5/8/13 Meeting Notes

Meeting - May 8, 2013

Full Attendance

• New Web Build
• Issues:
• How to convey what can be done in a scene?
• How does player know how they're doing?
• Will the 2D/3D feel good?

We had a lot of progress today!

1. We came up with a quick solution to telling users during scenes how much stuff they have left to do. 
• In the background of every scene, there will be a mountain with three sections on it.
• This mountain's thee sections are (1) the village, (2) a first set of collectibles and (3) a second set of collectibles.
• Both sets of collectibles have two options: collect berries or hunt game
• for every 3 berries, only 1 game is required.
• However, hunting game may negatively impact the predator aggression meter
2. We sorted out the programming requirements for making the mountainside happen.
3. We assigned programming tasks to Bingjie and Sanjay
• Sanjay: Work on the respawn system and figure out how to make it work.
• Bingjie: Work on the bug with projectile shooting as well as put finishing touches on the start menu. 
4. We assigned some art tasks to Dan
• Generate some sample assets for the mountain side
• Work on overall scene level art and cutscene design
  

May 1 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Bingjie, Alex, Kirk

Discussion Points:

• Finalized Inventory Measurements
• Predator Aggression [1 - 100]
• Village People  [1 - 100]
• Sticks  [1 - 100]
• Berries  [1 - 100]
• Meat  [1 - 100]
• Presence of Fire [Boolean]
• Created Village [Boolean]
• Found Forest [Boolean]
• Problem Points
• Player Feedback / Communicating Internal Parameters
• Proposed Solution:  central column that has repository representation of player stats.
• Not much carry-over between 2D and 3D Worlds
• Proposed Solution: Beast in shadows that (1) limits progression and (2) changes in behavior based on player's choices in scenes
• Baby's role is unclear
• Proposed Solution: 
• Make it a rare spawn in (1) 2D scenes AND (2) baby eyes in 3D shadow.
• Audio cues?
• Environmental Markings?
• Baby tracks in 2D.
• Keep in mind DIFFERENT SHADES of endings
• final painting, not beast behavior
• Domestication evolution idea - creature should have a form of evolution as well.
• Level Design Talking Points

For Next Week:

• Playable Demo
• Setup Survey [Web Build]
• Consistent Web-Build 

Meeting 4/29/13

Attendees: Kirk, Bingie, Justin, Dan, Alex

Notes:

• Discussed the cave layout
• Discussed the various 2-D interactions
• Discussed creating one large grid map for the 2-D
• Assigning group members production tasks
• Discussed how the interaction with the Beast at the end will play out.
• Parameters set in the 2-D interactions will determine whether player is presented with a bone knife or bone flute
• Showing that there is two optional outcomes, while only letting the player take one, will increase replayability
• Discussed Torch Relighting mechanic

Week To-Do List:

Kirk

• Character modeling for 3-D Beast and Baby
• Alter
• Torch

Dan

• Concept Art for Alter, Torch, Tools
• Misc. 2-D Assets
• Various 2-D grid layouts

Bingie

• Concept Art for Baby Beast
• Bone Flute
• Bone Knife

Justin

• Basic Set-ups for each gameplay style
• Coding for End scene
• Coding for each scene type
• Coding for Torch (Flickering out/Relight)

Alex

• Basic Cave layout
• Update Gantt chart

4/28/13 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Jason, Bingjie, Alex

Meeting Points:

Agenda:

-Discuss Level Design

-Assigning assets to People

-Beast's Den Scene - polishing it & decide how to tie it into the story

-Scene/Mechanics Breakdown

-What we can have our eventual high-schooler focus on

Discussion:
map design concept
Scene Description Spreadsheet

• 3D Assets
• torch
• flute/bone/weapon/thing
• skeletons
• tribe remains
• Beast
• Baby beast
• Programming / Technical
• scene setup in that allows for array images to be background
• Shaman scene
• wasd controls dance movements
• background characters doing those movements in a certain order
• player follows movements

Meeting Apr 11, 13

Apr 11 Meeting (11:00 pm)
Attendees: Justin Patterson, Dan Newman, Jason Kirk

• Briefed Kirk on some of the new ideas
• offering mechanics
• Web-like plot structure
• Kirk Offered Other Game Mechanic Concepts:
• What if objects were more abstract?
• Offering to paintings could perhaps be swapped with placing abstract offerings inside a central unit/column (could be a tomb, etc)
• Placing items is a minigame of sorts where the object needs to be rotated to fit
• Perhaps have different ways each object can fit
• Different permutations have different effects on plot

Apr 13 Meeting (12:00 pm)
Attendees: Dan Newman, Justin Patterson

Discussion:

• Discussed narrative structure and its relationship to the programming / technical implementation
• Art style of  physical world relationship to story line
• https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7gSSV9g9vfCY2xrLTVYM0FucGc/edit?usp=sharing 

