Sprint 2 - Let the Dough Rise (Feb 9 - 15)
In our second sprint of development on Overgrown our team still did a lot of planning and preparation, however, we finally dived into some content creation and made some good progress on our project despite it only being the second week. Some of us, myself included, worked further on planning and documentation which we were not able to get to during the last sprint, but in addition to this, we also produced some good content for our game which we are now able to send to QA for feedback. Some of the things our team as a whole was able to achieve this sprint are: starting development on the designer tools discussed last sprint, modeling our new player character, creating the first prototype of our cat mechanic, creating the first prototype of our bug swarm mechanic, implementing the sprinting mechanic, modeling more plant and interior assets, and more.
My tasks this sprint included:
Meeting with Simon and Jason to discuss cat and bug swarm mechanics
One-on-one meeting with Ian
Brainstorming new ideas for pruning mechanic
Rewriting the tutorial dialogue and describing illustrations
Creating concept sketches for the Greenhouse layout
New Mechanics Meeting
During this meeting, Simon, Jason, and I discussed both the new cat mechanic and the bug swarms. I had previously written up a somewhat brief description of how the cat and bug swarm mechanics would work, but it wasn't until this meeting that we really nailed down exactly how they would function, keeping in mind any limitations from the engine or our programmers.
The original idea for the cat was that it would wander around the level for a certain amount of time, and then it would randomly seek out a plant in the level and go knock it over onto the ground, causing the plant to lose health. We liked this general idea but I decided it was too random and could be frustrating for the player if they had no way of anticipating when the cat is going to knock over a plant or any way to stop it from doing so. To mitigate this issue we decided that the cat should be more predictable and so instead of choosing randomly when and where to knock over a plant, the cat will follow a set pattern of actions. These actions are as follows: first the cat randomly wanders around the level for a period of time within a range (10-20 seconds for example), next the cat picks a spot in the level to lie down and take a nap for another period of time within a range, finally the cat will get up and choose the closest plant to itself and go knock it over, after which the cycle repeats. This pattern will not be explicitly told to the player, however, if they are diligent and pay close enough attention to the cat then they will learn that when the cat is napping its next move will be to knock the closest plant over, and so the player will be able to anticipate this action and be prepared to pick the plant back up immediately. This new system helps to mitigate the risk of players becoming annoying at the cat's unpredictability or feeling that is completely random.
As for the bug swarms we were all a bit less clear on how exactly we wanted them to function. I had originally written that the bug swarms would randomly target nearby plants to swarm around them and damage them, but the swarms would be limited to a certain radius within the level. I believe that this would prevent them from being too much of a nuisance if they had free range of the entire level and all of the player's plants at any time. However, upon further discussion, we also decided that this had a similar issue to the original cat idea where it can be too unpredictable and players may feel it is unfair. So to mitigate this risk we decided on a similar system to the cat, instead of randomly swarming around any plant within range the bug swarms will have a set path within the level which they always follow, whether there are plants in those spots or not. The bug swarms will spend a certain amount of time on each plant spot before moving on to the next spot in their path. With this system the player can observe the bug swarm and learn what its path is, thus allowing them to keep their regular plants away from those spots if possible and purposefully place their carnivorous plants there instead.
I believe these changes will help our players to feel that they have more control over what happens in the game as well as giving them more things to observe and learn for themselves. This also helps with our goal of having Overgrown be a somewhat skill-based game, as the more players play and observe how the mechanics work, the better they will understand how to mitigate these challenges and overcome them.
One-On-One with Ian
During this sprint, Ian decided it would be a good idea to have one-on-one meetings with each member of our team in order to discuss how the project is going, how we each felt about the project so far, how we were each getting along with the rest of the team, and to address any concerns we had. I think that having meetings like this is a great way to make sure everyone on the team is comfortable with the project and everyone else, and to bring up any concerns they might have which they aren't comfortable addressing in a more public context. While I personally did not have many issues to discuss during this meeting, I would personally enjoy it if we did these types of meeting again in the future in case something does come up which I would like to discuss with Ian personally. I also believe it is just good practice for a producer to keep in touch with everyone on the team and to make sure everyone is happy with the project and with one another.
