Week 3 — Building the Final Project
My teammates hard at work for Whisker! :)
Monday — Brainstorming and Pitching
For the first day of our third week of COSMOS, we started creating our final projects. Our final project was going to be a game that we would need to showcase both to our other cluster members and to everyone else next Friday. We spent the day brainstorming our idea: we decided to create a baking game where all the characters are animals. The game would be very cozy and relaxing. At the end of class, everyone had to pitch their ideas to the class. We successfully pitched our game and got it approved for creation. Our teacher even helped us by giving us a cookbook of French pastries.
Tuesday — First Day of Production
We began producing the game. I reused my previous scripts for player movement and customer AI. I created new scripts for baking the food — two different ingredients dropped into a specific area combine into a type of food — and another script that made the customer AI disappear once the food was served, triggered when the player clicks on them while holding the finished food. My teammates focused on designing the backgrounds and characters. I imported their art and animated the characters using the Unity Animator. By the end of the day, we had a complete simple level of the game.
Wednesday — End-to-End Prototype
For our second full day of making the game, I wanted to make sure we had a complete end-to-end prototype. I created a start scene and win screen and rigged up the game so the player can progress through those scenes. I also added a dialogue script to be used later for conveying the story of the game. I worked on the UI and imported the UI assets my teammates made. By the end of the day, we had a complete end-to-end prototype of the game.
Thursday — Computer History Museum
Today we took a break from creating our games and visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The museum contained a vast collection of computer artifacts covering over 2,000 years of computing history. It was fascinating to walk through the galleries and see how computers developed across the eras.
Friday — First Playtest
We had our first playtest today. Before it started, our instructors went over the guidelines for running a playtest — including the important tip to not interfere during the session in order to get the most accurate player experience. Afterward, we could ask the player questions to gauge and record their thoughts and feelings about the game. The player feedback was very helpful for improving our games and surfaced problems we had never noticed ourselves. Week 3 was a very fulfilling and exciting week!
→ Week 4 — building and shipping Whisker
→ Full build log — sprint, technical challenges, release day