4/10/13 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Alex, Bingjie, Kirk

• How does paintings work?
• 3 Parts
• Brief cutscene (Find cave, everyone is afraid)
• Then you can play; character tires to go into the cave and they can't or something
• Goal is to get the story across
• Then the varying ending scenario
• Central hub kind of thing?
• Everything together unlocks some sort of end-game
• wolf being projected by shadows (but actually rocks or something)
• wall is coming to get you
• Maybe solution is to put out the torch
• Maybe putting out the torch is the answer
• Previous people go into cave; maybe you see the signature (hand prints) of people throughout the cave
• Build up to a boss fight, but no boss fight
• Myst - lead-up to something opposite (collect pages and then destroy book)
• Possible setup for interaction
• Dropping objects into an alter as an offering
• Rooms consist of an Act; Act consist of many scenes.
• Each scene takes an offering.
• Based on offerings, the payoff is an epic Act painting that plays on the ceiling
• input story, output story right after, input, output right after
• Each input story with offering has its own output

4/8/13 Meeting Notes

Meeting: 4/8/2013
Attendees: Jason, Alex, Bingjie, Dan, Justin

Discussion Notes

• Maybe the remains of characters on the ground in REAL world have the memories
• What if with the first person game idea, when you lit the beacon you took agency of the characters in it?
• Shadow dynamics - like the boar's head shadow from a rock 
• Puzzling NOT platforming, perhaps (in the context of the painting aspect)

Story Discussion

• Original story - is village burning current or historical?
• Story's interactive parts should hark to interactions of the game's 3d world 
• Story perspective could shift between predator and human
• Before having the characters get attacked by the bear, have more story to establish the village and the characters
• Audio narrative?
• As told by the shaman, wallpainting character (maybe)

GAME BEGINS

• Player knows nothing. Torch on wall. Walk up and pick up since NOTHING else is visible. Upon lifting, all of the paintings become slightly luminescent (and therefore giving the player places to move toward).
• Paintings have family tribe doing things and struggling for a few stories (making fire, surviving winter, etc)
• Then bear has his sequence later in

Apr 6 Meeting

Venue: Google Hangout
Time: 7:30 PM
Attendees: Dan Newman, Justin Patterson

Discussion Points:

• Adding "gray area" to the gameplay
• Shaman/Warrior dynamic is very binary, and its implementation and implications are unclear
• Perhaps focusing more on puzzles that have societal implications
• Puzzle Mechanics:
• Transmission of ideas (symbols)
• Exchanging ideas between warring factions to find common ground?
• Etc. just spitballing
• Physical nature of cave
• More narrative dynamic
• Perhaps have the pause/zoom-out be pangea, each continent a different tribe
• Each level is interaction with a tribe, these tribes could have relationships with one another (pos/neg/neutral)
• Perhaps a central monument that is either awesome looking or falling apart based on how well you unify everyone
• Did super predator hurt all of these tribes in some way?
• Perhaps there is a painter/painting dynamic
• The painter can destroy/create things in the world
• each painted object has a color that represents a culture or a tribe
• erasing one of those things weakens the tribe and thus takes their image away from pangea over time
• Light is still our most powerful narrative and visual symbol
• Maybe walking in a straight line, illuminating parts of the story (there are two stories, your seeing parts of both stories)
• What if this is 3D, the character is a caveman with a torch
• You can light certain beacons that initiate animation on the walls next to them
• Or, you can simply view stills of those paintings if you don't light their beacon (getting less of the story)
• 
  

2/18/13 Meeting

• Assets
• Modular Platforms (Bingjie)
• Background Plane (Kirk)
• Multiple planes per level that represent different platforming elements
• Tribal Characters - TEMPLATE (Dan)
• Troggles (Dan)
• Chieftain (Dan)
• Shaman 
• Warrior
• Villager (repeatable)
• Staff (Kirk?)
• Symbols (Dan)
• Shaman Symbols (curly)
• Warrior Symbols (gnarly)
• The Beast; The Shadow (Dan)
• Predators (Bingjie)
• If you meet a kind person (level 2) and you only have level 1 shaman, you can't mix with them and they become violent
• Research Platform Programming (Justin)
• Animation Research (Alex)
• Program Architecture (Fin)
• Tool Dev (fin & justin)
• Powerups
• Warrior
• Throw Spear?
• Stronger Spear
• charge spear
• Shaman
• Shield
• Stronger communication skills
• flash of light to solve certain puzzle

Jan 18 Meeting

January 18 Meeting Minutes

Objective

Discuss paper prototypes. Decide on general subjective game to design for and draft before Monday meeting.

Attendees

• Dan
• Justin

Discussion

• Dan's Design
• Unknown encounters, illuminate or attack?
• Random chance of being a deer, tribesman, predator, superpredator(!!)
• Doing attacks versus illumination influences game
• Tribesmen give you symbols for future powers? 
• Maybe they give wildcards that are used in a deck of powers
• Justin's Design
• Player is the painter; trying to lead the caveman to the end of the cave. 
• Player controls movement and jumping of the caveman painting as well as the brush stroke of the painter
• Caveman painting has no offense, but the painter can slash out animals and plants
• Damaging trees vs. damaging animals
• The more damage to trees, the more difficult the nature obstacles
• The more damage to animals, the more fierce they become 
• Depending on who painter damages more, the look of the caveman changes to match
• If caveman painting takes damage, his light fades and makes progression more difficult

Requirements for Next Meeting