Updated Pruning Mechanic
Just like in the meeting I had to discuss the cat and bug swarm mechanics, our pruning mechanic also needed some revision in order to make it the best it could be. In its current state pruning was far too similar to our already established sunlight and water mechanics and it felt like basically the same mechanic just reskinned. It was not adding much interest or value to the game so I sat down and wrote up a list of possible ways to change it so it could be more unique and players would enjoy it more. My favorite idea, and the one we ended up choosing to go forward with, was to change the mechanic so that when a plant is overgrown, instead of it just losing health like with sunlight and water, it would instead make the plant require more of the sunlight and water resources. I thought this was a pretty interesting way to handle it because, while it doesn't affect the plant's health directly and isn't as dire to the plant, it does affect the way the plant needs to be treated for its other two resources. For example, if a plant is in the middle of a room and is getting the proper amount of sunlight, but then it becomes overgrown, it now will require even more sunlight causing the player to have to physically move the plant closer to a window in order to prevent it from taking damage from its sun resource. Otherwise, if the player cannot move the plant closer to sunlight due to the other plant spots already containing plants, then the player would be forced to get the shears and prune the plant. While it is a small change I believe it is different enough to feel unique from the other resources and has to be treated differently by the player.
New Tutorial Dialogue
As discussed previously from the last sprint, we are updating our tutorial notes to be more clear and concise and to include simple sketches which go along with the text showing the player how each mechanic works. This sprint I was tasked with actually rewriting the tutorial text and also including descriptions of what each of these sketches should look like. After going through our current tutorial dialogue I found that a lot of the notes were unnecessary as they were things that the player could figure out as they play without needing to be told directly, or instead those things could be conveyed to the player in other ways. I was able to cut down on a lot of the tutorial text but still give the player all of the necessary information to understand how to play the game.
Sketches for Greenhouse Layout
At this point in development, we had already decided as a team that we wanted to change our previous level select screen into a 3D environment in which the player is able to walk around with their character and interact with objects in order to start a level. This is going to be an outdoor greenhouse filled with various kinds of plants that the player will encounter in the game, as well as other decorations and details. In this sprint I was tasked with coming up with the layout of this greenhouse space and deciding where everything should be placed within it. I decided that it would be cool if we could design different sections of the greenhouse to somewhat match the 3 different world themes we are going to have in the game. Because of this, I decided it would make the most sense and be easiest to decorate if the greenhouse was split up into multiple different rooms, each room corresponding to one of the world themes and containing all of the levels for that world. In each room there will be various tables and shelves filled with plants and other decorations, and specific plants, which will stand out and be obvious from the rest, will be ones the player interacts with in order to start a level.
After showing these concept sketches to the rest of the team we decided our favorite was the L-shaped layout and will be moving forward with this design. I felt that it would be nice to have the character customization area and all of the player's collectibles together in one room so that they can go here to admire all of the items they have unlocked and get a sense of accomplishment when they see this room start to fill up with lots of new things. I also thought it would be best if the player starts in the room for world 1 when they load up the game as this allows them to jump right into a level quickly and easily without needing to walk through the collectibles room first like in some of the other sketches. While this would only take a couple of seconds to walk through one room into the next, I still feel that it will make a big difference for the player's experience to be able to load directly into the room containing all the levels.
Sprint 2 Reflection
Overall I feel that we have made some good progress this sprint towards our final goal for what we want Overgrown to become. I personally did quite a bit more planning and tweaking of mechanics this sprint similarly to the last but I feel that it is really helping me to be a better designer. From this sprint I have gotten a better understanding of how to tailor the player's experience to be what we intended and also to think deeply about how certain mechanics and systems might make the player feel while playing them. Like with the section about our new mechanics, I believe this sprint I have done a good job of thinking about how an outsider with no knowledge of a mechanic might feel when they experience it and what about it might frustrate or annoy them if they don't understand. I also think I have gotten some good practice in with being able to balance between challenge and fun.
Sprint 3 - Make the Filling (Feb 16 - 22)
On our third week of development on Overgrown our team really kicked it into gear when it comes to producing new high-quality content for our game. During this sprint we were able to produce the most new content that we have yet this semester, as well as preparing our game for our Greenlight presentation during our class period at the end of this sprint.
My tasks this sprint included:
Deciding on a mechanic to cut from our project
Concepting the layout for the Journal
Concepting the layout for the level info window
Working on our Greenlight presentation for class
Cutting a Mechanic
Throughout our planning and prototyping of our new mechanics during the Greenlight phase, we knew that by the end of it we would be deciding on one mechanic out of the three to cut from the project. This decision was made because we felt that moving forward with all three mechanics would be out of scope for this project and instead of producing three sub-par mechanics, we would rather produce two high-quality ones. In order to make this decision, I met with Ryan and we discussed the pros and cons of each of the three mechanics: pruning, cats, and bug swarms/carnivorous plants. After some discussion and debate, we came upon the decision that pruning should be the mechanic to cut from the game. This decision was not made lightly, as our decision during this meeting would drastically change the outcome of Overgrown.
