All the backgrounds

The week before: making preparations

The week before the deadline, the festival is next week!

This week we went to the digitale werkplaats again to have te game tested again with the digitale werkplaats poeple. Also to test it on the location we're setting it up for the festival next week. We had a good discussion talking about the game, and also had a proper first playtest on location. With our gained knowledge we went back to school and started putting in the finishing touches on the game.

One major issue this week was the printing of the physical parts of the game, we were focussed primarily on the finishing touches. But the game pieces needed to be printed. The cheapest way was ok but took a lot of time, so after long debating with both the HKU and the Digitale Werkplaats we came across a good middleground.

The game begins to reach it's final conclusion with all aspects. Next week is the final deadline for everything, and the festival starts on Friday.

Progres

Progress

 

Playtest

Progress

Week 11

This week was a hard week.
A lot of last minute things with the whole 3D printing, the whole map had to be done gamedesign wise and it had to be modeled in 3D. There were also some miss-communications about the printing itself. But that has been fixed for the most part.

We are also working on making preperations for the next digital prototype.
Getting a new webcam and getting the digital map done, for example.
The playtest will be held in week 12.

Next week we will also have a meeting with Meindert Ekkelenkamp who is the lead artist from AGD.
All the artist can discuss things with him to get some feedback.

Week 10: K'nex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

This week was a week filled with K'nex Drugs and Rock and Roll.
On Monday, under the sweet melodies of Arrow Classic Rock, we worked with k'nex to make the prototype and also to test a part of the AR technologie. A few hours of working with the k'nex led into some free building which in turn led to creativity and some neat ideas.

Furthermore we worked pretty hard on the physical prototype and tested it a few times, which gave us some very useful information.

The process of modelling also came along nicely with 4 out of the 6 big buildings done (or at least the rougher and more abstract versions of the buildings).

Today the Client came to Hilversum to test the prototype. They also had some information from the FabLab about the pricing for the 3D-printing. Which came in a little bit high, because of a little bit of miscommunication  about the material usage. We fixed that now and will hopefully have some new information by Monday.

Progress

Week 9 The FabLab

This week was a very interesting week.
We have had an important meeting which is going to decide how the the next month is going to look like. We had a talk with Youp about the 6 important buildings that are going to be on the board.
Now we can work on the events of the broadcast and the gameplay of the events.
 
Besides that we went to the FabLab, a 3D printing company, who are going to print all of our models.
Its was incredible to see how the machines work and what they can accomplish. But because of our concept its very hard to make the board. We really have to think out all our models. So its amazing but also a head scratcher.

 We are a bit stressed about the deadlines of the buildings. But we will figure it out.

Week 8: Back to work

This week we started up again after our holiday with working on the Boardgame.

The designers had several important tasks and desicions before them. The roles of the game needed to be grounded. As wel as the Game rules and the playthrough. Lastly there was an important role of which playable options we wanted in the game. Several important brainstorms and discussions later we decided (for now) on the following

- the four roles are going to be "Mayor","Citizen","Engineer" and the unnamed Defender role.
     - Each of these roles will have a "Attacking" and "Upgrading" function. These shall be all focussed on making the building easier to keep at their best stage.

- The buildings of the game each have their own hp, and this will deteriorate.
     - This is focussed on 4 bars, each representing the color of a role, to support the notion that it's that roles turn to work on the building.
     - If a building reaches the 0hp mark, it is unsalvageable and can't go up any more. If this happens multiple times the game is over
- The events will change a part of the town to and have their own clear goals.

- The goals of the game are either have all buildings at stage 4, or complete a wave. After this they'll get points on how well they did.

The artists are working on the interviewers and the style for the map/events. It's starting to gain shape. The AR technology has gained path-finding, now it's just a matter of adding buildings to a grid system and apply the game rules to them.

Next week we'll focus more on in game development and try to make our goals for the first part.

Week 6: Starting with the boardgame concept

After the last weeks presentation we had our boardgame concept chosen and we were ready to start to work with it.

The goal of the week was to define the gameplay more and also make an asset list to help make our production more straightforward. In Unity we started working with linking the augmented reality marker tracking to match the grid based map system to get the basic gameplay to work. Lots of planning for the forthcoming weeks was also made.

