Welcome to Mathew Cipriano’s Personal Production Journal
Week 2
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Production Journal #1:
Completed Tasks:
Worked on one pager final with group: (1 hour) Worked on concept art for enemies in game: (4 hours)
Total Hours: 5 hours completed.
Concept work:
Positives:
- Basis of the game was completed.
- Artwork for enemies was completed.
- Organizing a schedule of compiling assets together was also done.
- Designed an early version of the website for our game.
Negative: Problems with connecting everyone to certain websites to link up all assets. Minor technical issues.
Upcoming: Begin general work for the game. Begin designing characters in photoshop as graphics for the game. Begin any additional designs for the game. Get fully connected together with team in terms of project files and assets.
Week 3
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Production Journal #2:
Completed Tasks:
Designed Additional Enemies/ concept art for game: 8 Hours. Worked on slides for selling presentation: 1.5 Hours.
Total Hours: 9.5 hours completed.
Concept Work:
Positives:
- Continued progress in coding the game concepts.
- Finished the enemy concept designs.
- Background concepts completed.
- General layout for game designed.
- Negatives:
- Took time to get a feel for the enemy designs, many concepts created.
- Not being able to meet many times during the main week.
- Background artist was working on a new art style.
- Some minor technical issues.
Upcoming:
- Begin implementing enemies into the game.
- Work on photoshop to add enemies into the game.
- Work on any additional designs for screens and the game.
Week 4
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #3:
Completed Tasks:
- Finalized monster Designs: 1.5 Hours
- Created digital versions of monster designs: 10 Hours.
- Total Hours: 11.5 Hours
Digital Work:
Positives:
- Creating digital monster assets for the game.
- Game physics and mechanics were updated.
- New UI art was created.
- Continued focus on coding a balanced playstyle.
Negatives:
- Minor glitches/errors on some designs of monsters, said assets had to be redesigned.
- Difficulty in focusing on what style of gameplay would work.
- Some other minor team technical issues.
Upcoming:
- Continued work on additional designs, possible cutscenes or extra design elements.
- Continued work updating coding and physics for the game.
- Playtesting game to find any bugs or glitches.
- Focus on polish and overall design elements.
Completed Tasks:
- Finalized monster Designs: 1.5 Hours
- Created digital versions of monster designs: 10 Hours.
- Total Hours: 11.5 Hours
Digital Work:
Positives:
- Creating digital monster assets for the game.
- Game physics and mechanics were updated.
- New UI art was created.
- Continued focus on coding a balanced playstyle.
Negatives:
- Minor glitches/errors on some designs of monsters, said assets had to be redesigned.
- Difficulty in focusing on what style of gameplay would work.
- Some other minor team technical issues.
Upcoming:
- Continued work on additional designs, possible cutscenes or extra design elements.
- Continued work updating coding and physics for the game.
- Playtesting game to find any bugs or glitches.
- Focus on polish and overall design elements.
Week 5
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #4:
Tasks Completed: Animated Enemy Characters: 7 Hours. Total Hours: 7
Digital work (in the form of gifs):
Positives:
- Began Animated Character work for the enemies.
- Detailed tiles for the board were created, backgrounds edited.
- Continued work on coding the game’s mechanics & playstyle.
Negatives:
- Minor issues/glitches with animation.
- Group still continuing the slow process of working on mechanics.
- Minor team technical issues with the game.
Upcoming:
- Continued work animating enemies, possibly finish them by next week.
- Group editing and finalizing mechanics for the game.
- Continue design elements and art assets for the overall game experience.
- Keep playtesting for any overlooked bugs or glitches in the game.