We made this decision because we felt that pruning as a whole was the least interesting and fun mechanic of the three, and also brought with it the least new interactions for the player. Even with the changes to the pruning mechanic I made last sprint, it was still fairly similar to our sunlight and water mechanics, whereas both the cat and bug swarms/carnivorous plants brought completely new interactions and skills for the player to learn. I believe this is the best decision we could have made as now moving forward the player will be able to experience two completely new and fun mechanics which are unrelated to sunlight and water.
Journal Layout
The Journal is a book the player character carries around with them at all times and records important information about the various plant types they come across, as well as general notes about how to care for plants. This Journal is broken up into two sections, the Plant section and the Notes section. The plant section contains useful information about each plant the player encounters while playing the game, and each plant's entry in the journal is not unlocked until they actually encounter that plant in a level. The notes section contains all of the tutorial notes the player has encountered so that if they forget how a certain mechanic works, or they forget a certain control, they can always come back to this section and review all of this information. In this sprint I was tasked with concepting how the layout of this journal should look, as well as what type of information will be presented in the plant section.
This is the final layout which was decided upon by myself and the rest of the team. Hannah created all of the assets for the journal and I put them together and added the text underneath each plant listing helpful information for the player to reference. At first I listed the sunlight and water requirements much more directly by showing the player the exact numerical values for the minimum and maximum levels. However, Ian pointed out to me that this level of information was unnecessary, especially considering that the player will never see the actual numerical values of sunlight and water as we are using bars that fill and deplete instead. To fix this I decided to go with a short sentence describing the amount of sunlight and water the plant needs, which is a bit more vague but it also fits in with our theme/idea for the journal being that the player character is writing it themselves and doesn't know exact measurements for the resources. I also thought it would be fun to include a short fun fact at the bottom of each page for each plant. This information is not relevant for the actual gameplay, but it adds a bit of charm and character to the game as well as teaching the players a bit about each real-life plant.
Level Info Window
Another aspect of the game which I was tasked with concepting the layout for this sprint is the level info windows. We decided we want to add a window that appears when you select a level, instead of being sent directly to the level instantly. This window would show the player the level number, their high score for that level, and some other useful information about the level itself.
These are the concept images I came up with for this window. You can see my thought process behind them with the notes I added next to each one. I wanted to give the player useful information about the level without going into too much unnecessary detail which the player either wouldn't care about or would ruin the element of surprise when they play a level for the first time. After some debate myself and some feedback from the team I decided to go with a combination of the first and second layouts in order to produce this:
The image on the left shows what the window would look like when they are playing that level for the first time, whereas the image on the right shows what it would look like after they've played it at least once. I decided to include only a silhouette of each new plant a player hasn't yet experienced so that it can still remain a surprise, however, the player will be aware that there is indeed some kind of new plant in that level. I believe this will be useful in preparing the player for the fact that there is going to be a new plant that they do not yet know how to take care of, but it does not outright spoil that plant and the player will still get to experience it for the first time within the level itself. Showing the player the number of plants as well as the length of the level also helps to mentally prepare them a bit for what they are about to get themselves into so they are aware, at the base level, how challenging that level may be.
Greenlight Presentation
This sprint was our final sprint in the Greenlight phase and during class we were able to present to our professor the work we had accomplished in this time, as well as prove that we completed all of our greenlight goals which we set for ourselves in our onboarding week. For this presentation, each member of our team had their own slides in which they were able to talk about their individual work. I was responsible for presenting information about the future mechanics, which mechanic we decided to cut and why, our Greenhouse hub world, and the changes being made to the tutorial text.
Our presentation during class went really well and our professor was genuinely impressed by the amount of work we were able to get done on our project in only 3 weeks. At the start of Greenlight he expressed his concern to us that we would not have time to complete all of the goals we set out to do, but against the odds we were successful and did manage to complete all of our goals except one. The only goal we could not complete was gaining the ability to port our game to the Switch console. After sending our application to Nintendo to gain access to a Switch dev kit, our application was unfortunately declined and so there was nothing we could do to continue with that goal. Fortunately, we are planning on reapplying again in a few more weeks after we have made some more progress on the game in the hopes that they will change their minds after seeing how much more we have added and changed by then.
Thankfully for us, our hard work during these last few sprints paid off and we were able to successfully pass through Greenlight into the next stage of development, Alpha.
Sprint 3 Reflection
Overall this sprint was huge for us, we were able to successfully make it to the next stage in our development and we accomplished a lot of good work within only 3 short weeks of development. I believe this sprint especially showed that our hard work has been paying off and it gives me high hopes for how much more we will be able to create with the rest of the semester ahead of us.
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