Week 1- 27/09/2024
In our first week we played some itch.io games to get some inspiration into the topic of Visual novels, we took some notes on some games that we played and what made them effective.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 2- 04/10/2024
Our meeting this week was where we assigned the roles, decided on the direction our game is going to take with the brief in mind, discussed potential plot ideas, made our studio Miro and started mind mapping our game. On top of this we made mood boards and talked about some benchmark games we can base our game off of.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 3- 11/10/2024
Week three was the Game jam, we discussed target audience considerations, Art style considerations and creating the characters. We also finalized the overall idea for our game in a more structured timeline.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 4- 18/10/2024
Following on from week 4 as a team we did some more thumbnailing for our characters, UI and environments. We also did some research into benchmark games, and talking about UI functions.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 5- 25/10/2024
In week 5 we looked into some Legal and ethical discussions and created some more concept art. Most importantly we prepared our PowerPoint and filled in any gaps that will be needed for the pitch presentation. We also talked about next steps and created a Gantt chart to help keep us organized and on track.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 6 - 01/11/2024
Made overview of Meeting notes as well as storyboarding the plot of our game. We discussed important and potential environment ideas and the possibility of making a style guide.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 7 - 08/11/2024
This week as a team we did some research into the market and how our game stands to be different when compared to other games in the genre. On top of this we looked into how we can make our game appropriate for our target audience. I also got some feedback on the sketches I had created earlier on in the week so that I can move on to the next stage of planning out the scene.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 8 -13/11/2024
In this weeks meeting we talked about how we can refine the plot of our game to fit within the 5-10 minute time allotted. One of the ideas we had was condensing the plot down into just two days, adding a lot more details and decision making into the first day and having the second day be a deadline. This would give the feeling of having more choice on how the plot plans out rather than skipping through the whole week very quickly. We also discussed how we could miss out days and only focus on the most important events. I added to this by suggesting we could give summaries of the missing days through the laptop and talking to the best friend, this could also push the storytelling aspect perhaps of the friend leaving them on read or not responding at all. Another thing we discussed is having the decisions be written from the thoughts of the player, for example instead of an option just being:
Talk to popular girl -
Sit alone -
It could be something like
[Talk to popular girl] "I should probably talk to her, she might think I'm being rude!"
[Sit alone]"I should leave her alone, she'll probably think I'm annoying"
This would mean that instead of just plain options it would be written from the internal thoughts of the player, showing how anxiety is informing their decisions.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 8 -15/11/2024
As a group we looked into Labour market and equality research and looked into statistics and data that are specific to our game. This covers topics such as mental health struggles and gender equality in the games industry.
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 9 -22/11/2024
Unfortunately I couldn't make it to this meeting as I was very unwell. My team informed me that they discussed about making the games script, splitting the days up between each person. I was tasked to write a script for Wednesday including the events of class stresses and in the evening, the best friend ignoring the main character's messages.
Week 10 -29/11/2024
This week as a group we made our sound design document, I contributed by also creating a freelance work document and suggested we amend our NDA for our other group to fit this project, giving us 2 contracts in total. I have a bit more work to do on my segment of the script, but I now have my group's scripts to refer to, to ensure my ideas fit with the overall plot of the game.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 11 -6/12/2024
As this week was industry week we did not manage to have a meeting together, Personally I tried working more on figuring out what the script would be but I seem to be drawing a blank on any ideas, I think I will pick this up again next week with a fresh set of eyes and hopefully I will know what to write.
Week 12 -13/12/2024
In the meeting this week I compiled all of the scripts we have done so far into one document, i hope this will make it easier for everyone to utilize later on in the production process so that we don't have to keep switching between blog posts. We also discussed about making a storyboard to show which backgrounds will be needed and what characters will be needed in each scene, we could also use this storyboard to plan out the decisions the main character can choose from. My contribution this week will be to finish my section of the script and also to finish the role model section on my blog. Over Christmas i will sketch out some potential environment concepts and, if needed, help out with the storyboard.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 13 - 17/01/2025
This weeks meeting we discussed what elements of our project we would like to trademark, on top of this we researched what Copyright is, what are its benefits, what is a copyright infringement and how to get a copyright. We also discussed what assets we need to begin working on and their requirements to be imported into Renpy, as my own contribution to the project this week i took my section of the script and created a storyboard to show how it might look in the game. The next asset i will be creating is the final background for the classroom and hallway scenes as well as the text screens.
