the body burying mechanic. I also made some texture changes to help with legibility of the bodies, the plague body has now been changed so it's clearer for players to tell which body is which. Kris and I also begun brainstorming for the animation sequences for in between the levels, we want to think of 3 unique stories which introduce the mechanics of each level and also give a little bit of context and narrative.

#devblog #grave affairs #graveaffairs

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Dev Blog Week 8

6/09 - 12/09

After a long PGF days and nights of work, the team has taken a small break from the stress and production to work on smaller changes and tweaks this week. We have sat down together as a team to determine how the game was going so far and what changes and challenges we encountered with the play testers. In continuation from existing content, the team’s plan is to create 2 more levels in the game and push it further as an art team, while Lewis is working on fixing the bugs that we have recorded after the PGF. Meanwhile, Teresa has been collecting extra feedback from external playtesters to “break” the game and find any extra bugs that might be an issue. In the future week, we are continuing the work on the levels and bugs, while also dipping our toes into working on 2D and 3D animations.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer and Marketing)

This week I have sat down and review how our game played and read through Teresa’s feedback documents to determinate how the main playability of the game was viewed by the play testers. There were multiple tweaks and changes that needed to be done and implemented to make the game more playable. I have also started working on the gameflow and breakdown for the other 2 levels to determine what would be included in them and what mechanics we needed to have. This would be discussed with the team to make sure all of us agree and implement any adjustments if needed.

Nathan (Design Lead)

I spent this week focusing on creating the additional levels for the game. Starting initially with the 2nd level planned, I used the concept level layout given by Kris to create the new scene. I am yet to add the different lighting effects we want to have for the different levels or any additional scripting functionality outside of the prefabs being in place. Over the next 2 weeks I plan on finalising the 2nd level and finish the planned 1st level.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

This week I got feedback on level some preliminary designs for level one and then finalised the level design with a concept art. The design incorporates all the base mechanics in their most basic form to help the players get used to how the gameplay feels. It is a simple 3 room layout and I tried to design it to ensure that players would move evenly around different areas of the map. I had a bit of trial and error with the sizing and aspect of the map since I wanted it to be slightly smaller than the second level but not too cramped, I also received some feedback on the sizing which I made sure to apply to the final design.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

I spent this week trying to fix some of the game's most severe bugs. Firstly, I added an internal timer to the wave system so that the cart deliveries are able to continue even if more than 3 bodies are unaccounted for. The next wave can still be triggered early by disposing of all but 3 bodies, however. I also added code for activating and deactivacting the ragdoll physics for the corpses as needed, which has finally fixed the bug that caused the bodies to "vibrate" more and more aggressively the longer they remained laying in the same spot on the ground. Both of these fixes have caused further bugs that need to be addressed. My next task is to implement a minigame for disposing of bodies in the furnace.

Teresa (Test Lead)

I was busy with arranging external playtesting last week and that would continue until the of this week. I just want to make sure there's enough feedback and bug reports before we start testing out future builds. After the playtesting is wrapped up, I will be working on adding new animations for player and environment interactions

#devlog #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 7

6/09 - 12/09

Perth Games Festival is this Saturday (11/09) so we are all making any final preparations to the game and merchandising to get it ready for the festival. Kris was working with Evie on finalising merchandising for the event, picking up printouts and merchandise from Snap Print and Officeworks and also planning supplies we'd need for the booth on the day. Lewis was working on bugfixing and finalising some mechanics for the game such as the wave system and minigame. Nathan was helping out Lewis with UI and also the minigame. Theresa was working on finalising animations as well as bug testing the game before PGF.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer and Marketing)

The week of PGF was very busy in terms of overall organisation and planning. As a producer, I needed to make sure all things ran smoothly, and the team had everything they needed for the convention. On Tuesday, Evie and I went to Office works and Snap print to pick up and print out the rest of the merchandise. There were few issues upon the printing process with the post cards but mostly everything run smoothly. This week I was concentrating on the 3D model that would act as a merchandise display during the PGF. Upon receiving it, I had to cut off excess plastic, file it and sandpaper it. Then, I applied base coats of primer for easier application and filler of the leftover printing lines, afterwards applying the paint layers and finalising it with polish and gloss coats. Overall, it came out well and was well-noted by the players.

