Luke's Dev Blog

Date: October, 2nd 2023

This week was pretty confusing not going to lie. We were on our own for this week because the day our class was supposed to meet there was a holiday. Anyways, I did a lot of pre-planning. Meeting with the team for the first time. Exchanging information, and just generally getting set up so that we can have the most success going forward. We spent a lot of time pre-planning. We weeded out a lot of potential ideas and got it down to just two. We had an idea for a co-op game that depends on the other player to complete tasks to complete the level, but we decided that a single player game would be better for this project. The two ideas that we ended up on were a rhythm-based game set in a waffle house and a heist game. I think that we are going to move forward with the Waffle game though.

Date: October, 8rd 2023

This week I did a lot of research and documenting. First, I made sure to document imagery about various tools, stations, and general scenery of various restaurants and waffle houses. I put all of these images into a mood board. My mood board has a few intended uses going forward. First, I need something to look back on when I am making my models. Something I can use as a reliable and quick reference. Secondly, it will help inform me of things like color palate and general flow of the restaurant. Finally, it helped me create the first layout of the restaurant. I made an overhead map to make sure I know all of the different assets I will need as well as developing scale. The version I made this week is not a final copy. That is going to be created for next week.

Date: October, 15 2023

This week I made the first pass of essentially all of the 3D models that we needed for our game. There are still a few things that need to be changed and added. For example, some of the models that are at the stations will need to be remade with a higher level of detail. The goal wasn't really to make final assets, although some of the models are developed enough to be final assets (not many). The goal was to help fill in the space and make it easier to visualize our gameplan. I also made sure to finalize the map for the waffle restaurant I cleaned it up and digitally recreated the map with correct proportions.

Date: October, 22 2023

This week I developed the dish station's assets. I upped the poly count for the sink itself. The goal of this is to concentrate polys onto the objects players will be right in front of, and keep the background objects with lower levels of detail. I am getting good responses from my teammates with little feedback. I made sure to model in correct pieces so we can control what color we make each piece. That is stuff to worry about later, however, because we are not at the texture phase yet.

Date: January 14th, 2023

This week was mostly getting things set up for the future. We planned a lot of the tasks we were going to do and then made sure to set up the documentation for the assets as well as the miro board so that we can spend sufficient amounts of time brainstorming each week. We had to make sure that everyone who was joining our team had all of the most up to date information, and made sure to plan out our next steps. This week and probably next, we are going to focus on fleshing out the outside of our building. Right now it is just a blue screen but we want to fill out the environment. I will be working on the sign as well as the cars.

Date: January 21st, 2023

We have been told to take a break from making the outside because the player will not be outside for large poritons of the game. We have also been told to put character design on the backburner to work on the management aspect of the game and to finish the creation of assets for all the stations. Right now, we are working on assets for the coffee station and the soda station.

Date: January 28th, 2024

We have been told to drop the soda station and focus only on the prep station, maybe adding in the coffee station if there is time. I have been creating assets for the prep station. I have made a heat lamp, the actual prep station and other things as well to help fill in the area.

Date: February 5th, 2024

We have had many different meetings to go over the intricacies of the prep station, such as toppings and what assets need to be made for it to be complete. Additionally, I made some hats and extra purchasable items for our game as well.

Date: February 12th, 2024

This week we really spent a lot of time planning all of the different items we will be making for the latter half of the quarter. All of the different purchasable items for the item shop were brainstormed.  I will be remaking the booths and seats for all of the various themes of our game.

Date: February 19th, 2024

This week I created moon and space assets for the upgrades. the space assets went fairly well. I only had a few hiccups. I started off with the space windows. This was a bit of a challenge to get it to be the correct scale both in maya and unity. I got to learn how the conversion looks from maya to unity. I had to specifically model spots in it for LEDs to be placed. I also made sure to give a hard bevel on one of the edges to mimic some of the styles that we had looked at for inspiration. Next up to make was the assets for the Space outdoors. I first made a spaceship. This was a fun challenge because I had to see how few polygons I could make it without losing the spaceship shape. I was able to make it very low poly because it is going to be placed outside the window. Finall, in terms of upgrades this week I created the moon. This was a very interesting process that took some creative problem solving and a couple attempts. I ended up with something that definitely passes as a moon. I hope it is not too many polygons because I had to make it a little dense so it didn't just look like a circle and to make sure I could put holes in it.

Date: February 26th, 2024

This week I started on the windows for the sea theme of our game. This was one of the most significant modeling challenges that I had been given thus far. I had to try and make our inspiration work within the confines created by our current waffle house space. Our idea for inspiration was to make it look like a fisheye aquarium tank window. This proved to be a very hard thing to model because I had to make the curved window part into a square shape. The worst part was it was not very noticeable in engine after Amanda put the transparent background on it. However, I was glad I was finally able to figure it out in the end. The other thing I did this week was make a squeezed and Un squeezed 3D model of our batter bottle. This was in an effort to convert all of our 2D UI that involves gameplay into 3D models.

Date: March 4th, 2024

This week I put the finishing touches on some of my previous assets, such as the sea window and the spaceship. There is nothing too incredibly exciting about this except that these assets were finally finalized and ready to be put in the game. I also put some focus back into the characters, because it is something that we intend on having in our final build. I created a few hats for each of the characters. First, I made a top hat. It was a pretty big challenge, but I was able to make something that worked well even though it was faithfully modeled. It had no detail underneath it. In my defense, it only has to look like a hat on an egg person's head, so I figured that it was ok. The fez hat allowed me to dust off a modeling tool that I had not used for a while. I got to extrude a face along a curve in order to make the string for the hat. I tried a few different methods, but we decided on a lower poly approach of a single face extruded along a curve. The last hat I made was a birthday party hat.

Date: March 11th, 2024

This week I spent a lot of time creating the final 3D assets we need for the game. We made the last of the sea upgrades. This included on my end the sea lighting. I created a pirate ship wheel shape and it hangs from a chain. I tried my best to keep the pieces separate and to keep the polycount as low as possible. I also found out a way to set up a mesh so that you can put different materials on the same mesh in Unity. This is something that I actually already knew but forgot until Dmo reminded me in class. I can now take this knowledge and apply it in case we need any other emergency assets in the last week. I also made the sea counter. I had a lot of trouble coming up with an idea of how to make the rope that goes around the counter. I was able to come up with a working solution and my team actually really liked it. Dmo gave me the idea to add cannons. A nice touch. 

Date: March 18th, 2024

I finished up some assets and we started brainstorming some UI for the game. We really need to come together this week in order to get everything done that we aim to. I believe in us and I think we can do it. I know I need to make some UI elements as well as brainstorm some ideas for phrases and stuff. In any case, my biggest hope is that we can get the prep station working properly. 

Date: March 20th, 2024

We put in a ton of work this week. Every member put in a ton of work before the final presentation. I am very happy with the work we were able to get done in this time period. We got in pretty much all of the feautres that we aimed to. What I did this week was creating smaller assets and UI elements for the game, such as the station tabs and all of the album covers for the songs. I also wrote a ton of the GDD and updated all of the assets. I am really proud of us.