Hey Everyone,
This week you're going to see quite a bit of construction and testing happening in the weeks ahead. Most of this is due to the core route and gameplay features being tested and rapidly built.
There's a strong possibility we may have a working dev version of the first map now that we've decided to split the level into two maps. It will not only help performance with rendering the entire level (which just reached another milestone - yay!), but also for balancing and pacing the gameplay flow.
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| Milestone Number 2 ~ ! |
Maybe it's better to keep working as we are. I've been also thinking that progress in terms of sheer level building speed has been declining at an increasing rate (forming a log graph - hehe). It could be due to the major presence of schooling and assignments plus work for some of our team, though that might not always be the cause. A strong cause of the delays and development procrastination has been motivation, or lack thereof.
A few weeks ago, when Schmooze released the teaser trailer, it was extremely well received by all of our fans on Facebook. Their reactions and positive feedback gave us a enormous boost in confidence over many aspects. Our entire team was in great spirits for those weeks up until now, where times and development (unfortunately) has reversed roles. Time is speeding by us and leaving development in its dust, much like our intro sequence ~ hint hint.
Needless to say, we're aiming to carry on through these pressing times, and bring this project to the level of detail, playability and enjoyment that it deserves. Our community expects nothing less than that, and it's up to us to deliver what we are capable of.
On that note, stay tuned for more updates here and on the page at Facebook:
www.facebook.com/blitzdesign
Atamarashi (Lead Level Modeller at Blitz Design)
Hey Everyone,
I think it's time we considered taking a bit of time out from our busy schedules to inform you about something quite intriguing in getting further insight into our level design process. That is, 'Livestreaming'.
Now, if you've been around the Internet long enough, you'll know that real-time video where the creator of the video can actually interact with their fans and those that are interested, can supersede those videos we upload, as well as the pictures/text posts we can offer in terms of communication.
Updating all of our fans and followers on our Facebook page as well as on this blog can prove to be an exciting and varied process, so that means we can add that to our enjoyment of designing/testing/developing the project. In addition, our Livestreams would allow fans to directly interact with us as the developers and fellow gamers, as we continue the development process to its deadline (it's getting closer - 9 weeks away!).
We will be streaming alternately throughout the weeks, separately from the normal updates, with mostly our development work and the odd gaming session between our team, on Battlefield, Left 4 Dead, the current Mass Effect 3 Demo and more...
That's all for this post,
Atamarashi (Lead Level Modeller at Blitz Design).
Hey Everyone,
As you all know, development, documentation and much more behind-the-scenes activities are going by in full swing with 10 of the 11 weeks to go until first release. If you haven't found out that date, it is once more, the 26th of April, so note it down somewhere safe if you'd like to take a journey in the map for yourself.
Likewise, we have been taking attempting various designs for each section of the map, critiquing and experimenting with each one. Even though I had literally learnt most of my Left 4 Dead advanced mapping techniques from included Valve maps and mapping forums, we had decided to go with one of the more radical yet exciting ideas for the introduction sequence.
It may still be rough ideas, after storyboard-ing the idea on our group design meetings on the start of the weekend, though we're definitely sure that it works excellently. If we had all the time in the world for development, I'm sure we'd have this sequence at least or even greater than Valve quality (which is quite an impressive feat).
For issues tension and idea originality, we're not able to share exactly what is to occur in the introduction sequence, though what we can detail is that it involves some discreet dust trails and a point of no return. Possible yet rejected ideas involved a subway, and an exciting, high-intensity vehicle entrance cinematic, where those ideas simply did not fit the design brief, structure or theme we had set.
That's all for this update, stay tuned for more on this blog or on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/blitzdesign.
Atamarashi (Jon), Lead Level Modeller at Blitz Design