Nathan (Design Lead)

The week leading up to PGF I spent setting up the framework for our bubble tutorial UI. The idea was for icons to appear near the disposal sites of the bodies with the portrait of the corresponding corpse it belonged to. Originally it was set up to appear for the first few bodies until it would vanish, but it was then changed to be more dynamic by Lewis to appear when a body of that type is being picked up. Additionally, I added to the body washing minigame UI by adding in a small animation for the sponge icon which appears when interacted with. Some smaller things I did in the leadup to the week also included fixing the long running sound issues which prevented the audio from being built out in the exe file.

Evie (Art Lead and Marketing)

I was working with Kris this week mainly to finalise any merchandising we'd planned. We arranged to meet up on Tuesday to do some printing and buying of supplies we'd need on the day. On my way to pick her up I picked up the sticker order from Snap Print since we'd shipped it to a store near where I live. Once I picked up Kris we headed to Officeworks. We were mainly wanting to print the postcards, the QR sign and some concept art to display. We ended up waiting around the Officeworks for a fair while and getting stuff reprinted a few times since it wasn't really working out. We eventually bought our supplies for display and paid for our prints. We also picked up the sweets we'd be giving out on the day for our table. On Thursday we made final preparations to marketing materials, cutting out some stickers as well as cutting borders off of concept arts and printed materials. We realised there'd been a critical error with the printing of the postcards so we had to change how we'd planned on delivering them to manage that.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

Over the course of the week leading up to PGF, I added a wave system to the game, fixed a lot of bugs, added visual cues and button prompts, improved the cleaning minigame, and too many other minor things to list. The final build that was showcased at the festival was relatively stable for 1-2 players, but there were some critical bugs that started to crop up with 3-4 players (mostly to do with the new wave system). Despite this, PGF was a huge success for the team and the game received very positive feedback. My job now (once I've spent a couple days recovering), is to fix all the new bugs that were discovered on Saturday.

Teresa (Test Lead)

In the week before PGF, I spend majority of the time making sure I can import or fine tune animation for the boatman and the delivery cart. The cart was probably the most difficult compared to the boat. A lot of adjustment were made in order for the cart to have weight when it rolled in to dump the bodies. I spend a lot of time tweaking the "throwing" animation so the bodies won't clip through the cart when its leaving. For PGF, I spend majority of the day socialising with fellow developers and helping the event goers playing our game. It was an interesting experience and we all met a lot of people who were really interested in our game. Even if we did had a few game breaking glitches that prevented a lot of people from finishing it. At the moment, I will be setting up multiplayer playtesting sessions with the Murdoch Esport club on their Friday meetups to comb out bugs to fix. I would also try and arrange other external playtesting just in case we don't have enough.

#devblog #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 6

30/08 - 5/09

This week was the final full week we got to code and add mechanics to the game. We worked mainly on bugfixing, mechanics, UI and marketing materials. Lewis has added the final mechanic to the game before PGF and we are now working on streamlining the gameplay experience with a wave system, bugfixing and finalising the marketing material for PGF.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

For the sixth week of production, my concentration was on making visual UI for the newly introduced game mechanic – special body preparation. This included making vector UI for the mini-game and the pop-up UI for the boat where the body needs to be put on. Prior to this, last week I have given my team several placement and design suggestions to choose from, this week concentrating on finalizing the chosen designs. On the second part of the week, my job was based around marketing. I created the illustration and designs for the post-card, basing them on a medieval painting to create a historical link. This illustration was done in Photoshop and has varying designs for front and back. This design will be going into printing early next week for preparation of PGF.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was spent again implementing the UI elements provided to me by Kris. I went about setting up the UI for both the body scrubbing minigame, the boat man requests, as well as the tutorial instructions which appear at the start of the round. I had the challenge of lining up the UI canvasses with the 3D assets on screen which was especially hard for the boatman since it has particular animations it plays. For this week leading up to PGF i am going to polish the existing UI with animations and reformatting some screens to Lewis' request

