Cate here. Today we begin the monumental task of consolidating all of our assets, communication, and production within Google itself. We are moving away from our Wordpress and committing to the functionality provided through Google Drive, sites, calendars, sheets, docs, and slides. We have been so focused on simply getting things to work that we have shirked making sure they work well.

This past week we fell through on a number of things. Programmers were overwhelmed by scope while designers sat twiddling thumbs. That ends now. Moving forward, all members of the team will have work and scope will be analyzed with much higher scrutiny. Due dates will be enforced and check-ins mandatory. Sure, we already had that, and everyone worked their asses off, but we still have a long way to go before we are in a good position. As of right now, we are behind. Hopefully, this site will help catch us up.

Cheers,

Cate Byrd

MSG Producer

10/24/2019

These weeks have been very busy. We are adding tons of features, including dashing, stamina, UI, two types of throws, and a staggering system. We also play-tested a bit, and the results were about what we expected. We haven't been given time to fix any bugs, so the game is still pretty rough. The game should be looking significantly better by Thanksgiving, but until then we'll have to keep coding.

Hello! I’m Ryan Kelley, the art director working on Ragball. This is going to be a short update on my side of things.

In broad terms, the art for Ragball is a wonderful blend of goofy and energetic. We really want to capitalize on the flailing, sentient ragdoll aspect as well as encouraging a high-energy and exciting atmosphere. This may seem like two opposites: flimsy vs. snappy, goofy vs. intense, but we feel confident we can pull it off, and are already proving it.

The design of Ragball follows a consistent aesthetic that conveys these qualities. The entire court is simple and smooth. The floor of the basketball court looks like it comes straight out of a cartoon, while also maintaining the straightforwardness of a professional sports court. The ragdolls themselves are clean and simple, but have goofy eyes, large stitching, and are just stuffed full of character.

Our current task is redesigning the court and designing menus. With each improvement to our court, comes new models, textures, and layouts. When it comes to menus, we already have mock-ups and just need to add some polish.

At this point, we’ve nailed down an aesthetic and have already made it work. To see our project already look like a clean and visually cohesive game is exciting in so many ways.