The Build Asset Backcheck Yap to Broadcast All Laudable Leverage Sources

The fonts employed in our game can be found at the following locations:


https://www.dafont.com/go-wild.font
https://www.dafont.com/ghoulish-intent.font https://www.dafont.com/ghoulish-fright-aoe.font

Programs Utilized:

Visuals Modified on GIMP, Adobe Photoshop

Synths generated and music produced using Caustic 3

Sounds edited on Avid Pro Tools

Programmed with VS CODE


Game Engine Employed: Unity

Week 10: You are the Wind in my Sails, Brian.

As this particular journey of kalamari inC appears to be nearing its conclusion, my romantic spirit turns to whimsical tales of nautical expeditions and fantastical voyages, as I consider the very spirit with which they yearned for the unknown.

No, this is not the end of this adventure, there is so much left to be done- as a game, as a team, as individuals, and as creators.

Horizons are as elusive as they are pristine, and I am endlessly blessed to pursue them with this remarkable hearty crew. I am honored to sail by their side, and they serve as a boundless source of inspiration and joy. It is because of them that I would be content to never reach the horizon, as they have taught me to accept the gentle guidance of the tides.



There have probably been hundreds of authors who have written similar things, but WAAAAAY better. My goodness, I am so melodramatic sometimes. At least the running nautical metaphor sort of paid off.

______________________________________________________________________________

*Ahem* now, as far as the creation of Fingers Crossed is concerned, my role was largely twofold.

First, I created the in-game music, mostly using "Caustic 3," a music creation software/ synth editor.
Second, I wrote a large portion of the script which we handed to our talented voice actor to complete the lines for "Mr. Face."

Less notably, I also performed some more minor sound editing for a variety of our supplemental sound effects, and lent my dulcet tones to the game myself in the form of guttural, vaguely euphoric grunting. I also pride myself in being the sole defender of justice in this universe, as without me, this game would have contained a simply unacceptable quantity of rhyming. Honestly, those rhyme schema would have proven downright irresponsible, but due to my interference, it is not so unwieldy.

Beta Milestone

What I did:

Everything short of art and sound assets. Except I edited the assets to make them work. Then I guess some of the assets. I just like saying ASSets.

For real though I coded and implemented everything in the game, worked on design, playtesting, some animations, etc.

What we didn't do:
We had some sound assets I grabbed like months ago and did not remember the links to anymore so we replaced those at 3 am. *high fives face*

So basically nothing unless u count the software packages we used to make it. Personally, I used Unity, GIMP, Audition, VS Code.

What we still need to do:
POLISH.
Color Palletting.
Re-record dirty audio.
Nuke the code and start over.

How much of that will get done before festivals? I'm taking bets....

Woot! 3rd blog done! How many was I supposed to have?


...


Well, its a start.
-J

Week 10: ITS OOOOOVVVVVVVVVVERRRR

I don't have anything profound to say. We've had our ups and downs, but in the end, we made something that I don't think any of us has made before. A party game. It's been quite the journey, and I hope our friendship doesn't end here.

-------------------------------------------------------------
As for what I contributed....
That's the background art -the main menu, settings menu, and buttons (excluding the font which Daria font and placed)- and the end screen. Oh, the wonderfully awkward end screen. It's a beaut. Although technically not for this class, I did a bulk of our playtesting documents, and with Justin's more eloquent wording, we relayed our findings & experiences from our playtesting class back to our team here in game mod.

Watch the video
Download Here


Or use the links below:

https://youtu.be/DOBucUyjoSk

https://untamedarts.itch.io/fingers-crossed?secret=uvLcrvy5t40ColQiDATW3OshQ

Week 9: The Most Precious Treasure

We had a playtest

For which I prepared cookies

They had spooky face

Week 09: Playtest

We had another playtest today. It went pretty well, but we did not have as many people show up as we did last time (eighteen last time as opposed to the seven or eight we had today). That’s not too much of a problem, we’ll probably get a few others over the weekend –maybe.

Things we learned: People enjoy the prompts, both visual and audio prompts. The voice actor did well in delivering lines –definitely kept people interested. The visuals work well with the theme. And the game runs pretty smoothly –except for the time where the visual prompts were not popping up for some reason. That’s something we’ll have to go back and check on.