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I made some additional basemap textures for our dead body models to line up with the cleaning the body on the prep table mechanic. I created 'dirty' versions of each model by opening the texture then adding a layer where I painted some dirt onto them. This is so that the bodies can change state when they go from dirty to clean while using the prep table. I also created and textured a bucket prop to go with this mechanic, to give players an idea of what they're supposed to do at the prep table.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

This week I implemented the code for the minigame, so special bodies can be cleaned with a progress bar that fills up when the player mashes the B button. I also coded a spawning system for the coffin boat, so that it intelligently spawns and moves into position when a body is placed on the prep table. Finally, I designed a complex corpse randomization system for the delivery cart, so that there are variations in the combination and number of each body type that gets delivered. Over the next few days, I will be implementing a wave system so that new corpse deliveries are triggered when there are only two bodies remaining, as well as fixing as many bugs as possible before making a final build for PGF on Saturday.

Teresa (Test Lead)

The rigging and animation for the boatman is probably one of the most difficult thing I have worked on so far. I had a lot of issues figuring out the proper way to constrain the oar to the boatman's hands without breaking the model. The boatman model had to be completely reworked with extra polycount to account for the rowing motion. The animation was an interesting challenge due to the fact that it needs to be synced to the boat animation done in unity. I had to set up a reference version of the boat in maya, constrain the boatman onto the boat to "match" the boat's idle and moving animation with his "rowing" motions. Once the animations were done, it was reimported into unity for a rig and animation check. At where it currently stands. I'm happy that the rig function as intended with minimal errors. But a revision on the animations is needed to fix the transition erros. I'll be busy handling playtesting with the team before the PGF on the 11th. Then I will be back to figure out how I can sync the boatman/boat animations at the same time.

#devblog #grave affairs

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Dev Blog Week 5 – Grave Affairs

23/08-30/08

Coming up close to the PGF, the team has worked hard on getting the content together for the game presentation. This week, the concern for most of the team was to make the required assets and programming into the game that would summarise our 5-minute gaming experience together. This week was a heavy marketing planning week, with needed budget and timing plan implemented to make sure that we have the required minimal for representing our game at the convention. Kris and Nathan concentrated on making and implementation of UI to the game, to make the game clearer and easier to read. For the marketing, Evie has created a sticker design that was pushed through and published for production. There were also some improvements to the gameplay done by Teresa and Lewis, including an important foundation of a new mechanic and animation.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This week for me was concentrated around the UI development for the game and improvements to the current one to make it clearer and more readable. First, I have worked on improving the UI for the tutorial menu. As our game improved, more instructions needed to be included and I have updated some illustrations and typography to make it more up to date. Then I have also worked on the suggestion UI sketches for the “special body” conditions and how they would look like to review what team though would look the best before I work on the finalised looks. In the upcoming week, I will be working on finalising those UI to be game-ready. Another part of the week was based on marketing. I have worked with Evie to research and explore merchandise offers that would work with the short time span that we have and the budget allowance. Evie and I worked together on making sticker designs and I was asked to create the typography for the design that she created.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent some time dissecting the UI to implement some additional designs created for the game. I managed to get a pause UI functional which stops the game time. In addition, I added in some of the previous UI designs sitting in the art repository ready to be coded to functionality. This next week I will be working on setting up the UI for body preparation in time for our last mechanic before PGF.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I worked on developing a budget and exploring some marketing options with Kris. We discussed with the group what they might want last week and everyone really wanted some button badges to distribute at the festival for visitors. We agreed this was a great idea and did some research, unfortunately button badges were a bit outside of our budget with the current timeline as we’d have to pay $2.70 per badge to get them on time, so we decided on stickers as our second option along with other marketing materials. I worked with Kris to decide on a sticker design which I then illustrated, with Kris providing typography that matched our brand identity for the game.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

