Team Progress Our first prototype was developed this week using Unity. The prototype so far includes mechanics for movement and basic stealth, as well as opening the journal item that the avatar has on him at all times. In the prototype are also checkpoints that players fall back to if they die, enemies and enemy-player detection (through vision), and sound effects. Our programmers were able to code these functions and features in the week that we had to build the prototype, while our visual artists were in charge of creating all the assets needed for the game. Aside from this, we conducted internal reviews and 3 playtesting sessions for the prototype, which brought to light many of the issues we'd need to address for future milestones. These feedback and intended design revisions were all compiled in the playtesting report and refined game design document we had to hand in for this week's deliverables. My Contribution I contributed to this prototype primarily by creating assets for the map. In doing so, I worked closely with the level designers and programmers in order to draw the environmental puzzles that they had come up with and to instruct them on how to place the assets in Unity (ex: which files / objects should be in the foreground, which map segments connect together, etc). Along with doing visuals, I also gathered temporary sound effects we could place in the game, making sure that they were all permissible for use. On top of this, I conducted one of the playtesting sessions we needed for evaluating the prototype as well as wrote content for the two documents we had to submit for this milestone. Lastly, I prepared the slides for the demo presentation during lab this week.
Reflection Being on the visuals team, I find that the scope of what we will need to accomplish for our game in terms of assets may be too much for what we are able to do in the time we have for this project. The art style as it is now seems disjointed and inconsistent, and my experience creating the environment for this prototype's one level indicates that preparing the environments for the rest of our game's levels would prove to be more challenging and time-consuming that it could or should be. I believe that this is an issue that can be resolved by considering how the art style can be simplified so that our team may be able to focus more on the functionality of our game, which in itself has its own problems that need addressing.
