Log #1: Aug/27/2024

This is the first entry into my game development log, and you may be wondering, how did I get here?

Creating this "blog" is part of a class I am taking, and I hope it will become a useful portfolio item in the future.

These posts will include summaries of what I have been working on, and some details on my process and struggles.

This last week has been only the second week that our team has existed. After I pitched my idea to my peers, a couple of people were interested, and our team was formed. Meeting everyone and trying to figure out what idea I wanted to pursue was a little bit stressful. I did not feel super enthusiastic about the other ideas I was hearing, and I knew I wanted to pitch some idea, so I sat down and prepared my pitch one night.

Since my goal as a developer is to be a designer, I think it is worth going into my "creative process". The night I came up with my pitch, I sat in my chair, trying to remove distractions, and waited until appealing ideas began to hit me. I kept focusing in on a "feeling" that I knew I wanted to emulate with a video game, and that led my ideas until they had formed enough to get me going.

Once I found some inspiring ideas, more and more thoughts began flowing in, and I began working out the cryptic world of ERASE. I spent the rest of that night making a simple slideshow, looking for free stock photos to build a mock-corporate "job recruitment" advertisement. I thought opening my pitch with a fake performance as if I was looking to hire my peers into the world of my video game would be funny. I just worried that it wouldn't come across as stupid.

The day of the pitch had me nervous, but I had practiced some the night before, and I gave my pitch two performances to my dad in the car as we drove. While I listened to the other presentations, and they were reviewed by our teacher, I picked up on two valuable pieces of information: don't say everything, and focus on the core ideas of the project. As I was sitting, I honed in on exploration-based storytelling, talking with NPCs and "task" minigames. When it finally came time to give my pitch, people were interested, and my teacher complemented it.

From there, a team was formed, 1 project manager, 3 coders, 2 artist (one of which originally wanted to design), and me, a designer. The first day with our team was spent setting up our project management software, Taiga, setting up Github, and getting into Unreal Engine. One of our coders spent a lot of time readeing Unreal Engine's terms of service. These softwares had me nervous, since none of these are my expertise, but I took our teachers advice and tried to read, and was able to navigate things alright.

However, something I did find over the next two days was that I did not have nearly enough designing done. While I had written enough to make a pitch, I did not have much else. I didn't even have what was repeated to me as a core principle of game design: a balance of actions and consequences. I spent Thursday night and Sunday night working on more details for the story, but it was not until today, Tuesday, that I really felt like I came up with significant consequences, as well as a potential ending, for the game.

During these times that I need to brainstorm, I sit in a chair and "think" a little bit. I don't even realize it, but soon ideas come in. I pass along ideas I don't like, and after some time, good-enough ideas float into my head. This is how I have done a good bit of my design work so far. Additionally, I did two seconds of research on the employee heirarchy of a tech company, and that gave me enough information to start fleshing out more of my world building. But coming up with significant consequences and an ending seem like they will be super important for ANYTHING going forward.

So, I've been working on designs. But that is not all I have been doing. I also have been spending time chipping away at an Unreal Engine tutorial, which I am know 20 minutes through. To my surprise, the team's coders have been at work, already having some experience, and they will soon complete all the basic mechanics they have been assigned to work on. Good thing I worked out more of the game today!

So here I am, completing a this blog post assignment, leading a game's deisgn, and realizing that I have work to do. And yes, I do see that it is already 10:17 PM.

-Luke Knotts