Things we will change and/or do: Art-wise we might add a few things here and there. Specifically looking at the main menu, we might have the background slowly spin. We were thinking of adding a summoning circle in the beginning and having Mr. Face pop out from it. We will have to mess with the audio a little more, tweaking the levels of various pieces. Maybe changing the background music a tiny bit.

Most of what we are doing now is just polishing the game up as is rather than adding anything new that we haven’t talked about before.

Things are looking good so far.

Week 08: We Gettin' There

I forgot to do my blog post last week! That's ok I guess, since I feel we're getting close to a "complete" game. I say complete with hesitance only because there's always MORE we could do to make the game feel complete and better, etc.

I'm not really sure what to say. We've got the voice lines now. Justin is working hard on the programming and it's looking great. Daria made the prompts and Charlie made the music, Anna and I are pretty close to being done with the art as well. Everything is coming to a sort of ENDING moment which is really nice.

I wish I had more to say. I don't even have a skeleton to post here since I'm on a school computer. You'll all have to suffer with NO SKELETON this week.

Week 09: Another day another blog

Last week: I redid the title screen and parsed out its parts properly. I started remaking the prompts with the new fonts.

This week: I (and Anna) are finishing all remaining prompts

Week 8: Turning the Tide

With most of the major hurdles overcome, the last leg of our voyage commences, driving us in pursuit of theoretical perfection. Special consideration is being given to improving the clarity and adjusting the persistent tone through narrative and character interaction.

Perhaps the front line of this gruesome conflict will be the ear, and as a result of my inefficiencies with composition and music production software, it is becoming more and more strenuous to modify the tone on the fly. While I finally feel comparatively at ease with the background music that I created to play during the main game, it quickly became apparent that the key I wrote in was a trifle too sinister to suit our purposes, but regrettably, without some careful transposition, it is largely too late to modify. The most meaningful method of improving the music will be adding additional voices to add a layer of charm or whimsy in an attempt to curb the fear factor.

Additionally, I am going to record upright bass and jazz snare with a musician friend of mine this weekend (assuming he doesn't cancel on me again, which is an unfortunate plausibility), which will lead to a very interesting main menu version of the main theme from the other background music. I am hopeful that the addition of this element will be a huge step toward making the game seem more... marketable.

Week 08: Jackbox Party Pack Party

I can't think of anything to write. I've added more art. We've added some more sounds and replaced others. The main menu looks brilliant. Gracie did a great job with the button faces. Daria picked an awesome font which is used throughout the game. Charles has been working on the background music which he keeps saying is not great, but I love it. And Justin is a goddamn robot.

On a different note, most of us (plus some from other groups) hung out over the weekend and spent the entire time playing games like Quiplash and Monster Seeking Monster. It was a great bonding moment. Also, party games are awesome -which is why we're making one.

That's all I have.

Oh and some leftover homemade truffles which the team might kill me to get.

Week 7: X Marks the Spot

While this game is extraordinarily precious, the real treasure was the friendships we made along the way.

I've gotta be honest, I'm running out of thematically appropriate segues for the blog posts.

...



So I've been working on the music, and it has been brutal as a result of me having a well developed knowledge of music theory, but incredibly insignificant understanding of the use and application of synthesizers, which makes the intended application of my musical ideas frustrating at best. I feel as though I have made a great deal of progress in the last, but the track is still somewhat lacking for now. I am retaining hope that my musician friends will come through and allow me to do live recordings, but I am confident that I can produce a respectable tune regardless.

Week 07: A Baby is Born Again

Wow! So our game is going well. I think? I hope. It feels like it is.

We've mostly just been fixing up stuff. The biggest thing to add is the voice clips now. We may have a VA, but if that VA thing falls through, one of us will do the lines. Hoo-boy. I'd be happy to do the lines if we need it, but that means y'all gonna have to be ready for my voice and how I try to voice act. It's not really a pretty thing to be honest.

ANYWAYS, I'm not sure what to write exactly. We're doing well. There isn't much drama at the moment. We've been talking about how on Etsy you can buy Overwatch themed slime and that that's very weird. But also kind of amazing.

I think our game is really going well. I'm not OVERCONFIDENT here (cause we all know overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer) but I'm confident we can finish what we need to have a decent game by the end of this class. We'll definitely need to continue polishing after that if we want this game to be what it was born to be, but that's for the future.