Week 6
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #5 Tasks Completed: Animated additional monsters: 12.5 Hours. Re-animated existing enemies: 2 Hours. Created a new map: 2 Hours. Total Hours: 15.5 Hours Positives: ● Additional and new animations for enemies. ● Created an additional map for the game. ● New effects created for the game. ● A new sprite was designed for the main character. ● Improvements towards coding & mechanics. Negatives: ● Minor glitches for animations & had to re-animate some enemies. ● Unable to finish animating all enemies. ● Some glitches on the coding side of things, minor bugs. ● Slow process of designing games overall. Upcoming: ● Finish animating enemies. ● Continue to design art assets or possible scenes. ● Improve coding and mechanics for the game in order to finish by a set deadline. ● Make sure all designs and effects are implemented. ● Need music for the game. ● Continue overall development for Momentum.
Week 7
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #6
Tasks Completed:
Animated last four characters: 8 Hours.
Created art assets that include objects and titles: 6 Hours.
Reanimated creatures to include hit animation: 1 Hour.
Total Hours: 15 Hours.
Positives:
● New Animations for creatures.
● Finished Animations for creatures.
● Applied new designs to the art.
● Created a trailer for the gameplay.
● Further developed the mechanics of the game.
● Fixed any bugs or issues for the game.
Negatives: ● Ran into a minor glitch that caused me to lose some designs and as a result had to redesign some of the assets.
● Large portions of the project were needed for completion this week and we generally were quite busy.
Upcoming:
● Continue designing additional assets for the game.
● Continue to fix any bugs or issues with the game.
● Keep working to create music for levels and menus.
● Possibly create cutscenes for the game.
● Create any additional assets/designs for the game.
● Continue overall work on the game.
Week 8
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #7
Tasks Completed:
Reanimated/made edits to the enemies, also did some minor reorganization: 2 Hours.
Created Forest scene assets for the background: 4 Hours.
Developed a visual version of the ‘Dr. Grey’ Character: 2 Hours.
Total Hours: 8 Hours.
Positives:
● New character designs.
● New background assets were created.
● Fixing bugs and glitches in the game.
● Game is nearing completion..
Negatives:
● Additional glitches for the game need to be fixed.
● Some of our group’s assets were lost and had to be redone.
● Some of the asset’s files had to be reorganized and fixed due to issues in programming them.
Upcoming:
● Finish any last minute designs to incorporate into the game.
● Finish all the coding by next week.
● Have the final deliverable game pitch by next week.
● Complete the game.
Week 9
Week 10
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #8
Tasks Completed:
Designed assets for powerups, created title screen for game: 5 Hours.
Total Hours: 5
Positives:
● New powerup designs.
● Title screen implemented.
● Finished designs and coding.
● Adjusted U.I elements.
Negatives:
● Reestablishing mechanics and coding for the game.
● Minor issues with playstyle and showcasing how to play the game to new players.
● Minor bug and glitch issues.
Upcoming:
● Make sure everything to present the final version of the game is 100% completed.
● Present final version of the game and showcase the elevator pitch for said game.
Personal Post Mortem:
Overall, upon viewing our project, I felt that we worked exceptionally well with one another and were able to fully develop the game in a generally smooth and positive manner. I felt that when working with the team, everyone was productive and ready to do the work continuously throughout the semester, and were able to solve any problems or issues that came up during tests and developing the general gameplay of the game. During the early development of the game, we worked extensively on how we would create the ideas of Momentum, and how we would implement them into the overall gameplay. I felt that when we were continuously working through the game, we never really hit any large roadblocks or anything that would completely hinder our overall goal of completing Momentum. For myself, I worked on much of the art assets and designs of the game, which included enemies, objects, some tile work, and a portion of the art for powerups, the main supporting character, and the title screen. The work was ambitious, but I felt that I was able to complete a fair amount of work that I believe was well suited for the game and played a large role in the overall conception of its design. Combine this with Alex’s and Ravi’s art, as well as our coders and designers, I believe we were able to create an overall unique experience and exploration into game design and art. Therefore, I feel that we had done a good job of keeping track of our work and implementing everything we could in the game during the semester to get our general idea and feel for the game across.
