Roadmap

What do we need to make to get to our value props?

PLAYER CHARACTER
- Design - The main character is Toci, resurrected Aztec Goddess. This requires animation.
- Movement/Aiming - Toci will move in four directions and aim following the mouse. This requires programming.
- Attacking -Toci has two attack slots, mapped to left and right mouse buttons. This requires programming.
-- Weapons - There are four weapons with four methods of attack which can be assigned to attack slots. This requires programming and animation.
-- Powers - Additionally, there are four powers that can be assigned to attack slots. These require programming and animation.

ENEMIES
- Design - The Spanish need animations for movement in four directions, and individual attack and death animations. This requires animation.
-Movement/Aiming - Enemies move and aim in four directions. This requires programming.

-AI -This will require a great deal of programming.
--group
--individual


ENVIRONMENT
- GUI - There are three GUIs, main, inventory, and temple. These require programming and animation.
- Tenochtitlan - This is the level, which are art tiles, colliders, and layout. This requires programming, design, and animation.

s0r: A Text Adventure

The Sprint 0 Round-up! Our goal for Sprint 0 was to complete four things:

• Enemy Types
• Enemies Surround Player
• Damage Received/Dealt
• Enemy Scaling

Are they done? ...That's not the question we should be asking ourselves at the moment. The goal of Sprint 0 is to build a structure, and we've built a rickety structure, you know, so we've got that, and now we can look and try to see why it got rickets.

Design, I thought, was sufficient. Stats were estimated, abilities pitched, all with relative competence, but without the framework of a play-tested game, the fine tuning of mechanics remains a chore. If anything, designers were under utilized, or at least with little to do.

Programming was quickly done. The base tasks proved little challenge, but I fear the real test will be the AI. Of course, this fear is unfounded because I know nothing about the AI script, but I do believe it is integral to the fun of this game, and as such should be worried over.

Truly, the greatest misstep was in art, as we only have 4 artists. This isn't so much an issue of the team, but rather a shortcoming of the idea* which wanted to utilize an aesthetic style as a key value proposition.

In regards to the trinity of specialization, I suspect that the programming side of the equation only grows heavier with the progression of the process, with design worked hardest in the beginning and the artist in the middle. Whether there is validity in the sentiment is secondary, though, to my need to correct my antiquated-Waterfall thought-structure. Programmers are no longer a group, neither designers nor artists. Once our base pipeline is tested, we are feature teams: coalitions of the...willing, I guess. We have individual features to address in all three facets - programming, design, and art - and dealing with only the feature in scope. The base upon which those features are added was concluded with Sprint 0 in accordance with the ideal that the product is always finished, and only continues to get more finished with iterative sprints.






*And most certainly not the idiot who thought it up and promoted it.

Value Props and the People Who Love Them

What is most important about the game? My guesses-

1. Historical setting. I can imagine people enjoying the Aztecs for one(/two) reasons. The most obvious is that they know something about the Aztec, and could appreciate seeing this knowledge in the game. The second is the negative of the first: they know nothing about the Aztecs, and thus take pleasure in the foreign-ness of the surroundings.

Survey says:

A plurality of people (44%) rated this of mid-level importance, with the next largest category (41%) feeling it of only slightly less importance than the first. So apparently the setting is important, but not completely a deal-breaker.

2. AI. I think something that will set this game apart is the group AI mechanics. Hack and slash is fun, but I think it'd be more fun if you were fighting a sea of enemies, where the crowd behaves in certain ways but individuals also display qualities.

Anyone else?

A majority of people definitely want varying enemy types; that's clear. As for their overall organization, the only clear message is that the enemy should not scatter. I don't think there's enough data to make any kind of inference regarding player preference to troop formation. My guess is that this is something that needs to be played by the customer. Surveys, as lovely as they are, just aren't conveying the experience of the quirks of our program, and generalized data is wonderful, but user interaction should now be the goal.

3. Inventory. This is a game about hitting things: the fun is most likely in the variety of ways there are to hit things. Thus, our job is as a nozzle, controlling the flow of of fun and agency to the user; too much at once and the player is overwhelmed and quits, too little they quit out of boredom. This is where our inventory, and to an extent our skill tree and mana mechanic come in.

53% of respondents chose to agree with the 'obvious' inventory answer, but I think the small sample size is enough to draw any conclusion irrelevant. 68%, and a more palpable 686 votes, support our direction regarding the use of the temple GUI housing the skill tree. I'm not prepared to interpret feedback on the mana cooldown.

Sprint 0

We're going into production, but before we can, we have to try. Sprint 0 is a team-run system-diagnostic test: tech rehearsal and an e-check.

We're identifying every possible task, figuring out exactly how difficult and how long it is, then using mock-ups and primitives, forming an alpha build. Hopefully, we'll look as shitty as this:

That's Bastion in alpha.

C4K: Town

This is an overhead view of the town. After playing it a couple times, Sage complained about the size. He suggested moving the buildings closer together; I might increase the player speed.

There's a billboard past the library, but I think I might move it up closer, so you could see it from the basketball court.

