Week 03 PPJ – Gina

This week I met with Ryan, James, and Toni for a couple hours to discuss which idea we wanted to wanted to work on for our project. We decided to work on James’ idea Tag Team and renamed it to Tag Team Frenzy. I created the WordPress blog and was tasked with getting everyone’s emails to invite them to collaborate on the blog.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to go to the second meeting where a lot of the details of the game was discussed, but I hope to get caught up on that soon.

I worked on the blog a bit, adding simple drafts of the About Team page and About Project page. I couldn’t find a satisfactory theme to work with yet so I just stuck with a very simple minimalistic one. I hope we can figure out a way to customize the theme more eventually.

I hope to get more involved with the rest of the game aspects next week!

WEEK 3 PPJ – JAMES

As previously mentioned by my group mates, a lot of this week was getting our idea down and getting everyone on board. This process was drawn out a bit as we didn’t get a chance to all meet together, but I know personally that I had a family event commitment and that shouldn’t be an issue for me moving forward. I attended the first meeting with Toni, Ryan, and Gina and it was there that we decided to work on the idea I pitched, Tag-Team Frenzy. Although I was initially going to attend the second meeting to help with the Tech-Demo I was called away by a personal commitment.
However, in the time between those two meetings I worked on the first bits of concept art: I made a handful of logo mock ups with 12 variations, and I worked on a pixel art concept and a vector-style concept. Overall I wasn’t terribly satisfied with these efforts and I’ll have to continue to iterate with the team in order to really define our game’s direction. All of the work I did was by myself on my own time due to aforementioned scheduling conflicts, so my goal for this week is to get everyone who is doing art together so that we can all share our ideas and start to work towards that collaboratively defined creative vision.
Overall this week was helpful in beginning our production and I’m satisfied with our results, and I have great confidence in our ability to come together as team and see this thing out.

This week I will look to:
Improve our methods of communicating
Continue to offer feedback in design aspects
Make about 3X as much concept art as I did this week

Week 3 PPJ – John Keough

This week I didn’t end up spending as much time as I’d have liked to working on Tag Team Frenzy. I made sure to respond to the emails the others sent out when needed, but until Wednesday I didn’t contribute much, if anything really, other than necessary information for getting added to the WordPress and the Google Drive.

When Wednesday came along, I met up with Toni, Ryan, and Lukas. I arrived at the URBN Center a few hours early to secure a room for us to work in, and later went out and purchased snacks — pretzels, cookies, chips, etc. — for the group, though other than the cookies these went untouched.

I also took up the task of coming up with several of potential minigames for the project. One example, Trout Toss, involved teams tossing a trout back and forth and tagging in and out with their teammate — each player can only touch the trout if the last member of their team to do so was the other player — and whichever team is closest to the trout when the timer runs out loses. Another example, Keep it Up, divides the fighting ring in two and each team must tag in and out, hitting a balloon in an attempt to keep it aloft the longest. The longer the balloon lasts, the faster it falls though. There are three end conditions for this one — a timer, and one team failing to keep the balloon in the air or a player hitting it twice in a row.

I’m hoping to be able to talk these over with the entire team this upcoming week in full and work out a few more minigames and game mechanics even. I’m looking forward to this project.

Week 3 PPJ – Ryan Smith

For our first week of production, we decided to meet as a team to figure out what game we would make. Toni, Gina, James, and I all met together, and as a result, we decided to create Tag Team Frenzy. We finished the meeting by discussing our deliverables and how we would get them ready. We set up another meeting, and went our separate ways.

For the second meeting, Toni, John, Lukas and I all met to try and build our first Tech Demo. For this process, I was the one who built the demo itself. I used some artwork made by Lukas to build a playing field, and then created a character that could move around said playing field. Overall, I think it was successful, but I wasn’t very happy with the code I found that gave me ideas for player movement. That is one of the first things I want to figure out how to change. In addition, the colliders I used to keep the player in the ring were not very effective; I will probably have to try something new.

This week, I hope to revamp our current Tech Demo, and add on to it. I would like to be able to have two characters interact with each other, and to map controls over to PS4 controllers. Overall, I’m happy with how the week has turned out. I think everyone did good work, and I believe we are in a good place to really get started.

Week 3 PPJ – Lukas

For our first week of production I was unable to attend the first meeting when the game idea was chosen. At first, I didn’t understand the mechanics and art direction of the game. I wasn’t sure I would be able to contribute because I didn’t understand the concept. After re-reading James’ one-pager and speaking with group mates; I was on board.

This week I created a mock wrestling ring for our tech demo. I wasn’t sure the direction the camera would be viewing the ring, but after looking at the related games in James’ one-pager I had a much better understanding.

I also help John brainstorm some mini-games that would be included in the game. “Avoid the Crap” (temporary name) is a mini-game where objects are thrown from the crowd in all directions and players must avoid getting hit.

Next week I’m hoping that we get more organized and can all meet at the same time. I hope to get more concept art done and work on our promotional website. I look forward to working on Tag Team Frenzy for the next 7 weeks.

Week 3 PPJ – Toni

This week was spent mostly on idea gathering, documentation, and group dynamics. On Sunday, I met with James, Ryan, and Gina. We brainstormed a bit and decided we would work on Tag Team Frenzy. We created a list of what needed to be done for this week and when we should meet further in the week, which I sent out via email.

On Wednesday, I met again with Ryan, John, and Lukas. Ryan and I had planned to work on the Tech Demo together, but I ended up typing a lot of documentation instead. We went over the concept of Tag Team Frenzy again, tweaking it a little bit so it was to everyone’s liking. I then took what James had written for his individual one pager (Tag Team was his initial idea) and modified it for the final team one pager. I also condensed this information into an elevator pitch. I also sent out a lot of emails, making sure everyone had access to the WordPress and that everyone was on the same page. I watched what Ryan was doing in terms of the Tech Demo and made a few comments, but I did not really touch any coding this week.

Next week I am hoping that our team falls into a smoother flow. I’m hoping that all six of us can meet together at some point, that didn’t go very well this week. Things did work out okay, though. I am also excited to start coding, Tag Team Frenzy seems like it is going to be a lot of fun.