EXTERIORS (term 1 dev blog)

Week 1

In the first week we established our development methodology, choosing the agile development strategy, specifically Scrum and its sprints allowing us to meet up and develop the game in chunks. Scrum also had an emphasis and importance on respect between developers, and we established our ground rules between each other with types of jokes, humour and level of professionalism.Next, we decided upon our game ideas. We came up with two strikingly different ideas that touched on different genres to see what everyone in the team would decide upon. We initially came up with a silly over the top beat em up game that was inspired by Conker's Bad Fur Day.However, we also wrote up a second idea that was the polar opposite. This game's idea was made by Sab, our business lead, and drafted by our teams' designers. The game will be focused on the female experience of expectations, revolve around trying to clean the exterior of a house, a metaphor of the female's appearance. There will be people badmouthing her with each one adding dirt to the female leads' house.There are multiple ideas from the designers, however the Audio team has to wait for the art team in order to develop a proper sound for the game. During this waiting period, me and Aimee in the audio team were drafting ideas, listening to example pieces of music for inspiration. We were particularly looking for piano pieces to match the black and white tone, and match the light and calm feel the game is trying to show. Additionally, we were looking for placeholder music for specific scenes and getting feedback from the team.For example: We were thinking of replicating the feel of this piece as the main BGM.

Week 2

In Week 2, we started talking about what each discipline needed to do for the week. Me and Aimee mainly were worried about how to implement audio into Unity as middlewares are still new to the both of us. We want to use Wwise, however we both are very new to the software. So we are speaking with the programming team to understand what the plan is with that.We wrote up the Audio Asset List, and highlighted them based on difficulty and tagged them based on who is able to complete that sound effect.I started work on the Title Theme that plays in the main menu of the game. I purposely waited for Aimee's rendition of the BGM to understand what motifs are being used. She ended up going for a waltz that uses an ascending G minor scale starting on F as a motif. I used that motif in my piece for the main menu theme to bring some consistency between the two songs. We are planning to have this motif in most songs. I also incorporated my own motif to represent the Main Menu / Start Screen, and continued to develop the music in a (A BC D BE) structure.I also attempted to record my own sound effect audio at home, starting with "picking up watering can", "pouring watering can" and finding initial sounds for the UI. I was able to make pouring sounds, however without a watering can, I was unable to get the adequate sound for a watering can. And additionally, the sounds for the UI were tough as I had no art to base it off on.

Week 3

In week 3, I focused on recording and finding ways to create the sounds that the game needed. I also figured out the limits that my environment has and what my particular skillset can reach.For instance, I am live in the middle of the city next to a motorway, making it hard to get clean sounds when I'm outside. However, sounds within the house I was able to achieve just fine.The sounds I wanted to record came to the; "Screwing on the hinges", "Hammering the Nails", "Picking up and Placing down Bin Bags". It was as simple as recording myself doing these actions in a quiet as possible space. This included switching off fans, computers and closing windows etc. However, I still encountered an issue where there were still some ambient sounds that I couldn't switch off. So I used Audacity to and its noise suppression filter to filter out the ambient noises from my sounds.I then sent these sounds into the discord to get some feedback, and will be working on feedback in the next week.Some feedback included volume, and some rustles that I need to cut out and the need for a bitcrush effect to match the theme of the game. In this SCRUM sprint, we managed to build a playable area where the player could walk around, pick up and throw around two objects. However, we have yet to add in audio.

Week 4

In week 4, the Audio Team sat down with Weston (Programmer) and discussed the use of WWise for Exteriors. We found that WWise implementation at this point would be too complicated, and would be a risk to the entire project. Both me and Aimee were new to WWise and were told that Version control would be difficult to monitor, as everyone would have to install WWise to their machines as well. Since we are new to the program, we couldn't take full advantage of WWise that wouldn't otherwise be applicable by hard-coding the audio into the game.So Aimee suggested that we'd go with the latter option and simplify the project for our programmers and designers.Since this was our 4th week into university, it's not hard to retrospectively agree with our reasonings. Especially when most of our team didn't even know what WWise was at the time. However, I feel like it would've still been beneficial to learn how to use WWise for the project to get a grasp on it before the Triple A project we have for the next term. Either way, I think me and Aimee should've taken it upon ourselves to learn WWise in our own time, at least to a basic understanding before making this decision.In hindsight, the WWise basics weren't too difficult to grasp and I feel like we would've been able to teach the others the same basics too.

Week 5

In week 5, me and Aimee sat together in a call to understand where we were within Audio progress. We also discussed what was on the GDD, Audio Asset List and subsequent documents and figured out that a lot of details were either outdated or missing information beneficial for us.For instance, we were not informed of the "gutter grates" being in the game. We believed that it would be open gutters, rather than grated. This meant that we needed to add two or three sounds for the grates that wasn't added to the audio asset list, or the GDD's Asset List.There was also miscommunication from both me and Aimee. With me believing that the Powerwash mechanic was scrapped but Aimee hearing otherwise. It took me asking a Designer within the Discord to confirm that it is re-added back into the game without my knowledge.After an hour of deliberation and discussion, me and Aimee concluded with assigning audio tasks to each other. However, the both of us need to keep the powerwasher in mind, as we have no objects that we can use for that specific foley.In reflection, it would've been better if we were with others for this call to better understand the situation we were in. However, it was also not too much of a priority due to audio not needing to be implemented at all until much much later into the SCRUM sprints. In hindsight, if both me and Aimee were actively working on the Audio and got it all done quickly- even if it was just placeholder assets- we would've been able to help organise too. Especially since the Audio team's work is almost entirely separate from the other teams.

