Autumn Harvest Seasonal-Challenge at CG Spectrum

• Stellar Harvest came from a collaborative challenge hosted by CG Spectrum, known as the "Autumn Harvest Challenge". I had just finished my Intro course and wanted to get experience working with a team as soon as I could.

• Groups of students were tasked with creating a proof-of-concept project that matched the theme of "Harvesting".

  • Final Deliverables included a showcase Pitch Deck (explaining our final gameplay and art decisions) as well as a demonstration video (see top of page).

• Students signed up with a form and were randomly assigned to groups.

  • Each team was given a thematic name for the month, with ours being: "Gourd Ghouls".

• I was grouped with 4 other students; two 3D-artists, a Programmer, and another Game Designer.

I was told early on by one of the programmers running the challenge, that a big responsibility of Game Designers in small group projects like this is to take charge and lead the team, because the Game Designer is the one with the vision. Therefore, I made it an important goal of mine to lead the project despite never being in a lead position before.

• From the beginning, I stepped up to establish times we would meet as a team as well as get the team familiar with project source control

• The challenge included weekly production guidelines that I focused on to help stay on track

• I helped establish art objectives to give the 3D modelers direction

• I worked alongside the other Game Designer to develop a pitch deck (see below) that would give us a unique concept, as we anticipated that most other groups would go for more obvious Halloween or Thanksgiving themes.

Some additional tasks I accomplished within the project were some materials that were important for gameplay, including:

• The shield for our base that communicates to the player the safe zone making sure it was animated to provide some nice, futuristic atmosphere.

• The effect for the countermeasure that disperses from the character provides visual feedback for this ability's range.

  • I chose a simple circle effect for prototyping reasons. Having the game mechanic working well, early, is more important than making it look good and working poorly.