Complications

As the final few weeks of school wind down, Pendulum Ascension is nearing completion; however, progress on the game almost came to a screeching halt. Several issues contributed to this slow down, the first in which we finished many of the remaining tasks and halted the addition of new features. The second issue arose as a result of a mid-April blizzard interfering with a large chunk of scheduled work blocks. Finally the most crippling issue came about as a result of overloading the engine our game uses. Thankfully the first two issues are temporary and we resolved the problem with flash develop. As we approach the ending of the academic year, the amount of tasks dwindle to the point teammates run out of things to keep busy. The narrative work is finished and the audio is close behind, while the art and level design still have a bit of work left. The programmers are the only group the still have a lot of work left and we've allocated a few other team members to help with minor tasks. The recent issue of our overloaded engine, however, prevented most programming work from occurring. To make matters worse, Flashpunk's website, the engine used on this project, shutdown several months beforehand, so we lost any direct support on the problem. The core of the issue is that the engine ran out of memory and after some extensive digging, we finally determined discovered a solution in how to increase the ram. Aside from the complications, I'm currently working on finalizing the torch puzzle assets. As for the pieces found within the level, I completed them in the previous week. The pieces include a torch rack with separate holders for the torches, an altar, formally an oil pit, and four separate weights. The idea is that as the player moves the weights to different holders, they will move up or down on the rack. The last assets I need include a larger, gui version of the torch pieces in which the player will interact with.

Easter Break!

Easter Break begins today and will end with the All Fools Game Fair, an annual game design showcase of various course projects, including Pendulum Ascension, as well as other noteworthy projects. Over the last two weeks, the team's goal is to produce a playable version of the game for the fair in which to receive feedback from players. While we have not set an official feature lock, I decided to halt any additional feature until we implement the current features and if we still have time. I came to this decision Due to the amount of work building up for the programmers, as well as some problematic communication discrepancies. During the first week, I was absent from class as a blizzard stranded me back home, and thus missed out on important iteration planning. When the weather cleared and I made it back to campus, I began working on creating all the assets for the torch puzzle, the only task assigned to me. The problem, nobody made a list of what assets we needed for the puzzle, or even a clear explanation of how the puzzle worked. From the information available I knew we needed a torch rack, and an oil pit, though the description of the puzzle remained too vague and seemed to break the tower of Hanoi puzzle direction. I discussed the puzzle with others, and came up with several ideas similar to the original concept, yet worked around some of the issues I found with it, only to find out that there was communication problems between those designing the puzzle. For the time being I set that assignment aside until we figure out exactly what the puzzle is; however, I believe the assets are useable despite the confusion. This last week I began focusing on improving some of the other areas aside from the second floor which up to now was the center of attention. I began with environment outside the manor, a neglected and barren lawn, as there were few assets created for it. According to the feedback we have of the current state of the game, the grass texture appears "too happy" and out of place. I managed to create a new texture, though the process took longer and was more difficult than I expected. I wanted a grass tile that displayed more detail than a flat green tile, yet was not seriously obvious that it was tiled. It took several iterations to find a pattern that blended well and still retain a grassy texture. Thankfully, we decided the only visible section of the yard is the walkway up to the door, which greatly cuts down on the assets need. Tyler began working on the fence and gate around the mansion and I finished of the week with two leafless trees, which may or may not receive any.

Spring Break!

With spring break's arrival commencing right after the most recent post and lasting a week, very little development on Pendulum Ascension occurred. Despite this, I believe that the team deserved the week off considering all the progress we've made since the start of the semester. As for myself, I found time to work on the game and managed to refine the second floor layouts and fix some glaring issues. During the second week, we had a public presentation to prepare for, as well as an iteration demo for the class. Even with these two events, the team finished several important stories for them game. Right before spring break, I was working on creating assets for the level and so I opened it up to compare how the assets looked and what else we needed. That's when I noticed a number of issues with the level and made it a priority to resolve these problems. The most obvious problem arose from the misalignment, and in some cases stretched, tillable assets that clearly stood out and took away from the aesthetics. That's where the second major issue arose, as most of the level flattened into a single layer making it impossible to simply move the tiles into place as well as causing decorative elements permanently merged with the walls and floors. In order to fix this, it was necessary to re-import all the main mansion assets, which turned out beneficial as one of the artists created an improved wood floor tile to replace the old. I used a 32 by 32 pixel grid and Photoshop's snapping feature to ensure all the tiles lined up properly, occasionally mirroring assets when the edges blended together more effectively. As for the non-building assets, our level designer separated most into individual layers, grouped together for the appropriate rooms; however, several assets merged with the background layer, stretched, or otherwise distorted. I deleted the layers with the problematic assets and re-imported what I could and place them as close to their original locations. Once we returned from spring break, one of my teammates and I did a little interior decorating and improved the Feng Shui, while adding a few new assets into the level. As for the rest of the team, they completed several major features of the game including, the dialogue system, the black "fog of war" so the players can't see into rooms they haven't visited, essential art assets for the magic circle puzzle, as well as new user interface screens. I haven't put much thought into when we would have a beta release for the game, taking more of "it's ready when it's ready" approach, but with the progress we've made, I think I'm going to push for a release within the next week or two.

