As the end of semester one approaches, we looked as a team towards what the next semester holds and also what we want to achieve personally.
Schedule
For our GPP, we'd created a schedule comprised of weekly sprints with specific goals for us to achieve in them. It wasn't until after we'd completed the GPP and sent it off to be professionally printed that we realised all of our plans were shunted a week forward, however we are still attempting to stick to this schedule to keep us on track and get the game's bones created as soon as possible so we have adequate time for play- and bug-testing.
The schedule outlines our idea for Maive's development, but may need tweaking as problems or new tasks arise. Our plan is ambitious and probably a little overly-optimistic, but we are determined to work hard so this game can be as presentable as possible by the end of the year.
Marketing
Kerris and Sid are responsible for the marketing and branding side of this project, as how to handle this was covered in both of the option modules. That said, I still have a part to play in marketing and branding next semester in the form of social media presence. We have a team Instagram account that we are all responsible for updating with our work, along with making sure this is tagged correctly to direct audiences towards not just our game, but the Games Design and Art course as a whole. I also have my own Instagram account that I constantly update with in-progress and completed works. All of my work on Maive signposts to the Otter Tales Productions Instagram account.
We also plan to have a dedicated website for Maive that includes a development blog that we update weekly, along with the continuation of our own blogs. Whilst this will document our process for the course, we hope it will also make the audience feel more involved in the creation of Maive as a game, giving them deeper interest that hopefully will translate when the game is finished.
Learning
I have knowledge and experience for all of the roles I'm undertaking next semester, however my hope is to continually develop these skills and learn further to become a better developer. I feel this particularly with 3D modelling, something I only started learning last year but have developed a love for and am progressing at quickly. Over the course of next semester I hope to really hone my modelling skills to create a professional-looking end product that I can be proud of. I want to be able to create models efficiently but to a high quality, and have a solid ability to texture all of them.
In this semester alone, my storytelling skills have developed. I have been writing my whole life, but storytelling for games is a different beast than all of the other forms I've experimented with over the years (novels, short stories, poetry, screenplays). Whilst I've outlined the narrative concretely, there is still much to be learned when it comes to communicating the world I've built through dialogue. Executing this with nuance and style is going to be challenging, but I hope doing it will make me a better storyteller.