Development Log 1 (24-30 Oct)

Game development for Primed State has well and truly begun, with pre-production finished and our week 1 of development gone already. All disciplines are focused on implementing early works and basic greyboxes for alpha build, but wanting to push forwards so we reach our imagined finished product in the 6 weeks left.

Hello all, I’m Cameron, one of the designers for Primed State. These devlogs will capture and record what progress has been made in the week past. We have an end goal of game completion by 7th of December. So, let's recap what has happened with each section this week.

Art

Art’s focus this initial week was to have a blockout, model and sculpt of our big items: the character, ERD and enemy. They also gave us some concept art for what a level could look like in its finished state.

Finn was our character artist. Several versions on what they should look like were drawn up, with the team voting on the final design. Below is the concept art and the progress on the 3D model.

Hazel was leading the enemy design. Once again, she produced several designs, and as a team we voted on which one we liked, while considering elements such as how we would be animating its movement and gun aiming.

Polina was working on the other elements that sit within the foreground, such as the ERD, magnets and EMP powerup. She also did some mock ups of what the ERD’s beam would look like and the EMP explosion.

Emily is working on environmental art. She has produced several pieces of concept art that are honestly stunning and give a great image of what the final game could look like.

Programming

The programming team's focus this week was to finalise AI state machines and get the basic mechanics in, even if in a buggy state, so we can work with level design in-engine and see what needs to be changed.

Gary was our man to get the character moving and solve the bugs too! The initial character had the issue of being able to pass through walls if it was moving too fast. This issue has since been solved.

Lachlan’s focus was getting the interactable working–this means firing the ERD at things such as magnets, switches and doors. He also did up a zero gravity field that works with Gary’s movement controller by disabling left-right unless in contact with the ground.

Andrew did the back of game systems such as the health, checkpoint & damage. The placeholder UI was also done by Andrew to allow for testing.

Design

The designers this week were focused on all the documents that needed to be finished in pre-production. We also had further work to the level drawing, with a confirmed layout for our tutorial area. An initial sound library was created listing all the potential sounds we may need.

Aruna is currently doing the level design, drawing the game's layout and puzzles. She finalised the tutorial area and began to work on the next few rooms.

Michael’s job week one was to list all the sounds and create a library with generalised sounds of what we are aiming for.

Luke created a task list of everything that will happen during production and worked on the LDD.

Sonya’s job was to ensure that any other documentation was completed. She started and finished the WHS register and project risk tracking, then went on and assisted Aruna with her puzzle creation. While WHS documents aren't a glamorous task, Sonya completed it with great detail.

And finally myself, Cameron, I was doing the initial greybox of the tutorial level to allow us to test how the game feels in early development. I also assisted Luke with job assignment.

Overall, Primed State is developing smoothly and I hope that we can keep this momentum going forwards. Check back next week for updates on how week 2 of production went.