Delta Bat Studios

[deltabatstudios]

Moving on...

So after a lot of effort put in from many members of the group, our last project "Damson Valley" was not completed. This was due to several things but mostly it all came down to one real issue. When I decided to initiate this project and bring together a team of my talented friends, I may have rushed in. Instead of creating a prototype and allowing my group to clearly see what we were working towards I began to tell people from the moment the idea entered my head and that was the downfall as it was hard for the team to invision where their work was going. Unfortunately things like this don't work out as planned but what can we do but learn from our mistakes? Perhaps one day Damson Valley will be rebooted and we will finally get to see what a team of this potential could produce . Until then we must all strive to continue flourishing in our own creative directions and constantly strive to achieve our goals. All the best and watch this space, there's something in the works. - Joni

[deltabatstudios]

A couple of days ago we revived the concept now that we have all found a lot of spare time in Summer! We added four new members to our team!

Bronwyn is a 3D modeler who has a good amount of experience in 3DS Max, she will be aiding John with the 3D modeling of the game and will be producing a lot of the models the player will see around the streets.

Lucas is a talented coder and has experience in Unity 3D, he along with many of our team studied game design at college and he will be working on the coding behind the Menu system in our game.

Sam is a good all rounder! He has an impressive understanding of Unity 3D, and Javascript coding and will be one of the main In-Engine workers.

Finally, Kira is another talented Artist who will be working along side Poppy in order to create concept art and final pieces for creatures, characters and assets in the game.

Getting the ball rolling!

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

Update: The game has not been abandoned, but due to a lack of equipment and time, it had to be put to one side for a period of time. However, I have begun re-writing the theme track and creating more accurate, high quality sound effects. I will also begin going to into story development in terms of script and dialogue. Stay tuned guys - Tom

[deltabatstudios]

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[deltabatstudios]

Now we're getting started!

So we all have a pretty clear schedule over the next 3 weeks, hopefully we'll have a pretty solid alpha by the end of it! We already have a large portion of the script, audio and assets pre-prepared. It's should be a good few weeks for Delta Bat Studios!

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 10

A lot of work has been completed and especially in coding and music. College will begin again on the 8th meaning that work rate will be slowed. John will have full access to the modeling software he will need in college and we are waiting until November until Tom gets his microphones and recording gear for our in game voices and some sound effects.

Poppy has made an interesting concept for a monster and the story line has been narrowed down as well as naming the town that the game will be set in (doubling up as the title). Holly has made some good HUD design concepts.

Now we wait and see what the next few weeks will holds.

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 9

Today, I created a few design ideas for the start-up screen of the game. We have not decided on a definite game title as of yet, but one name that has come about is “Damson Valley” which would be the name of the town of where our story is based. Therefore an appropriate theme to look at for my designs was towns/streets. A lot of our primary research was on this topic, so I used inspiration from those images and incorporated different features into my designs.

I have created a few sketches of my ideas with notes on composition, interactivity and background imagery.

I plan to create many more sketches based around this theme and more. 

- Holly

[deltabatstudios]

Day 8

Today has been a rather slow day for myself, though productive none-the-less. I spent today writing and mastering the game's theme tune, 'In This Skin'. It only took approximately 10 hours, but I think it's effective either way. Joni's main spec was for it to be dramatic, and I'm positive that if it's anything it's dramatic. - Tom

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 7

Today has been a relaxed day for our team as we have all been working away at the jobs that were delegated at yesterday's meeting. 

I managed to make the script that will allow our menus to work in game as in my testing project, I managed to link all of the scenes up with an easy Launch Menu, Testing Scene and Replay/Exit Scene. This will do doubt be useful to use in the final product.

I also played around with script for getting audio to work on the Audio Tapes that we plan on using in the game.

Tom finished up on the base plot of the game today, so we can really start looking into shaping the story.

Still going strong.

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

Day 6

Today was an important day for the team, as it was our first full team meeting. We discussed mostly how we want to develop the story, and what motifs, jumpscares and features we want to include in the game. It was also a good chance to designate specific roles to people, since at this time a lot of things can't be done until models have been made etc. 

If anything, today was a great chance to really get to know each other as a team and learn everyone's strong points, so they can be designated tasks on top of what they were brought in to do. For instance, Poppy is our artist of the group, but she has also expressed her interests in doing some voice acting, and therefore she will be helping Ryan in this task (useful for him since not all characters are male in this game). Today's really allowed us to move on with the story and make some real progress in how we want to shape this game.

-Tom

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 5

Did someone order a killer cube?