3/1/2013

The progress of our game is, for the most part, far ahead of schedule as we finished almost everything on the release plan. The last couple of weeks the artists on our team have completed the large list of art assets for Pendulum Ascension, known as story 93. The narrative team finished every task we planned for them, and we are finding it difficult to find new jobs for them. The programmers themselves are the only group that has anything left on the release plan, due in part that they required the rest to finish their tasks.

As I stated earlier, the artist completed a huge milestone with the completion of story 93, a majority of it consisting of assets for the second floor of the mansion where most of the game play takes place. While story 93 contain the most prominent assets required we still have a plethora of assets in which we can add to the aesthetics of the game. I initiated a new list of additional assets and, with the help of other team members, began looking at what else we could create for the game. The new list consists mostly of decorative items (carpets, plants, etc.), variations of current objects (front and side views as well as color), or fixes to certain assets.

As for me personally, I finished the bedroom assets I mention in the previous blog, before creating various assets from the new list. Unlike story 93, the new list, as of right now, does not have as easily defined categories to assign deadlines to. Due to the lack of well-defined categories, I chose to work on assets that required refining or variations, while the other artists worked on the others. This route appears suitable as despite the new list being just as long as story 93, we completed over half the items already.

As of the last two work blocks, I stopped working on the art assets and instead began refining the level layout as I've notice a number of issues that need fixing. The core issue stems from the flattened main layer with many of the assets merged into and thus making it difficult to edit a fix mistakes. I am attempting to recreate it into separate layers and to line up the pieces more accurately with the grid.

On a final note, as development is ahead of schedule, we are considering adding a second murder to the game.

Here's a look at all the new assets I have made

2/15/13

The scheduled release plan of all the stories and tasks required for Pendulum Ascension which we established at the beginning of the semester has proven extremely efficient for our progress. With the aid of the schedule, each member of the team gains deadlines to finish specific tasks each week and prevents us from wasting too much time. As a result, the project's development gained momentum, especially in the creation of art assets. Continuing off of the previous weeks, I have personally taken charge of creating the art requirements of the fireplace puzzle as that is the first puzzle scheduled for completion. I divided up all the necessary assets on a room by room basis or other grouping when they did not fit in a room category. The set of bathroom assets, which I mention in the last blog post, is an example of this categorization and requirement of the fireplace puzzle. The other categories included the study, where the fireplace is located, the hidden room behind it, and a set of additional items based of the revisions of the puzzle. The first piece I created for the study was the fireplace itself, as the whole puzzle centers around it. Since it is intended to act as a secret passage, I needed to create a version of the fireplace that was lit, and one that revealed the path. In keeping with the clockwork themed mansion, I utilized gears as the fire guard and a door behind the fire, which also served to hide the path when lit. I briefly looked into animating the fire, and gears to move out of the way, but decided to put that off to a later story if we had time for it. I also produced front and side views of a couch and end table, as well as create a desk lab.

After the study, I naturally moved on to the room hidden behind the fireplace. The number of assets required for this was less that the study, with an antique desk as the only piece of furniture. To supplement this room, I created two books meant to serve as clues and narrative to the game. I also created a sheet of paper that I actually put text on, though small enough to be illegible, but it added the look as if there was something written on the pages. Since there were fewer assets needed for this room, I also worked on creating items based on the revisions to the puzzle. This included a key, screwdriver, and wrench all meant mainly for the inventory screen and proved to be the most difficult simply due to scale. I also created a toolbox that is located in the bathroom, and like all the assets, I attempted to give an antique appearance.

I've also added a preview of what I'm working on for next week

I am rather surprised how rapid Christmas break came and went even to the point where Christmas snuck up on me, and sadly to say neither my team nor I managed to accomplish any sort of work on Pendulum Ascension. The reasons vary from having none or poor internet connection, work, or spending the break with family. We are now three weeks into the spring semester and, despite this setback, we have picked up an immense amount of momentum. The first week sought to bring numerous changes and refinement not only to our game project, but to our development process. We began the week by fulfilling one of my goals of creating an outline of all the tasks and features we needed or discussed and issues that needed solutions. From this outline we then cut features and other elements, such as the sanity system, that didn't fit the current direction of the game and/or didn't improve our game. Along with this, we discussed the issues of which the two major problems brought up included the sluggish art pipeline and the puzzles that lacked interest and challenge. The problem with our pipeline originated with the artists creating their assets as 1000 by 1000 pixel images which were then scaled down to a range closer to 64 pixels when implemented into the game. This formed two issues, first making the art time-consuming and secondly, creating the assets inefficient due to the rescaling and loss of quality. We resolve this by refining pipeline where the artist developed at the same scale as they appear in game. As for the second major issue, we decided to look at examples of puzzles and other games, such as Tsuro in the case of the magic circle puzzle, for inspiration. Studying the mechanics of other games and puzzles helped us see what was wrong with our current versions. Part of this came from an unclear understanding of our own game mechanics, especially that of the watch and what role it played within our game. To resolve this, as well as to kill two birds with one stone, we set up a semester schedule where both the narrative designer and level designer would dedicate an entire week to a single puzzle, and communicate with the rest of the team on what would be required for the new designs. As I stated earlier, the creation of the semester schedule killed two birds with one stone with the second being it set goals for everyone on the team to complete by the Friday of every week. I worked extra hours during the second week to see to that this schedule, with the help of the outline and input of team members, was as complete as possible. While I managed to complete a majority of it, the schedule is still a living document as there are and will be new items to add and discuss. I also spent extra hours during the week finishing the bathroom assets as one of the first stories due on the schedule.