For this game, Dragon Grandeur, my development experience has been interesting. Initially, I decided to step up to the role of Project Lead, without realizing exactly what I was doing. I have previous experience in being a project lead, but the circumstances were very different, and I had never managed a four-person team. Thus, my teammate and I swapped roles, and I became the level designer. This presented a new issue, since our game was designed in a manner that did not warrant a level designer. However, we decided to worry about the details later in the development process, and began work.
Above, you can see the first document I completed as a level designer. It is a simple annotated map that my lead asked for to plan out the game’s five districts. Below, you can see the next and essentially last document I did for level design work, a basic blockout of the stage for potential use later on with 3d assets. Both of these documents were created tentatively, since we had not locked in a clear path for our game quite yet. I also created a text document that explains how a basic fashion show would proceed, but this document was only ever used for the paper prototype, and hasn’t quite seen the light of day since. All of this work makes up Sprint 1 of Dragon Grandeur, a sprint where we were trying to understand exactly what we wanted to accomplish.
Next, in Sprint 2, I was tasked with creating all the judges’ preferences for the fashion shows, which I accomplished in a spreadsheet, seen below. Creating the spreadsheet was interesting, because I had never worked with google sheets or microsoft excel at length before, and I had just recently learned how to change the color of the background on the spreadsheet. I was simply given the names of the districts, and the statistics to be used by the dragons in-game. Initially, I had thought the game was going to be linear, so I designed the levels to follow a linear escalation of the statistics at the top. After clarifying with the project lead, I learned that the dragons would randomly receive stats from the table, not that dragons receive stats based on how far they are in the game or how legendary they are. Thus, I had to learn how to randomize all of the statistics in the tables. This took some time, but eventually I was able to create the proper tables of preferences.
During sprint 2, I was preoccupied with rearranging and adding to the spreadsheet that I did not get much else done. However, I was able to create a text-based dragon info menu that would show the player all the statistics of the dragons and show them a picture of their dragon, as well as create a very simple, but usable menu for the earth district.
Now for sprint 3, I had begun work on more and more UI elements, since at the time, this was the direction the lead said would be the most productive. I began working and created this basic earth district shield UI element seen below, before preparing to create a shield for every district. While working on the shield for the water district, we decided to shift our focus one final time. This time, our lead was focused entirely on making certain the digital prototype was playable and functional, rather than having great aesthetics. I was not part of putting together the prototype, so the lead asked me to stop working on the shields for a few days while he put together a plan for the sprint. In the meantime, I helped him with a pop-up tutorial that would open at the beginning of the game.
Finally, we arrive at the end of sprint three, where I have gained a new role: sound designer. Our lead tasked me with finding sound effects for every single aspect of our game, including background music and ambient noises. During the sprint, I was able to put together a button click sound effect to be used throughout the game, since players were saying they wanted more feedback from the menus to let them know the game is working. I was also able to find some copyright-free music to be used throughout the game, along with a few more sound effects for transitioning on the map and ambient noise within the incubation chamber.
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