BGP: Week Nine

This week followed with the final touches on the rule-book which had to be done before Tuesday. I got help by the other team members to overlook and edit the final text which helped a lot to add and correct certain parts. Last day before GGC I worked on the general design for the rule-book.

BGP: Week Eight

In the beginning of the week I still had not finished all of the illustrations. Though, this worked out well in the end. Since we had some problems with other cards that was not part of my schedule at first I had to take over those as well which delayed some of my original work. This went fairly smooth and we got all illustrations ready for printing in time.

Since I only had the day to draw this and from scratch it is simple in its design and detail level.

For the rest of the week we were on the graphical part finished, there were some few things to consider but apart from that it was all there. I spent the rest of the week writing the rule-book for the game. Because most information about the final rules were scattered across the group, some on paper, other on our shared drive, but most still in Marc's head it was difficult for me who were the least familiar with the rules at this point. But, since everyone else had their own things to attend more important I took it on me. It went fairly well, just that it could have gone smoother.

BGP: Week Seven

Much last last week I continued working on my assigned illustrations. It is slowly going forward, perhaps to slow. This weeks focus has been to get the illustrations to a finished level. At this point it is important that every card has an illustration even if it is not good enough. Better to have something than nothing I suppose.

This week I managed to complete all the resource cards, which is good. I think they will suffice, the important part in this case is that they are clear in what they stand for and are easy to read. I tried to add a bit of neon light to them just to connect them to the general theme of the game.

BGP: Week Six

The game is taking shape and it is starting to look more complete. It is going fairly slow but I think we are not that far behind. To compensate this though, we had to look for other artists to complete some of illustrations that would otherwise not get finished.

My personal efforts to contribute to the project is still not going as desired. Though there is an improvement in progression from before. I have managed to get almost all of my cards to a near finished state. For now I thing it is a good approach to see that all the cards at least have something before I start finishing them. This way a can oversea any larger setbacks and more easily control a unified rendering quality.

BGP: Week Five

This week have been really slow on my part, before I was frustrated with where the overall development were going and much focus went on trying to puzzle all that together. When we finally had enough groundwork done to put all graphical attention on drawing illustrations for the cards I was excited, this was what seemed appealing when I signed up to this project. Now, unfortunately things haven't gone as I want and I am getting behind on my work, it is not that I am not putting in enough time quite the opposite. The problem routes down to my own expectations on myself. They are far to high and I know that, still I seem unable to get over it. I feel bad for holding the project back.

So far I've tried my luck on five different card illustrations with only one making it to finish and even that one is getting a remake. Frustration and stress is not helping and with a episode of food poisoning my energy level is not at its highest. Apart from all this i did manage to create a first draft for our logo this week.  

BGP: Week Four

This week had a slow start much because of my absence on Monday but also because of a uncertainty whether we would stick with the theme of the game or if we would be better of starting over. In my opinion I don't think this would do us or the game any good, though I do agree that what we have is broken it is far to late to scrap something this big. A large mistake that have been made in the early development was to after the game itself was designed throw a theme and story on top trying to mold it to fit. This resulted in a badly matched relationship between the aesthetic and mechanics. To start over just to try the same thing again when the method behind it comes with unnecessary risks it is to likely that we will end up with a equally mismatching theme.

After we've decided to stick with what we had I could continue to focus on the illustrations for the cards. We now had a quick sketch for each card and with the risk of any major changes to the cards that we had agreed on being small Jessica and I split the all the cards into two piles. Since we most likely will have a difference in style and I though it would be a good idea if we kept each subgroup within the cards consistent in style which would make it easier to identify each of these groups when playing.

I have so far not finished an illustration fully something I would have preferred to have. It been slow and I am to self critical. I need to loosen up my expectations and start being more realistic. With over ten card illustrations on my plate it is important that they have a consistency in rendering so that one doesn't end up being a sketch while another is a fully rendered piece.

BGP: Week Three

This week we finally had enough groundwork done for us to start planing the illustration for each card. The goal that I had for this week was to take all the card descriptions and turn them into a simple sketch. With over 20 cards that was a big challenge. There were still a bit of cleaning up in the documents an to better define curtain things. This of course slowed down the process but nothing dramatic, though it was a bit frustrating to not have a clear view over all the cards and their relation to each other.

I feel like I have done my part when it comes to fixing the game itself, when my suggestions weren't considered anymore and the flaws of the game was neglected I focused my energy on the illustrations and the general visual appearance of the game. This part feels promising considering...

