Charging looking good..

What a difference a simple feature can add. The charging is in but still very buggy. But for our basic purposes it works, and I will be smoothing it out in the coming days. And that is very good news. I spawned a few other bots into the game and sure enough, when you run into them it's gib city. Works on the default destructable objects too.

We have some art up and I've been meaning to take a picture of our workspace here so people can see what it looks like. I think I'll get some of the color art up first.

Johan came back today with a nice concept sketch of Foamzilla. He still has to finish it up but it looks pretty cool. We are going to still press for those 5 versions of Foamzilla to be up here on the walls asap. With the progress we've made in coding, graphics and other assets, it's looking very good that we will hit the first milestone with a very decent build.

Oh we got some feedback from one of our storywriting mentors on dialogue for the general. Making the case all the much stronger for him.

We are looking for someone to do the ADR (voice acting) for the general now actually.

It's been a long day, so no time to go to value village and no time to get a costume for halloween.. Well there is always next year I guess.

Just squeaked in..

Almost missed todays post! Working all day as usual. Had to look back at Foamzilla and realize we could have designed each stage better, from a visual point of view. Now it's time to submit the work to the modelers and we had to hash things out a lot quicker than I would have liked to.

It's the nature of things though. It's not like we had lots of time we were wasting last semester. Going to continue the flowchart for level design as soon as possible. The first 2 minutes is done but we really need the rest.

And the really good news is that after some hours of programming, I have the initial stages of the charge feature looking pretty decent. It's still not triggering the wallbump event properly but I'll look into that more tomorrow. White boxing is also done (for now) so I can focus on getting the machinima in as soon as this charge and the camera are fixed.

For some reason I thought the deadline for milestone one was the end of this week. But I checked things out again and it appears it's two weeks. Thats good news... Thats actually really good news..

Lastly, I have to say, I love Firefox 2.0. In-line spell checking is a beautiful thing (specially when you are running a wiki.) My spelling is actually pretty good in general, but even the odd spelling mistake I hate to make. Life is good, and I get to sleep for five hours. So until tomorrow!

First Blogger Blog..

Whoa.. this was supposed to be a day off. I suppose I did get to sleep in, meaning I got a full eight hours of sleep. Even saturdays are rarely a break for me. I get just enough time to do some shopping and clean up the appartment.

Well onto development. So as mentioned way down on the first post. I was looking to try to set this blog up at our mockitup.net site. But it ended up eating hours out of my day. So I looked around to see what the free web blogs are like. And most are pretty good, so I settled for the same one google uses: Blogger.

By the way, as a game designer, these are kind of the days that I hate. I did a lot of work today. At least 6 hours, and I'll be doing another 4 before I go to bed, but I can't show you anything cool added onto the game. It's all back end stuff, which helps a lot, but not nearly as morally rewarding.

Well by the end of this weekend I hope to have the charge feature roughy working, and by November 10th, as it is our first milestone, I'm determined to have a playable copy of the game availible for distribution.

Don't forget that the whole point of all this blogging is to give you (whoever the heck you are reading this..) insight into our design process. And all we ask in return is that you leave some feedback. We want to make this the best we can.

So until tomorrow, (when I am officially working).. cya!

- Mark

Level Design

Seems no matter how much I've studied level design, I've still got a lot to learn.

So we started doing the white boxing for our level, and it was going ok until we both started to review it and realize we had only loose ideas of what events are supposed to happen and when. We weren't thinking of the same events either. And as far as a timeline went, we weren't solid on that.

So even though the level has to be white boxed out, in terms of how big it is in relation to Foamzilla, and for playability, it was even more important to have the elements of the level detailed.

So we started constructing flowcharts. Actually it was a tip from another student that reminded me of that. Easy to forget things when you are being bombared with information from every corner.

Flowcharts are working pretty good so far, and I'm just trying to finish off the main gameplay chart right now. I'll add in things such as spawn placements and items in there as well. See how detailed I can get things before I have to write things down. It's a little like doing the encounter writeups for the paper and pencil games before doing the maps.

