User Stories

On friday we discussed as a group and in our indivdual sections (programmers and artist) what our tasks would be and where we wish to head in the next few weeks.
With help from brad and andy we now have some set user stories.

User Stories:
Design:
(these include refined ideas that matt suggested)

• Create a game design Document.
• Assign team roles.
• Review game design document with product owner.
• Show weekly stable build of the game to product owner.
• Check new blog entries (before weekly scrum).

Art:

• Devolop an art style (remember that character models must be fixed into a 32 by 32 pixel spec).
• Develop an asset list.
• Start on animation planning (png format was recommended images).

Programming:

• Pygame loop and res: 640 by 480.
• Keyboard input to work with res/key detection.
• Move sprite onscreen with the same keys.
• Platforms on screen so when you collide with them it collides with the sprite too.
• collision detection.
• gravity.
• sprite to object detection.

Game References

As we've discussed in class; we want our game to grow from 1 bit to 32 bit in style. I thought it would be handy to have a visual reference as to what 1, 8, 16 and 32 bit games looked like.

Now, 1 Bit is fairly simple. There, you have Pong. However, there is no need to stick with the visual style of Pong necessarily depending on what we want to do in the way of game style. We could have Scott's character mock-up in black and white moving through to 32 bit.

8 Bit, things begin to become a bit more expansive. Around that time you had Atari and the like out and bout. The game I was thinking of as reference, was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the graphics actually looked a lot more complicated than that - as Megaman was 8 bit, too, but released 5 years later.

16 Bit I imagine something closer to Super Mario World. This is where things start getting pretty sticky - the games look really good, and it's kinda hard to think where we can take the games design from 16 bit into 32 bit.

32 Bit and you have Chrono Trigger. How do we feel about doing sprites on that sort of standard? I'm wondering if we should scale things back, just go up to 16 bit for the 3 separate levels instead. But really, it's up to you guys - how do you feel about doing art with these sorts of standards?

-Matt

too many post from me,

waiting to go out, so i made this. i'm pretty bored.

i know i'm getting ahead of myself here, but might as well chuck this up aswell.

this the sprites combined into a gif along with a dpe sheet and the original character sketch.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/DopeSheet.jpg

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/aeronaught2-1.jpg

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/RunCycleFinal.gif

~Scott

Just mocked up a scene to show what i had in mind for the 32-bit level of the game,

tell me what you think, the red dude is the playable character (its just a sprite i knocked up for the image), tell me what you think?

~Scott

As a Q.A it means we need to have a testing game by week 4 and a almost finished game by week 10 and we should be all able to test it all then

Producers User Stories

PRODUCER
As Producer, I want to keep things simple and construct this game from the ground up with our core ideas and mechanics so we have a functioning product in 4 months time.

As Producer, I want to set specific roles for my team to focus on and turn in when expected.

As Producer, I want to make sure our planned game sticks to the Product Owners requests of the game being playable in 5 minutes, made up of the themes of Float, Stream and Grow, and to not be multiplayer.

As Producer, I want to keep our Product Owners up to date on the current state of the project as often as possible.

As Producer, I want my team to keep me up to date on the current state of the project as often as possible.

As Producer, I want the programmers to focus on getting the platforming aspects of the game working first.

As Producer, I want the artists to focus on organizing how sprites are going to work and what they are going to look like.

Preliminary Mockups

Here's all the stuff we've come up with so far.

Mockup Document
Platform game: art heavy, less programming.

Time travel theme (stream of time),

5 minute count down timer. Mario ish game. Changing art style (16 bit sprite)

Flow of time represented by the changing of graphics 1-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit.

Constant scrolling background to force game play.

Must evolve to the next bit in order to continue playing.

each level requires you to collect bits in order to get to next level, i.e.

8 bits and 16 bits.

1-bit:

White bit collects other colour bits in order to evolve to 8-bit.

Platform without gravity, side scrolling shooter.

Mockup Pitch

BIT

By Team Bit

The game that us here at Team Bit are going to produce is a platformer/sidescroller. It portrays the player (at the beginning) as a single pixel, trying to make his way through time into an 8-bit sprite, a 16-bit sprite and eventually a 32-bit sprite.

The game mechanic starts off as a simple sidescroller/shooter where your aim is to destroy red pixels who’re flying at your white pixel whilst all the time attempting to collect the golden pixels which – once you’ve collected enough, upgrade your player and subsequently allow you to advance through (time) into the later bit formats.

Mockup Images

Getting Started

Team A is made up of:
Ben Moreschi (Swapped with Kieran McDonald)
Llew Watson
Mat Lawson
James Gibson
Scott Higgenbottom
Ben Russell
Matthew Dyet

Does anybody have any ideas as to what sort of game we could do, or a specific role they would like to do? Both are worth thinking about over the weekend, or if you have your mind made up now go ahead and post your thoughts. I'm happy with a Producer or Designer role if nobody else is.

The idea I've been throwing around in my head was for a game based on the flow of time. A simple platformer like Super Mario or a fixed shooter like Galaga. Basically putting more emphasis on the art than the mechanics since we have so many artists. Unless Mat and Llew think they can program something more complicated - I'd like to keep it simple and add onto it.

Post Testing

just testing i can post,
and just checked the emails, Ben Moreschi and Kieran McDonald switched teams for future reference.

~Scott

Test Post

This test post bought to you by Matthew Dyet!

Welcome

This is where Team A will blog their progress. Contact andyhawkins@ozemail.com.au if you are having troubles creating a blog here, or you want to be added to this team