This fall 2021 studio is my first larger scale experience in video game development. Before this fall, the only experience I have with game dev has been 2D animation and environment art for a game demo in high school and a tileset for a game jam this past winter. At the beginning of this semester, our team actually didn't have an art lead for the project, so I, along with Mariana, volunteered to be co-leads for the art team: I would be the technical art lead and Mariana the creative lead. And thus, a lot of my hours throughout the weeks have been spent on meetings, logistics, and planning.
Before the sprint began, Mariana and I spent some time going through the overall plans for the project and breaking down tasks for art. However, we quickly realized that a lot of tasks for art depended on design. So in the first week, I decided to take some time (about an hour) to play through Bloom and brainstorm issues that we could work on in the meantime. Unfortunately, even after talking to Mariana, we weren't able to come with a very long list of tasks, mostly because a lot of questions arose for the design team. Some of the tasks we came up with that we knew we would be able to work on immediately are:
new settings menu sliders (for volume, mouse sensitivity, etc.)
custom title font
a new icon for credits on main menu
Because we didn't have many tasks to assign, I took some time to play the reference games GZDoom with Hexen and Heretic mods, spending around 30 minutes on each game for a total of 1 hour. I played them through mostly an art lens for the purpose of studying its aesthetic and how we could apply it to Bloom rather than focusing on the gameplay. I also spent about half an hour playing Quake, another one of our reference games. Although I didn't get too far in any of these games, it was really interesting playing them. The oldest game I had really played before these would be maybe something like Team Fortress 2, which is still relatively modern (albeit a little dead) or Pokemon Platinum, which is a completely different genre. The style of these games and intended style of Bloom is something that I'm quite frankly unfamiliar with. A lot of my own work leans toward stylized realism, like in Overwatch or my game demo from high school: Beat It! Bloom, on the other hand, strives for a simpler style that is more minimalist than detailed, and I'm excited to be trying something I'm unfamiliar with!
Here's the final time breakdown for the first week:
1.5 hours - studio-wide meeting
0.5 hours - studio leads meeting
0.5 hours - meeting with Mariana to discuss next week's plan
1 hour - Bloom playthrough and task brainstorm
1.5 hours - reference games
In total, I spent around 5 hours on studio work.
The second week was a pretty rough for me. On Saturday after the studio leads meeting, I had started to feel a little sick. By the end of the day, I was feverish and feeling very sick. Because of this, I was unable to attend the studio-wide meeting on Sunday, and I was actually so sick I missed all my classes on Monday and Tuesday and called in remotely for the rest of the week's classes. As a result of being sick, it was hard to get work for any class done, and this unfortunately also extended to studio work. I started to feel better around Thursday, but I still hadn't been assigned a task for the week. Thus, I decided to practice my 3D modeling skills in Blender because I had only recently started learning how to 3D model. I spent this week practicing modeling a character in low poly, but I also plan on learning how to model objects like potions or levers in preparation for when the assets need to be created for Bloom. To be honest, it was easy to lose track of time while 3D modeling, and I was really enjoying myself, but I spent 5+ hours on Thursday and Friday working on it. I wanted to ensure that my model would have good geometry and I actually started over a few times just to practice building the base figure and building muscle memory. The majority of my time in Blender was spent modeling the hands and feet, which easily became very frustrating. I really struggled with the thumb and I scoured YouTube for tutorials, but eventually, I figured it out. Obviously, it's pretty far from being done, as she has no face or clothes, but I'm pretty proud of what I've been able to learn from this week.
Although I'm not sure if all of these skills will be necessary for the project, I was enjoying myself and I figured any practice would be helpful, even if only to familiarize myself with the software.
Here's the final time breakdown for the second week:
1 hour - studio leads meeting
1 hour - playtest with Matt Rader
5+ hours - Blender practice
In total, I spent around 7+ hours.
I'm hoping for the next weeks that I'll be working more on actual tasks, but I suppose that depends on where the design team is and whether we can find enough tasks to last us until they're ready.
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