#champlain college

[r0s3mm]

SCRIPT WRITING DRIVES ME INSANE

Omg ! Right? It’s all fun and games to come up with the story but actually writing one? with all the formatting and all that! Wow hahahah. Do you study in film or is it a hobby? 😊

[green-mountain-gay]

somewhere over the rainbow

[eliottdemaurys]

I just got accepted to Champlain College!!!

[onethousandlemons]

Lake Champlain, Burlington, Vermont

[inspectorclarke]

Sci-Fi Hallway project is finished!

(Modeled in Maya, textured in Substance, assembled in Unreal.)

[thecodingsheep]

Near The End!

Introduction

SpudLiminal, formally known as Hilbert’s House, is the physics-based puzzler that came to life the way my team and I foresaw it to be at its current stage 10 weeks ago when the concept got pitched. We regarded this idea as a joke since we needed another game idea. At the time (10 weeks ago), we were deadset on making a stealth-based mushroom-themed game, but SpudLiminal, where the player plays as a potato, quickly grew on us. My team and I consistently meet each sprint cycle to help empower our vision of SpudLiminal. We also meet outside of working hours to get to know each other and build relationships outside of a role on the team. so far, we never once encountered any issues of miscommunication or malicious intent from another. We are fond of one another's company; we habitually confide with each other when presented with roadblocks.

Core Idea’s Clarity

After sprint six of SpudLiminal, my team and I proudly closed our gameloop (enter room, encounter puzzle, solve the puzzle, acquire new ability, escape room). Players were now able, for the first time, to complete puzzles and unlock a newly acquired ability; which assists them in their escape with a dialogue system to support them with puzzle completion; it provided context to their environment. Utilizing that system, we want future puzzles and scenarios to enhance and showcase SpudLiminal's overarching narrative. Proceeding sprint six to sprint 9 (week 12 of the semester), we began refining and polishing SpudLiminal by encompassing multiple puzzle solutions and ways for the player to escape the room to ensure our gameloop is closed. Subsequently, through game testing, we were able to observe pathways players took in completing our current puzzle (analytics system), and it allowed us as a team to assemble new changes to either suffice more transparency or locate any unexpecting loopholes. Some of these discovered loopholes were patched or turned into an achievement to reward players in exploration (one SpudLiminal's design pillars) for using the game as a playground, sandbox-esque experience.

The Team Being a Team!

Everyone in Spud Studios (the team name) is working well together. Many team members assess their risk for current features they want to implement and any interdependencies it may require and tackle them with appropriate priority; While also communicating their struggles and components needed for a functioning game. At this moment, all that is essential to hone the homestretch is ways to facilitate visual feedback for grabbable objects in an immersive manner, sound triggers for the already implemented sound effects, and smoothing the player's third-person camera. My only worry for Greenlight last minute changes/merges into the final build. What if a critical gameplay object is left out, causing something in the room to look unfinished or potentially break SpudLiminal into an unrecoverable state? Despite my concern, my team is already taking action to mitigate my fears; the final build is one day before Greenlight (which gives us more time to find any lingering issues.

[thecodingsheep]

Building out Spudliminal’s Production

Introduction

Over the past eight weeks, my production team of seven has been working on our game, "Spudliminal,"  formally known as "Hilbert's House." Players open their eyes as a limbless potato in a mysterious house where the rules of nature cease to exist. When exiting a room, you seem to reenter the same room but through another entrance. Although players return to the same room, entities within the space shift and bestow a new stumbling block the player must overcome to hopefully once in for all escape the room. The main objective is to escape the locked room using any of the provided tools given, either through completing various puzzles, pure will, or luck. 

Team Makeup

As a generalist programmer, my role on Spudliminal has been working on assorted physics mechanics, particle effects, and shaders to appeal to one of the game's core pillars, absurdity. Some features I worked on were: smoke shader & VFX, water shader, buoyancy, mesh deformation via the squish mechanic, liquid in containers shader, etc. Like myself, my preoccupied team is aspiring to complete Spudliminal's minimal viable product (MVP) for the Greenlight showcase, with each discipline specializing in one unique role on the team. My current team buildup is:

One 3D-Environment Artist

One Character Artist

One Producer

One Narrative/Level Design Designer

One Sound Designer

One Systems & Tools Programmer

One Generalist Programmer (Me)

With my team's current makeup, build status, and project scope, we are on track to meet the standards of a minimal viable product within two weeks from today.