Here's some of the stuff I'm working on. I'm going to add some squash and stretch to the actual balls. Daria suggested it and I fully agree, it'd add a lot more character I think.

Week 07: I'm busy!

Last week: I found a ton of fonts and tried them out to make a fun title. Made the title screen. Parsed out the buttons.

This week: Make the settings screen, change the font and designs of the prompts.

Week 07: Knickity Knack

Inspiration! Motivation! All the things! ...are back.

After seeing the playtesters play through our game and enjoy it, I felt a bit better about the game. After a couple more meetings and a couple more art attempts on my part, I;m back in it. I honestly don't have much to write this week. We've changed the background art and buttons -which aren't implemented just yet- but they look great. I SWEAR.

Alpha build

Right so that thing I'm supposed to do or else I'm somehow a lazy student? Whatever, here's the build:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B48MbGMg2nn2RnU4cXloOC1IVTA

Woo.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kj14Ufm6Dxen6yADML_9O_aBPeLPPLgAI8FCV6P3voQ/edit?usp=sharing

Now I'm going back to actually developing it before I go to my FULL-TIME JOB.

Week 6: Land Ho!

The design and development process for "Fingers Crossed" has been consistently rocky, with frequent indecision and mixed feedback plaguing our progress at every turn. Despite having supreme confidence in the efficacy of our ambition, I too faltered as morale wavered, and uncertainty loomed. The frequency of uneasy sentiments gradually climbed, as each of us individually questioned if we had been charting the proper course to success, leaving us little option but to charge forth, unafraid of our seemingly incorporeal destination.

Because of this, it is with great pleasure that I feel the last week of progress can be described as no less than an absolute triumph. Both in terms of feedback from various testing parties and of team unity, our path has been made clear, and we are able to proceed with full knowledge and comfort that we are where we would like to be.

At this point, most of our incoming responses have pertained to the clarity of information, and several of our players have had various nitpicks about the nature of our interface, which is exactly the kind of problem that we want to be having at this stage. If such a large portion of our testers (for what we are declaring our "alpha build," to be clear) are garnering such enjoyment out of our game even with myriad rough aspects, it suggests to me that the quality ceiling of our game is far higher than I had ever imagined.

I know I say this fairly often, and it comes across as severely overbearing, but I am tremendously proud of the excellent quality of work that my teammates have consistently put forth. I have said this many times, but I am truly thankful (and exceptionally lucky) to be honored to work with such kind and talented people. They make me extremely hopeful and optimistic about the potential of our game.

Week 06: I was anxious for NOTHING

I had so much anxiety about class today and I'm not entirely sure why. I was worried our game wouldn't be good enough to even play or something like that. I think my anxiety might've been more about my own emotions than the actual situation (obviously) but yeah. After class today I dunno, I'm more optimistic. DON'T GET ME WRONG, we still have a LOT to accomplish and I'm worried about that, but I think I'm a little less worried about the things that aren't worries. Which is good, if that even made sense.

We've got an alpha! I mean it's ROUGH but we've got something. We need to add clarity, that's the most important part. Polish is important too, but making the gameplay clear to the player is more important than even that. Currently we have a lot of "messing with the players" in our gameplay, but we need that to be clear too. It shouldn't be "I'm messing with you and you don't know" it should be, "you know I'm messing with you but you're still playing". I think we can definitely make that happen. Or I'm gonna hope we can since optimism is helpful sometimes.

What I can say for sure is that it's the best feeling in the WHOLE WORLD to see someone play your game and smile. Yeah ok, the smile might not mean the game is good at all, but boy does it feel nice. Even if the smile is short lived, just knowing that someone got a kick out of a project I was a part of makes me feel like I've done something. I hope to finish game mod with a game that makes people smile and makes them CONTINUE to smile throughout gameplay. A game that makes them feel awkward but feel a little bond afterwards like "hey I touched that guy's finger". It makes everything else feel a bit less awkward which I think is really nice.

I GUESS I'M JUST in a good mood right now. We've still got a ton of work to do but my passion has been returned to me. I can see this game being a really fun game. A game to be proud of. I'm excited to work towards that goal.

week 06: we have things!

Technically, it's week 6 of development, but week 7 of the quarter. I think? Maybe?