Week 6

Following on from the meeting I had with Aimee, the team hit a delay in our workflow. We sat down as a whole team and discussed what the issues were with our methodology. We realised that our SCRUM sprints were unoptimised and highly inefficient, as some people were not only working harder than others, but a lot of people were given more tasks than the other. Paired with inefficiency, we had a large miscommunication problem. We the Bruce Tuckman model to diagnose our issues and concluded that we would be within the "Norming" phase when we really should be in the "Performing" phase by this point.Since we already developed and established bonds and boundaries between each other in the first week, we were never in the "Storming" phase and always worked to keep our positive attitude and optimism. So we continued to dissect our issues, and found that communication was a necessary avenue of improvement, and also the art team was severely behind in schedule.There were some efforts to alleviate the pressure, but due to the lack of communication, the team was left in the dark with the Art Team's struggle. To fix this issue, Sab, the business lead, assigned creatives within the Designer Team to the Art Team to help with art asset creation.Aimee and I also voiced our concerns with communication. The both of us were lacking the critical feedback of our sfx and foley. With us only receiving simple "This is good" remarks, rather than constructive feedback. Sab, our business lead, explained that she had experience with the music field and was willing to offer that criticism to us which will help us develop a better sound.

Week 7

For week 7, we decided to Review the script together as a team to critique the story and its presentation. Since the script was written under one person, Sab, with no supervision if not only a little supervision, the script has slipped away from the original direction.For instance, the original intention was the NPCs commenting on the house instead of the player directly. However, in the current script it's the opposite. With the player in mind, and the attempt to make the story open to interpretation, this diversion from the original design bars this effect.We made a player profile in the first day of the week, focusing on Bartle's Explorer player type. As a team we realised that we couldn't pinpoint down the specific person we wanted to cater to as the script was straying further and further away from the original goal. At first we were aiming for a female player looking to explore the intricacies and subtle storytelling within our game. However, it wasn't like that at all with the current "directly speaking to the player" script.I believe as a team, we have failed to keep our leader in check. In fact, we have been fearing our leader and as a result we have left her to her own devices. I think I'm also partly to blame as within my time working on the audio working alongside the script, I should've realised that the script wasn't up to par even though I had my apprehensions when I first read it for the dialogue audio. In the future, I should be taking more initiative to lead the team, even if I am not a leader, to help the team move to the right direction. Even though we rectified the issues within the day, it's still a problem that should've been fixed from the beginning.In the audio side, it was this week where I sat down to write the Credit Music. I was thinking of something along the lines of a dramatic orchestral piece, but upon getting feedback we decided against it. So I sat down at the piano and began playing with the F Major melody. I realised quickly that in order to make the credit music more uplifting, I would have to distinguish it from the main BGM. Therefore, I shifted the key up G Major and started playing around with the G Major Pentatonic scale with the Exteriors Motif being played. I also tried playing around with the G Minor motif of the main menu, but that didn't work out too well in a major setting. It took a half hour of brainstorming melodic ideas to finally get the ball moving.I began improvising and the melody just came to me. I took some liberties from anime songs from that of RADWIMPS and Halyosy and followed their chord progression for the chorus. In said chorus, I used chordal harmony at forte to accentuate the drama and the feeling of sadness leaving; hopefulness. The anime feeling is especially apparent at the third to last musical idea, where chromatic chord progression suddenly hits a D# to give that unstable feeling which is an aspect that is seen most common in J-Pop music.After coming up with the chorus, I needed a way to build up to it. So I used a slower melody that key changed into D Major, the perfect 5th of G Major which would help differentiate the bridge but keep it harmonically in line with the original. I also wanted to spice it up a little so I key changed from D Major into G Major but using a B Major as a starting chord. I would use that to shift into G Minor, to end that chord progression on a G Major to finalise that phrase. For this I was inspired by the song "Fubuki" from the series Kancolle, which uses that similar progression to finish their chorus. However, I wanted to use it here to transition into the chorus instead.

Week 9 - 10

In Week 9 - 10, I made my final commit into the Music branch and pushed my work into the main branch. I had finished the bird feeder, various dialogue sound bites (both aggressive and casual), fixed my bin sounds and cleaned up the ambient songs and credit music.Within this time I was working from home and I have been getting consistent feedback throughout by the team. At this point, our connection has really solidified and we had been working hard to get this game finalised with all its bugs ironed out.Within the scrum sprints, the Audio assets were finally being implemented too. With bugs being ironed out, the programming team had the opportunity to hard code in audio. However, I think at this time we were having troubles getting things completed for the day of the RAZER Store London event. I think if we were communicating more closely at an earlier time, this Event looming over us wouldn't be that much of a hassle.For instance, the Progammers were only relaying information to one designer through DMs and not in the Discord we were talking in. Thus, we had no clue what was happening with the Programming team for a good portion of time. It also came to our attention that there were still a lot of problems trying to implement audio too, as hard coding it in proved to cause bugs with the Unity Scenes.Thus, in the final build for the RAZER Store London event, a large portion of my sounds weren't included. Including my Main Menu music, ambient songs and ambience sounds as the night scenes haven't been finalised yet.I think overall, I needed to be more proactive with my sounds at the beginning and use my free time to push for more communication- taking a more leading role alongside Sab as I had less work to do. Having said that, I did offer my content creation skills to screenshot and edit the pictures for the Itch.Io page, and even was on standby to making the trailer for the said Itch.io page. However, due to the time constraints and the fact that there were not working builds at the time- I was unable to get any trailer footage and ultimately, no trailer was made.The team overall was messy, but that's to be expected from a first time experience. So here's hoping that the next time we engage in a development, we can collaborate effectively and communicate more efficiently.