Introduction Let me start off by saying this. A TON has changed with the game’s identity as well as the team dynamic since my last reflection post – both for the better. In Step 2, our game was decidedly a camera game where we focused on polishing the polaroid camera feel and function while in VR. We were entering un-explored waters in terms of what gameplay could use this camera, and what should justify its…
At False Panda Studios, we are working hard to narrow down our ideas and select the best game possible to continue developing for capstone. We have realized that the “camera” mechanic that was prototyped in the detective game was amazing and showed lots of potential. For this reason, we wanted to focus our engineering time on this feature. We first wanted to go for more of a time travel theme where the camera was showing…
It is finally capstone, and my new team is focusing on VR yet again! This time around, we are going to be working on three distinct prototypes to decide the right genre for our team. The three we picked are as follows. The first prototype is about exploring the idea of a rogue-like in VR. This genre is often done in VR, but we want to sprinkle the additional mechanic if having all movement be…
Early on my team realized that we need to apply to get more development hardware. We had a serious lack of VR headsets, so we decided to apply to the Oculus Start program. This involved me creating a company website, working on a central brand, and also typing up important material on the game. I applied to the Oculus Start program and heard back a few weeks later with a half-approval. It was contingent on…
In doing our final team postmortem, we reflected on the project as a whole so far. We talked about what went right, what went wrong, and what we can improve on future projects in our careers. Starting with what went right, we felt like we really delivered on what we set out to achieve. Our game was mostly bug free, had a complete game loop, and was very fun to play. Everybody who plays the…
After our game went through the midmortem presentations, our team expanded from 5 to 10 people! This includes 4 designers, 3 programmers, 1 artist, and 2 producers. I had to ensure that this process went smoothly and that each team member had some sort of defined roles. To start, we reviewed the previous 5 person team's working agreement and I asked each person if there was anything they wanted to add or remove from this…
Our team decided to attend RPI Gamefest as we thought it would be a great opportunity to represent the college as well as to showcase our beta phase of development to the public for the first time. With our recent success at the Champlain Gamefest, we knew it was the right time to showcase yet again. Prepping for gamefest involved the team crunching the day before to ensure all the core systems were functional and…
Our team decided to attend Champlain Game Fest to showcase our alpha build of Snowball Showdown. This festive is a one day, family friendly event featuring locally made digital and tabletop games in Essex Junction, Vermont. We were up against roughly 40 other games which were anything from VR games such as VR yo-yo game String Theory to co-op horror games such as Gaze of the Abyss. Setting up the booth took some time, as…
In the last post, I talked about all the ways that my team and I were preparing for midmortems. On Februrary 15th, we presented our game to the whole studio! Following our presentation, I will discuss what I feel like we nailed in showcasing our game. The audience seemed to love our skit. It went over just as we wanted it to. We really wanted to convey the fantasy of our game. First by pointing…
We picked Snowball Showdown to polish for midmortems. In our game development program, this is where teams get cut in half for the most viable games to move forward. There was a lot on my team's shoulders during this vital time. We knew how badly we wanted to make it through midmortem cuts so we could continue making Snowball Showdown the game we had envisioned it to be. In exactly a week and a half,…