Beginning The Project

Beginning the project, we chose suiting roles for each group member. Everyone chose roles based on past experience, desires and what gaps needed filling -- to cover the needed pipeline of production. I started the project as a Generalist, as gaps various in production needed filling. Throughout the project though, I leaned towards the Technical Artist role more and more, and soon replaced the role of Project Manager.

Afterwards, I worked on teaching Owen McNally Blender. He is most comfortable with 3DSMax, but desired to move software. Since I know both, and I’m somewhat proficient in each, I offered to help. Associating Max’s features in relevance to Blender’s made it much easier to digest, I also provided Owen with custom keymaps/ settings which help mimic Max. To further mimic Max I supplied plugins which imitate missing features and further optimise Blender’s workflow. (Link): the Google Drive I share with some of those in the class, which covers what I just discussed.

I also found various tutorials and such to help Owen with learning Blender. The majority of them can be found on my personal Discord server. The most helpful tutorial would be by “ChamferZone”. As well as “Arrimus 3D”.

While this was happening, as a group, we met inside, and outside, of class to further decide upon the project idea. From a multitude of ideas, devised through a mind map, we found ourselves primarily debating between just two concepts: a horror game and a third person shooter.

We wanted to keep our scope small, as to not overburden ourselves with an unachievable project; in hindsight we may have kept our scope too small. We leaned more heavily to the dodgeball idea because of this; simple, easy to manipulate mechanics and more heavy focus on the art side of production. We then grabbed a whiteboard, and expanded upon the idea. Taking in account the ‘playability’ of such a game idea.