Fifth Sun: Roadmap

This is Fifth Sun, or rather just Fifth Sun's Combat SuperEpic. We've established how difficult for the team each feature would be to build, and then ordered them in terms of importance. Features which are important enough to consider, but are not critical to the final vision are placed in the backlog. Should any of the features be completed ahead of schedule, this frees up time for backlogged features to be developed.

Features:

1. Character Movement (13)
2. Interaction with enemies (40)
3. GUI (40)
4. Save functions (40)
5. Health (5)
6. Mana (5)
7. Weapon Leveling Script (8)
8. Weapon and abilities attacks (13)
9. Weapon and ability animations (20)
10. Kill animations (20)
11. Enemy design (20)
12. Enemy AI (20)
13. Enemy scaling (40)
14. XP tables (20)
15. Accurate art design (5)
16. Non-linear progress (8)
17. Cutscenes (40)

BackLog:

1. Quick Select (20)
2. Hidden content (5)

Fifth Sun: Presentation

• We are West State Studios, and this is our game, Fifth Sun.

• Fifth Sun is a real-time, top-down, hack-and-slash PC game with possible release on Steam or Desura.

• A screenshot mock-up showing Toci in Tenochtitlan.

• Here's the isolated GUI showing health, mana, weapons equipped, weapon levels, and player level.

• And a brief look at the weapon select GUI.

• With Fifth Sun, we're going for a bit like Binding of Isaac, 

• With some Hotline Miami, but more about open spaces and hoards of enemies.

• Hammerwatch is another similar game, but with a bit more RPG focus.

• What makes our game different?
• 2-d, top-down combat, but against multitudes of enemies and in large open spaces.
• Inventory allows mixing and matching, allowing the player to find a style they like.
• Skill-tree unlock system.

• Fifth Sun is for mid-core PC gamers, aged 22 - 28. 

• People who might play: Amy. Amy enjoys hard games and is looking for a challenge. 

• Rick is more interested in the abnegation and sense-pleasure Fifth Sun offers.

• Gene plays games for the story. Fifth Sun is most appealing for him because of the ongoing narrative of the Aztecs fighting Spanish forces.

• From the existing market, you can see we are priced competitively for the relative length of our game, approximately 10 - 15 hours of gameplay for one play-through. 

• Building West State would cost $16,745, with monthly operational costs of $7,395.

• Over the course of the eight month project, this totals $79,905.

Let's Look At: Copz 4 Kidz

Let's Look At: the player's house.

From the start screen, when the player presses Start, they are taken here.

This is originally where a player select option would have been, but the feature was cut, and thus, this happened.

From here the player enters the next room

Should the player return to the house having completed any of the games, they might see this (although they'd be entering from the other door):

This is the exterior view of the house. Once the player leaves the house, they are brought to the town. The green wire frame on the path is the box collider which triggers the player's option of returning into the house.

Cops for kids: Animations

Here is the first child walking.

And the police dog.

And the fire dog.

The children were made in 32x32 whereas the adults are 64x64. The resulting effect is that adults will look a bit more complex or detailed, while children are blocky. The underlying reason, trying to hint at growth, maturity, and knowledge that comes with age and civil service, is something that needs to be stated implicitly due to the very nature of children. There are fundamentally two types of children:

• The ones that'll do something when you tell them to. Let's call them (I don't feel like coming up with names) 'girls'.

• The ones that do the exact opposite. These will be 'boys'.

This game isn't for 'girls', although 'girls' will be able to play and enjoy. This is a game for 'boys' in that we aren't going to force them to do anything. All the game is designed to do is present obstacles to the child, which the child solves by utilizing police and fire services, and then the child is rewarded. We're not telling them to call the police and fire departments, all we're doing is showing scenarios where kids and public services work together to solve problems. And also presenting information about local police and fire departments. Kids are smart enough to do the rest.

So back to the art- we can't say adults are smarter, we just imply it by making them imperceptibly more complex.

Also, none of that actually matters to anyone in even the slightest.

Fifth $un

This is Fifth Sun, i.e. how much it costs.

8 month dev time
Team size 10

Legal - $305

Administrative and filing fees........................$250
Copyright.........................................................$55

Operations - $15,750

Router/modem...............................................$200
Fridge............................................................$650
Desks...........................................................$3000
Chairs..........................................................$1300
Tables............................................................$400
Computers...................................................$9500
Wacoms........................................................$600
Printer...........................................................$100


Tools and Middleware - $690

Reaper SFX...................................................$250
SFX...............................................................$400
DbPoweramp..................................................$40


Fixed Total - $16,745

Monthly Costs

Rent............................................................$1800
Soda.............................................................$150
Snacks..........................................................$100
Meals..........................................................$3000
Coffee...........................................................$100
Phone/internet..............................................$140
Utilities.......................................................$2000
Misc. office supplies.....................................$100
SEO.............................................................$1000
Website.............................................................$5

Schedule

Month One................................................$24,140
Month Two.................................................$7,395
Month Three...............................................$7,395
Month Four.................................................$7,395
Month Five.................................................$8,395
Month Six...................................................$8,395
Month Seven...............................................$8,395
Month Eight................................................$8,395

Total..........................................................$79,905


That's right. To build this project is $79,905.
I don't have anything witty to say; $80,000 is a lot of money.