Week 1

Week 1 - 25/09/12

This week was mainly spent learning about the unit, assessment and what is expected of us in relation to passing and getting a good grade. For the first hour and a half, during the lecture we learned about the Open Wonderland program, which seems like an excellent way for team/group communication. This differs from other means such as Skype as you are able to drag documents, images and ideas into a team space, which everyone can view, and edit. These stay in this space even when you log off, so are easily accessible to all members at all stages within the unit.

After this we were presented with a lecture on the actual course requirements, and what is expected of us to pass. This involved a timeline of what will be taught, when we are expected to have paperwork in for and when our pitches are due to be delivered.

Next up we were asked to form teams of 2-4 members, name them, and let Jim know who was in, and what our teams were called. I became part of Team Baron, this consists of myself, Fiona Bruce, Andrea Hosie, Ross Griffin and James Lemmon. We also all agreed to use the Open Wonderland environment for meetings when necessary as it isn't easy for all of us to get into Uni for meetings, so this will make this process much easier.

After a break we moved to the labs were we began work on this weeks tasks. This included making a blog, all of our team members decided to make on one blogger with a unified theme so that our paperwork would all look of a similar standard. After this we had an informal discussion on what area's each member of the team would work on. In college we had a similar unit to this one called Pitch to Treatment, and also within our graded unit in HNC year there was a lot of teamwork, for this we had a Project Manager, at the time that was myself and I thoroughly enjoyed this, so quickly offered myself up to this job, the rest of the team agreed. With regards to the other tasks, Andrea is focusing on graphics, but also gameplay, Ross the story and and paperwork, and James the gameplay and graphics, but we would all like to help out each other, but we will have original defined roles.

Some other tasks for this week that were discussed was setting up a code of conduct and swapping details, looking in to how to access the Open Wonderland servers from home and University, a look at how to break down the overall problem into manageable tasks. One of the main ways in which we would do this is to research other game design documents and pitches. There are a number of these available to us on Moodle, which I have thoroughly looked at, and will be keeping my own word document with ideas. Ross was given the task of coming up with some ideas and we had a small brainstorming session.

I looked into using Open Wonderland, and watched the video guide on Moodle, also I completed the first survey related to this.

We had a brainstorming session with Ross and came up with some ideas which all of us were interested in, these were narrowed down to -  Walking through walls, colour being removed and coming back, Light Physics (bulb and light trying to get back) Comic Book style breaking through panels, and an Immortal trying to kill himself in funny and inventive ways.