Things we must do.

The following is what needs to be done and when. All of the due dates are Thursdays. Done means that it's in the game. So if it's something that needs to be placed in the game it should be given to whoever needs it by the Tuesday before. Also remember that just because something isn't due for another month doesn't mean you should put it off. The early bird catches some sort of eating device. GO BANANA!!

Tasks

Dan

Target Market DUE MAY 7TH

Questions DUE MAY 14TH

List of Audio needs DUE MAY 21ST

Actual audio DUE JUNE 4TH

Krissy

Personas MAY 14TH

Character List MAY 14TH

Concept Art MAY 21ST

UI Design JUNE 4TH

Todd

Personas MAY 14TH

Story MAY 21ST

Level Blocked Out JUNE 4TH

Malina

Competition MAY 7TH

Main Asset List MAY 14TH

Concept Art MAY 21ST

Tom

Paper Prototype MAY 14TH

Basics Programmed MAY 21ST

UI Layout MAY 28TH

Advanced Programming JUNE 4TH

Sprint Stuff. (Not the phone company)

This is the basic layouts for the sprints. I think I have everything that is needed to consider each one "done". If I'm missing something let me know.

Sprint 1 May 7^th

Researched Gameplay Mechanic

Competition

Target Market

Genre

Sprint 2 May 14^th

Paper Prototype and Testing

Paper Prototype

Personas

Questions

Testing

Asset list

Character list

Sprint 3 May 21^st

Playable Digital Prototype

Basics Programmed

Concept art for character and enemies

Concept for environment

Story

UI layout MAY 28TH

List of audio assets

Sprint June 4^th

Level Complete

Level blocked out and in the game

UI Design

Audio

Some Assets

I am working on the asset list next so if anyone has some ideas please let me know. I know were focusing on the factory setting so I have some ideas of what we could use.

Pickup Assets:

• Wrench
• Metal Plate
• Duct Tape
• Wire
• Mop
• Cloth
• String
• Replacement Pipe

Environment Assets:

• Conveyor Belt
• Crates
• Tables & Chairs (Stations)
• Factory Product
• Pipes
• Furnaces

I will continue to work on this list and some of the concept work. If any of you have something to add please let me know so I can start the concept work.

Turn-Base Examples

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Disgaea - Hour of Darkness

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - Grimoire of the Rift

Competition Paper

Competition
Our game is marketed as a turn-based strategy game that competes with such games as Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Grimoire of the Rift), Final Fantasy Tactics (Advance), and Disgaea (Hour of Darkness).

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Grimoire of the Rift

Genre: Strategy RPG

Basic Story: School is out for the summer, but mischievous Luso Clemens must first face detention to make up for his misbehavior. Alone in the library, he stumbles upon an ancient book with magical powers that summons him to the mystical land of Ivalice. Warped into the middle of a battlefield, Luso joins Cid and his clan to set off on an adventurous journey looking for a way home

Game Mechanics: Destroy Enemy, Uncover Story, and Increase Levels (Power)

Game Reviews:

· Good overall view, depth and audio.
· Long battles with little payoff
· Restrictive battle conditions


Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Genre: Strategy RPG

Basic Story: The main character is Marche, a young boy who is friends with a couple of other down-on-their-luck kids. Collectively, they aren't having a great time in their formative years--they've got problems at home and at school. One day, though, they discover a magical book that literally transforms their harsh and mundane world into one of swords and sorcery. This is a place where they can be heroes. Marche, nevertheless, believes that this new world is not his rightful place, and so he begins his long quest to find a way home.

Game Mechanics: Destroy Enemy, Uncover Story, and Increase Levels (Power)

Game Reviews:

· Hours of game play
· Interesting story (Story helps to keep the player playing)
· Unique judging system (some battles prohibit certain weapons, magic, ect)
· Character class leveling can be tedious and time consuming

Disgaea Hour of Darkness

Genre: Strategy RPG

Basic Story: The hero of the story, Laharl, crown prince of the netherworld is a demon, and spoiled brat. He awakens from a long slumber one day to find that his father is dead and that the netherworld needs a new overlord. The choice is obvious to Laharl, so he sets off to take control of the netherworld by force, with his not-so-trusty vassal Etna in tow.

