Welcome to the general overview of my time on A.V. from start up to now. Here I will cover the production/development of A.V. from its conception in school up to our current state. Some areas will lack specific detail for now, but I will dive into the details in further posts. My personal blog and hopefully at some point, Doug’s blog also, will also cover the blanks from the commercial era. To start off here are the links to the “living” game design document from our design phase and also the development blog, which started losing steam as we shifted from the academic to commercial development phase.
· Old Development Blog - http://devblog.avthegame.com/
· Game Design Document/Wiki - http://avgame.wikidot.com/
· A.V. Main Site – http://avthegame.com
A.V. had humble roots as a student project. It was the brain child of Doug and my interests. Our main intention was to experiment with concepts that we were interested in while producing an experience worthy of finishing our degrees. At the start there were only two of us graduate students focused on the project as others had teamed up to go a different route with a custom mobile engine. We had no idea what resources would be available at the time. This will come into play later when we start to scope and structure the project.
The university gave us slightly more than a week to brainstorm ideas to present in class. That time sure was needed as it seemed we had very little overlapping game passions. Doug had interest in making a puzzle game and wanted to avoid the shooter prospective. He was also interested in adventure and RPG elements as well. I always had interest in a combat heavy game and really wanted to push the limits on audio. Fortunately we found some common ground with the desire to have an open world space and some quick paced action. I came up with the "Sound to Light" (STL - not to be confused with the C++ library!) concept a few days in, but set it aside as we explored other avenues. There was a brief period where we thought that there was not enough common ground between us to continue. Of course this was extremely concerning not only to ourselves but to faculty. We technically were allowed to split again but the university urged us not too. Doug and I knew that a further split would be like shooting ourselves in the foot. We would lack the personnel and talent needed to create something of professional caliber. On top of this we risked falling flat on our faces and not even completing our degrees.
Fortunately we were not to headstrong to waste the opportunity presented to us. We spent another day just throwing ideas at the board so to speak, without committing to anything specific. We made a list of plausible mechanics venture on to along with a few potential match ups. We slept on the ideas overnight so we could weigh in on things in a cool and collected mindset the next day.
Doug and I realized the multitude of compelling gameplay we could implement in this open-world, audio design, puzzles, stealth, combat… well you get the idea. We had of potential and were trying to keep the obvious scoping issues on the back burner. Doug continued to flesh out the game mechanics as well as drawing up a world map of sorts. Even though we were heavily leaning towards using Unity, I also researched other potential options for prototyping and full development. Right around this time we found out that we would be able to use a multi-disciplined team of student contributors to help crank through some of the work. Knowing that our lives were about to get even more chaotic with the search and management of these contributors, we outlined our own roles in the project to help define the project structure.
Officially I am credited with being the Executive Producer, Technical Director/Scripting Lead, Audio Director, Zone 1 Music Assets & Various Sound FX, Community Manager, and Design Assistant. Doug was credited with Creative Director, Lead Designer/Level Designer, 3D Modeler & Animator, Writing & Narrative Design, 2D Art & Animation, Video Editing, Voice Acting, General Scripter, and Audio Assistant. As one can tell, there are several areas that we both dabbled in heavily, but we still had clearly defined leads. Some areas, like audio and art assets, had extensive help from contributors, while others, like design and programming, were more closed off to us. Doug and I wanted to try to keep direct control of the project evenly split among the two of us while also being flexible to outside feedback as needed. We wanted to keep communication between the two of us as open as possible in order to make most decisions as a pair. Anything that wasn’t declared in the document and was deemed critical to the game should be decided as a pair. Lesser decisions could be left up to the ‘lead’ of that particular area. (e.g. Doug could make an executive decision about the color of a particular light, where as I could make a judgement call an audio.) Going down the chain of command here, we also wanted to extend the same sense of creative freedom to our contributors in an effort to tap the maximum potential. We would dump the technical requirements on contributors while being somewhat vague on the creative details. If there was confusion then we would add constraints as needed to help guide. Mostly we were interested in other takes for the art style and audio.
