Alpha build

Last week was Alpha presentation, where we showed Symbiosis to a jury of testers for more in-depth feedback, and another playtest session is scheduled for this friday before the beta presentation next week. We have, to put it short, our hands full. I will thus not go into very much detail on my recent work, and instead give you a short update on the project.
 

Screenshot of Symbiosis in it’s current state
 
 
The greatest gameplay change since the pre-alpha has been the […]

Pre-Alpha

Hi again!
Last week was the pre-alpha playtest, enabling us to get that sweet, sweet feedback in before the Alpha presentation that will be taking place this Thursday.
For this build, I first and foremost prioritized feedback on the controls and platforming aspects of the game rather than the actual puzzles that the game will eventually feature for the beta build. The goal was to get input on how the most fundumental aspect of the game(the player controls) felt for the player, […]

First playable

 

New, year, new project

Just broke my record on longest period of inactivity on this blog – over one year!
 
So, we just started the Big Game Project course, concluding our second year at the programme with a, well, big game project. We are again tasked with writing blog posts as the project progresses, so I will make short, weekly updates from now on.
 
I work with a team currently without name working on the game Symbiosis – a puzzle platformer where the player controls two […]

Design document 2.0

Hello once again!
 
This week I’ve been workin on, among other things, the design document.
Last week we got the feedback on the hand-in, and we had a couple of things that we need to fix, which is what I did. There was no single large problem with the document that we had to fix, but several small things – the layout for the levels were missing, a few chapters needed more images and some other things needed further explanation.
 
When I started […]

Ambient sound and the bane of the vuvuzela

Hi again!
This week has been a bit hectic, as the beta is due tomorrow and we had a playtest session this monday. While I’ve been working on a number of different things and have got a lot done, I’m gonna focus on the sound for the game’s main menu.
 
Erik started last week with making the main menu for Day of the Piñata. While we were doubtful at the least of how many of the menu’s buttons (start game, credits, highscore […]

Even more level design!

This week, I continued to work on Day of the Piñata’s level design, trying to get as much of the game’s features into the playable session as possible.
 
What I did was to attach a couple of background images for our game (made by Erik) into a single large image that represented a whole level. Together, the backgrounds created an image over 37 000 pixels wide. I then added images of enemies and objects to the picture so that programmers could […]

More level design!

Continuing from last week, I’ve spent the time since working on level design (among other things).
 
The level design is very important for the player’s experience of the game, as all of the game’s objects, enemies and power ups have close relationships that dynamicly change dependent on the performance of the player.
 
In Day of the Piñata, the goal of each level is to gain enough revenge points by smashing objects on the level. Another function of the object’s destruction is that […]

Level design & presentation

Second post of this project!
 
There really won’t be much to write about this past week since the weekend went to other things and then I got struck by a pretty nasty cold. I only got to work on things related to the project these last few days.
What I did work on was drafts of a few ideas for the level design and the alpha presentation.
 
The level design drafts was basically a few ideas put down on paper about how we […]

Game development & design document

For the past three weeks, we have been working on a game as a part of our course in Game Development. The concept of the game was chosen from other groups ideas from the previous course.
My group chose the concept for Day of the Piñata – a side-scrolling action game where the player takes control of a possessed piñata during the Day of the Dead festival, and must collect candy and smash decoration to win.
 

 

With a deadline of tomorrow midday, […]

Space Shooter Assignment

Earlier this week we got the five week-project of doing a full concept for a game, putting everything we’ve learned this far to the test. We are to supposed to make a concept document, a pitch, a paper prototype and some other things to learn how to convey our ideas.We’ve been put into groups of six and are to make a “Space shooter” game within a set of rules like that is has to be 2D, the platform has to […]

First post!

So, because I’m a lazy sucker, this is my first post on the blog. We were meant to start writing our blogs right away, but since I suffer from the condition mentioned this is where I’ll start.
So Hi!
My name is Tom and I’ll be writing about my studies in Game Design & Graphics and stuff revolving around that. I’m currently one month into the program, and we’ve had a number of assignments and essays and an even higher number of lectures.
This […]