Game Mechanics: Destroy Enemy, Uncover Story, and Increase Levels (Power)

Game Reviews:

· Game is intended for experienced Strategy RPG players
· Game allows player to go back and replay levels
· The game loses its strategy intent by allowing group combo hits. So as long as the player keeps three characters together he she can cause massive damage to enemies.

Jack Rabbit (game name pending)

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy

Basic Story: (Todd please feel free to cover this section)

Game Mechanics: Search, Gather and Repair

Game Similarities:
· Player’s intellect is tested against the computers artificial intelligence. The player has to think about his or her set movements by using a turn based grid.
· The player has the ability to push/throw an enemy character a set number of squares.
· The character can obtain new weapons (upgrades)
Differences:
· Our game requires the player to collect resources such as duct tape, cloth, string, metal plate, wire, ect.
· The player is required to repair assets in the game in order to advance to the next level.
· The player cannot destroy the games enemies.
· Our game consists of moving only the one main character as opposed to moving 4-6 different characters.
· The player does not level up throughout the game.




Copyright References (Websites)
Copyright 1991 - 2009 :: Game Informer Magazine
http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200805/N08.0523.1440.01923.htm

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved
http://www.gamespot.com/

Copyright 1996-2009, IGN Entertainment, Inc.
http://gameboy.ign.com/objects/480/480116.html

Copyright References (Strategy Guides)
Atlus Offical Strategy Guide
WWW.ATLUS.COM
Disgaea TM Hour of Darkness © 2003 NIPPON ICHI SOFTWARE INC. Licensed to and published by ATLUS U.S.A., Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Bradygames Offical Strategy Guide / Square Enix
WWW.BRADYGAMES.com / WWW.SQUARE-ENIX.COM
©2007, 2008 SQUARE ENIX Co., LTD. All Rights Reserved. FINAL FANTASY, FINAL FANTASY TACTICS, GRIMOIRE OF THE RIFT, SQUARE ENIX, and the SQUARE ENIX logo are trademarks of the Square Enix co., Ltd.

The Offical Nintendo Players Guide (Nintendo Power)
©2003 Nintendo of America Inc. All Rights Reserved. Nintendo is a registered trademark of Nintendo of America Inc. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance © 2003 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. FINAL FANTASY TACTICS is a registered trademark of SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

Competition Info

I have been working on the competition aspect of our game. Currently I am comparing our game to the agreed upon competion.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Grimoire of the Rift
Disgaea Hour of Darkness

I will be posting the paper in the next blog post but I will need Todd Dinus to email me or post a basic outline of our games story to add to the review.

So far we seem to have a good balance between similarities and differences between our game and the competition. Please look at the section on reviews of the competions games. Long drawn out battles and endless leveling up seemed to be a common complaint on these types of games. I am sure our game resolves the leveling up issue by just not having that option but we are going to have to pay close attention to balancing the time it takes a player to accomplish his or her goals.

Story and Characters notes

Story and character discriptions start
These are only rough drafts, ill flush the story out and add in the discriptions of the levels you are in, because that mainly is what I wanted to do before I drew up the concepts for the level bases. This is just to get an idea of how this disaster started and if you think of any other characters to add post them in the comments here.