I think we're finally back on track.
We've updated a few things since last week. If I remember correctly we have since added a main menu page, an end screen, the background changes according to who is in the lead, a timer of sorts, and a settings page. Then a few nights later, we have visual prompts, a score bar, and individual sounds.

There's still more to go. Updated menu pages. Audio cues for prompts. More prompts. And good ol' Mr. Face! (It's the name I've give our narrator.)

We've playtested it a bit the other day. It was entertaining to watch others play. We received some good feedback. Things we did well. Things we can improve on.

People interacted, they got engaged. One mentioned that they don't usually get competitive but this brought it out. Players laughed at the ridiculousness of the game and even with each other. Some wanted to keep playing. It was evident when someone was looking at the game on their own and three other people joined in. One of my favorite moments was when some players realized the background color corresponded with whomever was winning, which sparked more competition.

Here's a quick video of what it looked like:
https://youtu.be/qoauW0VVzDw

Week (5?)- Hoist Somethin'

The other posts are probably going to talk about how many times we have dramatically changed direction in the last 2 weeks, so I'll try to focus on something different: sounds!

Right now, all of the sounds in our game are placeholders that were barely thrown together after several dozen things had gone wrong with the recording process. I even taught myself my intended musical theme on the piano only to realize that I lacked the proper cable to record the audio (and in fact, I was given reason to believe that it didn't exist). Eventually I contacted a musician friend of mine, and he tossed together a quick 30 second loop to tide us over, and used my PC headset microphone to capture assorted mouth sounds. They are gross and ineffective, but up until now, they have served their purposes.

The time has come, however, to toss in some actual audio, and I've been tinkering around to make that music come to fruition- I even broke out my violin for the first time in three years and tried to dig my brother's old bass out of my basement (only to find that the case was empty). After a few hours, I came up with something that I was reasonably happy with, but each mechanical and thematic change our game has undergone recently has made the theme less and less appropriate, which means I will be spending the weekend starting from scratch on that again. The current tone is both goofy and sinister, but also tense, which is kind of a difficult assortment to capture all at once. I think I'm fine at composing, but I honestly have no clue where to begin on this.

The sound effects, on the other hand, are going to be far more impressive, as we are applying our own acting talents to bring the Press // Release Folk to life. Our players will be fully unsettled if we have anything to say about it (er... moan about it?).

The inclusion of a narrator character is also going to add some complexities, but I doubt it'll be a problem after some clever mixing. Justin says he's got a voice actor for the part, so that's one mystery solved.

I think the tone of our game is absolutely wonderful, but it does sort of defy conventional genre, and it will test both my skills as a musician and my access to proper instrumentation to bring any sort of music to the table.

Week 05: Hey SAW!

I'm not late this time. I'm learning.

So on Tuesday we basically set out to change everything about our game. As soon as we left the classroom I didn't know who I was anymore or what we had just discussed. In the moment changing everything felt so right, but later it just didn't seem to make complete sense. The new idea was definitely a fun one but getting it all done in a week seemed like a crazy idea (especially for our programmer).

We took time to think on it and basically, decided not to change everything, but to change everything. What I mean by that is that we're keeping our original idea, but adding this narrative to it that kind of changes everything about it in a good way.

We're adding a SAW like character to our game. The narrator. The narrator is to be presented as someone talking through the tablet. We're not sure yet who this character is or if we want them to have a face, but will hopefully discuss that at 3 today.

Brian said something interesting that I feel really resonates with our current changes. He mentioned the aspect of internet culture (mostly because the faces have that "meme" quality to them) and then talked about trolling. SO YEAH OK INTERNET WORDS ARE ALWAYS SO CRINGEY, but I don't have another word to fit this feeling. Our game essentially is pushing people to troll one another in a friendly but somewhat competitive magic circle. They are getting to know each other by each reaching this level of annoying at the same time.

I dunno, I think this all sounds wonderful. Maybe it'll all come crashing down when we start our meeting today, but as of right now, I'm feeling super good about this. We need to figure out how to represent the vocal prompts so they have a visual piece as well, because banking everything on the vocal aspect just ain't gonna fly with how tablets and party games work.

I'm excited for this! I think we can pull it off and have our rough demo by Tuesday. I'm really excited to see it all come together. We've got this team. I still love all of you, we're doing great things. Let's be strong, and make this baby come to life.

