Group project - end of sprint 1

So seeing as it's the end of the first sprint for my group project I thought I'd go over what we got up to, the ins, the outs, the successful and the sucky.

So to start off with in our initial pitch we came up with the idea for a dungeon crawling adventure game with RPG elements called Searching for Celia, in short it was a classic Zelda clone, and in shorter; it was a disaster waiting to happen. The idea was shot down in our pitch and logically for good reasoning, so back to the drawing board we went!

One of my group members was working on a concept idea he had for a side scrolling shooter where you defend a girl from being attacked, it would all be in silhouette form because that was easier to create then a fully detailed game. I liked the idea, it was simple, it could work and it had the potential to be fun.

It was at this point I threw in the suggestion for a mechanic to challenge the player; an aura. The game seemed to repetitive and simple in its current state so I suggested an aura, created by the girl that would grow or dissipate dependent on a variable. Originally it was suggested that variable be that damage taken = smaller aura. I was however against this idea; I felt it was increasing the gap between good players and bad players and making it harder for less skilled individuals to proceed. So in the end after some debating we came up with the idea to make the aura get smaller as you move, and recharge when stationary, this way we could reason that the aura gets smaller because the girl is exhausted from moving.

So we had our new concept, and an interesting mechanic. work was delegated between us all. Wayne handled the code while me, Jake and Giselle did concept art. We three were each tasked with creating a background, menu, main character, girl, monster and boss. While Wayne worked on coding the minimal viable product.

So lets have a look at what I personally came up with;

• Background - The background idea I created was basically a desert like theme where the player would be moving across the screen while a sandstorm brewed in the background, this background also left room for the possible inclusion of scorpion type mobs that crawl out of the ground.

• Menu - The menu idea I had was one similar to a lot of games pause menu, the idea is that the menu is simply overlaying the game itself so that when you click 'Start Game' the menu fades revealing the game in all its entirety.

• Player - The player design I did was basic but kind of shoddy and dodgy, the best part I'd say of this design was the gun, the gun would make an aesthetically appealing addition to the game, as for the character; I feel others may have outdone me.

• Girl - The girl concept here wasn't exactly the most lively silhouette, and the detail here was poor. But the idea was to convey the simple concept that as the girl character loses health, the change in health would be clearly visible, indicated by how full of blue she is.

• Monsters - The monster design for the spider was quite simple and original; giant spiders, where would we been without them right? The idea was that at a later date we could implement a bit more detail to the way they spawn; having them come down vertically then move along horizontally.
  The second design was sort of a cross between a panther and leopard; this mob would be a straight forward horizontal moving mob that has more durability than the spider.

• Boss - Going on from the previous idea, I decided to develop the scoropard (hey it's my creature, I'll give it a cross-breed name if I want too!) into a boss type creature by adding crystals to its form that are meant to bolster its abilities and make it one tough cookie! I'm considering animating the crystal to glow blue to signify its status as a boss.

Overall the pitch went well, the lecturers seemed impressed and I left quite happy with how interesting they found my aura idea. A successful contribution I think.... now for the next sprint, I hear animations is heavy on the agenda.