Characters-
Pat-Unknown Gender-Janitor- Protagonist of the game

Scientists- male/Female- a couple of model maybe 2 or 3 of each sex will be enough to populate the rooms they are barricaded in

Rabbits- Antagonist-One generic rabbit or a couple if we fell that there needs to be some variety

Story-
You are a janitor named Pat in a NASA research lab analyzing samples brought back from space. The lab you work in was working on using gas collected from a Jupiter probe. The gas was kept in tank that leaked into the lab animals and the bacteria dormant in it made them into man eating beasts. As they spread you being the cleaning crew are wearing the only protective haz mat suit at the time so it’s up to you to fix the leaks that have sprung up in the lab. The rabbits feed off of the gas so stopping the leaks will knock them out for good.
You have only what you can find to repair the leaks and simple cleaning tools to defend yourself with. You must find your way through the building stopping all the leaks and rescue the people trapped inside rooms hiding from the man eating bunnies.

Persona

This is just a rough draft of our persona's. If anyone wants to add something to any to the persona's, post a comment and I'll add.

Primary: Hardcore Gamer

Secondary: Average Gamer

Negative: Non-Gamer

Target Market: 15-18

Persona 1: Hardcore Gamer

Age: 15-18

Education Level: Middle/High School

Personal Background Information: Lives and dies for video games, they play non-stop until they unlock everything in a game.

Technical know-how: Knows everything and anything about video games.

Persona 2: Average Gamer

Age: 15-18

Education Level: Middle/High School

Personal Background Information: Someone who knows how to play video games but not as much as a hardcore gamer. Plays a game a few days at a time and sets it down for a few months and picks it back again to play.

Technical know-how: Knows how to use the computer and video game console.

Persona 3: Non-Gamer

Age: 40

Education Level: Middle/High School

Personal Background Information: Someone who doesn’t play any type of game.

Technical know-how: Knows how to use computer basics, knows the how to use basic computer applications like IE and word.

Some Type Of Organized Thought Process.

General Idea of Schedule (Tentative)

Tuesday 4/28 – Split up tasks to hit the second green light.

Thursday 4/30 – Title, Genre, Gameplay Mechanics, and part of the story fleshed out.

Tuesday 5/5 – Market (R.D.), Competition (R.D.), List of assets, Character Ideas, level ideas/layouts, layouts of UI, basics of the game programming, play mode ideas

Thursday 5/7 – Sketches of main characters/enemies, sketches of assets/environments, flowchart of level, flowchart of UI, Market (Complete), Competition (Complete), basics programmed

Tuesday 5/12 – Green Light 2 DUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pitch Document

Title

Genre

Story

Gameplay/mechanics/interface/AI

Market

Competition

How you differentiate your game from others

Overall scope and focus of your game – the overall philosophy

Experience you want the player to have

Major play modes

Characters – who they are and how many there are

Main assets

Venues/levels

Sketches and concept art

Schedule

Dates for 5/14 to 6/9 to be filled out soon.

The gathering mechanic

What if the part were you had to gather the materials was in a place were you had to remove the enemies from the area first so another objective would be to have something were you turn a valve some were and it turns off the gas so they either leave the area or go to the point you were just at, either way they leave the area and maybe better materials are there.

Early Testing

Tried the game when i woke this morning and i thought of something while playing the part were you roll the dice to see if you fail or succed at making them faint/die. What if we had something that made the timer a cumulative time and the more time they spent trying to damage your repair the less time you had for others. This might make the player focus more on the game as a whole and make them want to gather the best materials more so they don't waste time failing. It adds one more simple puzzle to drive them to collect the materials. What do you think?

One More Thing

I did send out emails. Two in fact. Let me know if you didn't get either of them. That means I have the wrong email for you, or I'm stupid. Here's hoping it's not the latter!

A Few Things

So as of right now it looks like our roles will look like this:

Todd
1. Art Director
2. Programmer
3. Level Designer

Malina
1. Creative Director
2. 2d/3d Artist

Krissy
1. Concept/2D Assets
2. 3D Model
3. Level Designer
4. User Interface

Dan
1. 3D Model
2. Audio

Tom (Lead)
1. Programming
2. Technology Director
3. User Interface

I guess most of this is subject to change. I imagine people will help out where and when they're needed. Overall this seems like it'll work fine. I'm finishing up writing the basics for our tentative schedule. I will post this as soon as I'm done.