So this is my first development log since year 4 and capstone have started. We're currently on week 6 out of 28-ish, so we're still in our first quarter, and yet it feels like a lot has already happened. We've decided to call ourselves Hexabyte Games, and we're accepting the design challenge given to us by Shadow Factory.
The challenge was to make a cool gameplay experience that allows players to move around a space without the restriction of cables. Specifically, we were given some cool new toys to help us meet this challenge. We have the Omen X Compact computer, which is a PC that straps onto a backpack contraption, so you can literally carry your computer around. Therefore, the headset can just be plugged into the player's back, and the player is not tethered to any specific location. We also have the Zed M camera, which is a camera that can sense 3D spaces and depth. Therefore, although we have a pretty cool setup and new fields to explore, we also have a couple of unique design challenges to solve.
Our core game pillars are movement, asymmetrical gameplay, and full utilization of mixed reality. Our current game idea is temporarily code named Effervescent, where two players play as a young spell caster and a spell book keeper who work together to defeat evil monsters. The spell caster will describe parts of the monster to the bookkeeper, and the bookkeeper will search through the spell book to find the proper spell the spell caster will use to defeat the monster. The spell caster will also have to continually cast location based defensive spells to ward off its attacks.
When I'm writing this, we actually just decided on our game idea yesterday. We've focused most of our time so far on understanding the tech, so we know what it can and can't handle so we can design for the technology we have. Therefore, we don't have that much in terms of art or art progress, since we're still on the design stage and haven't started production yet. However, we do have an art direction.
For our art direction, we decided to go with a cartoon-y, low poly style that focuses on bright colours. For Mixed Reality games, optimization and frame rate are extremely important, so we decided to optimize our models and art style based on that.
One thing we wanted to make sure of was that our game would have little to no characters and character animations. While I've done some 3D modelling before, character modelling, rigging and animation is still something that I have very little experience in. Not to mention it takes a ton of time, so we agreed to keep the characters to a minimum. Another thing we wanted to make sure of was that the in-game shadows wouldn't juxtapose against the shadows in the real world since our game is in Mixed Reality. Therefore, we're keeping the textures to mostly flat colours with no shading.
In conclusion, I'm very excited to see how our project will turn out. Never did I think that I would be doing a design challenge for a "client" for my capstone, but I am grateful I did because it gave us the opportunity to explore so many new things. I'll continue to update this blog as I go :)
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