Week 05: "...."

The confusion continues.

It really does stem from our lack of direction, which further stems from the idea itself not having a clear lead. No one person came up with the idea -at least not that I can remember considering the versions it went through- so there was never one specific vision to follow. Instead, we kept trying to reshape the vision, coming up with new brilliant ideas that we just don't have the time for anymore.

In all honesty, there's a certain point within this project where I just lost the passion for it. The mess of ideas has been hurting productivity. That being said, I love getting people to playtest our game and seeing their reactions. People really do seem to enjoy it, but for short periods of time and when/if they know their score and who the winner is. Otherwise, it feels pointless because it's endless, there's no set time limit. We've tested so many things at this point and those may not be explicitly seen in our product because we keep taking things out, like the crowns.

I think I'm just burnt out from everything. Not just this project, just everything in general. Several different group projects, all with their own meeting times. Work. Mentoring. Playtesting. Various other obligations. I'm drowning.

But that's beside the point. I have to get my head back in the game.
And I think in order to do that, I have to have a firmer stance on things.

Week 04: OH NO I'M LATE AGAIN

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW. Late AGAIN. What a fool I was. But I'm here now I guess. I can talk about some things.

So, we had a LONG meeting on Thursday and we came to some conclusions and then got rid of those conclusions and came up with NEW conclusions and then went back to an old idea from a while ago. That's generally how our meetings go, and I'm happy so long as we decide SOMETHING by the end.

We went back to Press Release Man. Did I ever talk about him? Press Release Man, PR man for short was a short lived dream of mine, a dream who became a meme, and now might become a reality, which is wild. We'll see. Animals are definitely cuter and easier to work with, but facial expressions are glorious and should be loved. ANYWAYS, so I got to bring him back. He Press, and he Release. Such a glorious man. I respect his attitude too. He's got his life figured out and is going places. SO YEAH! Wow my late post is all about PR man. Amazing. I might as well show the concepts for the cast then.  Original PR man on the left with his more colorful buddies.

Playtesting

Playtesting Participants:

Age	Gender	Major
21	F	Elementary Education
19	F	Accounting
19	M	Secondary Education: Mathematics
20	M	Game Design
19	M	Game Design
21	M	Game Design
21	F	Digital Cinema
20	M	Game Design
21	M	Computer Science
21	F	Animation

We’ve learned a number of things from playtesting. Players found the game intriguing, which is a good start. Our first playtests were set up in such a way that the players knew which speed they were playing on. Those speeds were low, medium, high, and extreme. Given a minute for each speed, the players determined that high and extreme were too quick and made the game utter chaos. However, when the speed changed dynamically the players didn’t pay much attention to it –and could not distinguish between the speeds. That being said, game length felt “about right” for many of our players but scoring was off. It was fairly difficult for our players to determine their scores. Some barely paid any attention to it for that matter.

Things we have to improve on are:

·         Our scoring system

o   We’re thinking of using a crown to show who the winning player is.

o   Another option is using 3 crowns to designate first, second, and third place. So far, that has proved to be a bit too much on screen. Some say the buttons now look like beyblades. Let it rip!

o   Getting rid of the score number altogether

·         Art

o   Having an ice background or a granite/countertop-like background has shown to make the most “sense” so to speak to players so far. And by that, we mean that players would understand why the buttons were moving in the way they were.

o   We’re planning to change up the art anyway. So far we’re going with ice, but we’re changing up the animals just a bit.

·         A mix of programming and design

o   Adding a menu screen

o   Adding a timer-like function that designates when the game ends

§  So far we’ve come up with “melting” the ice that the animals are encased in

§  Thus the person that melts (keeps their fingers on the buttons) the most is a clear winner

o   An end screen and/or pop-up that shows who won the game

Week 04: Leopards

I truly feel like these weeks are blurring all together. Week 5 is already rearing its ugly head, and alpha is approaching. Quite menacing!

Last week we further discussed the direction of art and mechanics. Specifically, I wrote a bunch of notes on UI, and plans of action that we could possibly take if playtesting finds that the current UI, well, sucks? I also made a wickedly sick leopard-print START button. It's possibly the pinnacle of my portfolio.

