Organizing to Conquer -- Week Ending 24 Mar

Though little visible progress has been made on the game over the past few weeks (Spring Break, GDC, and a few other delays are at least in part to blame), we've actually nailed down a lot of planning, team structuring, and optimizing of our existing game code. In addition, we have an updated Dodo model in the game, so kudos to our art team for the concept progress and continuing implementation of assets!

From a design standpoint, several features have also been more clearly defined, and the team seems to have the same vision of what the game can and should be. We've put into action our customized Agile development process in which every sprint will end with a new build of the game. This way, each week will result in more and more features of our target alpha design being playable. With this methodology, we can efficiently and effectively scale the design to something that's realistic as we work through the coming weeks.

Speaking of design, we've also got several potential level designs sketched out and in the modeling process. Thus begins our quest to find great layouts for chaining traps and machines together and to generate some truly devious Dodo destruction!

- Troy

Forward March! -- Week Ending 3 Mar

Whoa, double meaning to the title of this post (maybe even a triple meaning!).

Pre-production is in full swing! Everyone's ideas have been collected and communicated (not to suggest that inspiration won't hit us with more along the way), backlogs have been formulated, and a release backlog for our alpha version of Last March of the Dodos has been settled upon by the product owner and the team.

Though official development is scheduled to begin in a couple of weeks (GDC is next week, and Spring Break is the week following), several of the team members have gotten a head start on nailing the process. Particularly, Derek, Kamron, and Felix have been hard at work selecting the appropriate development engine and plug-ins necessary to make our game design come to life. At the moment, Unity Pro with the A* AI path-finding plugin looks like the winner (what we were using in the prototyope, but a more robust version). Coupled with the art skills that run rampant in the team, we can't wait to see what our talented group can produce over the next two months!

- Troy

Marching On! -- Week Ending 25 Feb

It's official! Last March of the Dodos was greenlit and will move forward into full production as one of three thesis games our cohort will develop! The hard work and unity of the team paid off with the professionals and faculty alike, and we are pumped to see what we can do over the next 10 months with twice as many developers as we had for the prototype.

We're in the middle of brainstorming and constructing an updated product backlog right now, so there's not a lot of new content to display. Fortunately, that makes this the perfect opportunity to introduce our new team members!

The Team
- Team/Developer Name: Naturally Selected Studios
- New Members
     - Brandon Rees
          - Job: Artist
          - Status: Sweet beard (1 of 2)
          - Skills: Maya master and broad game dev knowledge
     - David Gilder
          - Job: Artist
          - Status: Sweet beard (1 of 2)
          - Skills: Mad drawing abilities
     - Derek Higgs
          - Job: Engineer
          - Status: Pumped up (the jam, that is)
          - Skills: Amazing work ethic and dedication to finishing tasks
     - Felix Lau
          - Job: Engineer
          - Status: Industry-employed
          - Skills: Problem solver extraordinaire
     - Eric Levin
          - Job: Engineer
          - Status: Med school eligible (but he chooses to be here!)
          - Skills: Self-teaching and incredible capacity for retaining new information
     - Jesse Ferraro
          - Job: Producer
          - Status: Fresh-faced and fancy free
          - Skills: Mass media design and team leadership

Sadly, Jorge Elola was assigned to a different team, so he'll be employing his talents elsewhere. We wish him the best but miss him here at Naturally Selected Studios!

- Troy

A Successful Team Effort -- Week Ending 18 Feb

The prototype is complete, and it has been demoed and presented to our faculty, peers, and the professional panel...

And we couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

We received and incredibly positive overall response to our concept and to our presentation. The theme was well-received, as was our implementation of it. While there were certainly some design concerns and some critiques of a few mechanics, most of the comments from the professionals were suggestions for future iterations and compliments on what we had built thus far. If they are making suggestions for consideration n future work, we'll take that as a good sign that we might actually have a shot at putting future work into this game.

Kamron, Jorge, and Chris have done a phenomenal job making this game come to life. Their weeks of work have turned into a great product, and it's been an honor to work with them.

As for the future, we're all stoked to see which games become our theses, and we're excited to team up with more of our peers to really create something special. If one of those thesis projects turns out to be the full production of Last March of the Dodos, well, that would be pretty sweet... Okay, it would be awesome. :)

Here's to the future!

- Troy

Imminent Extinction -- Week Ending 11 Feb

Last March of the Dodos is playable! There's a white-boxed level in place, the Dodos are making their way to their destination, and the player has full control to set traps and watch the Dodos disappear as they die. Only minimal chain reactions are possible, but seeing them in action is pretty cool: place the pie bait, watch the Dodos cluster in large numbers, then--BOOM!--drop an explosion in the middle of them. :) And it's all guilt-free!

Beyond that, we also have a solid vision of how we want our environments to look. Above is a waterfall in Mauritius, the home of the now extinct dodo bird. It's a shame that such a beautiful place has such a dark past.

We present to the faculty and the graduating cohort on Monday, so we're looking forward to how we can clean up our presentation for the professional panel on Wednesday. We can't believe time has flown by so quickly, but we're happy with our progress, and we'd love to continue work on such a fun concept for our official thesis.

Wish us luck!

- Troy

It's All About Style -- Week Ending 4 Feb

We had a couple meetings with our professors and with each other this week, and we came to the conclusion that our game needs to ooze style. Not that we didn't assume or want that before this point, but it was sort of a distant consideration, second to getting the game functioning properly on an engineering level. We realized, however, that even the mechanics need to feel stylized--the physics reactions, the trap effects, the whole package need to be a part of the aesthetic as much as the art style. While that doesn't change much of the work we've done up to this point, it does put a little different spin on the way we think about the project as a whole. Rather than the art and the engineering being two entirely separate pieces, we are starting to recognize just how much collaboration every aspect of the game needs across all the disciplines involved.

That said, it's a good thing that each of the team members has some understanding of what each of the others is doing and is capable. Kamron and Jorge have worked together to figure out how to get traps to place at the player's will on any spot on the level, Jorge and Chris are working together on the 3D modeling of the Dodo, I've been helping Jorge and Kamron lay out algorithms for how the traps function, we've all worked together to determine the final designs of traps and how the Dodos look, etc. We've proven to be a good team so far, and I expect the next (also last) week-and-a-half of development to turn out a great prototype.

The game has playable pieces at the moment, too, though not that fall together into a cohesive game yet. By next week, it will actually play like a game, so take a look at some more concept art in the meantime. Aren't they cute?!

- Troy

Becoming a Team -- Week Ending 28 Jan

There wasn't really a question about the work part of our development this week (we planned on doing a lot of work; we did a lot of work), we weren't entirely sure what would set this week's work apart from any other week.

The answer came in waves, beginning with the definition of what we want to accomplish with Last March of the Dodos. With help from Roger, one of our executive producers, we came to realize exactly why we're making the game: to experience the joy of calculated mass destruction without any of the usual guilt that comes as baggage. Note the three facets of that definition: 1) the joy of mercilessly destroying cute things, 2) a fascination with deliberate mechanical intricacies, á la Rube Goldberg, and 3) the alleviation of any guilt that might otherwise accompany any sort of dodo-cide. Basically, we are making Lemmings the way that it should have been done in the first place (okay, Lemmings was a great game in its own right, but this is gonna be sweet).

Thus, we came up with a team motto as a razor for any work that we do:

And we're not one bit sorry.

In other news, the engineers have the Dodos stoically marching toward their desired freedom now, and you can check out some of Chris's concept art.

Wish us another great upcoming week!

- Troy