Backgrounds-
Niamh : Wall closet [shop front], Doorframe shot [roomate]
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 14 - 17/01/2025
This week we decided to set up more meetings over discord to get back into the flow of working, we discussed how all members of the team could create storyboards for their allocated script part so that we can easily relay to each member of the team what characters, assets and environments will be required for the game. We also reviewed all of our software and hardware to ensure we will be able to create compatible files, we also made sure to inform all members of the team about Ren'pys technical requirements. My personal contribution to the team today was creating a gantt chart for us all to use and track what we have done so far, and what we have left to do, it is my hope that this will help keep us on track and help us understand what we need to do next. I intend to make some sketches for the environments my team have told me about so far, and make some changes to the bedroom background to both help avoid copyright issues, and make some elements of the design clearer. Here is my
gantt chart so far.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 14 - 31/01/2025
In our group meeting this week we discussed mainly how we are going to make our game and what next steps we need to take to get there. We discussed who would be in charge of the Ren'py work and getting a block out of our game. As I personally have a bit of an understanding of Python I offered to take this task on myself, i think i should be able to get this done in roughly a week, this would just be a very basic blockout with placeholder images for characters and backgrounds just to see how our game would play. We then talked about what we want in our game, perhaps having a Dress up minigame [however for times sake for this project only one outfit would be chosen in the end] We could maybe have this as a drag and drop or select box option depending on what is most feasible to do in Ren'py. This would just add in an extra layer of interaction between the game and the player. To keep track of our work some people have opted to use a Kanban board over the gantt chart, myself personally i prefer using a gantt chart so to make sure that i am keeping in contact with the rest of my team, i will make sure to inform them what i am working on and how long i have left until i finish it. Some tasks assigned to us to get done in the near future is to: Create Ren'py blockout [for me this is the most important thing to get done as it will make putting everything together in the game later on much quicker], Niamh said that she will be making a character design requirement document on what she wants from us so she can take our ideas and put them in her art style, all of us should be working towards this, And finally i had asked Nathan the script writer to put together a flowchart for the script so that it will be easier to transform into code, although if he does not have time to do this i can work from the script we all made just fine.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Following on from last week's meeting, I now have 95% of the Ren'py Block out created which has allowed me to finalize what environments and sprites we will need in our game. I showed this to my team and the director advised that once I have finished I should release an Alpha test to the team to check for any bugs to ensure our game runs smoothly. I should be able to deliver this by Sunday at the very latest. Alpha testing involves my team running though the game several times and noting down any errors they find in gameplay, or anything visually or mechanically they think could use tweaking, I will then use this information to improve the game. I might also release a Beta test to some friends to see what they think from an outsider perspective. As I now have most of the block out done, I can note down what environments are needed in the game, and we also discussed having more detailed splash pages/transition scenes and perhaps having a title screen. The rest of our team will be continuing on with character thumbnails/designs to then pass onto Niamh and Nathan and Pantelis have been working on UI considerations that will hopefully be inputted into our game. This is something I will have to figure out how to do when the UI has been created. We briefly discussed not showing the main character in our game to immerse the player better, however due to the nature of visual novels, and our game's script and set up in general I advised this might not be the best move as if we remove the visual of the main character and their sprites it might make it both hard to interpret the main character's emotions and would also be boring to just stare at a background with no one in it for the vast majority of the game. I certainly think that having some transitional scenes from the main character's POV is a great idea, but we agreed that removing them from the game altogether might confuse the player.
I also got some peer feedback on the idea of removing the main character sprite from the game, i showed a friend the playthrough of our game so far with and without the visual of the main character, this is what he had to say:
"i think you should show the main character sweaters, it would help with showing what kind of emotions they're meant to be feeling (like having the expressions change with the text) and it also could help add some attachment to the character, making the player more invested in them and their emotions?"