This week we had yet another of one of those tug-o-war debates/convos about our game, really trying to find the core of what we wanted to do. We reaffirmed (or maybe confirmed for the first time? GASP) in which direction we want to game to go, which I think is going to be more B.U.T.T.O.N than Warioware. For my tasks this week, I'm going to attempt to make a title screen and a win screen. And maybe also come up with a name. I don't understand how hundreds of thousands of parents a year come up with names for their newborns. I mean, what if you name your kid Chris but he's really a Chad? I feel the same here.

Anyways, I'm scared for the future! But it's fun! :)

Week 4: Batten Down the Hatches

The primary developments of our meeting today involved a departure from our microgame structure, allowing our game to evolve into a more simplistic, yet gratifying "mechanical bull" iteration. Though we were scourged with gradually less palpable ends and constant creative disagreements, the primary motivation behind this shift was the perceived misuse of our game's greatest strengths in the other configuration. In specific, our game's greatest novelty, and most inspiring source of enjoyment, is derived entirely for the interplayer physicality that our system provides. While the other direction had a great deal of merit (and I admittedly hope to pursue some of those ideas further beyond the confines of this class), we simply were not pushing the envelope of discomfort nearly enough.

Our new version provides players with frequent physical demands, which will either greatly inhibit the ability of the players to retain contact with their dots, or simply distract them and make them look foolish.  In addition to creating a spike in the difficulty, and by extension, prioritizing the most intriguing aspect of our game, this change also has a minor benefit of visibility- the players of this version will be far more ostentatious and will have far more exaggerated movements, which will draw the attention of more onlookers, and so on. I think this game is presently a far cry from being app-store-ready, but the potential is absolutely there, and the talent on this team is astronomical, so I think business-savvy considerations may have some merit.

Our cursory tests earlier today showed a great deal of promise, and as long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot by making information unclear, I can only foresee the player experience getting stronger with every new addition.

Week 04: Why are names so difficult to come up with?

The game is coming along nicely so far. We've added plenty of the art assets at this point. Some work, some not so much. I've playtested what we have so far with others outside of class and outside of the game design major. It's great seeing others enjoying the game or at least becoming competitive with each other. We're still going to do some more, mainly A|B testing to see what features work and which don't.

Our score system is the main one that we have to figure out. Do we leave the numbers on the screen? Do we make a bar for each player to fill up? Do we not have anything at all just a crown indicating first place? These are the questions we're struggling with right now.

Oh, and what the title should be.
Finger Twister is a bit generic -though it does get the point across.
Baby Balls.... sounds bad, worse out of context. (To be fair, I have enjoyed onlookers confused faces when they hear it. But we probably shouldn't call it this. Just saying.)

Maybe we'll find something soon. Maybe it'll hit us like a brick wall by week eight. Who knows? For the time being, I'm just going to go with Finger Twister. We should just make up a word like Quiplash or Fibbage. Eventually, something will stick. For now, all aboard the struggle bus!


TL;DR Naming things is hard.
Back to arting.

Week 03: I'M LATE OH NO

OH NO, I was supposed to write this Thursday but didn't. Holy moly but here I am. I'm in a meeting with a DIFFERENT game group.

I'm not sure what we really realized about our game this week. We talked more about our angle and hopes for our game's completion. We'll have a good prototype soon with some basic art so that's exciting! Hopefully that will help decide our next evolution of the production. Right now we can't totally decide if a WarioWare angle is the way to go with our game, or if a Mario Party aspect is the better choice. What we need BEFORE we can really test for this is a basic skeleton of one mode at least. Then we can see how long our gameplay sessions last, how interested people are in the play, and if they actually find it fun or not. We want to push the "fun" meter as far as it can go. We want to reach the PEAK fun if you will.

I have high hopes for our game. Once we really start playtesting I think we'll find out a lot about our gameplay. I'm expecting one game to last about 30 seconds, but perhaps this will end up actually being shorter or longer. I GUESS WE'LL JUST FIND OUT WITH TIME. YEEHAW I'm excited.

Week 3: The Art of UI

This week, I feel like we're arguing a lot less, which is phenomenal! (I kid, we yell for fun)

Last week, as a group, we were still solidifying the routes that we wanted to take. We all brainstormed a ton of possible modes that we could work into or from our core mechanic. There was cooperative boulder avoiding and competitive coin battles, etc.

