Monday, July 18, 2011

Week #14

This fourteenth week continued in much the same way as the week prior - it was busy and there were a lot of people in the lab. It is a happy amount of activity that allows the lab a chance to feel a little more alive.

One other thing that's cropped up for the master's interns in our roles as producers/designers/jacks-of-all-trades has been the development of the missions themselves. This is a fun aspect of the project to work on for me personally, since I enjoy level design, and it's a fun chance to try and work out solutions to scripting problems by way of a difficult tool. It may be a little strange, but I've always enjoyed having constraints put on means of solving a problem, as I feel that it allows me to be more creative. In this case, the constraints of the tool - its unwieldiness and limitations - let me contextually apply my creativity.

Another challenge in the roles of mission design is in turning historical events into playable game experiences. I've been working specifically with the historical (and historic) flight of the Wright Flyer. The historically-inclined might remember that this was originally more of a "proof-of-concept" than anything else, since the first flight was about forty yards in total. This doesn't make for a very exciting experience, though, and so it's fallen to me to try and suss a little more out of this than might otherwise exist. It's been fun, but we'll see what those who eventually end up using this have to say about the idea.

In sum, though, I'm really quite enjoying what I'm doing. The hybrid of management and design that I get to do hits a couple separate points on my fun-meter, and I definitely appreciate the range of experience I'm getting now.

No comments:

Post a Comment