Team Crescendo Encore made big progress in Week 4.

We finalized the basic design of the game. Violin, Clarinet, French Horn and Timpani are nailed down as the final four hardware instruments. This design decision making process was well documented, and we received very positive feedback from SmileGate. We also decided the design goal of our game for this semester. It covers instrument interaction, the feeling of playing music, music arrangement and User Interface.

The tech oriented prototype is also working on Xbox and playable by using controller now. Although XNA is not a familiar tool to the team, Crescendo Encore believes this learning while doing process is manageable.

In the meantime, Crescendo Encore worked out getting the prototype working on Xbox without our team’s developer account information. At the end of the semester, the game will most likely not be open for public downloading. Thus, it is extremely important to make sure SmileGate can access the game painlessly. Crescendo Encore went through the whole process in practice, tested on different Xboxes with different types of account information, and documented it step by step. Doing so, we are able to understand the process and teach it to SmileGate early in order for everyone to be able to easily download and run the final program with minimal difficulty.

Additionally, after finishing the project branding design last week, Crescendo Encore moved on to UI research. We analyzed 13 music/rhythm games’ interfaces, and started mocking up the user interface of our game.

In Week 5, Crescendo Encore will enter the Alpha phase of game development. We plan to have the new design of the game playable with hardware by Week 6. At that point, all the desired features should be completed. In Week 7, Crescendo Encore hopes to start testing with external people. However, from now to next week’s Wednesday, Crescendo Encore will be very focused on preparing for our quarter semester presentation.