Post Alpha

Finishing up work for Alpha was a pretty crazy ride, however we still have a ton to get down before Beta is due, especially for the level designers. We aim to be completely done by Thursday with all of the gameplay and level design so that the artists can have ample time to art up the levels. I think that we can definitely have the levels ready by that time, although I will say that I am a bit worried with the amount of time that we are giving to the artists enough time to properly art up the game.

Coming up is just a ton of iteration upon the created levels, both from QA feedback as well as feedback generated from our design team. Along with finishing the levels, deciding what to keep and features or parts of features need to be cut. There is still a bit left to finalize, but at the speed we’re going now it’s certainly feasible. Our communication pipeline was been super spot on for a while, the weekly work meetings has produced a huge amount of progress and is maintaining very well. I still need to document out a level design bible of sorts to convey how we want the levels to shape themselves since there are three of us creating them and they need to flow better together.

Alpha Time!!

This week was a loooot of work meetings, communication chalk ups and level designing. The team got a lot done on all fronts, lots of environmental art was implemented and iterated upon as well as a good deal of juiciness was able to make its way into the game.

My work this week was a whole lot of level design, concepting the tutorial levels and iterating upon the concepts. I got a little bogged down on the iteration process of the concepted levels, Carlos helped pull me out of that polishing mode to just get more levels into the game, sense that’s what we really need for Alpha. However, I was very pleased to see that that extra time I spent on the levels where I did iterate more really paid off and were of much higher quality them some of the others. I’m very pumped to continue work on the remaining levels, getting them white boxed and in the game so that I can get to that polishing side of things with the gameplay as well as working with the environmental artists on making the levels feel like the world we are creating. This Sunday we will be finishing up all of the white boxing and I’m very excited for that!

GDC Week Reflection

Going to GDC is something that I allows knew that I wanted to go to my senior year at Champlain, hearing only great things from past senior classes about the expo. The first few days were pretty interesting, my favorite talks that I went to were the Level Design in a Day that happened on Tuesday, which had talks all throughout the day about everything level design. I went to a lot of those talks and really enjoyed them, some were more interesting than helpful but here were certainly those that were actually beneficial to listen to and take notes on (such as the history and future of level design in the industry.)

But when the expo opened up on Wednesday is when it was really time to bring the A game, having so many awesome meetings with studios that Daphne. Going to meet the Activision recruiters that Champlain has been fostering a great relationship with was great and we also were invited to come to the Activision after party that day. A few of us went to it and had not only a great time but also invaluable networking opportunities, meeting developers from Infinity Ward and being directed to there hiring manager to talk about current and future possible position openings.