This week I coded the foundation for the preparation system for special requirement bodies. The three special body types can all be placed on the prep table and picked up again, seamlessly transferring to and from the player’s hand. This is done using a similar trick to the old hacky switch that used to occur when the corpses were dumped by the cart, only a lot more sophisticated. The ragdoll corpse that the player is carrying is disabled on interact, the code checks which corpse type it is and then enables one of the three non-ragdoll dummy models laying on the table. When the body is picked up, the dummy model is disabled again and a brand-new ragdoll model is instantiated in the player’s hand. This will allow to me to easily swap it out with a cleaned corpse model. I was able to use the same code to allow for placing a corpse in the boat coffin, and can also use it for picking up items. With only one week left to complete this mechanic and the scoring system, having this foundation will speed things up a lot.

#devblog #graveaffairs

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Dev Blog Week 4 – Grave Affairs

16/08-23/08

For the fourth week, the team was made aware that any final visual design changes need to be finished up due to the submission towards the PGF exhibition. This meant that the visual team had to crunch up with any needed Unity level design changes and implement them on time. This week Nathan and Evie have made major texture and asset changes to the environmental props, making drastic changes to the lighting and visual appeal of the game. The PGF poster was also finalised and submitted for the printing. Lewis has implemented the most current corpse models into the game and applied an updated scoring system that would be relevant to different body categories and scoring.

For the upcoming week, the team is going to be looking at continuation of the new burial mechanic, as well as expansion on the merchandise. Animation blocking and sound design will start to be implemented and tested within upcoming week.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

My emphasis this week was to finalise the poster after the initial ideation, based on the audience’s and team’s critique and feedback. In the beginning of the week, I have provided colour tests and possible alterations that could be beneficial for the readability of the design. Once the feedback went through, I proceeded onto the rendering and touching up the final poster illustration. Due to the sizing required, I have used a vector line-art to minimize the pixel loss and avoid blurriness in the final look. I have also looked into the planning reschedule for the team and made up a timeline calendar to avoid disturbance or overload of work in different weeks. My upcoming plans are to keep working on the merchandise products and finalise the budget for the team’s printing allowance.\

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was the mad dash to get all of the art assets for the level finalised. I worked mostly with Evie to get all of the final additions into the game in under 3 days so we had the highest quality screenshots we could get for our promotional material for PGF. I worked on creating the coastline in addition to a couple of new environmental props for the level. I was also in charge of laying out all of our assets on the map to make the most visually appealing layout possible. Once this was done I took our 3 promotional in-game screenshots ready to be used for our marketing.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I was finalising some asset design for the level with Nathan. We were adding important finishing touches to improve the overall appearance of the level. I provided him with a sketch for the riverbed to model out that added some organic shapes to the shoreline, along with some bullrush and stones. I also created a tiling road asset which I UV unwrapped and textured. Using Nathan’s original fence asset I created 2 more variations which showed some wear by bending the pickets, this would add more variation and interest to the fence line in the level, I unwrapped and textured these assets too.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

This week I implemented the Evie’s new corpse models, including rigging them for ragdoll. I changed the scoring system to require different disposal methods for the two main types – soldier and plague bodies. The cart delivery system is also fixed now and no longer requires a hacky workaround at the point where the corpses are dumped from the cart. Now, the cart delivers the actual corpses that end up being dumped, meaning the groundwork is in place for a wave system with endless possible variations of body types and amounts. My job now is to implement the preparation system for the special requirement bodies.

