The first d(r)eadline.

We have little over a week before our first big "hand in", that includes, our game idea, all the concept art we had drawn and the technical prototype (no art or anything, just a show of mechanics). I'm really dreading the next week since we have a lot of work still to do before it's ready, Ben's calling it "crunch" time, so we're basically working 11 hour days to try and get stuff finished, tough times ahead.

We have also settled on the game's main character being a lost rabbit, but Simon and Phil had made some changed to the game, we're kind of reverting to the original idea of being able to switch dimensions mid level, at any point, in order to overcome obstacles (sound familiar?).

The dimensions are now;

The void dimension
In this dimension, the rabbit will be his original beat up scruffy self, and the void will be full of lost items.

The paper dimension
In this dimension, the rabbit will appear as an origami rabbit, and the level will be full of stationary items.

The robot dimension
In this dimension, the rabbit will appear as a robo-rabbit, and the level will be all mechanical and industrial.

The biscuit dimension
In this dimension, the rabbit will appear as a gingerbread rabbit, and the level will be full of biscuity goodness!

I'll include some of the sketches I made;

Dimension rabbits!

More dimension rabbits, and a possible fall animation

Critical thinking, show and tell!

This week we had our first "show and tell" kind of set-up on the monday, in the form of a group crit session, this is basically the 3 groups talking about their ideas to far, and where they wanted to go with their games, to the rest of the groups, if that makes any sense :S

Unfortunately, I didn't make it in, so I can't write too much about how it went, only what I was told, and that was that it went well, and the other groups seemed to like the ideas we'd come up with so far!

This same week, I had finally started writing code, YAY! This is what I had been waiting for, back into the programming fray, we split the coding up between me and Phil, and my first task was to code all the movement into the game, which I immediately dove into.

We also started using a site called ClockingIT which basically let's us all keep track of what tasks we need to do and when the deadlines are, it's free and really useful! Simon's basically the manager of our project, he's our dad :P

Gecko, Geckone! Time to worry?

Ok, so this past week Ryan had offered (since he gecko was his idea) to draw up a two-page pitch document for the unnamed game, this resulted in excitement, followed by us decided to scrap the entire game completed, now I know what you're thinking... WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! Well, I'm not too sure myself actually, we just weren't completely sold on our own idea, and all the other groups around us appeared to be moving on, we were beginning to worry, just a little :)

We decided to leave our lecture, and go into the common room, get some snacks, and sit on the big comfy leather sofas, this was to be our new design area, away from all the noise, just the 5 of us. We were quickly throwing out new ideas and had a really good 3 hours solid talking about everything.

Just to re-cap, our idea had to be based around multiple realities, this was set in stone! So we really liked the idea of the player being able to shift dimensions while playing, but we needed a reason why, why was the player in this situation? Why could he shift dimensions? Why did he need to? I proposed the idea that the player could be stuck somewhere, and he needs to progress through levels, defeat a boss, therefore unlocking a new dimension to travel to, so rather than frantic, fast-paced switching, you unlocked the dimensions just like unlocking the next level in any game.

The idea received a lot of praise, and we worked off this idea, so, where was the player stuck? THE VOID! A place not in time and space, where all lost things end up, car keys, tv remotes, odd socks, and even ATLANTIS! Then there it was, I missed a lesson, and next thing I knew, the stories protagonist had become a toy rabbit who had been lost by his owner, and you could travel to other dimensions like we had previously designed, the paper (which was stationary) and some new ideas from the team in the form of a metal dimension and a biscuit dimension, that's right.... biscuit.

We continued to add and remove certain aspects and the whole team really came together and we collaborated for hours, it was a super productive meeting and I feel like we've made great progression, time to worry? I think not !