Theo does some modeling for the game... And it looks like he might be helping with the story as well.

Previous Entry:
https://www.gamedev.net/blog/1922/entry-2260138-the-week-of-awesome-ii-day-1-so-it-begins/

Last weekend's prep, SHOT IN THE ASS:
So last weekend, a gamedev buddy of mine came over and we spent some time brainstorming about what the theme might be. My gut told me since last years was dinosaurs, this years might be ninjas, pirates, zombies, or volcanoes. My gut told me the idea was going to be Ninjas, so we came up with a pretty AWESOME ninja game idea. Stupid GUT!

I also gave him a walkthrough of my framework code, and we talked about simple game types I'd be comfortable cranking out. My control library is pretty simple, but clean so we could do a choose your own adventure style. Other very simple games sprang to mind like a twin-stick shooter, or possibly a side scroller, but I didn't even have collision detection yet or platform physics.

My Wife got a stick figure ninja running, I worked up an animation frame class to cram it in the game, and we got collision detection working as my friend and I messed around in the code. We had a lot of fun and my framework was decent enough to encourage my friend to possibly enter the contest. He took a snapshot of my framework so I could break the hell out of the original copy while I hack a game together. It will be pretty darn neat to see someone else use what I wrote. Plus he can (and will) tell me where my framework sucks.

Day 1 - Review:
Then the theme gets announced. Toys? Whimsy? BAH! After the brainstorming session, the game type that fits our idea the most is a top down strategy game (maybe real-time, maybe turn-based) which wasn't even on our radar before! One of the other contestants mused that he thought about trying a completely new game type, but was going to stick to his comfort zone because of the time constraint. It has the ring of very sound advice... But damn it all! I'm going in!

So, I scramble to get things going. My first priority though is to make sure my lovely wife can get to work on the assets and see them in the game. That way we can work in parallel. After getting the project setup and showing the title screen she whipped up, I get to work unit selection and unit movement. This took MUCH longer than expected, but by the end of the day, I had her animated teddy bear and robots responding to my every command! (or at least moving where I told them to)

At the end of the day, we made a rough first-draft of all the stuff we'll need, and I roughed out the game design. All in all, I'm pretty happy with where we are. Plus I received a few complements on my Game Room which was nice.

Day 2 - Plan:
Today, I plan to really hit the functionality of the game itself. Laurie has a list of most of the art and sound assets so she's getting to work on that. She's under orders to get a first pass rough draft instead of trying to perfect every asset along the way. I'm pretty sure a half-finished pretty game would get us less points than a completely finished game with a few rough edges.

By the end of the day, I should be able to see whether or not I was a foolish fool from choosing a strategy game style. If it's not coming together by the end of the day, I'll need to revisit the drawing board to scramble in a new direction. Laurie is still a little paranoid about sharing the concept, so game screenshots will have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm having a blast so far,
- Eck

Next Entry: https://www.gamedev.net/blog/1922/entry-2260184-the-week-of-awesome-ii-day-3-concept-revealed/