Thursday 20/10 - Review day #2

So here is it, the second review day (also known as the Alpha stage). All of our work had to be submitted onto perforce yesterday by 18:00 but was still in this morning nice and early to work on gathering all the correct files and put them in a folder to show Iain during my 1on1 so that I don't start searching amongst my 1gb+ worth of files that I've created so far (yes I know that's crazy big, but I tend to save a lot of different versions of files, and I am also working in 3D don't forget).

Ok so today's "group" meeting wasn't done per group as it was last week. Everybody was herded into the room which doesn't have any PC's, to make sure nobody can't work on their game while they await their turn. So as it was same order as last week Brown team was up first, but Varun wasn't here yet so we decided to let somebody else go first as we did not want him to miss out. He turned up shortly after so we were second up. The whole experience was very good and enjoyable as the last time we'd all been talking about our games was when we were talking about our concepts (although we have all been looking at each other's work throughout the days) but this was the first time we got to see how each other's game actually works. It was good for another reason, being that we could get feedback not only from the tutors but also from our fellow students, which most of it was very good. This went on for almost 2 hours, and then I had 10mins before my 1on1 review with Iain (Oliver wasn't there this time as he was sitting in with the programmers this week). It has to be said that it's probably a good job that there aren't as many artists as there are programmers because my review last for 40minutes. I'm not really sure how exactly as I showed him my work and, unlike last week's review, he was very impressed with my work and the direction in which it has gone from what I had done last week. I guess most of the meeting was spent talking about what I could add that would look really cool in the game if I had the time to create it (and as I only had a couple more things to do, I most probably would have the time).
The main things discussed were:
1) Having a wireframe model of the 3D ship spinning in the corner of the main menu, to give the impression that you are on this ship. I really liked this idea and took to the idea immediately, and actually ended up being one of the things I worked on immediately (even though I still had a couple of the 'important' things to do).
2) Was to have some 'wear and tear' detail on the console, to give it that damaged and used look that would give it some extra depth. Another thing was to make the menu selection handle look a bit better. I very much liked these ideas, and was something I had thought about already, but as it meant having to re-render all the menu screens it would be a lot of work; and for this reason I merely said that I would do it if I still had a significant amount of time.
A few more ideas were circulated but those were the 2 main ones that were talked about.

So instantly I got to working on some of the things that had been talking about. I pushed back the making of the enemy ship death animations and got to work on the detailing of the HUD (this is an area in which I really want to impress as it is the first thing that anybody playing the game will see).
So for hours I worked away at adding scratches and dints into the metal. Then I added a little speaker and improved on the texturing of the handle. After I was done with all this I showed Steven and Varun and I think they seemed to like it. I rendered and re-did all the images that will use this HUD in the game; and just when I thought I could move on they mention: "oh we need a credits screen" to which my response was of acknowledgement and frustration as it meant having to add extra animation sequences for the button, making additional buttons AND a credits screens, which means too much extra work for something as lame as a credits screen (I say lame because this game will not be published. Nonetheless you still want your name on it); but with my quick thinking I managed to come up with a brilliant plan; I would just have the credits engraved into the console, that way I would only need to re-render 1 animation spritesheet... brilliant; And it looks pretty sweet too, here check it out:

New Menu with worn look and credits at the bottom

Click on here to see the screenshot in it's full and proper size

A few other things were worked on today, but this post is already getting rather long so I will just let you know next week how the game ends up. The ultimate deadline is on Tuesday 16:00, so not long to go now and lots of work to be done still. (Will be mainly balancing the gameplay and trying to find some good sounds from now until then, along with the odd bit of art-work)