Theresa (Test Lead)

Focus on this week was coming up with a boat model and boatman for delivering the special body types. This is something was we wanted to be ready for the Perth Game Festival mid September. I started with gathering references for the boat and the boatman, then moving onto doing several concept sketches for the team to go over with. After we finalised on a design for both, I went and spend a bit of time trying to figure a boat model since I haven't really done one before. It took a while to figure out the right shape, but I did end up with a boat that I was pretty satisfied with. The next thing to focus on is a working rig and animation on the low poly player/boatman model. It's going to take a bit of time to figure out how to animate the low poly model to have movement without breaking the model.

#devblog #graveaffairs

[graveaffairsgame]

Dev Blog Week 3 – Grave Affairs

9/08-15-08

This week was quite full-on for us as we found out the Perth Games Festival had been moved up to a month from now so we have had to rework our approach to development quite a bit. For now we have dropped trying to create 2 more levels and are worrying about getting our level ready and playable for the festival. This means finalising vital assets, perfecting the visuals of the level, implementing all the planned mechanics and bug testing them. Kris has also begun preparing promotional materials for the festival.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This week I have started working on the promotional poster that will be used in the game exhibition in few weeks. Before creating it, I have summarised the feel of the game that we were going for and researched ideas that would help me create it. I have looked into medieval paintings and portraits, as well as some existing successful game posters to see how the overall composition and colours were used. This week I have looked into creating ideations for different directions, giving them off to the team to choose from and discuss.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent my time adjusting the main level following our team discussion. I removed an entire room and added experimented with a new material to the grass in order to give it more stylisation. Also I created a video tutorial for our group showing how to properly texture assets in the workflow I had been using up until now.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

We concepted what types of bodies we might need for our special requirements dead body mechanic last week so my job this week was to create all of those designs using our base model. The bodies we decided to make were a plague infected body, a priest, a noble, a soldier and a king body. These bodies will all have different requirements for how they’re buried. I also UV Unwrapped and textured the bodies using substance painter with the help of Nathan’s tutorial.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

This week I added the mechanic for disposing of bodies in the furnace. The bodies burn up when thrown in, and the score increases just like when they’re thrown in the hole. I also fixed the most major bugs listed on the issue tracker. The next thing for me to do is to begin working on the mechanics for special requirement bodies, replace the placeholder corpses with the three final types, and separate the disposal methods between them.

Theresa (Test Lead)

I spend most of Monday tidying up the swords and environment assets from the week before. Making sure the UV was clean before any weathering effect was going to be added. I then did some concept sketches for the boat that is going to be used for delivering special body types.

I was supposed to work on the boat and boat man model right afterwards, I didn't really get around to it until the very end of the week. It took a while to figure out the right curvature and size for the boat even with image references. In the case with the boatman, I roughed out a base with one of the dead body assets and played with a more peasant look to differentiate it from the players. The boatman base has a modular hoodie and arms for rough animation. Everything should be interchangeable if the team decides on a different character model.

Next thing on the to-do list is finetuning the boat and the boatman design with the team. Then I will be working on some basic walk animations for the player models.

#devblog #graveaffairs

[graveaffairsgame]

Dev Blog Week 2 – Grave Affairs

2/08-9/08

This week was a start of the workload for the upcoming semester and continuation on the work that was already established during last week’s meeting. We discussed the map level changes that needed to be implemented and clearer mechanics that would be present in those levels. Our key areas of focus currently are: game level design (1st and 2nd level), asset list, bug fixing, lighting fixing and asset creation. For the programmers, this week was more based around fixing up some visual issues and bugs and bringing discussed quality of life changes into the existing level.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

Second week was designated to the continuation of the level design. As my main focal point was designing for the second level, in the beginning of this week I discussed with the team on what mechanics and number of rooms need to be present in the level. Afterwards, I summarised all main points and brought them into 3 versions of the map layout. Majority of the team has voted for the second layout with some road changes, causing me to implement them into the final design. Upcoming meeting, I will be providing the team with rendered layout and a list of assets that are required in this level for both aesthetic and mechanic purposes.

