Pivot

Week Six

(You can pivot if you want too. You can leave your friends behind)

First off, check out the AIM< Facebook page if you haven't already. I just uploaded some awesome art by one of the concept artists working on our team. I will be updating the AIM< Facebook page weekly with something or other. As development gets farther along, there will be more frequent updates and I'll be building up a presence on other social media outlets as well.

This week my team and I focused on a process called "pivoting". To pivot in game design and development (GDD) means that aspects of the design is re-addressed while still staying true to the original concept. This means that as lead game designer, I re-work and re-write portions of the rules to better meet the audiences expectations for our game. Key mechanics, like movement and level progression, certainly need polish at this point, but pivoting addresses how fun the game is and what systems build up or tear down that fun experience. The mechanics have to be fun or basically we would just be polishing a piece of trash that no one wants to play.

After going through pivot this week, AIM< now has a clear win/loose structure and mechanics in place to enable us to create opportunities for drama and excitement. The feedback from the AIM< prototype playtesters showed that fun tools were in place but the players needed a motive to use them. They wanted to experience a sense of accomplishment. So, along with the teams feedback, I wrote some large additions to the AIM< rules. I also had to address the readability of the GDD document as by this time it had gotten hard to read.

Audio work for AIM< is beginning! Along with working on this senior capstone project, I'm enrolled in a digital sound studio. Some of my classmates agreed to work with me on AIM< audio the final for the course. I'll be managing the team, making sure we stay on track and produce quality work. I look forward to sharing some of our sounds!

I'll post an image of the result of  my last big task this week. I designed a tutorial level and visualized it through Adobe Illustrator. The concepts at work in AIM< are complex enough that it will take time for players to wrap their heads around. A tutorial is a lower risk, higher reward scenario that the player can feel safe experimenting in. A sense of mastery is important for many players and a tutorial is one step in that process.

As someone who plays a lot of games, I acknowledge the need to learn many games' mechanics. However, I really don't want to get bored during the tutorial. Unfortunately I often do. As I designed the first tutorial for AIM<, I tried to design the map with enough drama to keep gameplay interesting and teach the core mechanics of AIM<. I think that the process is similar to writing a story. Jumping right into the middle of a story is disorienting. Starting with a long conversation or description of characters and places the reader doesn't know is tedious. Why would a reader be motivated to finishing the book? Introduce the characters and start hinting at the peril or drama straight away.

Have an awesome weekend!

AIM< Tutorial Level Concept by Aram Wahler

Trial of Concepts

Week Five

(From 3D to In-Engine)

At the beginning of this week, I spent time making sure the level I wrote about last week was ready for our team's first play-test. Most of the work was just breaking up the map into appropriate pieces and learning how to get those into Unity. Once that was all finished, the map was turned into a play-test ready level in Unity. Check out the screenshots in the gallery below!

When the map was finished, I moved on to a quick 3D sketch of the main cannon model to use as a placeholder for the play-test. You can see some concept art for it here, a post from a couple weeks ago. We didn't end up needing this particular version of the model for the play-test, however.

After both of these projects I moved onto PR tasks. With regards to PR, our game finally has a Facebook page! Over the end of last week and weekend, we settled on the name "Aimless", stylized as AIM<. A logo and composite image was handed off to me and I was able to create a banner image and profile picture for Facebook. This page will serve as a websites of sorts for the immediate future. All of our teams dev blog links are there and we will be posting regular updates on the games progress. Check it out and follow AIM< from start to finish!

Finally, on Wednesday our team hosted the first closed play-test of AIM<. 16 individuals played the game and provided feedback. The players had a blast playing with the games mechanics and told us what they liked, what they didn't, and areas they felt needed improvement. This data was gathered through a post play-test survey. Overall, the players found the fun, which is awesome.

Last night and today I digitized all the feedback we received so that our team can refer to it throughout the next sprint. Not only did I learn a lot about the way players were approaching AIM<, I also figured out what sort of data would be good to gather in future play-tests. Using this information, I updated the post play-test survey and branded the form with with our games logo.

This weekend will be spent pouring over feedback and approaching the games design to enhance the aspects of fun.

Big stuff coming for AIM<. I hope you all have a great weekend!

Main Cannon 3D Sketch by Aram Wahler

AIM< Screenshots by Aram Wahler

AIM< ver 0.1.1 - Level 3

Map

Week Four

(From Drawing to 3D)

Just a short update this week. Our team is getting ready for our first play-test next week. I updated the game documents as usual but no big changes this week. We need to test what we have and see how the parts we've made work together before adding anything more.

Besides updating the design documents, I worked on white-boxing the level that I made a map for last week. You can check out the map here. I basically used the map as an underlay to guide my construction of the map in Maya. You can get an idea of how I used the map from the first image in the gallery below. The map was a huge help in keeping track of all the map's pieces. Adjustments will have to be made once we play the level and decide what works and what doesn't but the current model is a good start. I'm excited to have completed this level. This is the first level I've made from the ground up and it's been great to see the parts all come together. It's really rewarding to realize a design in 3D that was 2D illustration or drawing.

More soon to come! Have an awesome weekend!

Cannon Level White-Box by Aram Wahler

First Big Updates

Week Three

(or "The Week That Grew Wings")

I had a productive week with Cannons game design! It started last Saturday (9/30) with writing a short narrative for the game. I was inspired by all what I had heard in our team meetings up to that point and decided to try to get it down as a story. The story isn't meant to be shared with the audience. My hope was that the inspiration I experienced would be present in the narrative and be shared with the team as further inspiration for the design process. Kind of like a mood board but using a story instead. It isn't meant to be taken as a "be all, end all". I want to share my excitement for the awesome game we're creating.

I also made the final roughs of our main cannons design. The main cannon will be the "main character" if you will. The one players will be exploring our game as.The cannon is based on a fusion of concepts up to this point and personified to give the audience a relation point of entry into the game world we are creating. Our goal is to make a personable machine that players can identify with in some way.

The rest of the week was a flurry of leaps forward in overall game and level design. I had a huge update for the game design document I talked about last week. This week is the first week of work after we nailed down more concrete ideas and figured out more of what would and wouldn't work. Pieces of the design are starting to fall into place.

Because the rules are becoming more clear, we have had a better idea as to what levels are going to look like. This weekend will be spent implementing ideas from this past week through a process called "white-boxing". This means we are making levels out of simplified geometry and objects to create a sketch of the levels design for testing purposes. Our goal is to "find the fun" and make sure our game is as much fun to play as we think it will be. I took a rough sketch at made a map in illustrator to detail the layout and make the white-boxing process a little easier. Sketchbook sketches are often a bit messy and making a quick vector illustration provides clarity.

That's it for this week. Have an awesome weekend!

Final Cannon Concept by Aram Wahler

Level Overhead by Aram Wahler

Level Map by Aram Wahler