We received a comprehensive list about the actors included in the field of urban planning which greatly helped us to understand the mechanics behind and also we will be able to use this information straight for the game design.

In overall the week was more about changing our focus from the three different concepts to the chosen one and also to process the feedback we got from last week's meeting.

The next week 7 will be a holiday week for our group so it means also no updates here in our blog!

Overgrown week 5: concept presentations

This week everyone focused on developing and brainstorming on the 3 concepts for the presentation. We finished up all the development to a stage that we could show the client the essence of each concept and a small representation of it.

We separated during the week to work on the concepts, this gave us the opportunity to playtest the concepts on each other and get feedback with a fresh state of mind.

Friday we held the presentation with the client. We presented the three concepts and in the end the board game was chosen, we held some discussion about the concept. The main parts of the discussion were the following:

- What kind of buildings will we represent
- Which roles are there in city planning and what events are important.
- What gameplay representation will there be for the game, are there opposites? Are they're co-operative problems.
- the representation of the roles (merging)


Next week we'll start working on the chosen concept with the group, taking with us the feedback we got from the clients.

Overgrown week 4

The concepts are finally taking shape. It took hours and hours of brainstorming but we choose three game concepts we all feel comfortable with. Trying to find suitable concepts that fit the assignment takes a lot of time and brain activity. The good news is that most of that is behind us and we can focus on fleshing out the concepts.

We visited De Digitale Werkplaats on Wednesday again, but thanks to rain we weren't able to view the area again, although Timi, Ferry and Kana were able to find a half hour dry period to take some pictures. We spoke with Sahar Fakouhi over Skype about her projects “Grid” and “Detonator”.  2 games that use augmented reality to inform players about the problem of landmines all over the world. We asked her about her motives and what effect the game had on players. It was great to learn what she experienced and I think we can use her knowledge  in our games.

There is still loads of work to do and in the next week well be preparing for the pitch for our clients. From now on there will be more interesting post containing more than plain text, so look forward to that.

Overgrown week 3

This week we had a hard time with brainstorming. The assignment is very broad and we are having trouble to getting any ideas. We tried a different approach, we set a deadline for ourselfs that on the last day of the week we are going to pick 3 final concepts.
With that in our mind we we're stimulated to have 3 good concepts were all of us were enthousiastic about. 

That wednesday we went to Den Bosch and had a tour around the area where we where going to work with. We even saw the Gruyten Fabriek and we also had a sneak peak at the old PTT building. After that we discussed the debriefing with one of our clients, Tessa. Most of it was OK, we just had to add some things but we can conclude that we understood the assignment. 

After a lot of inspiration and brainstorm session and a big discussion, we finally have 3 raw concepts that we all liked. We are looking forward to the next weeks.

Overgrown Week 2

In the previous week we've finished working on the blog, the trailer and the logo of our team, all of which you can see in earlier posts.
We've also had our briefing with the client last Wednesday, who provided us with information and a base on which we could start thinking of ideas for the game.

Currently we are working hard on making up great ideas for the game, meaning researching and lots of brainstorming sessions. At the same time we're working on the debriefing and made our first planning; This week will be the focus on generating ideas, next week about refining and choosing ideas and the week after that we will make early prototypes and present those prototypes and idea to the client at the end of the week.

Starting next week, there will be an update about our progress every week at Thursday.

Moodboards

Overgrown trailer

Logo/Poster/Banner

Overgrown Week1

When considering an old building in a neighbourhood it is often the case that such a building is no longer needed, and is simply taking up space, or even polluting the view of the people in the surrounding area. This being said, it is, with some renovation, an ideal place to create a game-type area for young adults to 'hang', as they call it. This would solve the perpetual problem of these 'youngsters' loitering in areas where they will only cause trouble, and give new life to a building that had otherwise lost its function.

Our first meeting with our client will be the coming Wednesday, the 19th of September 2012, where he will explain to us exactly what is required of the building. Off course, we shall not come unprepared to such an important meeting, and so we have thought about different types of games that could be incorporated within the building, preparing our workspace and installing the devices we will be needing and listing what information we are going to need from our client. Other items that have been under discussion before meeting the client next Wednesday are a team name, logo, poster and trailer.