Embedded Files
Summary
Project Premise
The University of Staffordshire's 'Junior & Senior Collab' is for second and third year students in their final semester of study:
Teams of 20+ from all disciplines of games are gathered to produce a vertical-slice of a game within 8 weeks.
This module is critical for gaining experience in working with large-scale teams and familiarizing ourselves with the games production pipeline.
Game Summary
Race your friends in an exciting, fast-paced environment!
Compete to catch the most fish!
Fight over your catches to steal points from your opponents!
Bobber Buddies is a local 2-4 player PvP where cute animals fight to be the ones to catch the mot fish in a limited amount of time.
Software
Skills
Large-scale project management
Effective communication strategies
Presentation production and speaking
Gameplay element(s) programming
Rapid itterative prototyping
Beta-testing management and facilitation
Marketing materials production
UI-art production and implementation
Roles and Responsibilities
Primary Role(s):
Project Lead
As project lead, my responsibilities fell primarily on how the game would be made; with focus on the design of gameplay, the standards and expectations for the art assets and the production of the Art Bible
Overall, I did my best to ensure that everyone in the team, regardless of discipline, was on the same page with what the final product would look like when it came to the deadline.
Producer
In contrast, my role as producer meant I also had to tackle things like managing timelines and expectations, beta testing, producing marketing materials, and handling any kind of blockers and delays within the production pipeline.
Both roles go hand-in-hand when placed in an Indie-development context, so I frequently found the two blending together in day-to-day work; it was a valueable experience for me.
Art Bible
The Art-Bible was used to keep all those within the wider Art Team (Game Art & Concept Art) on the same page regarding the game's over-arching style and inspirations.
The Art-Bible delves into a combination of multiple disciplines including: conceptual design, reference for 3D artists, VFX-inspirations, and marketing pointers for when splash-art is produced.
Whilst creating it, I did my best to source plenty of references, with descriptive notes to detail which specific parts of each image it would be ideal to focus on.
Promotional Materials
The main splash art was created by one of our team's concept artists, however the responsibility of then taking that splash-art and producing all of the relevant promotional materials fell onto my shoulders as the Producer for the team.
I referenced multiple different sources for this, with a primary focus on the assets and images needed for web-store pages, this included Itch, Steam, and XboX.
Other promotional material assets included the Unreal Project files, poster-art, and potential box-art/packaging for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Wii.
Play-Day
The Play-Day was an informal event at the end of the module to celebrate all of the games produced over the course of Junior & Senior Collaborative Development.
Awards were on offer, being judged and awarded by a combination of lecturers, fellow students, and industry professionals.
Overall, Bobber Buddies ranked 9th for Student Choice, and was awarded Best Promotional Materials by the sharks.
The sharks playtesting our game during the Week 5 livestream.
It was a great experience getting to be Project Lead & Producer for my team; the learning curve was steep, as I had never taken on a leadership role on such a high scale, but the reward of seeing what we accomplished made it well-worth the effort.
Some photos I captured of fellow students from other teams playing Bobber Buddies
Secondary Role(s):
Gameplay Programmer
My Contributions:
All player-movement including:
Basic Steering
Boat-tilt Logic
Dash & Charged Dash
Knockback Effect
Stun Effect
VFX implementation within blueprint
Splining tool for 3D objects
Throughout the course of the project, I did my best to ensure that anything implemented was thoroughly tested to guarantee player satisfaction.
Whilst my primary role within the team was Project Lead & Producer, it was important to me that I helped the team in any way I could as a sort of safety net to ensure a minimum-viable-product was accomplished first. I enjoyed being able to make more technical contributions to the team outside of my main role.
Beta-testing was held weekly, with one large play-test event on week 5 of the project. All feedback would be taken into consideration and discussed in each weekly meeting the leadership-team would have, to ensure the game is moving in the right direction.
QA & Beta Testing
My Contributions:
Hosting and conducting weekly tests
Making MS-Forms for beta-testers to fill out
Personal note-taking alongside the forms
Infographics for easier understanding of gameplay mechanics
The most important part of any beta-testing performed was taking the feedback and figuring out what changes would have to be made based on both the user-feedback, and the notes I had taken on observed behaviour.
2D & VFX Artist
Whilst the bulk of my artwork was UI-related; the artbook here is used to display all of my individual artistic-contributions to the game-development process overall.
My Contributions:
Team logo
Game logo
UI (design, typography and colours)
VFX particles
Playtesting infographics for testers
Playday infographics.
Final itch-page design
Check out my other projects!
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