Been working on finishing the title splash screen. Got the polygons and animation all done but the UVs are largely in need of finishing. The design of the visual for the 3d lettering, in particular.

Gonna discuss it with my next class. Also need to get to making more levels.

So we were supposed to release our first build a week and a half ago. It got pushed somehow to yesterday. I ended up mostly doing ui artwork, just a few models for such, and some level designs which hayden ended up cutting a lot on. Which seems a little disrespectful of we designers to cut our work without consulting us but since he's making sure there is enough content I'm just concerned with getting the work done.

Now onto spring break.

So I worked on the evil block model, and I have five levels due tomorrow. We are trying to launch next week. I see that as a bit of a stretch but we'll see. I just haven't had a lot of time for anything over the weekend, and I feel that the argument that Curves is a sexual title is flat out wrong and based on men being themselves what they are trying to fight in the media. Curious what Rachel wanted to say about our game, or title.

Objective this week was to create some levels and to get some artwork done.

The level creation process is pretty long and tedious because of the way our editor works. Even with a fully fleshed out design before beginning, it takes about half an hour just to get it out there.

SINCE The launchers still do not work like they should, I have had to be creative about my designs to get just something at all out there. I ended up spending a lot of my time again writing into the bug report. I don't understand why tech team is bitching about the difference between a bug and a feature. They are essentially the same thing. Either way it is something that you need that isn't there whether it is in some form or no form. But there is a gray area to that.

Been working on a lot of other work this weekend, too.

Working on UI for the artwork, I also did an evil block character design.

Returning to work

Convinced group to go see Frozen this week. They seemed to think of it in a similar positive influence as I did. But perhaps didn't lead to any practical results. Haven't seen any new art from the art team yet. I have my ice princess concept finished and am uploading it later tonight.

I have been working with the .3 level editor. It seems to have most of the same bugs as before so I'm still not sure how I can make levels with it. I am meant to make a handful of them for tomorrow. I suppose I will just have to use features that don't work and say "this will work like this when the program works."

I made more careful revisions to the bug file to move what are feature requests to the feature requests file. Also added a bunch.

Want to do an evil block model for the group.

Very, very busy with Japanese homework, too.

Suggested Whitt be art lead. Mostly because he seems to have the most ambition and ability to recognize what we need and just does it. I resolve to do more of that, too.

Semester begins tomorrow!

Doing full school, no job this semester. It will be very rough. Haven't done a lot of work on this game over the break, but I do have a "winter princess" sketch. I will try to get it more prepped for tuesday, I feel it looks too formal and not practical enough, which should be changed since we don't want these characters lookingl ike barbie dolls.

Watched Disney's  Frost  over the break, it really was a good showcasing of mostly what to do, yet not that I think all of my group would agree. I suppose there is a possibility that our group might get scrapped if the teachers thought we didn't do a good enough job last semester to continue to where we need to be. Probably not, but I think our immediately next progress will tell us a lot.

Oh right,  Frost . So what they did well - their characters were very independant and explored as people, not just women; the main two characters were sister princesses (princi?). I felt that Elsa went toooo barbie when she got her frost dress. BUT I liked that they were comfortable putting them in dresses. I want to take inspiration from some of their ice imagery. I just can't yet think of how an ice princess would wear more than a dress. A coat? Maybe uninteresting, and I'm afraid of making it too much like Crystal Maiden from DOTA. I also have tomorrow to work on this.

Over for the semester...

A surprisingly anticlimatic ending to the semester. We worked on levels for the presentation, but the editor was still too bugged for any of the designs to be able to be shown. We ended up basically showing the editor rather than any actual game. That was alright I suppose. It was really more about seeing what else had been done and meeting people. I got to talk with some good people, including the lead for magnetic by nature. The minecraft cake was pretty fun, although I didn't dig in.

I feel I should talk about the other games. I wasn't impressed with the asteroids knockoff, but it was I hear only a few weeks of making. Zen Boat looked pretty good although I still feel that it should have been a relaxing game of exploration rather than puzzler / challenge. Reflection is coming along better than expected, I got to talk with Ryan over there and he liked my idea that there should be hazards that interact with the mirror.

Post Mortem is in. I tried not to say many bad things, but what I thought was my most profound insight into the last semester was that I realized that it was probably important for us to instead concept in the perspective of our product instead of our whatever view we want techniques.

Next semester, hoping we have a working level editor to work with, and hoping I get to make 3d assetts for the team.

Moved more from art side to design side, tried to work with the level editor. Long story short, it doesn't work. Spent a lot of time analyzing and reporting the bugs. I feel that I need the terrain and slope functions to work in order to make anything fun. For now, instead of pits we'll use evil blocks (enemies).

Presentation is thursday, time is low. Would love to make some big fancy levels if only the editor worked -.-

This was a lazy week up to this point, what with thanksgiving.

Art assetts for the build at end of semester is already in, so nothing is urgent.

Built more 3d assetts for Tent Castle. This is really just concept work, its not practical models that will ever see the public eye unless I want a pretty picture (hmmm).

Next on my list: make patterns for the tents and general world. This should push the character revamp.

Talked to Hayden about pushing for what direction our narrative is going. Brett came up with a good idea that they're trying to reach a thing in the castle that stops something bad from happening.

During Week 2, I proposed my pitch for BIFF IT, a game about hurting skate boarders.

I thought it would be a good game, because it uses comedy as the enjoyment experience, and utilizes a challenging skillset to accomplish the feat. I also love the open-environment of skateparks and so forth, makes it very sandbox-like. Almost like sim city where you're just trying to destroy the city. (makes me think of fire-starter from flcl)

Got the laughs and smiles from the audience.

Don't remember if it was this week or the one after, we voted on the games, and I didn't make it. Some feedback from a few students revealed that they didn't think it had replay value. Should have put more work into what the skillset is and how it grows further into the game you get. Still convinced it is a good idea, I just didn't pitch it properly. I think I ended with 30 seconds on the clock, I should have given more. So at least I learned a lot about pitching.

(this was a problem that cato corgi would go on to have with their pitch to industry professionals)