Thats it for today. Until tomorrow.

Stumpers

I hate getting stumped. When someone comes up to me and asks me about a portion of the game and I don't have a solid answer for them it really annoys me. One of my main jobs as a game designer is to have a very solid idea of everything for the game I'm working on.

Today for example we had some sound engineers come over to talk with us and they asked for some specifics on the sounds for some of the environments and areas. It was hard to answer without giving our best guess. I realize you have to do that now and then, but the problem with guessing is that you can say something, completely forget it and no one else on the project even knew you said it in the first place. Because it's not written down.

Even when things are written down people don't always read the design document over and over, despite change logs and even giving someone the nudge to do so. So often you have to go and explain a new item or feature and completely flesh it out, then document it, then go back and re-explain it to everyone involved. Needless to say, thats a lot of time.

This has caused me to get better about what I document though, a lot better. And that is something I like. I'm pretty decent about my documentation. Take a look at the game design documents and my timetable if you have any doubts.

For now though, when anyone comes up to me and asks me something I don't know, I add it to a list of stuff to detail out. And I make sure it gets done in the next couple days.

Some more web updates to get this blog up and rolling on the web. The project has all the inital screens and messages going into gameplay working at a fair alpha state. And Foamzilla is in the game! Although he is too large. Still, it's pretty cool to see your own character in the game. I'm going to be tackling the charge ability over this weekend. I really have to get it done for my next mentor meeting.

It's almost nine thirty now though, I figure I'll finish up some web stuff and leave at 10pm. I have an hour commute to get home and get some sleep so I can be back for 10am tomorrow morning.

Until then.

Million little things..

When you are split six ways from sunday on all the little tasks you have to get done.

I was going to talk about something else, until my partner reminded me I had to give him a map link. Then I remembered I had to reply to a number of collaberators today. Then once I started this blog, I got stopped twice as mentors came over to check up on us.

This is pretty typical and people go through this every day. I've decided that a million little things that are almost done aren't nearly as good as one thing that is. So for now, (and even though I restarted this blog). I figured I won't stop until I get finished.

It always amazes me though. People ask for stuff to be done, and even if you politely say no, the task seems so small and trivial that it's almost insulting to turn it down. The problem is that there are usually a million tasks to do that day. An exaggeration but I know I'm easily in the hundreds. And people are notoriously bad for underestimating tasks. That certainly includes myself. For this project I tend to structure my tasks and give them an estimated time to be completed. And I am always off, but at least I am getting closer.

One other note, I'm usually drained at the end of the day so I think I am going to start blogging in the morning whenever possible.

But look, I'm finished blogging for today! Thats one task down. 120 or so to go before I can get some sleep.

Until tomorrow.

First Blog!

Here's a sneak peak at something I've been curious about my entire life.

My name is Mark Barazzuol. I'm a student at Vancouver Film School and I'm studying game design. We are currently working on our final project. We are making a game. I'm getting the chance to do something that a lot of people have always dreamed of doing. I'm working primarily with my partner Johan Eickmeyer. The game that we are making is called Foamzilla.

Why am I making a blog?

Because of the nature of the game industry is to keep ideas are usually sealed under non disclosure agreements, I decided this is a excellent chance to show everyone out there just how a game is made. We've just finished preproduction, which means we just finished fleshing out the core ideas of the game. Now we are doing production. And I have to admit I'm swamped. I've dedicated 5 minutes each day to doing this though. Even if it means it's cutting into my five hours of sleep I get each night.

Thats it for today. Theres a lot to say, but very little time. Until tomorrow.

- Mark

Foreword.

I was actually setting up blogging on my own site, but time is my enemy, and I found I was spending too much time fooling around. So here we go and I'm using blogger. The following few blogs were recorded daily for the past few days. For the first five or so, don't let the dates fool you.