Today has been a very successful day for me in particular, I have managed to practice a lot of java scripting and gain a further understanding of how it works. As it stands I have quite a adequate knowledge of coding in Visual basic and rules that apply in most, if not all coding languages, i.e; Variables, Functions...

I managed to create the script for an enemy that will run at you if you get close enough, I also made it so that when it touches you it will destroy the first person controller. The killer 'cube' will serve well with a good monster model over it! A useful script to have up your sleeve when when creating a game like ours.

As a side project to test my javascript understanding I created a small Brick Breaker game in Unity. Some real progress has been made today on the coding ground.

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 4

The fourth day into the project has been a busy one for Joni. First of he began more work on the map and accidentally made an irreversible mistake which meant he have to start from scratch. This has been the first big slip up in the project but all is not lost and we learn by our mistakes.

After that he decided that he would start coding (as that is his primary job). Joni created a new project for testing code before he adds the script into the project. Joni managed to compile code for; A crosshair, sprint command and crouch command in the game and also designed a temporary crosshair. As well as that, Joni created a couple of seamless textures using primary images I took yesterday.

Today was also a busy day for myself. All ambiance sounds have been finished as well as jumpscares, so it meant going onto finer details. I created a wind sound by sending various modulators (mostly phasers) through a bandpass filter, which has given it a natural swirling effect. I also made the menu selection sounds (previous/next/select/error).  One of the more entertaining sounds to create today was that of a windup music box. It plays a simple, all major melody, and I've managed to find a vst that adds in the 'winding' sound softly. All in all, a very productive day.

- Tom

[deltabatstudios]

Holly is another new addition to our little team. She has an A-Level in graphic design and is very skilled in terms of design. Holly will be in charge of designing and creating our Menus System, HUD and GUI.

This means that in less than a week our team size has doubled and tasks have been delegated more effectively between specialists, who the jobs are best fitted to. 

It's an exciting time!

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 3

The third day with the team together. Some good progress has been made, we have settled on the types of creepy creatures and monsters we want in our game and I have also been out for a few hours taking reference pictures of our in-game route.

Poppy also had many brilliant primary images that she had taken herself prior to joining the team. They will come in very handy if/when we create building interiors especially.

Tom has carried on with his ambiance music as well as uploading all 3 jump scare sounds. He has also managed to create some very effective flashlight on/off sound effects. Additionally, the end-story version of the song heard during the game has been made, alongside the street version, which has a thinner texture and low cut filter, to emulate the sound of it playing from a megaphone-esque type of speaker in the street.

As for me I have finally managed to smooth out the path and create it so that it's at the right gradient and accurate to real life, giving it a smooth hill on one side and a dead drop on the other, this was a much harder task that I expected it to be.

Yet another good day for the team, I'm excited to get the ball rolling faster!

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

Today has been a very productive day, bringing with it two new members of the team. John and Poppy...

John is an experienced 3D modeler from my college game design class who will be working on the models for the game such as environment objects and character models.

Poppy is an extremely talented artist with a keen interest for horror in video games, she will be designing the concept for creatures and objects that John will later model.

Things are looking good!

- Joni

[deltabatstudios]

Day 2

I focused a lot of my time today in creating various ambient, atmospheric sounds to begin in the immersion of the player. I've made one track which is around 1:30, which will be loop-able depending on how we shape the progress of the game. The 2nd is 3 minutes, and will be used to draw the player in, increasing in volume and (minutely) texture. I still need to automate the high pass filtering on the 2nd track, so that it has a natural, almost sentient wobbling, as if the sound were a creature. Some good progress made here, though I'm still unhappy with my jumpscares, which I will continue to work on.

- Tom

[deltabatstudios]

DAY 1

Today was our first day as a team, we're already great friends but as we already know, socializing and hard work are two different things entirely.

We had already discussed plans and ideas over facebook chat. We had thought of a basic concept and story and where it would be set. Right here in our home town. Often we walk back to my house of an evening after our outings and as we are very familiar with the walk we though "why not have this route as our in game route?"

We all agreed that would be good. I encountered many problems when trying to create the terrain. At first I tried to convert a Google Earth point of view into a heightmap that I could later transfer into Unity to get an accurate level of terrain for the journey. This did not go well so I had to create it the old fashioned way.

Meanwhile Tom was trying to create an atmospheric ambiance that could be used as the overlaying sound in our game, this proved to be a difficult task even for him, he continues working on it in his spare time.

Ryan has began to develop characters and script for our game although we all know that his skills will be more useful later down the line.

A good start, none the less!

- Joni