Week 1 (16/09/19 - 23/09/19)

This week consisted in getting into our teams and becoming familiarised with exactly what we have to do. We got a brief explaining our how everything is broken down into two week sprints. We learned that at the end of a two week sprint we had to do a show and tell and explain our game idea. Going through different genres and concepts, our team decided to throw out ideas on what type of game we wanted to make so we started to look at other video games for inspiration. 

We also decided what roles to allocate team members and by default we had to have three roles each. I was sound lead, side concept artist , programmer.

I looked at the horror genre because I really like a creepy and sinister atmosphere that can slowly scare people. The games that mostly inspired me were Dead by Daylight, Slender : The Eight Pages, Amnesia : The Dark Descent.

I came up with a game idea that featured a main character trying to escape from an alien like creature in space by avoiding / hiding it / using abilities (such as jetpack or flashlight).

The story is set in space, on a space station that hasn't responded back to the main control center in a long time. You are a space cadet sent to investigate this anomaly as your first mission, having just finished your studies and training in space rescue &  The creature was based on the chupacabra legends and was basically a large space vampire that killed the whole crew of the spaceship you're investigating.

Week 2 (23/09/19 - 30/09/19)

This week was putting our thoughts together and coming up with a game made up of everyone's ideas.
The game was then to be set in space on a floating island that was like a small open world. You would have a base to live in and animals to take care of. My idea was that animals would disappear at night and you had to find out why. In the end you'd realize that it was a hostile alien that invaded your island in order to feed on your animals by sucking their blood.

The story was that this was like an alien "chupacabra" and you'd have to retrieve your animals at night using a mini map and vague localisation. A signal would tell you where the animals would roughly be and you'd have to actually look around with a flashlight at night. The alien being would then stalk you from afar and this would continue for the next few nights, with each night stalking you closer and closer as you returned home. The alien would never attack during the day as it was sensitive to light like a vampire.

You'd be able to retrieve back your animals and have to run back to your base in order to heal them. As the days passed and the alien stalked you more and more, it is supposed to seem closer with breathing and footsteps becoming louder each night. The point of the game was to find and bring back your animals and find out what species of alien is hunting your sheep down. Every night you'd research the marks and DNA left on the wounded sheep in your lab and find out info and hints about this alien.

The first power up you can research is the jetpack. It causes you to speed into a chosen direction and its best use is to escape while in a chase with the alien. This ability has a 15 second cooldown. The second power up would be the flashlight. The flashlight blinds the alien and makes it stop in its tracks. Only one use of 8 seconds per night. After that it's not usable anymore. Last power up that can be researched is the anti-alien gun which is supposed to kill the alien. The idea is that on the last night you stay up and follow the alien to its lair instead of running back to the base. You then find its nest full of eggs and have to kill it and then burn the eggs. This happens in underground caves.

Sprint 1 (30/09/19 - 06/10/19)

By talking concepts with the team we decided on a unique idea. By keeping the elements of something alien and also cute farm animals we decided to make a game about a farmer that is trying to defend their animals from an alien virus infection. The game would be set in space and on a floating island where the player can take care of their farm and fight off the alien virus. The virus will affect plants and therefore cause mutations in them which will transform them into monsters that you have to defeat.

In this sprint I have created a few draft sounds for what the enemy plant might sound like. This included microphone recordings of me experimenting with my voice, and also moving some of the leaves of my house plants then editing these sounds together using Audacity.

The next thing I have done for this sprint was to look up images for our moodboard which would serve as an inspiration for how we will design our game (environment, characters etc.) This meant going through images for similar games / movies and copying and pasting these images into a google doc for later reference. 

We also had to decide on the mechanics of our game as paper prototype mechanics and this required us to each give ideas and discuss effects of gameplay together.

Finally I brought in all sorts of materials from home to help everyone contribute to the initial paper prototype.

Sprint 2 (07/10/19 - 20/10/19)

 This sprint we decided on the granular game mechanics and each had to add or give their opinion on things like exactly how much health the animals had or how much damage the enemies dealt.

We each also continued working / improving on our paper prototype of the game.

Additionally I also designed some objects that could be part of our game such as food, plants, hay-bales etc. as well as the buildings (the barn, inside of Penelope's house (the hub), the lab)

This sprint I also was the one to compose some music for our game for different times / environments (eg. main menu theme, normal day theme)

I did this using FL Studio.

Sprint 3 (18/10/19 - 24/10/19)

This sprint I drew a bunch of concept art for the game. I came up with a design for the barn .

I also designed more game music (evening/night theme, alien infection theme)

https://soundcloud.com/hue-hue-anim3manga/tla-title-theme/s-EoEwg?in=hue-hue-anim3manga/sets/tla/s-93xH2

https://soundcloud.com/hue-hue-anim3manga/tla-theme21/s-ab2Z5?in=hue-hue-anim3manga/sets/tla/s-93xH2

https://soundcloud.com/hue-hue-anim3manga/tla-theme22/s-TYIuf?in=hue-hue-anim3manga/sets/tla/s-93xH2

Sprint 4 (25/10/19 - 29/10/19)

This sprint was the sprint in preparation for CA1 so I had to get all the sounds I made ready on the phone for our presentation and play them at the right time while demoing the prototype.

I also helped with the presentation and revised slides.

Sprint 5 (01/11/19 - 15/11/19)

This sprint I designed the game menu. I used CLIP Studio Paint and my wacom tablet to draw the imagined game UI digitally. I chose the colours and discussed them with the team. The Last Agronaut title should be included above the menu options.

For the colours I went for a pale violet / lavander scheme.

In this sprint I also designed some concepts for a spaceship which was to be Penelope's final escape from her island.

