Shoot em Up Project Finale – A conclusion and a PM

This course has been a great opportunity for hands-on learning when it comes to what an actual game project might contain. It’s been full of challenges and surprises, but in the end I am quite pleased with my contribution to what eventually became our game; Aetherial by Team Kraken.
The game is a 2D side-scrolling shoot em up game in which the player takes control of a futuristic skyship in order to hunt down a huge, flying skywhale. The player can […]

Importance of playtesting

One of the most important parts of working scrum or agile in general is iteration, and one of the most important parts of iteration is feedback. How else would you know what to change and re-iterate? This is where playtesting comes in. It is one of the most important aspects of making high quality games, games where every single feature just feels polished and well thought out.
The playtesting settings we’ve had have provided our group with great feedback, not only […]

Lightning laser breath attack thingy

This week I’ve primarily been working on the boss of our game, Aetherial. The boss of the game is a huge, flying whale, that you as a player is supposed to hunt down. The boss appears multiple times during the game, at first you only see its back as it soars through the clouds, but in the final scene you actually face this leviathan head-on. During this fight the boss will use several attacks against the player, one of which […]

Comment #3

Hey Linda!
First of all, nice description of what scrum is, it was short but still very clear and descriptive. It’s also good that you kept the description general, and not limited to the very “compact” version we’re using at the moment.
It is interesting to hear how it all affects you as a lead artist as well. It must be hard work to make it all go together, and as a fellow graphics student I know what you mean when you […]

Comment #2

Hey there!
I like the way you described how you worked from what your concept and that you’ve worked with your group. It’s also nice to see how you listened to their feedback and fixed it based on what your game needed.
Your bear sure looks sly and malicious, while still being cartoony and cute. Nice work describing your goals as well as how you reached them and also nice to see your sketches leading up to what you have at the […]

Comment #1

Hey Mattias!
First of all, really well structured post here. The way you showed and explained the entire decision making process makes it really easy to follow along and understand why you chose to work the way you did.
Your concept was also made very clear, both through your explanations but also through good use of images where needed. Not only did they help show what you were making and that you worked closely with your lead designer, they also showed the […]

How Scrum has affected my development

At first, scrum didn’t really affect me at all, but that was mostly because I didn’t really “do it” properly. I kept working like I had done in the past, that is, postpone things as much as possible until I only had a day (or in worst case, hours) to finish all of the tasks I had agreed to finish by the weeks end. This is obviously not a very good way of working, not for yourself but especially not […]

Sky slug on the move

This week I’ve primarily been animating the first enemy for our game, Aetherial.
The design idea for our version of the sky slug, an enemy that of course was a part of the original aetherial concept document, came from a mix between our lead artist’s original idea and then some alterations by me.
The sky slug is meant to swarm the player but be fairly weak and easy to kill individually. I wanted to represent this in its design in several ways. […]

Sickness and Harpoons

This week (week 6) Iwas tasked with drawing clouds and harpoons, which sounded simple enough, and would leave me with time to catch up on my animations from last week which took a bit longer than expected. It would probably have gone according to plan, had I not contracted a nasty sickness on tuesday night. This sickness included vomiting, dizzyness and constant headaches, which of course made me unable to attend group meetings but also pretty much completely unable to […]