Theresa (Test Lead)

Since the team has decided to have the inclusion of themes for the level rework last week. I got assigned to work on 2 Halloween assets on top of the ones we didn't get around to from last semester. Asset list: Swords, axes, raven, skeleton/bones, ashes, anvil. Weapon assets such as swords and axe for warrior/noble corpses. A modular skeleton with broken bones and ash pile for the furnace. Anvil for background decoration and two variations of ravens for adding a bit of life into the scene.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week I spent most of my time amending the issues that arose from updating to a newer version of unity. The lighting for the third level was reworked, finally implementing baked lighting into the project, this comes with the advantage of selectively deciding which parts of the scene I wanted to be influenced by the light sources, allowing for the inside of the map to be lit and visible while leaving the outside dark, despite there being no real barriers between the two. Additionally, I spent some time experimenting with an outline shader and mocking up how it would look in a game round.

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I worked on revising the level one design according to the mechanics that Lewis and Nathan finalised last week. They decided to include the preparation mechanic in the first level to introduce players to the gameplay aspect and I think this is a really good decision, it gives players a lot more to do in level one. I redesigned my level to accommodate this by adding a prep table room, an item storage room and also adding the river. Lewis also suggested having the cart drop the bodies into a front room in the level rather than on the grass, so my designs include this. I gave 3 different concepts, then had the team critique them then sent revised versions. Once we've decided on a final version, I can create a more detailed drawing and an asset list of what needs to be created for this level. Each level is going to reflect a different time of day, level one's time is daytime so I will need to create a drawing that reflects this concept.

#devblog #graveaffairs

[graveaffairsgame]

Dev Blog Week 1 – Grave Affairs

26/07-1/08

This week we began back after our break, and decided that it was important to have a clear foundation set out for our game as well as plan the upcoming production. We discussed what our timeline for this semester will look like and some challenges we might face and how to rectify them. Our key areas of focus currently are: game mechanics and implementation, bug fixing, level creation and asset production. We have altered our roles from last semester slightly with Nathan taking up more of a coding role to support Lewis further. This means that I (Evie) and Theresa will be focusing on asset production more. Kris and I have taken the role as marketing manager and will be working on marketing and PR for our game, Kris is also looking into more into texturing assets. Theresa will be very busy this semester with bug testing as our test lead and also potentially will make some animations for the game. We tried to redistribute our roles to alleviate some of the stress Lewis was dealing with as the sole coder of the game.

A short summary of what each team member did this week:

Kris (Producer & Marketing)

This week I have worked on some beginning of the level design for 2nd stage. Main aim was to drop down ideas on some themes and explorations of what the level should look like and how will they variate from each other. I have also done some quick sketching to develop discussion sketches for what the layout should look like for main point positioning.

Theresa (Test Lead)

I did a fair bit of bug report and added 1 or 2 feature requests. I did a bit of scribble over how people navigated around the current level. Just trying to figure out how we could make it bit more efficient and still keep the chaos.

Nathan (Design Lead)

This week was spent mostly in discussion with my teammate Lewis, who will be the other coder, on the solid foundation of our mechanics. Making sure we have a clear vision of what we want to aim for by the end of this semester is the most important thing to get right at the start, and I think we have a pretty solid plan going forward for this project

Evie (Art Lead & Marketing)

This week I was working on designing the layout of the 1st level. This level is very paired back compared to our final and will work as an introductory level to new players. I tried out a few different layouts which all tried to push the player through the house or create different routes for them to take. I also had a look over the current state of our game and took notes on some things that can use polish for this semester to just elevate the quality of our game, these are changes that we can make throughout the semester.

Lewis (Tech Lead)

I worked with Nathan, who I will be sharing coding duty with this semester, to finalise the plan for all the mechanics that will be implemented. There are critical bugs that need addressing first, but I’m glad we now have a far more detailed picture of how exactly the levels will be structured in terms of gameplay. With clear design goals, we should be able to work efficiently.

#devblog #graveaffairs