This is a thread of Reina’s weekly journals.
New replies will be added every week.

Week 1

The major thing our team did the first week of the course was to decide on the game that we are going to develop for the semester. I contributed by suggesting some games I played in the past to refer to for some of our ideas, which were “Freddy Spaghetti” and “The Almost Gone”. I joined the team mid-week so the suggestions were based on the original idea the team had before I joined, mostly centring around an idea of exploring a room. As a team, we built on the idea to make the map isometric view and implemented a rule of 10 seconds per round. I searched up Bartle’s player types and discussed with the group what types of players would take interest in our game the most. We wrote our game proposal on a google document. I took contribution by writing down the target audience and player type sections. I contributed in other parts of the document by discussing different game ideas and bringing up concerns and questions about the details of the game other group members did not think of. For example, the types of puzzles we are going to have in the world and what would happen after an artifact is collected were some topics brought to discussion as a group. I also contributed by creating the initial powerpoint for the presentation and its visual elements before we got together as a team to make iterations. During the presentation, I felt that our storyline and the artifacts are not very strongly connected. In the upcoming week, I plan to build on this aspect and write an overarching storyline that justifies what the players are playing for. As a visual designer, I also plan to find more visual references the game could base on so that the team can start visualizing the game and its colour scheme. By doing this, I am also hoping we as a team can start modelling the character and the artifacts.

Week 2

We focused most our time this week as a team to make story outlines and go over details from previous week’s presentation. I, as the user interface designer, brought some visual artifacts to share my thoughts on how the game will look like to other group members. Some visual artifacts were about color schemes and aesthetics the game will look and feel like, creating a sense of mood board. Other visual artifacts were about the interface, such as menu and options. How the whiteboard would look like was also brought to discussion. In the following week, since the game design document is due next Tuesday, we will focus on that and in the process, I expect to participate by creating flowboards and concept shots.

Week 3

This week, my team’s main focus was to finish the Game Design Document. The GDD had a requirement to create a Functional Flowboard. I took charge of creating the Functional Flowboard as I wanted to work on how the user will interact with the system of the game such as the menu. I went on Figma with some of the other teammates to create a grey box wireframe of the game, such as the landing page, menu, and the Main Base where the player will roam around playing as the main character. I also connected the grey box wireframes together to demonstrate the flow the players will take as they navigate through the system.

Week 5

This week, I mostly worked on the UI of the main menu in preparation for GDD Version 2. The design was made on Figma which is to be incorporated into Unity. The look and feel of the game UI such as font and color choices were discussed within the group. I also joined group meetings held over Discord regarding the overall game mechanics and improvements we can implement to the game in response to the playtesting and GDD review notes. 

Week 7

helped with the new level design

Week 9

Alpha Code document contents were written and diagrams (graphs and overview map) were made by me. Assisted with playtesting and game mechanics were brought to discussion within the group.

Week 11

Collectives UI and the timer bar design

Week 12

Dialogue box UI

Week 13

Final Gold Code document was worked on. Game UI finalized and refined. Diegetic UI of CatComm was designed by me.