Week 2 Recap ~ Dev log #2

Building a Character Pipeline

This week we mainly focused on building some of the core systems in the game.

After coming to our design decision last week (if you didn’t read it check out Week 1 Recap ~ Dev log #1), we started working on creating the 3D scenes. We ran into two main obstacles right away. First, our computers were so old that they didn’t support Blender! So we had to pause everything, head to the Apple Store, and buy new Macbooks just so we could continue.

Second, while one of us has some 3D experience, we still struggled a lot with clothing our characters. We decided to try Marvelous Designer, and after about three days of trial and error, we finally got it working the way we intended.

We created a character-building template in Blender with our main 3D human model, all clothing options, poses, and animations. Everything works through a simple hide/unhide system with selectable poses. It took a while to set up, but now we can start creating our 500 card illustrations much more efficiently.

Dev Progress

While one of us focused on the 3D work, the other continued developing the core mechanics of the game. Since the concept started as a board game, the game itself runs on a turn-based system. We set up the main turn flow so that when a player ends their turn, the camera pans across the map to the next player, showing each turn as it cycles through.

Our game also relies heavily on dice across different scenarios. We created a 3D dice module that will handle all dice rolls.

Brainstorming

One struggle we’ve had even back when this was designed to be a board game, was we didn’t have a polished ending to the game just yet. Today, we finally came up with the flow of how the game ends and we truly think it’s an amazing concept and can’t wait to share it.

In addition to all this, we also threw out some ideas of some more small features that will really add to the vibe and atmosphere of the game, but more on that when we get there. For now they’re in our Jira backlog.

Catch you all after week 3!