Big Game Project

This blog is a part of the Big Game Project, a course available at Uppsala University - Campus Gotland. The course is ten weeks long and ties in with the GGC (Gotland Game Conference) which is sometime in June. The course could be seen as a examination for all that we are "supposed" to have learned. During these ten weeks each group are going to produce a game from a pre-designed concept. These concepts are created by individual students, before the course begins? Which was weird.

This week have been more than chaotic. Right of the bat I noticed the sheer lack of insight that the creator of this concept had in the project. It was broken in so many places that it was hard to keep track of them all. Much of that was because of the complete nonexistence of any paperwork created for this project. Nothing was defined on paper.

My main efforts this week have been on trying to fix as much as possible before going into full production. This is almost impossible when you have a project leader who is completely blind to the things that are broken and what parts are missing. The game itself was functional but far from fun and dynamic in its game-play. On top of this we had a back story that didn't match the mechanics of the game. It felt like the story was something over-coated after the game mechanics were designed.

Eventually I felt like nothing that I was saying got stuck and mistakes were repeated. At this point I let the design part go as it was functional in the sense that the players comes to their designated goal. This unfortunately only highlighted another issue, that nothing was clearly defined and large parts of the game were missing from the documents. With this and the fact that the cards were being heavily tested the risk for larger changes were still in play and that prevented me from doing any real graphical work. I did however with one of my colleagues start of to define the games visual aspects. This went fairly smooth, though it is hard to work in a group that don't have any real opinions about varying subjects, except for our project leader but those opinions are considered with great care. I am right now at a position where the risk that any work I do might be wasted. Though I guess that is better than rolling my thumb waiting for better days.

Presentation

Yesterday was the "big day" for this course. It was a tight fit but we made it work. The whole party was a successes, everyone seemed to have a good time and enjoy playing the different games that was there. Even though I had have much to little sleep I felt positive with what we had produced. The response was mostly positive and playing it myself and watching others try it out made it feel valid. Sure there are problems with the game but the group is aware of them and with more time those issues would be looked at. As for now though, we are happy with what we got and with the time restrain that we had on us.

The night before the "big day" most of he group was up all night trying to get the final touches done. The rules were defined clearly in words and some graphics was added to replace some of the placeholders that we had back then. This was not necessary for the functionality of the game itself but I think pushing for the little extra sure made the experience more fun and immersive.    

Week 43

We began this week by going over the feedback that we’d received from the two groups from last week. The feedback showed us that the movement system we had worked and was enjoyable to an extent. What we had was to thin, it had no depth and adding this depth was what took the most of my attention this week. Figuring out how to benefit the players to avoid each other but at the same time put something there to motivate them to confront on another was frustrating. Handling this depth took a great deal of effort and consulting within the group. “Keep it simple, stupid” was a motto to go by when dealing with the task to make this game more interesting.  The same as for last week, iteration was the key.

From play testing, we found out that the treasure hunting was an interesting feature and that it was a good reason to make the players move around the map. Much tweaking was needed for the cost of the cannons and what treasures there were.

We ended up with what we call “Voodoo cards” which is a way to give the players an opportunity to affect the environment. This made an otherwise a bit sterile movement system become alive and there where now more options thrown to the player.

I had done some thinking on my own during this week trying to come up with something that would interest the players. And all week I felt like I had it on the tip of my tongue but it was not quite there. I had one defined change though and that was to separate the winning condition from the currency. I felt that that was the snag.  This winning condition was decided by the group at the end of the week. Some thought was also spent on the map itself in regard of the hexagonally patterned platform that we use and to make these two works together.

I am happy with the result for this week, I feel like we came a long way as from where we were at the beginning of this week.

Developing Boardgames Assignment

I am half through the course "Advanced Gamedesign" and it is going well. I am growing as a designer and I am developing a bigger understanding of how the process of creating games works. Through this course we have so far been analyzing boardgames and picking them apart to define its different systems.

During the past week I and my group of four have begun creating our own board game. It is going well but not without its snags. We are so far keeping it simple and are focusing on its systems and making sure they are working well. We had at the end of the week a play-testing session with two other groups. These testings served as a way to see how well our systems worked and how well our aesthetics is readable through the gameplay.

I have my concerns, there is something that is not appealing enough, at least not for me. If this is only my personal taste that conflicts with what we have or if there is something missing remains unknown. I have a preference for simplicity and I think that is what is not working here. If the core is broken, adding more systems will not fix it.

Welcome

Hey,

My name is Gabriel and I study Gamedesign and Graphics at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland.
This is my schoolblog and it is a part of my program. I will use this blog as a tool to share my thoughts and ideas when it comes to game design and graphics. That's all for a starter.