Skip to main content

Zomb-Merge - Sprint 3

 Blog Post 3 - Zomb-Merge


My name is Kyle Ramser and I am currently a student in the Computer Animation and Game Development major at Chico State. I am focusing on level design and am currently working as the designer on a mobile game with the working title Zomb-Merge for the Mobile Game Development class 377. Our team, Graveyard, just finished up our third sprint out of seven sprints in the semester and had our first digital playtest during this sprint. So far, we are a bit behind our ideal schedule, but now that the game is functioning and the major scripts have been implemented, the rest of our sprints should be able to pick up the pace a bit and put the game in a good place by the end of the process.



As for the work that I completed this sprint, it was definitely somewhat lackluster. I had a very long week and did not put in quite as much time as I should have, but was able to put out some of the cards I had assigned. All in all, I have gotten the level completely laid out with all the different backgrounds, as well as the board and UI for my programmer to use. This means that from now on, while I am a level designer, I am going to have to try my hand at programming and art which I am not quite as good at. I am definitely going to need to do some research to learn how to do certain things in C#, and I have been looking through how to create a functioning pause menu with controls already since I created the UI for it in the last sprint. Now that the game is fully functioning, I can build off the code that my programmer implemented already and add in the smaller, extra functions in the upcoming sprint such as the attack button and upgrade menu.



As for what I was able to complete this sprint, I made the app icon for the game, which in theory would be easy but without a huge grasp on art, especially 2D digital art, it took me a bit longer to make something that I believed would work for a logo. Still, it is a work in progress and will need to be looked over by our producer, who is better with art, so that he can add to it and tweak it up a bit more. I also finished adding all of the backgrounds for the different cities so that rather than every battle seeming like it’s in the same place, it will give the player the sense of changing locations between cities. I also retextured all the backgrounds to add some more differences between them.



For our playtests this sprint, we were mainly looking to see if our core mechanic was working well and if it was any fun to play. While we got a lot of feedback that it was difficult to tell which squares were moving where because of a lack of animations, the mechanic itself did function. Most of our playtesters agreed that it definitely needed some work, but that the mechanic functioned and the idea was unique and interesting.


Next sprint, I am looking to do more than I did this time. I am going to need to do a lot of research into programming to make sure I can make everything function smoothly in the game, and I am looking to playtest more often than just once a sprint to make sure that the most significant changes are done well. So overall, not my best sprint, and this next one is going to take some work, but after reevaluating the process we have been going through, I want to make some changes and come back better.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

KickBack - Sprint Review 1

KickBack - Sprint Review 1 My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D artist on the game KickBack. We just finished up our first sprint, which means I was able to finish some of the early models to be implemented into the game. So far, this production has been one of the most interesting for me personally, and the team I am working with is a bit larger than I am used to. The art style for this game is low-poly models with a very simplistic texture style, reminiscent of something like Risk of Rain 2 or Solar Ash. I have never worked on a project with this type of style before, so it has been a learning curve for me, and I am still trying to find helpful information for texturing in these kinds of games. So far, I think the models have turned out quite well, and I am definitely getting the hang of the art style as it has become more natural for me to create these lower-poly models. As for the work I have completed this sprint, like I said before, I completed several model...

CAGD 373 - Destiny 2 Tower - Sprint 5

My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working with my group to recreate the Tower, a social space from Destiny 2. We just finished up our fifth sprint of the project, which means we are nearly at the deadline for the game scene. This sprint was a fairly productive one for me, as I was able to finish nine cards, all which were very important to the main layout of our scene, and was able to make some progress on the modeling of a pistol for the main player character. So far, this has proven to be one of the most difficult models I have ever tried to create. This sprint, I focused on finishing the last of our main models. This includes things like the vault wall, the giant overhang in the back of the map, and a modular wall to be used for the left side of the map.I was able to model and UV each of these, as well as add a few smaller things like a target for the shooting range and a Unity local fog to block off the underside of the tower. All I need to do now is to import these models...

Destiny 2 Tower - Game Scene Final Project Walkthrough

  Tower Walkthrough - Game Scene Project Attached below is an embedded video with a walkthrough of the tower scene.