Sadie Read
Game Designer
Frozen In Time is the current project that i am lucky to be working on. It all started with being given prompts for game ideas from the years above and we decided that there was a lot to talk about in this game. This page will be dedicated to dev logs and videos of the development process.
Frozen In Time is a game that is meant to be fun and enjoyable while also having an underlying message about global warming and why we need to listen to those educated on the matter, but it's also a game that's just meant to be played to have a break from the real world with elements of time travel. I can't wait for it to be finished.
Brief Given
Organisation
Personal Organisation
To organise myself I kept a weekly to do list for all my modules. For Tdemo this meant breaking down the things I needed to do as discussed in the weekly team meetings and dividing these tasks over five 1 hour time slots a week. This was incredibly helpful as i find that having small easily achievable tasks make me more motivated rather than having one large tasks that is not broken down.
I kept my team in the loop by constantly updating the discord with what i had done and also to receive feedback from the other designer but also other members of the team as they had to make the vision I saw and if they didn't like that then they would be unhappy.
With regards to my work I ensured that is was backed up on my pc, the shared google drive, the discord and my memory stick so that it was assessable from multiple computers but if something went wrong then it would be saved. This is engraved in my brain after hearing about how Toy Story 2 was almost deleted and the back ups failed (Harrison, 2022).
Team Organisation
As a team we obviously had the discord as mentioned before. As a student team this was incredibly helpful as it was free, we could talk to each other as we worked and could get instant feedback rather than having to wait for the weekly meeting.
The weekly meetings were incredibly important as this is were we really got to know each other. Meeting could be an hour and a half long with an hour talking about what progress had been made and what targets needed to be hit by next weeks meeting and the other half hour would be friends talking and catching up, this was lovely as it meant we got to know and trust the people we work with. This was important as it meant as well we knew how to build off each others strengths but also learnt what we could do to shine as an individual within the team so that our skills would shine through (Henttonen et al., 2014).
From Brief to Game
We had a lot of briefs to pick from however the team and I decided to go with frozen in time as we felt like there was a lot we could do artistically and creatively with a narrative. This was important as there was two designers which in other teams could have caused a lot of clashes however myself and my fellow designer worked in sync, bouncing ideas off each other before then sharing them to the team.
We then broke for the Christmas break, and over this period i begun to brainstorm ideas just talking into my voice notes. I've always loved the idea of it starting in a classroom, however the game originally started with a science teacher as the main protagonist rather than a geography teacher as well as there being other characters that would be shown in winter clothing to show the frozen age and then summer clothing to show a normal climate.
The whole voice now can be heard here:
After sharing these ideas with the team we absolutely loved the idea of creating multiple landscapes as different levels, starting in the school, then traversing the city and then ending with a mountain and cave landscape. The city would have sink holes and scaffolding to figure out before then having to climb mountains and cave crawl.
However due to time constraints we decided to make the first school level so that we could at least then have one well built and playable level rather than three poor levels.
I then created the main documented that we worked from:
This document meant that we could create the assets, the settings and the textboxes that we would need as it meant that we knew exactly what was needed where, Myself and the fellow designer also created character profiles for each charter mentioned so that in the future the character could easily be built upon. This was good industry practice as well as this would be something that has to be done rather than a choice. It also felt like it gave out characters more motivation as to why they do what they do and why they care about certain things (in this example the children she teaches) which if we had more time i would have loved to have conveyed further so that the player would feel just as motivated as the character they're playing as.
With this as well the team also created a design document based off of Race .N Chase otherwise known as the first grand theft auto (Citation - Grand Theft Auto V - UW-Madison Libraries, n.d.). It was easy to follow and worked for the small size of our game. I wish that I had researched design documents in more detail as to further understand how these need to be put together in a more professional environment, however that is something that i can do over the summer.
The document can be read here:
If I could do it all again...
References
Citation—Grand theft auto V - UW-Madison Libraries. (n.d.). Retrieved 20 May 2021, from https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9910223276602121/cite
Harrison, E. (2022, February 17). Resurfaced tale details how Toy Story 2 was saved after being deleted – twice. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/lightyear-toy-story-2-deleted-b2017238.html
Henttonen, K., Johanson, J.-E., & Janhonen, M. (2014). Work-team bonding and bridging social networks, team identity and performance effectiveness. Personnel Review, 43(3), 330–349. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2011-0187