Above are some of the designs I drew.
Additionally, I also tried to voice some of Penelope's grunts / small voice lines such as when she attacks or gets injured. Eventually this was scratched as we didn't find where to put these voice lines.

Sprint 6 (16/11/19 - 29/11/19)

This sprint I created a few UI sounds that could fit the game for when certain interactions happen such as button clicks, selections or overlay effects.
I created these using FL Studio by creating short, snappy sounds in build in extensions such as Sytrus

I created a final, polished design for the main menu scene. I imagined asteroids, and shooting stars over a spacey background.

For GPS I used a real dogs voice by downloading them from freesound.org and edited them in audacity to sound robotic.

• https://freesound.org/people/michael_grinnell/sounds/464400/
• https://freesound.org/people/Mrthenoronha/sounds/420449/
• https://freesound.org/people/apolloaiello/sounds/351876/
• https://freesound.org/people/josepharaoh99/sounds/361544/

Finally I did some concept art for the what the virus might look like. I was inspired by something like a spore but also magical. I wanted to portray the virus as something that draws creatures in. 
I always thought of the virus as a hive mind, or something that imprisons creatures inside their body and takes control, basically a parasite.

I played around with the colours and these are the different designs that I could think of.

Sprint 7 (29/11/19 - 13/12/19)

This sprint I thought we might use mixamo.com animations so I picked some for penelope such as walk, run, jump, injured and other cycles.

I also looked into how animators / state machines work in unity and watched a few videos on how the model animations work alongside them. I also looked into Unity documentation.

I also created a logo for our team which consisted of different designs but the team decided on the purple.

The logo design was heavily inspired by a supernova explosion.

Sprint 8 (15/12/19 - 20/12/19)

This 5 - day sprint was skipped.

Sprint 9 (20/01/20 - 30/01/20)

In this sprint I was in charge of re-placing the assets into the game world.
I made some calculations on how big the play area should be and how we can increase it if we have to.

I placed the assets in a neater way as indicated by the lecturers, as the level seemed a bit all over the place and added more assets to fill up any empty areas.
A barn, lab hub and battle area were accounted for while placing the assets.
As in the design, I changed the world so that it appears they are inside a dome to the player.

I was also the one to model a barn using Blender where the sheep could sleep in. 

Finally we were told that a good opportunity might be to port the game onto mobile so I tried to build our main scene onto android to see what it looked like.
I ran into a few difficulties as the android sdk didn't want to work with unity but eventually I managed to get the scene onto the phone and it looked promising.

Sprint 10 (01/02/20 - 13/02/20)

In this sprint I modeled the lab building in 3ds Max as we think this is the place where Penelope will be able to improve her crafting and make research the virus.
It is a simple building with two large antennas on top.

I also kept trying to make Penelope's animations work with her model which took a long time.
We decided to use animations Emma created in 3ds Max on Penelope and for some reason Unity gave me a lot of trouble...

While I tried to figure out the different errors, I watched a few tutorials on how to make her model work when the player moved in a direction. 

• https://youtu.be/5ozKp5qC4aA

Sprint 11 (20/02/20 - 05/03/20)

In this sprint I added the alien flower animation into the battle scene, now the large flower can be seen moving idly while the character selects what Penelope wants to do.

As recommended by people who played a demo of our game, I changed the colours of the scene because people that played said that there was too much green in the scene and it all seem to blend together too much, so nothing stood out. I also added a lit texture to the illuminated parts of the barn such as the round bulbs and windows.

This was the result after changing the hue of the texture partly.
I also created some UI sprites for the menu.

Sprint 12 (05/03/20 - 19/03/20)

In this sprint I created some spotlights for the plants to give them a nicer look towards the player, as the environment felt a bit lifeless without a bit of light. I changed the texture and re-added it to some of the plants then added the glow to cause them to seemingly fluoresce. 

We also had to, as a team, plan the next sprint carefully and make certain decisions regarding the game.
This was also a point when I started working on another team, Team Trebuchet, in parallel by allocating time to both teams.

This sprint I drew some ideas as drafts for their buttons, action icons and game icon. Mainly UI work.

Sprint 13 (19/03/20 - 02/04/20)

In this sprint we had a few meetings with our mentors to prepare for the big presentation on zoom following the outbreak of Coronavirus & lockdown.
We used google slides to all co-operate on the presentation working from our older one and we also practiced the presentation beforehand using zoom. We also decided to use Easter Break as a time to do more work.

For Team Nova I added a shadow under Penelope, and added movement to the environmental plants using Emma's animations and animator controllers I created, swaying the plants at different speeds.

I also try to add a new idle animation for Penelope but Unity made it seem like this one was more broken than the last so I decided not to change it. Emma's Penelope animations display properly in 3ds Max but refuse to work within Unity.
Luckily the idle and walk sheep animations worked and I added them to the models.

Another thing I added to the scene is particle effects to the plants and more glow so they stand out even more as it appealed to everyone playing our game.

Finally looked into the UI Crafting boxes to use different sprites instead of the template sprites.

For Team Trebuchet I created a Main Scene music theme, a Menu Scene music theme and a Menu Background image.

I composed the music themes from scratch in FL Studio using plug-ins such as Sytrus & Sawer.

This is the first theme I created for the Main Scene https://youtu.be/lY2puXzaiuU

I drew the the Menu Background using the bots as reference in CLIP STUDIO Paint. I used AI and my wacom tablet to draw the background.

Sprint 14 (05/03/20 - 19/03/20)

In this sprint we had to work on a group paper for Entrepreneurship so time was allocated for this part first as the deadline was 

Sprint 15 (05/03/20 - 19/03/20)