Reflection #1- Narrowing down to the Core

At this point, three HacknPlan sprints have been closed for this project, and reaching the point of starting a properly planned development required us to narrow down the initial ideas I had to meaningfully define the core of the game. Finally, we were able to freeze on a couple of mechanics keeping in mind the main story we already had in store. 

Sprint 1: In the first cutscene, it's been conceived that one of the main characters, Melina falls from a crashing airship and survives the fall. The challenge here was to come up with a rationale behind why she survived. This opened an opportunity for us to come up with a cool platforming mechanic and also to tie it to the story. The energy path mechanic has been implemented in our first prototypical build and seems one of the most promising abilities in our game. 

Hours were spent trying to a) find the right way to establish a proper scale for mesh transfer between Maya and Unity, and b) have a proper git workflow in order to update our project repository. The latter could be a bit vexing if one of the users makes the wrong move. 

I attempted to block out with pro-builder and its feature to 'probuilderize' was pretty interesting as it was able to make edges and vertices done in Maya visible. However, I reverted to blocking out with primitives for the moment in order to shun the uncertainty with pro-builder and the mesh problems that I might have to deal with later in the process.  

Sprint 2: I altered some of the plans for the player interactions with the environment, and a change of plans without notice to my teammates wasn't fair. So, that was something I'll have to be careful about especially when working in a team. 

I kept in mind to not have a linear level design that follows an almost straight path from point A to B and arranged the blocks so as to allow the player to have an opportunity to think about where they're going.  

Merging errors pop up in git, if developers assign changes to the same unity scene. 

Sprint 3: Some character design references were reviewed from the third person action-adventure Omno. I received great feedback about how I should really derive inspiration from natural forms and then layer unique characteristics over these forms. 

The meshes put together for the first build are to be further developed. Before proceeding with that, the character design for Melina(one of the main characters) has to be finalized. A solid character model would hopefully further help to shape the environment.  

Learnings for further development:

1) Levels from this point onwards would be designed to use the full potential of the energy path mechanic. One useful thing to implement would be to have the jumping character be pulled towards the ledge(if they're near it) for a better platforming experience.

2) The usage of prefabs for the purpose of working in the same scene seems worth looking into. 

A lot more has to be solidified: cutscenes, NPCs, the airship, etc. 

More updates to come. Cheers!