Yesterday's Meeting

I'm posting (what I remember of) what we talked about yesterday.

Work Accomplished:

• Gina has done the idle and walk animations for the robots
• I think everyone else who was at the meeting has done some stuff, but I don't know the specifics.

Items Discussed

• On Design and Creative Freedom - Gina asked about this, but I also wanted to talk about this. Anyone should feel free to think about the design of the game. Of course, our group will still decide the final outcome, but I hope it doesn't deter anyone from making suggestions, discussing ideas, or taking the initiative to try things first and then present it to the group. Some related points I want to make follows:

1. Generally, don't rely on someone else to specifically detail the area you're working on. It's usually better that you take the initiative by thinking and designing the intricate details of what you're working on or alternatively discuss the general idea first with the group; maybe provide a primitive sketch or outline of the idea. (e.g., when I'm working on programming attacks, I will tweak the values or specifically animate the movement of the characters programmatically just because I think it's better; generally, I don't mind if it needs to be changed later.)
2. Consider the other aspects of the game and how what you're working on will fit with the game as a whole (based on the current up-to-date design decisions).
3. Discuss your design decisions (i.e., what did you consider and think about?) so that everyone can have a good idea of what the game is becoming (either via the blog or in-person; both is better, but I think the blog can be more useful for receiving more thoughtful feedback because it'll give people time to think).
4. Think in detail when you're designing something. Create and write down a list of topics/items to consider if you need to; I do this. Consider looking at other games or work for inspiration. If you can create something really unique, that's even better than derivative work. When you're working on something (e.g., designing the entities, such as the environment), think about the mood, personality, cultural society, movement/feel, physical laws, past events/history/story , etc. Also, consider thinking about how things can be integrated with or impact the game-play (e.g., if you're designing an environment that makes use of light in an interesting manner, consider how it might contribute to the game-play such as maybe how glare or shadows might impact game-play; to repeat an important point, remember to discuss all these considerations and design ideas with the group if you think about them).

• On Achievements - We talked a bit about achievements and unlockables. Thomas suggested achievements that can be "equipped" on a character, where the achievements may give a boost in one attribute (to allow the player to customize a character), but overall handicaps the character. I prefer this approach over achievements that boosts the character overall (in a competitive game), since chances are if they can "achieve" it, then they're likely better than someone who hasn't.
  
• On Robot Animation - The character is quite bulky and it's less work to not have to deal with modeling weapons. Also, the characters will appear rather small in-game. We're considering just having the robot shoot from his hand.
  
• On Story - we still don't have anything concrete yet. But we did start discussing some ideas about locality, like arenas in space, or a gladiator coliseum. In previous weeks, I think we were considering a generally dark theme with cute characters (e.g., much like Zelda); I just wanted to remind you guys about this, but of course we can change it if it turns out this direction doesn't work for us.
  
• On Games we may want to look at - we looked at power stone I & II. They used an auto-targeting system. Still not sure how well manual aiming will work out for us yet (but that's partially why we're prototyping).