To finalize the managing structure we realize that we needed a way to break potential ties on team decisions. While we could go to the department with any potential concerns, we knew that someone on the team should really have the final word if needed. I was already taking on the Executive Producer role so I “stepped up and took the Iron Throne”, so to speak. I was already familiar with production and the RIT ways along too, so taking the lead felt natural.
· Old Development Blog - http://devblog.avthegame.com/
· Game Design Document/Wiki - http://avgame.wikidot.com/
· A.V. Main Site – http://avthegame.com
A.V. had humble roots as a student project. It was the brain child of Doug and my interests. Our main intention was to experiment with concepts that we were interested in while producing an experience worthy of finishing our degrees. At the start there were only two of us graduate students focused on the project as others had teamed up to go a different route with a custom mobile engine. We had no idea what resources would be available at the time. This will come into play later when we start to scope and structure the project.
The university gave us slightly more than a week to brainstorm ideas to present in class. That time sure was needed as it seemed we had very little overlapping game passions. Doug had interest in making a puzzle game and wanted to avoid the shooter prospective. He was also interested in adventure and RPG elements as well. I always had interest in a combat heavy game and really wanted to push the limits on audio. Fortunately we found some common ground with the desire to have an open world space and some quick paced action. I came up with the "Sound to Light" (STL - not to be confused with the C++ library!) concept a few days in, but set it aside as we explored other avenues. There was a brief period where we thought that there was not enough common ground between us to continue. Of course this was extremely concerning not only to ourselves but to faculty. We technically were allowed to split again but the university urged us not too. Doug and I knew that a further split would be like shooting ourselves in the foot. We would lack the personnel and talent needed to create something of professional caliber. On top of this we risked falling flat on our faces and not even completing our degrees.
Fortunately we were not to headstrong to waste the opportunity presented to us. We spent another day just throwing ideas at the board so to speak, without committing to anything specific. We made a list of plausible mechanics venture on to along with a few potential match ups. We slept on the ideas overnight so we could weigh in on things in a cool and collected mindset the next day.
Doug and I realized the multitude of compelling gameplay we could implement in this open-world, audio design, puzzles, stealth, combat… well you get the idea. We had of potential and were trying to keep the obvious scoping issues on the back burner. Doug continued to flesh out the game mechanics as well as drawing up a world map of sorts. Even though we were heavily leaning towards using Unity, I also researched other potential options for prototyping and full development. Right around this time we found out that we would be able to use a multi-disciplined team of student contributors to help crank through some of the work. Knowing that our lives were about to get even more chaotic with the search and management of these contributors, we outlined our own roles in the project to help define the project structure.
Officially I am credited with being the Executive Producer, Technical Director/Scripting Lead, Audio Director, Zone 1 Music Assets & Various Sound FX, Community Manager, and Design Assistant. Doug was credited with Creative Director, Lead Designer/Level Designer, 3D Modeler & Animator, Writing & Narrative Design, 2D Art & Animation, Video Editing, Voice Acting, General Scripter, and Audio Assistant. As one can tell, there are several areas that we both dabbled in heavily, but we still had clearly defined leads. Some areas, like audio and art assets, had extensive help from contributors, while others, like design and programming, were more closed off to us. Doug and I wanted to try to keep direct control of the project evenly split among the two of us while also being flexible to outside feedback as needed. We wanted to keep communication between the two of us as open as possible in order to make most decisions as a pair. Anything that wasn’t declared in the document and was deemed critical to the game should be decided as a pair. Lesser decisions could be left up to the ‘lead’ of that particular area. (e.g. Doug could make an executive decision about the color of a particular light, where as I could make a judgement call an audio.) Going down the chain of command here, we also wanted to extend the same sense of creative freedom to our contributors in an effort to tap the maximum potential. We would dump the technical requirements on contributors while being somewhat vague on the creative details. If there was confusion then we would add constraints as needed to help guide. Mostly we were interested in other takes for the art style and audio.
To finalize the managing structure we realize that we needed a way to break potential ties on team decisions. While we could go to the department with any potential concerns, we knew that someone on the team should really have the final word if needed. I was already taking on the Executive Producer role so I “stepped up and took the Iron Throne”, so to speak. I was already familiar with production and the RIT ways along too, so taking the lead felt natural.