Sprint 9: Into Vertical Slice
We made it into the vertical slice! Our team is excited to finally be able to take a break from having to meet class requirements and just make our game. Gameplay footage can be seen below. We've made progress on our how our stage and UI looks. We are still experimenting with the fonts we want to use and currently we are playing around with a font that is for personal use only. Sadly this means the video is unlisted, but don’t worry we are in the process of finding a font that is 100% free to use and fits the style we are going for.
We have about 2-3 weeks to polish up before the big studio wide presentations. We are looking to add more accessibility (ex. button prompts for pinning and climbing onto the ropes) and practice our pitch for these next couple of weeks.
You’ll see we are no longer developing the heel version of our main character Fuego. There just isn’t enough time left this semester to fully flesh out the heel version and finish up the face version. We are sad about this, but we are still going to create documentation for heel Fuego so that if we make it to next semester we can start development on him right away.
So far, I think our team has done a good job at accomplishing some of our original goals / creation values:
- Competition / High skill ceiling: The more you play the better you get and the more rewarding the experience
- Action / Immersive game play: Less spreadsheets and wikis, more playing in the game
- Monsters: Organic creatures of all different shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities
- Cool places / Crazy scenarios invoking the imagination
- Innovation: Asking "why" and "what if", challenging our assumptions, rethinking to create something new
We haven’t been able to incorporate our love for cool creatures and places as much as we wanted to, but that is mainly because animation and modeling take a long time and need to be super polished for a fighting game.
In terms of our original vision for the game, I think we all haven’t really known how the crowd / audience interactions were going to play out exactly and it has become a low priority for us to figure out an implement. Now that 90% of our core mechanics are done, we have the time to juice up the crowd and it is part of our polishing plans.
Time for a bit of a rant…
Right now, there is controversy among my peers and faculty on wether or not it is necessary to challenge out of vertical slice before the big studio wide presentations on Nov. 20th:
“At the end of 12 weeks all teams who have qualified will present their project to the community and the selection panel. Qualification requires the team to have completed the VerticalSlice stage of their development by the last class of week 12 of the semester. If you have not completed the vertical slice stage, you may petition your faculty member to present if you are in at least the ProofofConcept stage. “ (Syllabus)
Classes are two way streets between students and teachers. But some people don’t see it that way. Some students are so conditioned to being funneled information that they can no longer see the true point of all this and just do what they are told. During my time QA testing at Champlain over these past few years, I’ve played so many games that have moved through this or similar stage systems and even onto the second semester of capstone/senior production that felt like they never truly found their fun. As a Producer, I appreciate the want for some sort of system to determine where a team is at in their development, but many of my peers see the syllabus as gospel that they have to adapt to rather then a framework that they can adapt from.
Personally, I find it unnecessary busy work for our team to have to plan and execute another challenge presentation at the same time as planning our final presentations. We asked our capstone faculty member about this issue and were told that it is unnecessary to do a vertical slice presentation in addition to the final presentation. From what I heard other faculty members haven’t approach the situation the same way with my peers and they just accept whatever their faculty member says. Worse yet, these peers try to convince others including our team to follow them, but I say no. Even if our capstone faculty member were to tell us that we had to do the vertical slice presentations I would argue against it. I’m trying to protect my team from extraneous work. There is so little time left before Nov. 20th and our team wants to use every second making our game better and creating an awesome final pitch / presentation.