Game Update 1

This is the first of my "Game Updates". I will start labeling these posts to show important updates. Some of my other labels will include "Assets" and "Research". Look for these as well to find out some of the new assets that are going into the game and cool research.

We use a great project management system called Asana. Look this up if your development team is looking for a clean, browser based approach. Our prototype team consists of Me (Maxwell), Blake Sleight, Adam Durant, and Paulo Alves de Matos (Paul). This team could change once we narrow our eight games down to the final four. Paulo and I are the artists and Blake and Adam are the programmers. Currently we are going to build a simple White Box prototype. This will end up looking like a bunch of cubes and rectangles, but this is necessary for quick prototyping. A game should still be fun at this level and if it's not we will find out fast.

I am responsible for moving the avatar rig from Xbox into a program called the Soft Mod Tool 7.5. This is based on the Autodesk SoftImage program. Note! The rig does not work in SoftImage! You must install the mod I mentioned. Then I will do our custom animations and export into XNA as an .fbx file. It is pretty cool how simple this is once you get the rig from the XNA community and Soft Mod program. Since we will be using the player's avatar and applying to a pre-built rig, this will save development time by like...a lot. Hopefully, this means more time for designing levels, creating weapons, abilities, etc...

I am also responsible for creating some basic shapes to represent buildings. I am still unclear at this level if we should build the models outside or inside XNA. We will have to find out!

Summary:

• Team members have assignments.
• White Box prototyping has commenced.
• Max is creating custom animations for the Xbox avatar.
• Max is creating basic shapes to represent levels.