Senior Production - Full Steam Ahead!

This marked the first full week of our team working together on VXT.  After cleaning up all the loose ends from last semester and getting out teammates up to speed we were ready to dive in headfirst.  We joined together as a group, sat down within our respective division and worked out what we need to accomplish.  With our core gameplay in our minds very solid, we picture this semester more focused on reach features and polish, our game is fast and simple we'd like to keep it that way.  On the designer front, the have decided to create 4 zones of level each containing 4 levels and introducing a new mechanic in each.  As far as I remember (but this is all subject to change)  The first zone is a factory type setting in which the player will get accustomed to the controls and shields.  The second zone is a city where players will have to navigate through our railgun structures which brings the player to top speeds.  Next the player will go down into the cavern where they will be met with moving platforms and speed pads.  They will then move to mines where they encounter the phase walls surrounded by the unstable energy.  We see this is a nice progression of basic mechanics, scenery, and VERY subtle story for players to interpret in their own ways.  With the main amount of work on this front for the artists to make the environments and the designers to create the levels  with the tools already available to them from last semester.  Mike and I will be able to focus on our reach features. Mike will be progressing on our web presences and account system, while I look into our in game level creator for players.  Knowing how large of a task this is I have already hit the ground running on this task.  After a nice long thursday of programming I have a basic creator controller which allows the player to navigate around the space.  The ability for the creator character to spawn objects, move objects, place objects, delete objects, and re-pick objects that they have places down.  With this base functionality in place hopefully within the next week or so we will have something we can bring to testing.  I've already taken the liberty of speaking with the artists letting them know that all future models will need to be very modular to allow the pieces to line up nicely and allow easy creation for our players.   Overall I'm very happy with the current team progression and overall state of cooperation.  I'm excited in seeing what we will end up making over the next 15 weeks.

Till next time

-Ian