Three positive aspects of our team and myself regarding the project. ● All portions of the project that were given to me in terms of art and design were completed in a reasonable amount of time during each week for their respective due dates.
● Our team worked diligently on their respective assigned sections of the game, with all of them keeping well made progress on the game from start to finish.
● The mechanics were able to be fleshed out and fully implemented into the overall gameplay.
Three negative aspects of the team and the project. ● The process of deciding how to implement the mechanics took up much of the development time for the game.
● There were times where my version of the projects crashed and I had to redesign them, and they were fine afterwards.
● The process of getting everything together for the game took up a lot of time throughout the last few weeks and into finals week.
I really enjoyed working with my teammates to complete this game, and was glad to have been a part of this project overall. Personally, I believe I need to spend more time working on digital art in order to improve my style, and further define the kind of art I want to create overall. Despite this, I think the game came out quite well and I look forward to working on similar projects in the future.
Postmortem
Overall, upon viewing our project, I felt that we worked exceptionally well with one another and were able to fully develop the game in a generally smooth and positive manner. I felt that when working with the team, everyone was productive and ready to do the work continuously throughout the semester, and were able to solve any problems or issues that came up during tests and developing the general gameplay of the game. During the early development of the game, we worked extensively on how we would create the ideas of Momentum, and how we would implement them into the overall gameplay. I felt that when we were continuously working through the game, we never really hit any large roadblocks or anything that would completely hinder our overall goal of completing Momentum. For myself, I worked on much of the art assets and designs of the game, which included enemies, objects, some tile work, and a portion of the art for powerups, the main supporting character, and the title screen. The work was ambitious, but I felt that I was able to complete a fair amount of work that I believe was well suited for the game and played a large role in the overall conception of its design. Combine this with Alex’s and Ravi’s art, as well as our coders and designers, I believe we were able to create an overall unique experience and exploration into game design and art. Therefore, I feel that we had done a good job of keeping track of our work and implementing everything we could in the game to get our general idea and feel for the game across. I really enjoyed working with my teammates to complete this game, and was glad to have been a part of this project overall. Personally, I believe I need to spend more time working on digital art in order to improve my style, and further define the kind of art I want to create overall. Despite this, I think the game came out quite well and I look forward to working on similar projects in the future.
NEW TERM
Week1 - Week 2 PPJ 1
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #1
Tasks Completed:
Redesigned Dr. Grey Character: 3 Hours
Designs potential boss concept art: 1.5 Hours
Total Hours: 4.5 Hours
Positives:
● New Group members joined the team.
● New teammates were assigned tasks to expand the gameplay and scope of the game.
● New design for Dr. Grey character.
● Concept art developed for a possible boss.
Negatives:
● It was time consuming for our larger group to establish roles and new work.
● Glitches in the game became apparent as the game started to come together.
Upcoming:
● Create more art assets.
● Continue to improve the game through art, coding, design, and story.
● Experiment with potential items to add to the game, narrow down what’s possible for the rest of the semester.
Week2 - Week 3 PPJ 2
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #2
Tasks Completed:
● Experimented with transfering new color shading to designs and details: 3 Hours.
● Experimented with shading and design: 2 Hours.
Total Hours: 5 Hours
Positives:
● Was able to fully bring new pallets and designs towards unity to update monster designs.
● Portion of coding and bug issues were fixed.
● New assets & Music are being developed.
Negatives:
● Photoshop crashed and edits were lost.
● Glitches in the game still persist, ironing out bugs will take time with new assets.
Upcoming:
● Work on more art assets.
● Create updated graphics for monsters, have updated work posted to Discord.
● Continue to update overall production of the game, being music, art, code, and design.
Week3 - Week 4 PPJ 3
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #3
Tasks Completed:
● Retextured/edited primary monster designs: 7 Hours.
● Retextured/edited forest objects: 3 Hours.
Total Hours: 10 Hours
Positives:
Completed main enemy color designs and forest objects.
