Matthew Napolillo | Week 4: The Dangers of Getting Sick

Matthew Napolillo | Week 4: The Dangers of Getting Sick

WEEKLY NARRATIVE

This week was a strange one. From Sunday to Wednesday, I was mostly bedridden, so I missed some important things that happened on Monday. Most of the new responsibilities for this week were made clear to me, but there were also some important questions from the Programming department that unfortunately went unanswered. Luckily when they were reiterated in Discord on Thursday morning, I was back on top of things mentally, and quickly and clearly addressed them. That being said, Discord has it's limits when it comes to clarifying important things, and there's been a slight lack of structure/hierarchy when it's come to the design team anyway. The problem that was made very obvious this week, was knowing who's the "go to" person when it comes to questions and decisions about implementing game design.

When we met on Friday, I brought up that if there are any questions about design, an effort should be made to contact the Design Leads (First me, then Matt Wagar), and we'll try to make sure we're available when these questions come up. I started working on The Design Department workflow for Challenge Design that should help keep layouts clear to Modelers, while also creating a consistency for Challenge Designers. This has been outlined, but not all components are entirely finished, as the effort started later in the week. It should be complete by mid next week, around the same time that the Lobby, and Dash/X-Ray Tutorial designs are completed.

Other things that I worked on this week was a redesign of the Dash Tutorial per the recommendations (relayed to me) made by Tony in class. I also created the final design of the Lobby/Shrine, which addresses some of Tony's concerns as well. This is it for this space. No more designs. We did it. I also worked on a challenge design for introducing the Spectral Wall mechanic, which didn't end up getting used for the Alpha, but could still be reimplemented somewhere else in the final game. Oh, I also made a graphic for the gamepad controls, and setup Perforce finally.

CONTENT WITH HOURS

• Challenge Design (1 hour)
• Environmental Design (2 hours)
• Design Workflow Documentation (7 hours)
• Controller Graphic (1.5 hours)
• Answering Design Questions (2 hours)
• Team Meeting (1 hour)
• Setting up Perforce (1 hour)

WORKFLOW EXAMPLES

Controller Graphic

Final Lobby Layout

Wall Tutorial Design

POSITIVE OUTCOMES

• Worked out important Challenge Design Workflow
• Clarified certain mechanics, as well as who to go to first with those questions (me)
• Finally done with the Lobby

NEGATIVE OUTCOMES

• Clarifying some things was kind of like pulling teeth because there was no designated person to go to before this week, and no one did a great job at dealing with certain questions earlier in the week when they needed to be answered.
• I was very sick :( 
• Didn't have as much time as I'd like to finish the entire Challenge Design Workflow

NEXT TASKS

Creating the Color Key for the Challenge Design Workflow, creating the Design Key Graphics for use in designs, and finalizing the Important Object Dimensions doc. Also creating the final layouts for the Dash Tutorial, and the Lobby/Shrine so Modeling can create them.

TOTAL HOURS LOGGED THIS WEEK: 15.5  hours