The main job for this week was to do research in many areas. Since we have no idea about Dreamcatcher, Stingray, and chassis design, each of us chose a field and started working. Eric and Aiden were responsible for doing research on the gameplay side of Stingray, Angela took charge of the artist side of Stingray, Christiana and Feiran concentrated on chassis design.
Tuesday (Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
We filtered out some confusion about Dreamcatcher, as in our minds, Dreamcatcher has a heavy impact on our game design. For instance, “How long does the current cloud-based Dreamcatcher build a model? “, “Can Dreamcatcher take forces other than point force?” and so on. We sent a list of questions to the Dreamcatcher team for help.
Wednesday
We had individual meeting with our advisers, where everyone talks about their career goals, roles in this project, plan for this semesters, etc. Then we had a meeting about our branding. Since Aiden and Angela are the only two team members that know how to use Photoshop, after getting a rough idea in team discussion, they will finalize and specify the concept to actual posters and logos.
Thursday
Meanwhile, Eric and Aiden spent three days on learning Lua and Stingray and on Thursday they worked out a demo, where a vehicle can go straightforward, backward, and turn, as well as react to obstacles following real physics rules. In addition, the forces at A-arms are collected and shown visually. Then, we had the first brainstorm, based on the chassis design research done by Feiran and Christiana, about our game design. Because we are welcomed to do a multiplayer game, and a run-time synchronization is too risky, we came up with a design with a similar concept to “King of Thieves”. A player can build his own course to train his own car. At some point of time, he can publish the course for other players to challenge. If other players win, they take his money away, and vice versa. In addition, we will have official tournaments and competitions as a regular way to collect money.
By Thursday evening, we prepared all materials, including a screen record of the Stingray demo, a document of the design and a list of questions, for the client meeting on Friday morning.
Friday
During the meeting, we presented the materials to Mickey and he was impressed by our agile development and progress. On top of that, he pointed out that what he really wanted us to do at this stage, was to do wild brainstorm without any restriction from technologies. He cleared a lot of confusion and gave us more freedom, since our thoughts were heavily restricted by what Dreamcatcher can do. In Mickey’s mind, some great concepts are more important than a workable demo, and feedback to the Dreamcatcher team is also valuable.
Weekend
Therefore, we let everyone do personal brainstorm during the weekend and we will put everyone’s ideas together on next Monday. We will also have to know more about Bandito Brothers since we will have a meeting with them in Week 3, so everyone will at least watch one of their movie, “Dust to Glory” during the weekend also.