Milestone #1 Devlog

(Sunday, September 24 - Tuesday, September 26)

Our Team

Computer Science Students: Peter Albu, Alicia Natividad, Owen Huang, and Daniel Kehyayan.

Audio Students: Henry Lewis, and Tristan Culbert.

Art/Design Students: Edzhe (Idil) Yozer, Reznel Legaspi, Cheuk Hei Ng (Nicholas), Grace Hoang, Silri Kim, Hanyoung, and Sesha.

Our Game

Introduction

Our game is called Viewfinder. You control a person with a camera inside a large very detailed room. You are shown a picture that was taken somewhere in that room and you have to figure out how to retake that exact same photo by looking around the props and positioning yourself.

The game will feature multiple levels that contain several stages to progress through. The difficulty of the game will come in the form of puzzle and platformer components, as well as some ideas we are cooking up with regards to taking photos!

History

The first iteration of our game was presented on Saturday, September 23. We had the help of several wonderful graphic designers and animators, thank you: Idil, Sesha, Nicholas, Silri, and Hanyoung! This pre-release version of our game had the initial version of the picture taking mechanic, as well as player movement and controls, as well a working (barebones) level 1 .

Looking Forward

We will be presenting the first itch.io release version of our game on Wednesday, September 27. This version features minor improvements on the surface level, such as a working UI and stage progression system. However, there was a lot of work done under the hood, namely removing most of the "hacked together" parts from the game jam. Levels and their stages can now  be created using .json files, which leaves the majority of the level building work to be completed in the form of level design. The UI and game state all work dynamically now, so we can add, edit, or remove stages from levels in under 30 seconds.

What we've learned

The first game jam taught us a lot of what we needed to know to have a more successful second game jam - prioritizing features, combining assets, working with cross-functional teams, and basic familiarity with Unity. From that point until now, there isn't much else as we are still having early discussions - though we are aware that things will ramp up soon and we will have to start coming with tasks for the audio and art members of our team.