● Fixed coding issues that were noticed from previous week.
● Gameplay is continuing to develop and the mechanics are getting fleshed out.
Negatives:
● Continued testing for the game is still necessary to iron out more bugs/glitches.
● Glitches are still prevalent in the game and need to be addressed.
Upcoming:
● Continue retexturing monsters & reanimate some designs.
● Flesh out gameplay to have the momentum ability be smooth to the player.
● Continue creating story and possible boss concept for the game.
Week4 - Week 5 PPJ 4
Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #4
Tasks Completed:
● Recolored Enemy & Background Sprites: 6 Hours.
● Helped work out minor UI for the main game screen: 1 Hour.
Total Hours: 7 Hours.
Positives:
● Recolored monsters for the game.
● Continued progress on fixing bugs and ironing out overall gameplay.
● Further developed UI elements for enhanced balance towards the screen view.
Negatives:
● Getting the code together for the game continues to be time consuming.
● Minor glitches occurred which need to be fixed.
Upcoming:
● Further establishing design elements for the game.
● Begin reanimating assets (and reanimate assets that broke due to minor errors) to update look for the game.
● Continue to look for bugs and fix any continued problems overall.
Week5 - Week 6 PPJ 5 Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #5
Tasks Completed:
● Recolored monster sprites for game: 10 Hours. Total Hours: 10
Positives:
● Updated recolored monsters.
● New build of the game was completed.
● Further advances in coding game and game format.
Negatives:
● Additional bugs and glitches were found/still need to be dealt with.
● Minor animation bugs with some monster assets that need to be reanimated.
● Additional information is needed to further find proper playstyle for the game.
Upcoming:
● Implementation of new enemies with updated graphics.
● Reanimate several monsters for updated animations.
● Continue to iron out bugs and fix coding issues for more polished game experiences.
Week6 - Week 7 PPJ 6 Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #6
Tasks Completed:
● Reanimated Monsters and fixed graphical bugs: 3 Hours.
● Designed a victory and defeat screen for the game: 5 Hours.
Total Hours: 8
Positives:
● Animations are updated.
● New designs for win and lose screens for overall game.
● Designed music, updated gameplay, and added further code to the game.
Negatives:
● Additional bugs were found in the controller for the game.
● Game crashed at certain points and new code designs needed to be implented to prevent more crashing.
Upcoming:
● Create additional updated art and more designs for the overall game.
● Further focus for ironing out code and fixing bugs to avoid game crashing.
● Animate main character with additional movements.
Week7 - Week 8 PPJ 7 Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #7
Tasks Completed:
● Edited Victory screen: 1 Hour
● Created portion of level select screen: 3 Hours
Total Hours: 4
Positives:
● Updated screen for Victory.
● Created portion of design for level select screen in colaboration with Chris.
● Updated new designs and code to game.
Negatives:
● Had to restart design for level select screen due to several photoshop crashes.
● Serious bugs in game due to minor mistakes in implentation.
● Several issues with ironing out gameplay and keeping focus on style of combat.
Upcoming:
● Continue to create additional game artwork for game.
● Continue fixing code and avoid the game crashing from bugs.
● Begin to prepair for final presentation for the game.
Week8 - Week 9 PPJ 8 Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #8
Tasks Completed:
● Created projectiles for the enemies: 5 Hours.
Total Hours: 5
Positives:
● Created projectiles for enemies to be implented into the game.
● New levels have been devloped and created for the player to explore and interact with.
● New music has been created for more diverse playlist.
● Additional code has been implented towards the game and is nearing completion.
Negatives:
● Continued glitches and needed updates still need to be ironed out and fixed.
● Some minor issues with creating levels occured, though this has since been improved.
Upcoming:
● Finalize art and designs for game.
● Add finishing touches to overall game and the design.
● Finish creating levels and any code that needs to be improved.