Challenges

Some of the challenges my team and I encountered: 

Integrating mechanics into puzzles and core gameloop

Balancing physics systems

Balancing frustration with puzzles

Balancing narrative elements in a sandbox-esque game

The player's third-person camera

Redefining scope

To tackle integrating mechanics into puzzles and the core gameloop, the player acquires an ability they unlock through solving one of the room's various puzzles. That unlocked ability allows them to escape the room. In our second level, the player will have to utilize the unlocked ability in level one to complete various steps in that variation of the room's puzzles. Physics systems are difficult to balance; The core challenge Spudliminal carries is playing as a potato (so limited movement and control). To counter frustration, we allowed players to have some air control while moving through air and water. Smoothing out physics mechanics allows puzzle completion to go smoother, along with the introduction of the narrative system implemented during sprint 5, to give context to the world and hints on how to solve puzzles. Although, Spudliminal has a narrative through a non-playable character existing within the room, making dialogue options keeps the game's sandbox-esque aesthetic intact and appeals to story game players. One of the biggest challenges is getting the third-person camera that follows and looks at the player to feel right and yet not annoying to play. Game testers often comment the camera, at first, is satisfying as it bumps with the player, but after a while of playing, the moving camera gets unfun and irritating.

Going Forward

To ensure that my production team and I are satisfied with the product we are presenting during Greenlight, I will do the following:

Communicate any struggles encountered earlier during sprints focused on feature development. Discussion issues earlier on during a sprint helps the team redesign future sprint formats for an accurate portrayal of the current state of progress.

Establish boundaries for any possible workarounds for features out of scope for an individual but essential to the completion of the minimal viable product; Partaking in-studio collaboration "help" sessions are an example of workarounds that I could utilize.

Lastly, continue working on features in my personal set production work session. Finishing the work I promised my team keeps everyone on track for the sprint goal and is one step closer to completing the minimal viable product.

[thecodingsheep]

Reflecting on Hilbert's House

Introduction

During the first four weeks of my senior capstone, my production team and I had two achievable and amusing game concepts, Amanita's Talismans Shop and Hilbert's House. My team and I cherished those concepts and would love to work on them throughout the entire semester if we had the opportunity. Regardless, we had to part ways with one of our concepts so that we could devote a respectable amount of time to developing our chosen game idea into a cake pop-style proof of concept. We decided to select Hilbert's House, the sandbox puzzle escape physics based-game, over Amanita's Talismans Shop, the stealth heist-themed game. We saw the value of choosing a game with a more straightforward closed game loop of solving rooms' puzzles to escape and rinse and repeat for the next level. Compared to Amanita's Talismans Shop's game loop of sneaking past enemies operating various trap-making devices at the player's disposal to accomplish the goal of reaching the level door and rinse-and-repeat. Despite that, the main reason Hilbert's House was the concept my team and I decided to pursue was how silly, unique, and fun the game could become with the added bonus of having intriguing core mechanics like "Squish," eyeball arms for grabbing, etc.

What is Hilbert's House?

Have you ever exited a room only to reappear in the same room you just left but at a new entrance, and you are a potato? On a planet shaped like a lotus flower, where every time a star dies, something on the planet shift! Threatened by outside forces on that planet's petals, Hilbert, a genius and passionate magic researcher, built a safe house of sorts to hide in and trap intruders who sought to ruin him. Caught in the crossfire, players open their eyes as an ordinary potato on one of the shelves inside Hilbert's kitchen. When they try to leave, they suddenly seem to renter the same room but at a new entrance. Determine to escape, the player must interact with characters and objects to solve room-based puzzles for one step closer to freedom from the maze-like prison, Hilberts House. After communicating the game idea with many friends and family outside of Champlain's Game Studio, they all seemed fascinated by how such a mundane character set in a magic's only struggle is traversing the environment. They enjoy how original Hilbert's House was as the lore explains gameplay as to why rooms seem to repeat themselves. Since the concept's game loop appeals to the escape room theme games, it opens the player demographic to a wide-range audience, making the game concept, not niche. The only qualms they had were what other methodologies the lore is conveyed outside of character narration and the room repeating itself with minor changes! However, the environmental artist expressed how they were going to incorporate strange lotus-themed plants to convey how Hilbert's House takes place far from earth. The team wants Hilbert's house mechanics, systems, lore, narrative, environment, and characters to feel and make sense of how we want the concept to become.

Learning Experience

Even though Hilbert's House game loop is more straightforward, and has low ceiling scope, it provided us a safe space to ensure that we can achieve a minimum viable product while slowly challenging ourselves with new features in our respective disciplines. I have been slowly incorporating shaders and other forms of visual effects into Hilbert's House to help immerse the player into the environment, with my bubbles and smoke shader. We furthermore frequently divert work responsibilities each sprint to stay on track with our road map. During the earlier stages of the project, any jokingly made side conversations became features in the game, like the thought of making the potatoes physical being like mashed potatoes to get under the door to exit the room. That idea became the first core mechanic the player acquires to "escape" the kitchen during its first iteration, the squish mechanic. That cycle became full team meetings discussing the room puzzle's minimal requirements and what each discipline can do to execute it to a functional state. If the puzzle requirements seem too over scope, not fun, or distracting to the overarching storyline, then we inform the designer to rework the puzzle. In conclusion, my production team is challenging ourselves while keeping the core gameplay simplistic, which so far has kept our enjoyment in what this game concept can become!