Monday, November 14th
The very first day of the game project started with getting instructions for the assignment from our supervisors.
Following this lecture, the team decided on roles for our members well as establishing a basic vision for gameplay and art,
making sure we were all on the same page. Ideas about features to add, remove and change, were discussed and added to the documentation.
Together with the lead programmer and lead artist, I started working with the team to distribute the workload.
When I could find some spare time, I busied myself with writing the GDD, which we started from scratch.
After lunch the team held another meeting where we brainstormed further, discussed limitations and possibilities,
set the scope for the game and worked on a more polished game idea.
The programmers got to work making flowcharts and planning out the structure for programming.
Victor made a basic shotgun and some environmental mock-ups, Felicia started work on character concepts and
Oskar worked on the player character, called Morris.
Tuesday, November 15th
I held a meeting first thing in the morning of the second day, where the team discussed how the previous day's work went,
any issues and questions they wanted help with, and what they would work on during the day.
Following the meeting, we attended a lecture about source control in Unreal. I worked on the GDD whenvever I could find some time.
After lunch, we held a meeting discussing the art direction of the game, and held a discussion about the gameplay design and overall vision.
During a one-on-one meeting, my co-designer Hari Murali and I determined that the player's choices did not feel impactful enough.
We developed a new, simple system aimed at giving the player more opportunities to weigh their decisions against each other before
making one choice over another. Our hope was that this would make the player's choices feel more meaningful.
We then discussed this system with the programmers during a meeting. In this meeting we also discussed a system for pick-ups,
some potential Easter eggs, and how rooms would reward the player. Further, we were informed by the programmers that
procedural generation could be implemented without issue.
The programmers finished their flowcharts and got them approved by a supervisor. Oskar kept workin on the player character,
Felicia made concept art for NPCs and Victor made more props.
Wednesday, November 16th
I again held a meeting in the morning where the previous and current day's work was discussed. I then got to working on the GDD,
where I focused on writing down a detailed description for how the currency and shop systems should work.
My co-designer Hari and I then worked further on level design and layout for a few hours,
and discussed the changes with our lead programmer. After testing how some similar games had handled level structure,
we decided to change the approach we had been thinking of to something that was similar but that we were more happy with.
After lunch the lead programmer and I started testing source control within Unreal, and faced some issues.
Once these were resolved I went back to writing on the design document,
now focusing on writing the segment for how each of the different kinds of rooms work and the reasons they were designed that way.
Since their flowcharts were now finished, the programmers started working within the engine,
setting up the project and getting the source control running. The artists did some more work on the character,
props, weapons and environment.
Thursday, November 17th
The team started the day with our regular morning meeting. Following the meeting I got to work restructuring this
developer diary to it's final version, and then discussed design with Hari and worked on the GDD for the rest of the day.
Hari worked mostly on level design and did some work on the GDD, while David and Anton continued getting started in Unreal.
André made the start of a weapons system, where the designers can change numbers for all the gun types.
Victor remade the shotgun and started with some texturing. Felicia kept making models for the enemies,
and Ellinor worked on the environment and props while Oskar did the rigging for the player character.
Friday, November 18th
The morning stared with our regular scrum meeting. The whole team agreed that work was coming along nicely and according to plan.
Our timeline was looking good. I got to work on the document, focusing in on menus and user interface design,
as well as filling out and updating the parts that I was unhappy with. After an early lunch I spent a few hours trying to get the
project and source control set up on Felicia's computer, before ultimately admitting defeat and leaving it to the programmers.
Some discussions were had one-on-one with members of the team to make sure everything was going smoothly.
I finished the last day of week one with some more work on the GDD.
Hari designed a few more basic rooms for the level, and André finished the base gun system before lunch,
then started working on the player character in engine. The other programmers spent time improving their Unreal knowledge.
Victor remade a couple of guns and did some more work on environments, as did Ellinor.
Felicia finished modelling one of the robot enemies, and Oskar worked on animations for the player character.
