Introduction
This week marked the unofficial beginning of our Design Studio 3 term project. Over the last week and a half, we have formed our groups, conceptualized an idea of what we wanted our game to be, conducted primary research, and begun preparatory tasks to ready ourselves for the semester ahead.
From our first meeting, each member of our team had the same desire to create a gaming experience that was multi-player, multi-device, fun, unique, and educational for an age group that was not necessarily typical of those targeted in most educational games. From this mutual desire, we begun to gravitate towards one group member's main idea of creating a Dojo environment that taught its players about the martial art of Kendo. The game was appropriately named Kendo Gakko, or "Kendo School" in Japanese. So far, we have planned for the game to be a two-player game, in which one player is the student, being instructed to replicate hitting patterns on a wooden dummy, and one player is the master, providing the student with a sequence of steps to follow. Instructions will appear in the environment in such a way that allows both players to learn basic Japanese terminology related to Kendo, and the game as a whole will act as a "Simon Says" genre of game that will allow players to practice their memory skills.
For this project, I have taken on the roles of 3D Design Lead and UX Designer and will mainly be focusing on tasks such as 3D modelling the main game environment, overseeing other team members' 3D modelling processes, and assisting with UX design and testing. I will also be helping out with development in whatever way that I can.
Challenges and Successes
At this point in the project, because very little development has started on the environment, it's not likely that we'll run into major challenges yet. The biggest challenge that we have faced as a group so far has been simply getting set up and organized for the weeks ahead, which I think is fairly normal for any group during the early stages of a project.
With this challenge in mind, we have all been working together and making an effort to sit down as a group and openly discuss group member roles, potential game features, visual styles, and gameplay architecture.
From these meetings, we have been able to successfully obtain a more clear idea of what each team member wants to get out of this project, of the general visual style that we want our game environment to follow, and of the features that we would like our game to have and what we'll need to do to make them possible. I think that we could still benefit from additional meetings to solidify these points even more, but again, I think that's normal for any group at this stage.
Tasks Completed, Hours Spent
Throughout this past week, I have been helping with completing mostly preliminary and administrative tasks for the group with the goal of getting us organized enough that it will be easier for us to jump into modelling and development in the next week and a half.
As 3D Design Lead, I spent a good portion of my time (approx. 2-3 hours) looking for inspiration for our game environment including colour schemes (Image 1), lighting (Images 2-3), and style of 3D models for interior and possible exterior. Below are some examples that I found and really liked.
I also spent some time (approx. 2-3 hours) performing administrative tasks including creating an outline for our group's Design Document, contributing to the group's brainstorm document, editing the project website (still being updated and developed) and adding labels to project board tickets to organize them by work type and help make it easier to assign tasks to group members in future sprints.
Conclusion
Overall, I think that this week was a success for our group. I feel like we're organized, and have a solid plan for our project which will make it easier to plan out each sprint and implement the features that we currently have on our radar, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we're able to create together.
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