Week 1 Work Log

1. 29/2/12: 2 hours forming team outside of class
2. 29/2/12: 2 hour tutorial/workshop attendance
3. 1/3/12: 1 hour setting up google doc and sharing game idea
4. 3/3/12: 2 hour skype meeting about game ideas
5. 4/3/12: 3.5 hour skype meeting about game ideas
6. 5/3/12: 2 hour library meeting about game ideas
7. 6/3/12: 2.5 hour city meeting about game idea
8. 6/3/12: 1 hour power point slide write up
9. 6/3/12: 0.5 blog and email tutor

Reflection:

Initially I came into the unit with Lall Goh, but of course we need a total of 5 people in the team so before the first tut we found Yu-Chen who is an animator, and basically brainstormed games while waiting for the tut to start.

The tut itself was interesting for me because, aside from the introductory formalities, once we started talking about games and what common concepts are needed in everyone's game (fun, engaging, replay value, etc), I started to learn a lot more; and since I come from a programming background, it was pretty interesting how much more everyone else knew than I on games.

Meetings meetings meetings. We had some good ideas. I came up with one where your character's strength in a multi player co-op battle game was directly affected by the player's test scores (maths, science, english)  prior to the battle. One of the main ideas we came up with was a 2D co-op game  where each character was controlled by an individual on individual devices. Out main problem with this idea I discovered in out library meeting was the ability to maneuver correctly on an iPhone or any other touch screen phone. This was a huge issue if we wanted to go ios (which we all did for different reasons; mine was because I wanted to release an app game and be successful). So today I had lunch with Lall and we decided to do what we originally thought of months prior to semester; a mini game game untilising the sensor technology of the smart phones.

So we had the idea; but Lall wanted a theme. So I suggested a egg toy machine which pops out a random egg with a character and the character stars in 3 to 5 short mini games that you play consecutively. Then Lall came up with making it so that each character represented a machanic (or specific sensor such as tilting, touching, shaking, etc) so that when choosing to just play all random the player would know prior to playing which sensor tech would be used next.

We're still weeding out the kinks and exactly what type of mini games we want etc. For instance Yu-Chen suggested one where you are given a shopping list and then you see the shop and all it's items and quickly have to pop the items on the list into the basket and check out before the time; trick is that you only got to see the list right at the start so it's a bit of a memory game.

So for the next part we are going to have to find two more people for our team; and with this idea it will need to be 1 more programmer; and an animator (hopefully 3d proficient in flash).

But for my part I need to test viability of mini game ideas so I need to do some tests (tuts) on the engine we're most likely to use, unity3D; plus I need to port over a game created in unity3D onto IOS, Android, and Windows 7 phones and see what issues need to be addressed so that I can provide the relevant documentation during production for the final product to potentially be on all three platforms at the end.