Week 2 – scope analysis

In today’s lesson we learnt scope analysis and how we can incorporate the projects and teams, the project scope is a type of management technique that helps the team reach the projects objective by:

· list of features that the game must have.

· The predicted development time, so calculating how long it could take to complete an objective the project.

· The cost of the project.

· Skill requirements that the project might need to complete the objective

· having project milestones in order to break down the project into small chunks.

· Presentation format

· Timeframe = May 20

· Pipeline analysis

The Project scope itself can be achieved in steps:

one you have to look through the game design document to decide which features do you want to show, and the features, what level can really show the capability of that feature, last week were creating a vertical slice of the game, a vertical slice is not going be the whole game itself, were taking an element of the game and basically displaying its features. If that feature has to be shown in a new level and that’s what needs to be done, so essentially you don’t have to follow the games design document word for word.

After that create an asset list, an asset list is essentially stuff you put in the game so for example if you’re in your bedroom the light in the bedroom could be an asset, or the materials on the wall could be an asset as well. In the context of games design an asset list should include things like programming, server requirements, UIX requirements, another visual artistic asset like 3D models.

The team has to create the asset list, the leader should be putting people into different departments to achieve the project objective, also in this part it will be useful for the other people in the team to estimate how long it would take for them to complete an asset so that the team can see whether their goal is achievable or not.

After the lecture was done the team looked at Valka’s game design document and start analysing it and see what we can take from it. Valka’s games design document is quite big so there is quite a lot of features that he mentioned, so we picked the features that we found the most interesting and started developing and considered developing those instead. When it came to things like concept art, we took elements apart and start writing them down so we know what list of the assets we can create, so for example for me are there was a forest concept art so have to break down the grass had to break down whatever trees and plants there were so creating concept art and then 3D models and those.

This is where we were able to assign jobs because of my experiences with environmental design I will create the foliage 3D modelling, so that involves rough drawing, concept art, 3D models. Also, here I have to write down how long each stage of the design will take me so when it comes to rough drawing will take me a day and then when it comes to concept art public take me two days and then 3D modelling will take two days as well

my task is to create

· Tree one

· Treated

· Grass turf 1

· Grass turf 2

· Vines

· Bush

· Shrub

· Rocks 1

· Rocks 2

James meeting

After creating the project scope, we had a meeting with James where we discussed the scope analysis that we developed in the morning, after that we discussed what other vertical slice is that we want to develop and after that we start discussing different pipeline processes that we can use.

The meeting itself was about 15 minutes but when I first came into the meeting, they discussed things I animation, but talked about that to have extended animations will be quite important to have very little number of characters you can utilise most of your time to work on the extended animations.

My teams AI can be completed within an afternoon.

because the game design document that were working on its gonna be at quite a visual are driven game this would mean that the be very little and showing off of mechanics because the vertical slice is essentially to show off the features and capabilities of the game will be important to look at the lens of beauty because our group groups project is so visual driven

Because these meetings will be done every Thursday until the project is completed all be quite good to have our weekly goal for each team member, so we can complete it before Thursday and show it to James and then discuss what we can do next in terms of progress for our project. So for this week it’s probably going be focusing more on character sketches level designs and environmental concept art, e.g. this could involve prop design of buildings, tree and bushes.

In the meeting I pointed out that though Valkar has done a lot of concert, there has 2 levels that he described via text but did not create any concept art, so I believed that it would be more beneficial to start creating assets of the levels that already has concept art in them, Lio said that don’t necessary matter because is a vertical slice which I agree with, it’s important to focus on what we already have problems focusing on things that have been described but hasn’t really been implemented in detail.

because the games focus more on the environments are Phil said it would be more beneficial if we split the environment designs into two departments one would focus more on structural architectures and the other department would focus more on the foliage so trees or plants for example

James also suggested that there should be an lead artist and the subservient artists will have to design the concept based around the lead artist’s art style make it more consistent and precise

This semester there will be head of Departments, their job is to organise and assist various people in various technical topics, the head of 3D modelling will be Callum and flora so in the future when I start designing my 3D models of the environment I will especially be looking for Callum and flora for feedback.