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@alien-academy
In the past 6 months, Alien Academy’s come so far! He’s a glimpse at what the game looks like now. If you look back on our last post (from December...), you can see how far this game has come visually!
Finally, we’re almost ready to show it at the 2015 NYU Game Center Student Show - and graduate with our MFAs!
Hey fellow earthlings!
It's been a while since we've posted an update about the progress of our gameplay. SO, why say with words what we can say with a video!
Alien Academy is a long game, and we only have until May to finish it (or beyond, depending). We decided to prioritize the systems that make this game what it is, spending the last few months focusing on AI programming for the aliens - which is now set in motion and working.
Next stop: schedule building and then Alien Interaction.
Through the many iterations and prototypes we've produced since we beginning, we're finally moving back to the heart of what makes Alien Academy what it is: the whacky relationships and moments that come out of clashing AIs. So hopefully you'll be seeing some of that soon!
We're hoping to clean up the school and get more polished art assets in soon. But until then, we have a lot of work cut out for us. :}
See you, space cowboys!
Some more mock-ups for visual style using our second alien: fuzzy guy!
These will have have species names some day, probably, most likely, maybe...
Progress continues! More to say later.
No one ever said I could colour...
Our deliverable for this week is visual look and feel, so we decided to start with doing some visual mock-ups of aliens in different styles. This is one of my current favourite designs done with a couple different colouring styles and in different palettes! These are the first three - more to come, for sure. :} (I like the first and second palettes the best.)
Our prototype is coming together, super exciting!! More info to come on that soon.
Concept art?! WHOA.
Currently, while we're setting up our prototype for Alien Academy, I (Elyse) have been working on trying to design interesting aliens to populate the school with.
For the first page, I wanted to try with some aliens inspired by shapes and balance. The first guy, the fuzzy one, is more bottom heavy, and the other one is just... WELL I have no idea. And then there's that creepy rug monster.
The second page was fun, because I wanted to experiment with humanoid, bipedal aliens with interesting shapes. I'm really happy with the way the one on the top right turned out, but the other ones were working with combinations of characteristics of deep sea fish (jellyfish, axolotl, etc) and these flowing, beautiful forms.
Both pages are so different, but I really enjoyed doing both of them! There's a third page and I'm still working on trying interesting and strange designs, so there'll be a lot more of these in the future.
For the next week, I'm gonna take a few of my favorites of these two pages and experiment with different coloring styles before they go into the game. Painterly versus pixel, etc. More to come soon!!
So, I might be the worst at keeping blogs updated. But hey, learning experience, right?!
Anyway, long time to see! We're currently chugging away at Alien Academy, trying to get everything done in preparation for the end of Prototype phase. There might be some minor panicking, might be some blood, sweat, and tears, but we're chugging along.
Currently, we're working on getting a basic UI set up on top of some basic AI programming as well. As a sim/management game, Alien Academy relies on a lot of the game's AI to make magic happen. While you get to interact with those AIs, there isn't much of the game without it.
He's our beautiful (???) school that Vanessa and I (Elyse) put together last weekend using Google sketchup. Currently, the little capsules (who will soon have sprites!) wander around the space and look for one of the rooms to settle themselves in. The little boxes around them are the UI that each individual student will have on click - we just have to get the onClick appearance set up.
Ignore the game view. I might've messed up some stuff in my scene...
More updates to come!
Paper prototype version one! We decided to start working with the UI of our game - our most difficult task at the moment - as we make an attempt at making this an accessible and awesome simulation. So meet Globnor and his friend Barry (name courtesy of Char), the first students of Alien Academy. Next step: giving these guys an AI!
Moving right along!
Things have been progressing over here at Alien Academy! We have an improving paper prototype of the proposed UI interface, and have been getting a lot of good feedback on that (what people want to interact with and can't, how they want the screen to look).
It was recommended that we add faculty to the mix in our game -- so far it's just alien students. This seems so obvious, we have to do it, but it's so many orders of magnitude more works. Both exciting and terrifying.
We'll add some images of our paper prototype! Witness the amazing powers of glue and construction paper!
Two Krogan Walk Into a Bar...
Hey Alien Academics! A belated hello from Elyse, the third member of the Alien Academy team. I'm so excited to be working with Char and Vanessa on this project, as they're both so awesome and are really the heart of this super rad, interstellar project.
Like the two of them, I'm also an MFA candidate at the NYU Game Center. When I'm not designing games or pretending that I know how to code, I'm writing romance stories, doodling and sketching, and watching TV. I guess I play games sometimes too.
I'm also the alien fanatic of the group. Wink wink.
We have some awesome stuff coming up so keep watching! See you, space cowboys.
Welcome!
Hey, everyone! I'm Vanessa. I'm also working on Alien Academy, and I'm very excited to be working with Char and Elyse to make our horribly over-scoped and very ambitious game.
My interests have traditionally been in narrative and point-and-click games, but being at the Game Center introduced me to the emergent narrative possibilities of simulation games.
When I'm not fumbling with code and 3D meshes, I'm playing with my dogs, reading ( / falling asleep to) fiction, and working out with my marathon-training boyfriend.
Hey everyone, I'm Char
Hey,
I'm Char, Dad, Programmer, and Alien discipliner. I don't know what the last one meant, but it felt appropriate. As a small team, we all wear a lot of hats. Though, My biggest hat will have the letter C and the # symbol on it, as I'll be the lead coder. I may dabble in some other stuff too (really, you don't want me to touch the art. You really, really don't. Other than that, I generally love systems design, and the places where Code intesects design. So expect to see lots of that from me here.
I'm excited, and marginally terrified.
Alien Academy!
Welcome to the development blog for Alien Academy (working title), the thesis project by Vanessa, Char, and Elyse. Over the next year, the three of us will be working together to create this game as a part of our MFA thesis at the NYU Game Center.
The idea for Alien Academy began during a thesis ideation exercise last semester in Studio 2. When forming teams for our week-long "thesis jam," we came together under the project umbrella of a game where players have to manage a daycare for aliens. Unlike human babies, alien babies would have different needs, wants, and idiosyncrasies - and with multiple species, the player is in for a wild ride! This idea quickly shifted into something a little more boarding school-esque, and we ended up with a school management game.
You, as the player, will be the headmaster or mistress of this prestigious alien boarding school. While your school is (mostly) capable of running itself, you will have to use your administrative access to manage your facilities, students, and the ever-angry PTA to keep your school running as smoothly as possible. A happy student body is a functioning student body! Though things don't do as smoothly when you have so many aliens in one place...
We hope you enjoy the development process and journey of Alien Academy! Look forward to more from us.
-Your Alien Academics, Vanessa, Char, and Elyse