So we are going into our fourth project for Studio 2, this game must be based off the meaning of ‘home’ and more so what does home mean to us. This project will involve teams of 4, 2 of which are designers and the other 2 are programmers just like in Studio 1. This is good because the previous projects were either solo designer or a team of designers, so having programmers will mean we can scope a bit bigger.

One of the members had a really clever idea on how we could interpret that meaning of home in a game. The idea is that you play as a hermit crab from a third person perspective (similar to the player view in Crash Bandicoot (date)) and has to find new shells before they outgrow their current shell. The player can wonder around a secret little tropical beach filled with rocks, palm trees, shells, a lot of water and a whole lot of sand. For the visual aesthetic we are aiming for a carefree, tropical beach that can really make the player feel like they are in a paradise they can quickly call home.

Fig 1. Adorable hermit crab

Fig 2. Crabs Bandicoot

Their goal is to increase in size so that they can stand up to some bigger crabs that won’t let them get to a small boat. When a player has a home (shell) equipped they will grow in scale, if they get too big for their shell it will pop off. Without a shell the player will cook in the sun rays and must find a new shell before they sizzle away. New shells will be procedurally generated on the terrain and on the rocks around the player based on their current scale.

For the environment we have a handcrafted space including a sand terrain and some rocky cliffs around the sides. We will have rocks, shells and other items such as nature and more human items filled in with procedural generation. The environment won’t generate completely random, we’ve desired to go half and half on the level design. We will use trigger areas that we can modify in the Unity editor and will spawn the desired items in that area. This allows us to choose where we want each item to be generated so that there is still some reason behind the space rather than complete randomization.

Fig 3. Uncharted 4

Fig 4. Unknown Beach

Currently we have this example level that gives an idea of how big the level will be and how we are planning to go about layout. We also have an idea of what the player’s critical path is going to be since we can lure the player around with different sized shells.

Fig 5. Test level

Fig 6. Planned critical path

I have high hopes for Gone Crab, we have a great team that can really push this project to it’s potential. Although the end polish will heavily rely on visual work which I’m not as experienced at, any visual effect experience I can get is more than welcome.

I’m taking a minute to reflect on the project management (or lack thereof) in the third project known as Breathe. Before going on, it might be worth checking out my post-mortem for this project here so I don’t have to repeat what I have already said.

Breathe was not the most well managed project through fault of the whole team, and because of this it was difficult for each of us to schedule accordingly. This ended up making the overall work more compressed than it needed to be and also limited the quality of the final product. Breaking up tasks is so very essential to proper project management and sometimes people life myself need to learn the hard way before actively applying it to projects.

The start of the project was managed pretty well, we had a Hack’n’Plan setup with tasks allocated. But after the second week we stopped using it and this caused us to be at a loss of where the project was. I took the initiative and started working on the project without any allocated tasks. This was both good and bad, it was good because work was getting done, it was bad because only 1 person was working and the rest of the team was kept in the dark (outside of other communication platforms which we were all actively participating in). In retrospect the best solution for our problem would have been to talk to the team to get the Hack’n’Plan up and running again. Because 1 person took the initiative, the others did not know what that person was doing and what they needed to do as well.

We are already into the fourth project and the management is already way beyond the third projects. It feels like there are always tasks for myself and others at all times and I don’t feel like my contribution is too little. Moving forward in project 4 I want to help maintain the great management that is going and also start using proper scheduling again since I lost the habit after doing so many solo projects. Other than using Hack’n’Plan and my scheduling methods, having well written and organized documentation can really help the team realize what needs to be done and how to do it. In project 4 we already have most of our documentation done (GDD, LDD, Art Bible, etc.), in comparison to project 3 where we really only had a game design document which made it difficult to execute a vision we didn’t fully understand.