Overview:
Hello there! Welcome to the first blog post on my capstone project: Captain’s Hold. The purpose of this and the following blog posts is to describe the process the team and I go through to create a fun 3D game in 20 weeks. In the subsequent blog posts, I will cover a wide range of topics that pertain to my contribution to the project including designs, concepts, code samples, and more. But without further introduction, let’s get started!
Overall project goal:
The idea is to create a polished game within the 20 weeks we have in two quarters here at DePaul. This is to help us to learn, first hand, the full production cycle of game development / software development. The syllabus describes this course as “The primary purpose of this course is for students to gain experience working intensely as a team or “game studio.” Students will learn how to work successfully with people that have diverse skill sets, backgrounds, and interests.”
Deliverable:
The main deliverable will be an alpha build of the game. The core game should be completed by the first quarter (first 10 weeks). This means that the game should be fully playable, programming should be essentially completed, and the main art assets should be in. Sound will be outsourced to a different class at DePaul, but we hope to have some sound samples and a main score completed in the first quarter as well. In the second quarter the main focus is polishing, play testing, and a bit of debugging. Other assets in this stage may be added if they are small enough components. These components should not be an essential part of the game.
The team:
Brett Prank: Level Designer
Cole Funck: Artist, 3D Modeler
Gage O’Connor: Programmer
Greg Mendez: Programmer
Joseph Walker: Programmer, Producer
Lee Rundell: Game Designer
My Role:
I have taken on the role of “Programmer and producer.” As a programmer I will work on designs and development of game mechanics. This will include player mechanics, enemy AI, game inputs, and even GUI and HUD designs. Another large role will be refactoring code, creating documentation, and creating UML diagrams.
As a producer I’ll be in charge of project scheduling, organizing meetings, and keep the team on track with Agile methodologies. I will be making sure that everyone has a task to work on, and make sure that we’re all working toward the big picture of our final game.
Tools:
· Unity 3D (Game Engine): We will be using Unity as our game engine. We decided to go with this because many DePaul students have used this in the past.
· C# (Programming language): Unity supports C# and JavaScript. We chose C# because we will be using it’s object oriented designs.
· Perforce (Repository): We use perforce in other DePaul classes and its’ UI is simple for non-programmers to use, minimizing the need for terminal commands.
· Doxygen (Documentation): Doxygen will make documentation of code easy to maintain, an often overlooked part of software development. Doxygen also creates UML diagrams which will help us describe the various systems of the game.
· Taiga (Kanban board): We will keep track of tasks through a Kanban board hosted on Taiga, which will allow us to use Agile methodologies.
· Autodesk Maya (3D Modeling): Most of the art assets will be created in Maya, again because most modelers at DePaul frequently use the software. Even programmers were required to learn at least the basics of Maya and 3D modeling techniques.