Hello!
So, as far as Office Mayhem goes, its safe to say I have been fairly radio silent on this blog. That being said, its time for an update. As of now finals week is over and the production cycle for this semester has come to a close. So lets rewind a little bit to late November Office Mayhem had successfully met the requirements for presenting to our class and our professors. We were able to confidently show off not only everything we have done, but everything we want to achieve in the future development of Office Mayhem. We did this in order to plead our case for Office Mayhem to move into senior production next semester. I can happly announce that we did indeed make it to next semester, allowing us to truly expand on Office Mayhem, and make it the game we have wanted it to be since day one. One thing this does mean though, is that we are expanding the original team. As much as I would love fighting through next semester with the current team, we are going to need some help. So as far as choosing the new teammates our entire senior game class has gone through a draft in order to pick up the new people we need for the team. This process was fairly hectic, but overall I couldn't be happier with the team that we have ended up with. So that brings us to where we are now.
Where we are now?
With the final weeks of the semester coming to a close, development on Office Mayhem has definitely slowed. Since the code freeze, no significant progress has been made to the game itself. Instead we turned our focus into successfully integrating the new group members. This is a very important thing to the entire group. This is because, throughout this entire semester our group has really been successful due to our positive group dynamic. Our core group really had great communication across the board which really lead us to our successes with Office Mayhem. Obviously there were some hicups here in there, but these were really very minor in the grand scheme of things. As far as the new team goes, we want to carry this positive group dynamic forward. That is why these past two week have really been just having meetings with the new team not only to discuss how we have done things, but also to "break the ice" so to speak. So that's really where we are in this whole process. As far as Office Mayhem goes, I cant wait to move into next semester with this new team and cant wait to see where our developments will take us.
How did I get here?
I really couldn't be more proud of how far we have come as a group and how far we have taken Office Mayhem. As far as the art process has gone I am very happy with the overall direction we have taken. From the original concept of this game we have always had a good idea of how we wanted the game to look and feel. We landed on a very minimalist style to not only achieve a very comedic, entertaining look, but to also make the game as approachable and understandable to a diverse audience. In order to do this, I went through many iterations of the artwork and color pallet for the game. These not only helped me nail down what worked and what didn't, but also allowed me to get frequent feedback from my team and from some QA sessions. As a whole I can honestly say that I have achieved the look and feel that we originally set out to achieve. Moving forward, im sure the look of the game will develop, but im sure it will be for the better and will help better achieve any goals we set for the game.
What did I do?
Through this first semester I acted as the lead artist for Office Mayhem. Being the only artist on the team, I was scared of what this semester had in store. That said, going through and creating Office Mayhem has been the greatest experience for me here at Champlain College. Throughout the semester I was able to guide the art direction as a whole in order to best fit the overall style we wanted to achive with Office Mayhem. This meant crafting a color palette and modeling style that would properly represent Office Mayhem.
What does this mean?
Out of all of the production and game experiance I have had at champlain college, this game is one im the most proud of. I couldnt ask for a better team and a better game to call my capstone game. As a whole I believe this team worked very well together and did an amazing job at including all members in any decisions that we made. I know I speak for all of the team members when I say that I really hope to continue this trend as we move into next semester. I could not be happier working on this game, working with this team, and I cant wait to work with the new team members.