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Absent
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 15 - 14/02/2025
Me and Niamh ran an alpha test and found 2 Bugs [Benji text shows up when it shouldn't, define error].
I will fix these errors when I have access to Visual studio code. The rest of the team is working on their character design sheets [Teacher, Best friend]. When I have finished debugging my code I will make some sketches for the wardrobe, cafeteria and teacher's desk scene. I might also draw final versions of the kitchen and mc desk just so I can get that done and out of the way.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 16 - 21/02/2025
In this lesson we first started out by giving feedback on the class padlet which contains a good chunk of all of our work so far, I made sure to upload the alpha build of our game just in case anyone was interested in playing it. Over email I had been talking to Amiya about having an in-person meeting with all of us as a team to discuss the music elements, how they're going to be made and to look at some previews she had made so far. Meeting in metronome, Amiya took us down to the Synth lab where she had been making the tracks for our game using a range of Synthesizers. She discussed with us about making a very Low-Fi track by cutting up segments of this track that she had made, It contained some droning and more tense audio for the more dramatic moments in our game as well as some snippets that gave me a very Life is strange feel [which is excellent considering this is one of our benchmark games]. I was really impressed with the work she has so far and we discussed a bit about the foley elements we might like in our game with her. We finally settled on 4 tracks, 1 neutral, one sad, one tense, and one reminiscent of house music for the party scene at the end. With these 4 tracks we can reuse them a lot throughout the game which will save a lot of time on Amiya's behalf. Foley wise we wanted some footsteps, ambient chatter, typing, and perhaps a notification sound, though these aren't mandatory and if she is short on time we can absolutely omit them. It was very nice getting to talk with her in person and I think we all benefitted from seeing what she has made and talking about how we can use music in our project.
 |
| This is the synthesizer Amiya is using to make our music. |
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Music Designer - Amiya : Attended
Week 17 - 28/02/2025
This week we amended the Freelance contract to include Charlotte, and then sorted out the tasks between all of our team. Pantelis and Seb will be working together to finalize the classroom sketch and then putting together a 3D model so that I can accurately draw a set of 3 backgrounds from it [We will also do this for the cafeteria at a later date]. Nathan is going to be working on finalizing the choice UI, Niamh will be starting the character style guide, and Charlotte will be working with Pantelis to create the second best friend design as well as QA testing our game. This week I fixed the saturation on the backgrounds and i will make the phone scene/notebook scene/ classroom next. With Amiya I will be talking about any updates on the music and if she has any suggestions to make the soundtrack better.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 18 - 07/03/2025
As this week was industry week we didn't get to have a meeting together however I spoke a little to my team and requested Niamh our character artist to perhaps get the style guide done within the next few weeks. On top of this Charlotte our concept artist and QA tester explained although she won't be in session for a while she will be working on our assigned tasks to her. This is no problem as I will make sure to keep her in the loop with everything that is going on. Myself and Amiya have been talking and we talked about putting together a YouTube playlist of inspiration for the project. I intend to do that along with working on the wardrobe scene and phone scene for the game. It is also to note I revised our code to replace all mentions of the name Benji with Richie as that is the final name we have chosen for the childhood best friend.
