Alpha's Coming!
I think that title pretty much sums up this sprint, but I'll do a bit of explaining. Alpha basically means that all of the game's systems need to be present and functional in the game, and once they are the team can start working towards Beta. Seeing as this is a milestone for systems, my workload moved to content for the time being.
Challenges & A New Tool
Since most of the geometry for the train station is complete, this week focused more on enemy placement. Unfortunately, this is an area that isn't my strongest suit. I can do enemy placement, but I usually find myself struggling to do it in a decent amount of time. Thankfully, it sounds like Conor will be taking care of encounter design in the future while I focus on the actual level building aspect.
Aside from that, we've also started creating level design sketches for both the refinery and train station. Now as you can imagine, doing sketches for a 3D space where you can go anywhere is challenging to say the least. So to do sketches properly, Evan set up his Oculus Rift with a virtual reality painting tool called Quill. Using this, we can make sketches before implementation, which can make it easier for us to communicate our ideas to the artists for them to make assets.
Next Sprint
So Arachnotron is going to be put on hold for a little while due to 2 big things. First of all, next week is spring break, so most of us won't have access to computers that we can do work on. Secondly, right after spring break is GDC. I'm super excited cause this is my first year going, but since most of the team is going, not as much will be happening with development. One thing I might do over the break is though is go back to the level design document that I created for the train station since I can't do anything in engine. Either way, it'll probably be a while until the next Arachnotron update, so look forward to more, just coming a little later.
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