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.