The End is Nigh

Finally, we are done. I have finished all of the artwork and have handed it over to our awesome engineers. The final game, although buggy, still played pretty well and functioned like we wanted it to. The art looked great for the time that we had. Now, it is all about fine tuning and updating the art assets so that they are worthy of being in the museum. The final word from the museum was that they wanted both of our games to run. It is extremely exciting! To think that our game would be running in a museum that thousands of people visit. I'm proud of my team and the amount of work that they did to get this done. They are awesome. I hope to continue working on this to make it the best possible game that we can.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Hello again. Pressure is beginning to build as the deadline draws near and a lot of changes have been made. I have changed my touch screen interface 3 times, but it is finally done and will not be changing anymore (thank goodness). The Salt Lake Valley is complete, as well as the lake, stream, clouds, and trees with all of their varying states. I just need to get my butt in gear and create the city/suburban icons that will pop up as the population increases. Adam has been hard at work on the awards and they are looking awesome so far. I can feel the stress building, but our team is pulling through it really well. I am quite proud of our team. Some other changes that have been made from our first draft of the game: the board is no longer on the big screen but on the touch screen, hence the constant changing of the interface.

Some personal goals: I have been procrastinating much more than usual lately. This is unacceptable and I really need to pick up the slack. I have resisted the temptation of MW3 and Skyrim so far but I am still not getting as much work done as I should. It is letting the team down. So, I will now work harder to get my stuff done in a more timely manner.

The Next Step

The latest news is that the three museum groups have been split into two. We have acquired an extra producer and engineer and have switched artists. We now have Adam. The reasoning for this is that our ideas are very similar to each other, so we decided to combine forces. The art seems manageable. The hardest part will be creating a picture of the Salt Lake Valley with SLC, city icons, suburban icons, lakes, and streams that will all change pollution states and water level states. The other difficult part is two artists with completely different skill sets. I always have trouble in group projects, especially when it comes to art. But, I need to overcome this and include Adam as much as possible. That will be one of my goals. I have already completed an interface for the touch screens, so it seems that the art is moving along well.

First Things First

This latest prototype is a major opportunity for my group and I. The new Utah Museum of Natural History was supposed to have a game in one of their exhibits, but it all fell through. So, we have been chosen to create a game for them to play in 4 weeks. The theme is all about the future of Utah and how everyone needs to help conserve our resources for when our population doubles in 40 years. The tricky part of this game is that we are working with 6 different computers (5 touch screens and a projector). We have to integrate all of the computers as well as keep the game educational and fun. My group has decided on a simplified version of the current game, which is a voting system on different actions that the users can take over a period of time and how it affects Utah as a whole. To trim it down, we want to focus just on water conservation, streamline the graphics, and make the game more understandable. We also want to add a board game element and show everyone's icon traveling around the board to not only indicate what year they are in but provide a visual hint that this is a game. The art style will be vector (what a surprise) and I will actually have another artist on the team to complete this. Can't wait to start!