Dev Diary 5

Already on Dev Diary 5...Time flies when you're making games.

We're making good progress, slowing down a bit so the PM and I decided it was time for a 2 day weekend. The team obviously agreed. We plan to recharge and to hit the ground running on Monday.

I just finished converting the game to the new art style. Instead of only high contrast on enemies and the players hands, Now everything is high contrast. I was met with doubt by a few mentors, but I insisted that the art style would look good, or, great in fact, once I get the final lighting in.

They still wouldn't believe me. So, I converted my test room to the new textures and created the lighting I am envisioning for the final game. It was met with a lot of positive reviews...in fact, More than half of the mentors said it certainly has a Sin City look to it, to which I take particular satisfaction as that was my mission from the beginning. I couldn't have been happier to hear that.

In addition to that, I've completed all (currently) required particle effects. They really add a nice polish to the art style, combined with selective use of emissive textures we have a very unique, eye-catching art style here.

We got decap working 100% with our enemy models which was a task and a half for our 3d modeler. UDK was just not willing to comply, we were actually near to cutting it because we couldn't get it implemented soon enough but our modeler pulled a hail Mary and did a great job.

Our Coder is plugging away and is doing fantastic work as always, we are continuing to refine our main mechanics, but we are also receiving compliments on getting them all implemented and working so early in our build. That may suggest to some that they were simple to implement, they absolutely were not, we just busted our asses to make sure our core gameplay is working as intended as soon as possible. Lots of late nights and many more to come of course.

Our collaborators are doing great as always, we are actually running out of things for our 3d collab guy to do. Our sound guys are awesome, but very busy so work as slowed down a bit from them, completely understandable. We also planned for this so we had our sound "sprints" prioritized for them. We have all the vital sounds from them already, the rest of the stuff if/when completed is just icing on the cake.

Our PM is doing great, continues to evaluate and schedule. Constant adjustment and adaptation are what Agile management is all about. Some big changes may be coming soon (I am privy to this as assistant PM) but the team knows that in order to run effectively as an agile team adaptation and adjustment are key. Not only that, but in order to function in the industry one must be able to roll with the punches. More on this later.

Finally, I must once again apologize for lack of screenshots. Due to this hectic schedule, I have to do my blog updates on my 1 day off a week at home (where my current game build is not). I use the term "day off" lightly as that day is usually spent prepping for the following days work or doing other homework that VFS thinks is a good idea to stack on us right now. That said, it's no excuse, I'll be sure to make time early next week to add some screenshots of the new art style up here.

Cheers,

Z