● Prepair for final version of the game (art, gameplay, design, code, music, technical work, U.I.).
Week9 - Week 10 PPJ 9 Mathew Cipriano, Personal Project Journal #9
Tasks Completed:
Animated projectiles: 4 Hours.
Total Hours: 4
Positives:
● Animated projectiles created for enemies to shoot.
● Additional music was created and implemented into the game.
● Further new coding was created to fix glitches
● More playtesting and vocal opinions were done for ironing out the game.
Negatives:
● New game implementations are taking time, as per requests by playtesters, of which caused minor glitches and issues.
● Playtesting for the game has resulted in new needs for gameplay, requiring more experimentation and planning for the final version of the game.
Upcoming:
● Finish art for the game.
● Finish playtesting for the game and make sure everything is ironed out.
● Finish creating levels and any code that needs to be improved.
● Have the final version of the game done (art, gameplay, design, code, music, technical work, U.I.).
During the time at which I was working on the game ‘Momentum’, I believe my performance for this game was overall adequate, as I was able to continue a decent pace of design work that would be equivalent to the process I was working from with the previous semester. During the ten week period that I worked on the game with my team, I continued the process of creating art for the game, and specifically worked on updating the graphics to the monsters and nature assets, along with designing the win and lose screens and the main menu screen to select levels. I also designed projectiles for the enemies to fire at the player, and created the final asset design for the Dr.Grey character. There were also several animations that I had to reanimate due to minor issues with how they were acted within the skeleton of the creatures, of which later came out well. Between designing and implementing further artwork in the game, Ravi, Chris, Alex, and myself all collaborated and worked on methods of design with the purpose of creating a unique art experience for said game. We each split tasks to work on since there were four main level themes, with myself designing and recreating art for the forest level. The process of designing some of the newer assets (as well as creating updated art for older designs), was time consuming, and I had to plan out the various stages of implementation to the designs and then finalize said designs, to which I believe I worked hard on in order to make sure all the graphics made sense and were appropriately designed for ‘Momentum’.
In terms of what went right and wrong, I have a bulleted list here:
Things that went right:
● Successfully updated various sections of art and design that include creatures, screens, and additional assets.
● All the designs were created on time and the implantation of said designs in game were done and with no problems.
● In terms of cooperating with the group, I kept in heavy contact with them and we worked together to iron out designs and also give me suggestions on how to fix certain aspects of art I had created.
Things that went wrong:
● There were times where I had general issues with understanding the art style and aesthetics of the game in the early stages of this semester’s production, and it took me time to fully understand the direction of where we wanted to go with the art.
● There were points where I had underestimated the amount of time one design or set of designs would be created and finished, and thus my schedule of designs shifted every so often and I had to try and plan around these large portions of art creation.
● I had to continue to adapt to utilizing photoshop and further understanding the program in order to update the art, which took longer periods of time. I tend to work in physical forms of media, and thus utilizing photoshop was still a bit of a challenge.
Through this project, I learned that staying ambitious in creating assets is fine, but it takes time for designs to be created and thus my process of design must be more organized in order to properly execute my types of artwork. Additionally, I found that experimentation may be needed when applying aesthetic designs and understanding what kind of process might be done in order to properly create artwork. In the future (and to which when I may be creating games in said future), I plan to further experiment with styles and various forms of art in order to get more of a handle on how such designs may be fully utilized in said games. Along with this, I plan to learn and create additional digital work in photoshop at a capacity to which I will master the program and have the capabilities to design digital art with ease. Lastly, I plan to further manage my time when developing a project such as this game. Specifically, I wish to implement a more concrete schedule at which I can follow and be able to properly work off of for the purpose of spending as much time on the game as I can for the benefit of creating numerous assets in a reasonable amount of time. Overall, I believe as part of the momentum team, I worked hard to help our project grow and develop into something that may be sold in the gaming market as a product itself, and was glad to work with everyone on our team to make our ideas a reality.
