Feeding Ducks

Given 10 Weeks to Complete a Project that was Pitched at the start of the trimester.

I pitched a simplistic (or so I thought) story driven game about an eldelry man with lung cancer named Thomsen who has a daily routine of visiting the ducks at his local pond at his retirement village. He shares fond memories of his deceased wife with his grandchildren and they feed the ducks in a quaint, lush area. There's 3 acts and each progresses more gloomy becoming shorter with less to do. The final act Thomsen doesn't visit the ducks and his watch, a gift from his wife, sits on the park bench. The camera pans out and it starts to rain.

My pitch was accepted and I was given two other team mates to work with. They worked exceptionally hard and I'm proud of everything we achieved in such a short time with our limited skills and know-how.

I did all of the environment design, modelling and texturing, coding (from tutorials) and got the game working more or less whilst my other team mates worked on modelling, rigging, texturing and animating 6 characters (Thomsen, a father/dog owner, a dog, Pheobe and Melody and ducks). Due to time restraints we struggled to get the animations done as well as most of the code ~ I found it's a really difficult task as a beginner to do solo.

The above are just some really quick shots of the second scene (after the Menu) that the player experiences. This hallway turned out really nicelya and I'm happy with my improvement since my last post (the Chernobyl Classroom) regarding textures, modelling, trim and lighting.

We decided on a Cottage Core aesthetic for Thomsen's home as it reflects his wife's taste in decor and establishes the scenary well. Below will be some images I used as reference...

Moving onto the main area ~ I wish I could show more but it's rather difficult with just images.

The game itself is visually simple. In saying this, we aimed for a more stylised, stunning appearance but our limited skills and lack of time meant it was kept to more or less a blocking state.
Textures were done for the various assets in the scene but due to time and the scale of this task, they were forgotten to be applied... See above for files of completed texturing.

TEAM STATEMENT:
Over the course of 10 weeks this team has worked exceptionally hard to achieve the very demanding and high goal that was a full, story-driven game. Given these time restraints the game is up to a very rough testing phase with interactions, animations and story unfortunately missing. All assets are complete, the environment is complete to a rough standard (this was never something we could polish to a professional standard in 10 weeks), character models and rigging was completed; however, animations were just not going to happen with factoring in learning the software to do such things. This project stretched everything we knew and pushed us to accumulate new knowledge that will be handy later in our careers. Time management certainly was big for everything we achieved (from modelling, texturing, rigging, code and logic, and putting it all together). We polished what we’d completed and got the game going from start to finish - sadly not “playable” in any means. I (Julia) didn’t realise everything that went into making a game when I pitched this idea 12 weeks ago and I now realise it would take much longer to get my ambition, goals and idea to fruition. In saying this, this team has worked tirelessly with the aid of Toggl and Trello as well as checking in on where each other are at to get as much as we could done. I’m proud of where we finished even if it isn’t error-free or professionally polished but we certainly surpassed any basic requirements we set from the beginning.

Problems were overcome through team communication, seeking feedback and searching online for tutorials and forums. The project has turned out quite well! Not like what we aimed high to achieve but still a game! There was problems all around when it came to maya and rigging, not to mention issues with modelling as a whole before the rigging. I believe we were quite ambitious, and while we fell short I enjoy what we delivered.

Modelling is fun, as was the animation part. I’m bummed I didn’t have more time to add more animations for Thomsen or start on the dog and other male character’s movements. Weight Painting bested me on 4 occasions, but I eventually threw something kind of functional together. Just don’t look too close to the character’s movements… - Mitchum

I wished I'd taken more screenshots of works-in-progress for comparison and sharing, but I didn't do that as such. The game turned out really great for the time constraint and our skills, and I'm proud of my team. I look forward to the future and to where and what I'll expand my knowledge to. :))