Production Blog 1 - Gun Runner

Hello from the Production Side of Gun Runner!

My name is Olivia Yee and I am currently serving as the Producer for Gun Runner.  This was a project that a small team of my classmates and I decided to work on in the summer to get some experience in game making and designing. We are all currently senior students at California State University, Chico, either in our final semester or our final two semesters. 

This game that we have decided to make it called Gun Runner. The concept of the game is a rouge-like game in which it is up to the player to decide how they would like the game to go. The player can collect loot, battle enemies, and, ultimately, gain more cash. It is up to the player, however, to decide how much cash they want. 

Now that we have established a little bit about the game, I am so excited to share with you our current progress on the game!

2D Art

As the summer goes on, our team only gets busier, but we have been having a little bit of progress in the realm of 2D art. So far, we have a character concept for the main character that will be in the game and we have some gun concepts in the works. We have some assault rifles in the works, but we are also going to have pistols, shotguns, and possibly some SMGs. Take a look at the progress below!

3D Art

In the realm of 3D art, we are super excited for all that we have so far. Before the game really started progressing, our lead, Shawn, had the opportunity to put a mood board together as well as an asset list of things that he would like to see in the game. We only have two 3D artists, but they are really knocking it out of the park! So far, we have some reusable assets that have been modeled in the low poly style that we are going after and they have been textured! Shawn has learned this really cool feature that works with low poly models that does not require extensive UVing and it has made the process of texturing quite quick. Models have been coming out quicker than we can keep up with and it is an absolute dream! The other thing that we are really thrilled to see if the progress on our character model. We got the concept art for it and then our other 3D artist has been working on creating it. So far, we are in love with everything that we are seeing; take a look at the progress below:

Level Design

In terms of level design, we are so lucky to have a great team of level designers as well. They have been working together and separately and keeping up with jobs and it really is amazing. Our first task was making sure that we had a consistent key and items in our annotated maps, assuring that we were all on the same page; that choice seems to have paid off. So far, we have most of our levels as annotated maps and they are so clean and easy to read. On top of that, when we got our first build out, we were able to get a tutorial level into Unity and see what it looks like in action. It is not completely done yet, but it was enough to test the main mechanics of our game. To see our progress, download and play the game or take a look at some screenshots below!

Programming

As far as programming goes, I cannot do anything but talk great things on the team that we have. To start off, even before the summer started, our lead, Shawn, was able to make a small prototype of the game. Though we are not using everything that he had made, it has started out as a nice baseline for what we are working on. We have some very busy programmers and they have made some huge progress, especially over these last couple weeks. We have a working character controller, working AI, a few UI elements, and, a huge mechanic of the game, we have a shooting function! It is hard to say a bunch of the progress we have just because there is a lot going on behind the scenes that has not been implemented yet, but it is always really exciting to see all the new things that pop up on the Trello board everyday. To see some of this progress, you can download and play the game!

Next Steps

As far as the next steps and goals that we have for the future, we are hoping to get some more of our levels blocked in for the next build and get some pick ups as well. Part of the main mechanics of the game is to collect items and, therefore, cash, so we are hoping to get that mechanic in the playtesting. Additionally we are going to implement some of the models as well as get some more graphics out for 2D. There is definitely some room for growth and we cannot wait to see all the amazing things that are coming in the future!

With that, we will conclude this entry of the production log. On behalf of our team, I would like to thank you for tuning into this post and seeing the progress that we are making on this game. We hope that you also join us on this journey in the game development and play along as the game grows! Stay tuned and we will see you soon. :)

-Gun Runner Team