This week, has been all about pinning down key interactions and their information... so like, UI. Charles and I have been going over it, and I think we've got something that can work in regards to scoring, but will need some testing to make sure that it hits home with players.

Otherwise, I'll be making a fancy start button for our game. I'm thinking old timey illumination letters?

Week 03: *Insert inspiring title here*

Since we have figured out what direction we are going in, we've come up with a thousand new concepts to work with within this multiplayer game. And then we sat down, yelled at each other, and figured out the basic five we'd like to do. It went something like this:

Justin had originally uploaded this when we were all arguing.

But I think we have our game modes down. Now it's just a matter of "arting" them and designing a functioning UI system that makes sense and is not too in the way. Oh and actually making the modes.

Getting Out of Hand

After assembling our projected format for the game (but still no formal title), we have gone to our respective corners and commenced our duties. It is in these early stages that I suspect our communal sense of team unity will face its most gruesome challenge, as demand for quality product will intersect with conflicting vision. 

In other words, we'll be totally fine if I stop acting like such a weenie.

Home is where the heart is.

In the short term, most of my objectives are going to entail determining the best course of action regarding player feedback and conveyance of info. This process is muddled considerably by the nature of our premise- it will be hard to see most information we place on the screen if the overwhelming majority of  it is consistently covered by a mob of overlapping hands. For that reason, I feel we should alter the competitive aspects of the game such that very little information is required at all, and try our best to let audio cues do the heavy lifting.

Speaking of audio, I'm going to try to have a musical theme ready by the end of the week, but it has been slow going thus far. I have a reasonably substantial musical background, but backing tracks for party games are a beast all their own. It'll be a neat challenge, but I might need to call in some favors in order to make it happen.

Week 02: Baby Balls

I need to think of a new name for what the circles in the finger twister game could be called. They definitely should NOT be called baby balls but for some reason that's the only name I've got in my mind for them currently. Hopefully a team member helps fix this today at our meeting.

I'm really proud of us. We finally settled on an idea and I think it's for the best. As many of the team has said, we can make a good game no matter the idea we choose, which I think is true, but I also think that finger twister allows for the most room in development. That being said, it also is probably much more of a headache for Justin, so Justin, I'm so sorry. YOU'RE A TROOPER!

Wow so this blog post is mostly just me talking about how we picked an idea, but I guess that's a big deal. There's something I really like about our team dynamic, it's calm but also ready to "do things", which I particularly like. I know the development process is going to get messy, but here's me saying in writing that I like our team. I like you guys as people. Hopefully we all still like each other through the process but if not, at least it's here in writing that that once was the case. Personally I think we'll all like each other by the end though, so I'm rooting for that.

I'm excited to start working on concept art and just WORKING on this project. WE HAVE AN IDEA, and that's what matters.

Mario voice "Here we GO!"

Setting Sail

Alas, we scorn our cephalopodal roots in favor of a tablet game centered around the awkward entanglement of hands. I have little doubt that this decision was for the best, though my sentiments hinge, of course, on our ability to properly utilize the immense talents we find at our disposal. Though the squid concepts (all 500 of them) have been left behind, they will commit an enduring vestige on the progression of this new game, perhaps in more tangible form than we presently suspect.

We hardly knew ye.

I am highly optimistic about our prospects for our new game, however, as there are very few restrictions on the direction we can take- the world is our oyster! Devising myriad game modes and mechanics can escalate this idea into a real hum-dinger, without a doubt.

First?

I could probably make a game about pulling teeth with all this experience I racked up... but its settled. Finger Twister it is. Now I only have to figure out how...

You see, I spent hours wokring out that the new Unity Buttons removed their hover functionality and traded that in to the event trigger management system, which means that right now, its a button, with a trigger, with collision, with point effects, with a spring, with a rigid body, with a sprite renderer, with an image renderer too for some reason because its not used but required for the button which is not used but required to trigger the events. Oh and the event trigger still does not have a do while pressed or hovering function, so it's up to clicking it and not removing ur finger or leaving its area. But if you do it will go down, or double down, in short it doesn't know when you lift your finger while outside of the button, so it's possible to go perma negative score. I will need to write raycasts for all fingers every frame and not blow up the framerate somehow or find a new solution. Yay!

Unity you suck.

At least its fun so far, but next the plan is rolling little sleeping animal balls up and having them wake up and wander around. Not sure if its cute or mean to be poking sleeping puppies.

