Hello again! This past week has been crazy - I've been trying to feel more comfortable with my internship at Microsoft, and continue work on design for Twoneironauts. I think the scariest thing is knowing that there is still preproduction stuff that just isn't decided yet. Most of this stuff relies on the designer, and as such I've been feeling pretty stressed out the past week to stay on-top of things. However, There are a few important notes I need to discuss this update. Communication
Probably the single most important task for a designer is facilitating communication. I think I've been able to assist with this communication on the art-side of things, but because of that I've lacked including others on the design-side of things. This was never my intention, many things needed decided on and I tried to make it was malleable as possible, but provide as much direction as possible. So lately I've been doing the same things that I do with art but with design (since people seem happy with the artist communication). I'm thinking a good option might be to have weekly sprints where the artists just go, and opposite weeks will be design sprints. But we will see how things work out, I'd like that to emerge if it's needed. I've gotten some good feedback on different aspects of the characters and story, and I've decided to make my thoughts available on the respective Google Docs through comments the other teammates can see. I want to be as transparent as possible when I make a decision, but I also worry about my decision being trumped by "Design By Committee" which is a very common curse that affects this team. So I've been treating feedback as I tell the artists to treat it: Take what helps, leave what doesn't. I especially find this important since much of the design direction is already solidified, and I already feel limited by the pre-existing expectations for the design of the game. People will be happy to know I've been taking more than leaving, though. But there definitely have been a few things that almost are immediately far-off in terms of where the design should go. Probably the most helpful information has been for the story. During design of the story I struggled finding an exact direction that I felt was also within a reasonable scope. I think we're narrowing in on something really great and I'm excited with the final direction of the story - which I think will be completely decided upon at the end of Week 04. People's feedback has been helpful for finding the weak parts of the story, as well as how people feel about where the story is going. I don't think the story will be the reason people play our game - but with that being said, I'd like to have a good idea for what the story is. Even Castle Crashers has a story, it's just a really bad one. So I want everyone to understand that this has always been the intention of the stories, bios, etc. To provide more direction. Much of the detail likely wont even see the light of day. My plan is to meet with Fara Nizamani to discuss some of the story elements we already have. I think this will help bring all these separate pools of information together into a great narrative piece - even if we don't get to tell the whole thing. Characters will not have enough time to express their full bios, so I think the bios provide future design direction, but are largely not important to have more than a "Where did they come from, what are they missing, where do they want to go." I think anything more is too much depth, but I'd like to have these nailed down so that the children can each have some kind of a problem that they could dream about fixing. Really, It's Just For Direction The biggest thing people seem to mention to me is how heavy-handed the bios and story seem. The story will hold more weight in the final version of the game, but is still largely left up to interpretation. The basics of the story is, and always will be: You open the book. It's always night! Nyx is behind it! Close the book. Obviously this is exaggerating some parts (closing the book is actually reconstructing the book and then defeating Nyx [levels and end boss]). If we tell anything more at all, it will likely be about Nyx and Hemera, or maybe Hemera shows up and makes peace with Nyx. Really this is all hypothetical, but the point is the story was never intended to be an epic, and will not be delivered as such. Having the information does help me know where to go and how to direct things. The bios are even less important than the story. There's only so much character you can get through without it seeming random, especially since we don't go into any depth for the characters in terms of character development. The only part of character development that I think is necessary and missing is what the children learn after closing the book. The children from a design perspective are not supposed to entirely fill a character. I'm aiming for about half-way, and I think that's been achieved. The reason why half-way is because I want the character to be open enough to allow the player to inject some of his/her feeling into the character (since they are controlling the character), but I want them to visually make sense and act in a way that would reinforce whatever direction the player is thinking of taking them. I plan on meeting with Griffin and Ben to discuss this idea and the direction of the design in general in the upcoming week. Hopefully some of this can be ironed out, but I plan on there still being bumps as we progress down this path. Ben is potentially set-up already to meet with us at 7:30 on Thursdays. Griffin I have not yet received a response from. But I may also meet with Joe Sopko in the meantime to get more advice/direction. Google Discussions Another thing we're trying is to have an open discussion group with topics that people allow to drop ideas into, regardless of how complete the ideas are. I'd rather people drop whatever it is they're thinking of in the topic, and we have more things than having to scrounge up for a new enemy/pillow concept at the last minute. This has already led to some pretty interesting ideas that I think need to make it into the final game. If anything, this should be a place where the ideas aren't discussed or critiqued, but just placed to inspire and grow. This has been very successful for the past week that it's been implemented. I think it will continue to be successful, and I look forward to seeing more ideas and direction. Not much more to say about it, but I will make a small shout-out to some of the ideas I've really liked; Lightning Pillow, Armstrong-Inspired Sandman, Skeleton with No Legs on Skateboard. Obviously there are other great ones, but I just limited it to my top 3, check out the discussion if you have time! Until next week!
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