Our Razor and cutting stuff from the game

Yesterday, we had our team meeting to talk about what we're going to be doing over the winter break. The meeting was mostly meant to schedule art and features over the break but it also turned into a frank conversation about the scope of the game.

In the first conversations of the game, I came in trying to limit the scope of the game. My team was much more ambitious and they were looking towards more content. As we've seen the pace of the art pipeline and the programming for the game, a lot of us we worried about how much we could realistically get done.

As Roger and Bob suggested, we looked to our Razor. "Brutal Legend, the brawler, meets Guitar Hero." We want a "metal" brawler game played with the guitar peripheral. The biggest problem we talked about in the meeting yesterday was about how much art could get done for the game. We realized that we weren't going to get 4 music worlds done but as our razor said, we really were only interested in the Metal genre ( I am particularly attached to dubstep but still, it wasn't part of our razor). Metal is the core of our game and it's what we've been focusing on so we've decided to cut the other music worlds from the game. Instead, we've decided to keep the whole game in the corporate city, just in different areas of the city. Rather than 4 worlds, we've chosen 4 locations that can re-use elements we've already created. This way, we can polish our art rather than just make a large quantity.

We also decided to cut a lot of the extra features of gameplay and special sequences. We are trying to make a brawler game - quick time events, shadow of the colossus battles, and other special segments just don't fit into the core of the game. From a programming standpoint, we couldn't commit the necessary team members to create a lot of the special sequences.

This was a really hard conversation but we also understood that we saved our game. We could have created 4 worlds but it just wouldn't have been quality content. We would have been scrambling to complete stages and a lot of the art wouldn't have been finished. Numerous gameplay elements that we first imagined just didn't fit into our core and we have taken 4 weeks to complete. This conversation helped us set up a realistic scope to our game. Next semester, we have a lot of work to do but we are a lot more focused now. We can now make a smaller but higher quality game.

I'm glad we had that conversation and I'm glad that it went over so well.

For the break:
Art:
Isaac 2 characters - Main Character and Sniper
Dan - Medium enemy
Dan and Colby Rigging
Place Holders for Heavy
Robert - Heavy model (When he returns from Japan)

Eng.
Combo editor and combo system
Stop trigger
Camera movement
blood effects
enemy spawning
practice loading screen
visuals for attacks; HP system; player feedback; points system
Christian - Attack system
Nick - AI
Horde mode

Design
Levels from AJ and Jake
10 levels for one metal world; locations rather than worlds
Level scripts and maya designs2 control schemes - think about movement
Levels:[3 street day
2 sewer + 1 street night
3 red light district
1 tower}

Overall Time line:
January 31st - Gameplay done, mechanics done
February - balancing and play testing
February 28th - All models and Animations done
March 31 - All levels built and textured
April - testing, polish, UI, bug fixing, marketing materials