Team Meeting 7

In this team meeting, we presented our mock pieces and ‘environment art style moodboards’ to Shannon. We then proceeded to deliberate about which art styles would and wouldn’t either be feasible to execute or suitable for the deer’s art style. The art styles I had chosen to present were dismissed as either non-compatible with the deer’s art style or too detailed to be executed within the deadline. In the end we decided to use the art style showcased in Lepshkina’s ‘mushroom piece’ as the chosen painting style.

I also decided to present the dialogue I and created prior to the scope reduction as an example of incorporating dialogue options into the game. Bernardo stated that it would be a feasible task after looking at it.

During this team meeting, I decided to make a To-Do List was a good idea since there were quite a few things I thought we should go through in this meeting.

To-Do List

Decide environment style (& other styles? e.g. other animals/plants & props) ✓
– decided on Anna Lepeshkina’s style
– use the deer as reference for the other animals
– use the environment as reference for plants/props

Delegate tasks for Friday ✓
– design/draw assets and environments – pitch them on Friday

Use music programs for the game’s music/SFX – choose one ✓
– Programs that were suggested included FL Studio, Garageband and Audacity
– FL Studio was chosen as Garageband is only available on ios devices and Audacity has a limited range of tools

Decide on the dialogue & whether to have dialogue options ✓
– I will be altering the dialogue to suit the new game scope
– dialogue options will be included – they make the dialogue more interactive and the gaming experience more dynamic/immersive

Decide on the animations for collecting and giving items ✓
– there will be no animations for collecting and giving items – they were deemed to be unnecessary when there is a simpler solution:
– when collecting items, the item will just appear in the deer’s mouth
– when giving items, the item will disappear from the deer’s mouth
– the deer can only hold one item at a time
– there will be no inventory – it is unnecessary

Decide on the amount of background layers we want for the parallax scrolling ✓
– there will be six layers in total:
– foreground, main ground, foliage layer, another layer, another layer, sky layer

Decide whether the underground cave should be changed to an above-ground cave due to a complication with the game’s coding ✓
– the cave has been changed to be on the same level as the main environment

Decide UI for interactions ✓
– for dialogue, there will be a dialogue box with the talking animal’s icon in the corner
– for player options in regards to interactive items, there will be text around the items that the player can click on – i.e. investigate & pick up
– objects the player can interact with will have a glow around them as an indication

Decide on the interactions for the new environment ✓
– I made a list of the new interactions

List of new interactions

Frog –
talk
(help/befriended) wraps tongue around deer and jumps to ledge
(kill) croaks & dies

Waterfall –
pick up reed plant (deer dips head in)

Reed –
wear it

Burrow –
enter it (the player can click on it and ‘fade’ into the burrow – the code for allowing the player to walk down into the burrow was deemed to be too complicated as it wasn’t on the same level as the main environment)

Wind Plant –
grab it with mouth
pull it from ground
carry it to fog
place on dirt mound

Snake –
hisses at deer

Skunk –
(before wearing reed) looks at player
(before wearing reed & barking at it) trembles
(after wearing reed) freezes and looks at player
(after wearing reed & barking at it) emits smell and runs away

Crystals –
(before quest completion) flicker
(after quest completion) triggers glowing animation

My Tasks: Draw some designs for the crystal cave & change the dialogue to suit the new project scope and digitise it
Deadline: Friday