Week 02: The Debate Continues...?

It's quite impressive that the desire to choose one game ends up spawning several more ideas.

On one hand, I'm loving the group dynamic of being able to spawn ideas off of each other. Everyone brings something new to the table. A new mechanic. A twist on the original. A different style. However, this process is not without its qualms. The longer we debate, the less time we have to produce. But then again... If we nail the idea down now and fully flesh it out, we might be better off.
I really do believe that no matter what we choose we can make something impressive.

So what have we done in the past week?
Lots of talking and unpacking ideas. There's never enough time in the day. It doesn't help that we all have odd job hours or classes that throw off our meeting schedules. But we're making it work. Hell, we have some of the best artists and designers shoved into this team. We got this.

In the meantime, please hold enjoy some thinking music:
Can't slow down by Reaktor Productions

 Just keep swimming

EDIT ( a few hours later):
WE DID IT GUYS. WE CHOSE A THING.

Week 1: Title in progress...

Today's class consisted of presenting our little fledgling ideas to the world, and then subsequently getting their feathers plucked by the masses. (Just kidding, the class gave really good and kind feedback. ^^)

Past week: We individually and collectively amassed a big word document of possible ideas. There were some pretty sweet gems that we had to pass on, ranging from cooperative egg cracking to be a sneaky clown in obnoxious shoes. After much debate and turmoil, we settled on what I call Mr. Squid-game and Keyboard Twister.

This week: So we're still not sure which of the two ideas we want to pick, so we're researching each idea more thoroughly and seeing what paths these ideas can take. We've already made some tremendous progress in that regards. For the end of the week, we're going to focus on making some prototypes to get a better grasp on the ideas and see which may prove better in the end.

And that's all for now! I think that our team is able to make a stellar game, no matter the path we choose.

Week 01: Too Many Game Ideas

Which is not a bad thing.

Many were great ideas but we couldn't figure out a way to implement them within the given constraints. Others were extremely over-scoped.  We managed to narrow it down to two ideas, (okay in reality, there's game idea #1, #1.5, game idea #2, #2.1, #2.2, and #2.3 -due to trying to simplify and adjust). We'll see where this takes us.

In the meantime, there's prototyping and art testing. Seeing what works and what doesn't.

Current Challenge: Picking ONE idea.
(or ya know, mashing things together)

Week 01: The Egg Dies Before it Hatches

I don't care about that egg game, I'm glad the egg is dead. The egg idea had nowhere to go, but these two ideas do and I'm excited.

We presented today and got some good feedback. While we don't have a solidified idea yet, we have two ideas in the works that we are going to put more time and research into this weekend. I'm excited to see where we can take these ideas, and to eventually choose one of them to put all our efforts into.

While it would be nice to have a clear direction as soon as possible, I don't mind taking more time this weekend to think it through and make sure our concepts are possible and plausible. I want us to make the best product that we can, and doing extra research ahead of time is never a bad thing.

I'm not sure which idea I prefer, I like both of them equally for different reasons. Basically, whichever idea we choose, I'll be happy, which is definitely a good thing.

We're gettin' ready to blast off.

We have an inkling of an idea...

Hi there! I'm Charles, and I'm one of the designers from kalamari inC.

Here and now, on September 14th of 2017, we are going to pin down the premise of the game that we will then proceed to develop over the following 8ish weeks. Many lovely ideas were hatched, but some simply cracked under scrutiny. The final two ideas that remain are as follows:

- A soothing game in which players control a squid that leaves an ink trail as it orbits flowers and the like. Leaving the orbit at variable times will alter the travel path of the squid, which may or may not inhibit the squid's ease with which the next flower can be reached, etc.

-A funky semi-cooperative business simulator that involves crowding large amounts of players around a single keyboard and awkwardly struggling to hit their required keys under the veritable swarm of hands.

The latter retains an entertaining, seemingly unique gimmick, but fails to employ the tremendous artistic talent our team possesses to great effect, and may have balance issues when considering several convergent systems. The former maximizes this talent, but is a bit lackluster mechanically, and may fail to stand out when compared to titles of similar mechanical merit.

I am truly lucky to have landed, yet again, in a team so chock full of exceptionally skilled individuals such that I have complete unwavering confidence that our game will turn out fabulously regardless of our decision.