Game Report - Slaughterfield

Team
Group 19 - Gold Team
Cameron Wetzel Hillman: Lead Designer
Alicia Hill: Executive Producer

Game
Slaughterfield
Turn-based tactical combat and territory control. Two opposing commanders from the forces of man and hordes of monsters assemble a squad of specialized units to assault one another in order to conquer the land.
Caters to both hardcore and casual strategy game enthusiasts, aged 25-35.

Playtests
A core issue experienced through many playtest sessions was the speed of the game. Players took considerable time to fully comprehend the rule sheet, and after they started playing they didn't completely understand how the game functioned. The size of the game board was also much too large, not to mention that each player had 6 units to make decisions for each turn. It took upwards of 20 minutes for players to begin interacting with each other.

Solutions
The game board was cut down by at least 2/3rds, and instead of 4 control points across the board, there is now only one. Capturing that control point means victory for whichever player got it. Additionally, each player only controls 3 units instead of 6. The rules have also been greatly simplified to reduce reading time. As a whole, the speed of the game is improved, as well as the time needed to start playing.



For the Future
The team should have much quicker responses to failures in the playtest stage in order to have a better game sooner.

Game Scene - Final Post and Presentation

Here is our group's final submission for the project. It took a lot of time and effort. The scene contains four buildings. Three buildings are taken from a town called Lurelin in the video game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WIld. They have a somewhat tropical, beachside theme. My building is a generic stable for horses that is found in many spots around the game world, as there wasn't any other unique buildings I could create.

To create our models and UV meshes, our group used the Maya 3D software. I personally used Photoshop to make textures for the various parts of my structure, though I can't speak for my group members whether they only used Photoshop. After the completion of our group's work, we placed our individual pieces into a game scene in Unity to allow ourselves to 'physically' walk around and look at them fully rendered for any mistakes.

My original complete model had a lot of open spaces that I didn't fully realize would be completely see-through when placed into a game engine like Unity. I then had to go around and combine lots of vertices to close those spaces, as well as create new geometry where there was only a one-sided faces. I also made the horse structure a little less wide because I thought it was just too fat.

I had a tough time making textures for my model.The model it is based off of is quite complicated, and my limited poly count prevented me from representing many of the features present. Essentially, I had to swallow a big heaping of guilt at not getting things accurate and just get something done. I have 2 full complete texture maps, along with 2 bump maps and, though not used, 2 normal maps.

In the end, our group worked well. Each member did what was required, and turned in great material. Except for me, whose model didn't really fit the theme of the project and didn't have very good textures.