Week 19 -14/03/2025
This week my team discussed how we will promote our game, suggesting that we should post links to the game on discord servers we are in and on our Instagram's where there will be a captive audience we can advertise to. We discussed a Group itch.io page that we could all access but figured it would be easier just for one of us to set it up then link our respective socials in the mentions. We decided on this route as for our last project my group set up a group Artstation where we all had access to the username and password but due to the verification system it was just a huge hassle to continuously sign into and send verification requests to one person's phone. On top of this I discussed with Pantelis if he could make improvements to my campus background as i really wasn't happy with it, he agreed and was working on this during session. My contribution this week is to finish the classroom backgrounds to hand to Niamh to add characters in, then to Nathan to arrange the UI. I have also reviewed my feedback from the formative and will begin working on improving my work using those suggestions so i can better hit those MLO's. We have also been feeding back all of the meeting points to charlotte as she could not make it to session.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 20 -21/03/2025
This week we did not have any major changes to discuss, most of us were either working on completing assets such as Nathan's choice menus, My hallway scene, and Pantelis's campus scene, or working on implementing feedback given to us in the last formative's results. I personally was able to finish the hallway scene bringing the total number of backgrounds now needed to 8, of which we have split up between ourselves to get finished. I have also been talking to Amiya who is working on putting together the inspiration we gave her into some edits to the pre-existing audios, i think it would be nice to have another meeting with her before Easter break just to check in on how everything is going.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 21 - 04/04/2025
This week we caught up on what we have been working on and deciding where to go next with our project. Speaking with Nathan, I am going to start implementing his UI designs into the game and checking everything looks right. Niamh is going to send through the custom font she made for the previous project as it fits really well with our games aesthetic, along with this we discussed adding little icons for each character above their respective text box. We also discussed the weather overlay and coupling this with sound effects corresponding to the different weathers. I would like to get the cafeteria scene sorted out so i will have to chase Pantelis up on whether or not he has created the concept art for this scene, Niamh also wanted to check if he had any ideas for the party scenes so that she can work on them. Finally i put together two versions of the game, one with the sweaters sprite, one without so that we can compare which one looks the best and closest to the direction we want to take the project in.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Attended
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 22 - 25/04/2025
This week we caught up on what assets still need to be created and what we had done over the Easter holidays. Personally I wasn't able to get much done as I was working on the real worlds project, but a few of my team mates managed to work on some assets. Moving forward, we discussed the ending scenes as we would like these to be finished for when we release the beta test. We decided on splitting the task up, with Niamh doing the party scene as it takes place at the popular girls house, and I will do the bedroom as I already have the main character bedroom background completed. Niamh suggested building the background first on the Sims 4 to kind of iterate what the room would look like quicker, then using this to influence the final piece. I spoke to Pantelis who has almost finished the Cafeteria background, he is then going to make a design for the text chat scenes. Nathan will be making the day markers and the UI for the final 3 choices, the day markers we decided would be a flip calendar on a corkboard to tie into the corkboard motifs shown throughout our game, we might also add some tearing paper foley to imply the calendar is being ripped off. Nathan will also be making the Corkboard wnd credit scene, adding in some easter eggs of our own artwork [as well as hiding the alien in every scene]. To lessen the load on Amiya's end, Sebastian might be getting sfx for the game from a royalty free website called ZapSplat. I have spoken with Amiya who has explained she will have the tracks ready soon, I have made sure to keep her up to date with everything we have spoken about in this meeting. In terms of Charlotte, we haven't heard from her in quite some time and we are unsure if she has finished the character design task we set for her, Niamh has decided to make a back up character design just in case the task does not get completed and we will all try to get ahold of her to get a good understanding of how much of the task she has left to do. On my end I will be adding the overlay to the Richie talking scene, sorting out a few errors in the code, and hopefully implementing Nathan's UI designs over the next week, I would also like to get the final bedroom scene completed ready to send out or beta test. I think we can probably get our game completed by the summative deadline and i am overall really happy with our game on a whole.
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 23 - 09/05/2025
This week we didn't have a meeting per se, We presented our game as a beta test to our class just to get some feedback on how to improve. We recorded all our results on our google forms and in turn gave other groups some feedback. I did speak briefly with Nathan and Niamh about getting the end credit scene and day transition scenes finished which we decided on going with a corkboard motif for both. There are only a few assets left to add such as the final party scenes and the music provided by Amiya. I will also be putting some artwork on an artstation :).
Attendance -
Director - Sebastian : Attended
Concept artist - Pantelis : Attended
Concept artist/QA tester - Charlotte : Absent
Story boarder - Nathan : Attended
Character artist - Niamh : Attended
Environment artist - Kenny : Attended
Week 24 - 16/05/2025 FINAL WEEK
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