Sprint 1

Sprint one, the first two weeks of our project are done and here are the results. We work in sprints, which are two weeks long and start on Mondays. We give a presentation on the progress of our game on the second Thursdays. Considering that demos and the likes very often go wrong, it is called a Terrible Thursday. The Friday after that is for fixing any bugs found, finishing up the sprint and preparing for the next one.

The presentation on Terrible Thursdays is for our consultants (teachers and teacher assistants) and for our rival company. There are two companies that are currently making a game, and we will see each other’s progress during the presentations.

Above, you'll see the first page in our PowerPoint for the first sprint. This sprint was chaotic. We were all still figuring out what to do and how to organize ourselves. But we ended up with a cool first demo. Below you'll find some products that each team made and the demo at the bottom.

Design

Design started with deciding on the core mechanics of the game. The other teams are very dependent on this team, so their first priority was deciding on what the scope will be for our project and what the most important parts are. Below are some of the paper prototypes that they made to test out mechanics and a graph for the steps of one of the paper prototypes.

These are the steps for the test of the paper prototype for exploring. Exploration is one of the core aesthetics of the game, next to fantasy and challenge. The design team made a paper prototype for exploring to help with the design of it. They needed to figure out how to make the exploration in this game fun and what exactly it would entail.

These are the steps for the test of the paper prototype for exploring. Exploration is one of the core aesthetics of the game, next to fantasy and challenge. The design team made a paper prototype for exploring to help with the design of it. They needed to figure out how to make the exploration in this game fun and what exactly it would entail.

Another important part of our game is the inventory system. The player needs to be able to hold on to potions to use them during fights. Our inventory system also includes crafting. Different items of different sizes have their own spaces as seen above.

The inventory also includes crafting the potions. For this you'll have a recipe book which shows what potions you've discovered. Above you can see the paper prototype that was made for this. The recipe book is open on top of the inventory.

Art

Art started their art bible and made sketches. They got a general feel for the art in the game. Some of the sketches that were made are shown below. You've already seen some sketches for the company logo at the top, but here are some sketches for the actual game, starting with the environment!

The art team also started working on the player character. The sketch on the left is a starting base for the character with some inspiration notes and on the right is a small design based on the Zmaj creature. A Zmaj is a Slavic dragon.

These images of nature, potions and the cauldron were last-minute integrated into the demo for the Terrible Thurday presentation. The eventual game will be 3D, but these sketches were integrated to show a little more of what the art team had made during the sprint. It made the demo look a lot better!

Sound

Our lovely sound team didn't have much experience yet, so for the first sprint their goal was basically 'mess around and find out'. They started with recording random sounds. Near the end of the sprint, they also spend some time in the sound booth recording some voices. Here are some of the favorite recordings.

Programming

The programming team started with a small list from the design team. It included movement, both for the camera and the player, and picking up objects. They also started on the inventory system, which was at the time mainly just holding items and keeping them in specific slots. At the end of the sprint the programming team had made a demo that included not only their work, but also some art.