Trevor Beedie
Novus Imperium was my first project as an aspiring developer. Me and our group of 4 students developed a game from post production to final in a total of 6 months of development.
Once Pre-Production started, me and my future teammates gathered to talk about the kind of games we liked to play, and the type of game we wanted to make. While we had very varied interests in games, we all agreed that we would make a FPS, but specifically specified that it would be a fast paced and action packed game. We accomplished the idea of a fast paced game by allowing a significantly large freedom of movement. Where the player is fully capable of leaping from one side of the map to the other.
An interesting concept we had was the idea of playing for a crowd. Where, the crowd favors daring game-play and gives points towards victory. Something we would eventually make into one of our core selling points. In order to accomplish this, we would need to make an AI system that observes score and reacts accordingly. However this solution would require the system to be incredibly complex to provide any unique game-play. Our solution to creating unique game-play while maintaining the idea of a spectating crowd was by integrating Twitch into our game!
The Decision to integrate Twitch into our game was the most daring, but easily the best decision we made. While difficult to design around, it was a challenge that gave every member of the team the opportunity to shine in their own way. Adding twitch also allowed people who wanted to participate, but not necessarily play.
As Project Manager for our team, I facilitated communication within our group, from between our in-studio developers, and our out of studio collaborators. Tracked tasks through Physical Based Task Tracking and tools like Pivotal Tracker. As well as organizing appointments for asset acquisition (Sound Collaboration, Voice Acting, Green Screen, Motion Capture, ETC.)
However, with a small team of four, we needed to diversify our roles to benefit the project. So, on top of my primary responsibilities as Project Manager, My Secondary roles were Animator and User Interface Designer.
While I did not directly rig the character, I supported my fellow artist in doing so, afterwards I applied skin weights to the model while we prepared to obtain our motion capture data at Mimic Studios. Mimic Studios has partnered up with VFS, allowing students to use their facilities for their projects. After inquiring we immediately started working towards our capture day. We compiled a list of assets that we needed, found an actor from the acting campus who was eager to try motion capture, met with him to review our assets and do practice run-through's to ensure we were thoroughly prepared before we stepped foot into the studio. While Implementation was a daunting task, as it was my first time ever interacting with Autodesk Motion Builder, I feel that the challenge that I faced helped me learn quickly. We believed the motion capture we would obtain would help give our game plenty visual fidelity and I believe that we accomplished that thanks to our great opportunity working alongside the Mimic Performance capture studio.
As the UI Artist for our team, I was tasked with the very vital task of communicating the game's mechanics and their statuses to the player. Since our game's core revolved around quick, fast paced action, it was vital that we condensed all of the information we could to the center of the screen. Initial play-tests had reports of players feeling like they were not told the information that they needed to know, or they could not focus on the game-play itself due to having to dart their eyes across the screen frequently to stay in the know. Our solution was to allow players to experience the exhilaration of chasing their prey, by allowing their view to always stay planted to the center of the screen by shifting all of the information we could to the center without obstructing vision.
Through Novus Imperium we, as a team have learnt the importance of a thorough pre-production process, as this is the foundation for your development direction. Following through with pre-pro plans by having thorough scheduling for both short and long term goals is how you bring a vision to fruition. Understanding the dynamics of one's team early on, recognizing the role the team needs you in and owning that role is critical to smooth development. Sometimes during development you have to ditch traditional structure for what is most logical in order to get things done. Communication has been highlighted as the most critical crux through our game development progress. Ensuring that individuals make themselves heard and the team facilitates that will prevent a severity in the highs and lows of emotions during the project. Hard work and dedication can push a project very far, but team coordination and synergy is what makes a product fantastic.
I am very thankful for the opportunities given to me by VFS and my wonderful teammates, and hope that you enjoy the game! (Link Above)
You can check out the rest of my team on LinkedIn here:
Rasmus Jakobsson: Programmer