This diagram shows the pipeline of work we did for our game Design Dispute, except we haven’t published it. Once we were sorted into groups we began preproduction. This included lots of discussion, concept drawings, and ideas on mindmaps. We had to decide what assets we would need to make, and keep a record of them on an list. To make sure we would stay on time with deadlines, we made a production schedule for the game, and individual schedules for ourselves.
In the production phase we set about making high quality assets from our concepts. From the work i did during that time, three of my assets made it into the game: Pobo (character), Arctic (level), and the Jailhouse (3D model). Another character that went in the game was Wattson, a 3D character that Luke made. I find the 3D process more difficult since after modelling a character you have to unwrap it’s UVs, texture it, rig and then animate it. I think that as a team we communicated well – we would hold a scrum every few days so we knew what everyone was working on. There was a good tactic the 3D modellers had when making assets for the Dusty Ridge level: they made a door template which helped stop people’s houses having different sized doors from each other.
Once we’d completed most jobs on the asset list, we started to implement them. By that i mean Adam started adding them to the project in Unity. He had a bit of trouble since the college version of Unity became corrupted at one point, so he kept a backup version on his hard drive. Since Adam was our only coder he had to sort out all the game’s functions – writing scripts for character walk, shoot, health, etc. While everyone worked on finalising their assets (e.g. getting renders), i worked on the artbook for our game. In the final weeks of polishing the game, we had to start thinking of what promotional material we would make. The obvious was posters for the exhibition, so i made a few, using the technique of collaging our work in the background.
Next Gen Course 