Written on 26/08/2022
Greetings! This blog post will be going in depth on a new project that I have begun work on with a team of 2 programmers, 3 artists and 4 designers including myself. This project will last 15 weeks and I have been working on it for 2 weeks so far. Throughout the last 2 weeks the team and I have been going through feedback provided by industry on the pre-production game pitch for Foreign body. This game has previously undergone 2 weeks of pre-production where the GDD, Art Bible, TDD and a brief asset list were made to establish the core concepts of the game. Based on the feedback many changes were made to the initial idea for the game, these decisions will be broken down more below, enjoy! As this project is a university project
Establishing What Needed To Be Done
We spent the first 2 days going over the fundamentals of the game and how to best craft them to create the user experience we desired while still staying in scope. These days were spent jotting down notes on the changes that needed to be made as well as setting up things such as a naming convention, Trello board, Morning Standup and Meeting Notes document. We also established early on the project leads to ensure that we could have proper leadership and direction as well as having someone to be a tiebreaker in difficult decisions. I was chosen to be one of the producers for the game as well as the Scrummaster, this means that for the duration of this project I will be in charge of ensuring that the other team members are on task and understand what they are doing as well as understanding how each piece in the development process fits together. I will also be responsible for conducting the morning standups each morning as Scrummaster.
One of the first things we did as a team after constructing the Trello board, was getting everyone to fill out their availability to ensure no resentment came to team members that simply could not work on the project at certain times due to other life responsibilities. This also helped to know when each person could be contacted about project related matters. Work days for the project are Monday to Wednesday 9am-5pm (except for Wednesday which ends at 12:30). I will primarily be working on the project on those days.
Elevator Pitch
Foreign Body is a single player isometric turn-based strategy game, where you play as a hostile bacteria invading a defensive immune system. As you move further into enemy territory, you must spawn bacteria, strategise and consume your way to victory!
Game Context
To give a basic rundown on Foreign Body for those that do not wish to read the GDD, the game will consist of one level which the team hopes to flesh out and if there is leftover time more levels may be created however our focus is on creating one awesome level to begin with. You will play as hostile bacteria trying to invade the lungs of a person. Your main enemy will be the white blood cells trying to stop you from infecting the host and killing their commander (Stem Cell). The game will operate under a turn based system where the player has to input the next 3 turns of their units and then watch those 3 turns play out over the course of what we are calling a "round". Each round the enemies will also get 3 turns, each of their turns will take place after the players. There will be a variety of ways in which the player can play and strategise to win, this is facilitated through the use of "Resource Cells" which are like powerups for the players units giving them different abilities to help them win. The aim of the game is to take out the enemies commander before the 20 round limit expires and the body sends a flood of white blood cells to destroy the player. The game will also be made in Unity.
Major Changes
You can see some of the major changes reflected in the GDD documents below but if you would prefer a summary here it is! Keep in mind this section of the blog is not explaining every single change, only the big ones as there were many many changes made in the last 2 weeks, that documenting them all would be madness.
HUD Changes
Previously there was no structured way in which the player was said to control their units in the game, this was discussed and updated to reflect a HUD in which players could control their units and be presented with the information they needed to make informed decisions.
Fog of War
A "Fog of War" was added which added a vision radius to each of the players units allowing the player to only be able to see the tiles within a certain radius of their units. Anything outside the radius would show the tiles but the light would be dimmed to make it clear to the player that the enemy could be anywhere. This decision was implemented to add extra thought into the players actions, if the player could not see the enemy at all times it would lead them to observe their behavior and try to predict where they would move in order to defeat or avoid them successfully. By ensuring the player also does not know how many enemies there are it will encourage them to plan out how to push forward into enemy territory instead of rushing forward, by limiting their information it forces them to consider what may lie ahead and if they are prepared to deal with the situation that is revealed. Enemies will also have a vision radius, although this will not be visible to the player. This radius will help with how the AI functions.
Enemy AI
Another large change was how the enemy AI operates. Originally the enemies had vague goals for how they were meant to act, however they were not thoroughly planned out and their behaviours were yet to be completely established. Therefore the enemy behaviour, design and how they interacted with the board was more properly thought out. The enemies did not originally have a commander and instead the players goal was simply for their commander to reach the other side of the board without being killed. This was changed to encourage a more aggressive playstyle and less avoidant behaviour from the player as well as to try and thematically make sense in the context of the body. Because of this change both commanders now had the ability to create new enemies meaning that the player could not simply slowly pick off each enemy before moving their commander, instead they would have to consider how to best take out the enemy commander while protecting their own.
Additionally different varieties of enemy units were created all based around a "priority system". This system would allow for each unit to have a different list of things most important to that unit. For example if a player unit was more important to them than a resource cell, if both were in it's vision radius than it would prioritise attacking the player over gaining the resource cell.
Commands
Commands are the way the player tells it's unit what to do each turn. To simplify what was the pre-existing system, commands were now a way of categorising exactly what each unit was able to do. Gaining resource cells could add to a unit commands and some would last one turn, become an upgrade to preexisting commands or be permanent new command that unit was now able to use.
Game Design Document
Throughout this planning stage I spent the most time understanding, updating and rewriting the GDD to converge with the new ideas and direction the game was going based on both the industry feedback and discussions with the new team established to make the game. Here are both the original Pre-Production GDD and updated GDD documents to more clearly show the changes:
These Versions are 2 weeks apart from each other and so should demonstrate clearly some of the major changes that were made. For a comprehensive look at my input on this document please look at the "Change Log" in the Current Version of the GDD where all my changes and inputs are documented under "Flynn". All changes that were made were discussed with the team thoroughly before implementation into the GDD. Please keep in mind that this updated version of the GDD is not completely finished as the GDD is a living document and may be subject to change as the project continues.
Naming Conventions
This document was made up for the purpose of ensuring that team members would know what to call assets that were made and where to put them in Unity.
Asset Lists
In the second week our prime concern for the team was ensuring that all of the Asset lists were neatly written out and all of the features of the game had been considered and documented. This was necessary so that we could clearly see the scope of the game and ensure that the Trello could be updated with individual tasks for everyone to complete throughout the project. I spent only the last day of the week updating the asset lists as much as possible and beginning to convert the assets into Trello tasks as the first 2 days of the week were spent working on the GDD so that the team could be very clear on the aspects of the game that needed to be added to the asset list. Here are some of the asset lists that were made, please keep in mind they may be subject to change and may have assets yet to be added to them. These asset lists are also somewhat incomplete as team members have not yet been assigned to every task.
Rush Hour
Rush hour will be something that happens every week for the rest of the 15 weeks. It will be a chance for the team to quickly go through what they have done for that week in development to show others the progress on the game. These rush hours will not go in depth but will more quickly summarise what's being worked on and what has been done. I will post these rush hours in my blog posts so that you can quickly see what I have done each week.
Final Thoughts
I am extremely excited to be working on this project with these amazing and talented people. I have liked the idea of this game since the very first time I heard it's pitch in pre-production and made sure to express my interest in working on the project to Ahmad (the other producer, lead designer and man who came up with the game idea to begin with). I am very grateful to have the chance to make this game and hope to put lots of effort into making it something special. So far things have been going pretty well, we are still yet to finish the asset list and Trello completely however once that has been settled we will be able to start getting stuck into setting up the project in Unity and getting to work on that! It may be a couple of weeks until my next post as there is a lot going on in the project that needs my attention first but I will try to keep an update log here.
If you have any criticisms, suggestions, advice or wish to get in touch, please Contact Me. Also if you want to stay in the loop on future projects I'm involved in please watch this space. Thank you for reading!