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Here is my Game Development Blog for CS4043

Here is the Introduction to my Team

Team Flatpak:

• Me - Cian O'Shaughnessy - Genralist - Art(As it Stands)
• Kuba - Producer - Leader of the Group - Involved in Everything
• Shay - Nominated Designer (Programmer Manager)
• Caoimhe - Lead in Story Writting - Also Nominated as a Designer
• Piraka - Lead in Art Design Great at Sprite Work and Game Engine
• Adam - Also a Genralist working mainly in Art Design
• Lucretia - Lead Sound Desinger
• Misha - Programmer and Sound Design
• Pedro - Basically a Genralist inserts himself everywhere
• Leo - very good Programmer and Game design/UX

31/1/25

The first meeting was spent figuring out the roles people wanted; I decided to give myself the role of Generalist as I don't excel in any given skill needed for the development of a game; this gives me a great chance to learn new skills and get better at the ones I'm familiar with like programming from last semester. After all other roles were given out, we decided to gather everyone's thoughts on what game engine we were going to use; after the discussion, we decided on the use of Godot this meant that for any programming I was going to do, I would have to learn a new language as Godot offers GDScript or C# this intrigues me as I learned Java last Semester and that is the only language I am familiar with, this means I can take this opportunity and learn a new programming language. We then discussed the programming language and decided to use C#. This was a decision because some group members were only familiar with Java, and C# would be close to Java, so there would not be much of a learning curve.
We then decided to talk about the actual Game. We first decided on the Gameplay. We collectively agreed on a Roguelike. We also suggested the theme of the game to be a Marine setting as that would be a new idea for roguelikes as they are mainly set in Dungeons. This would be a change of pace for the genre. Leo suggested using weapon modifiers/enhancements based on the biome. This would lead to enemies having resistance and weaknesses; this was a great idea agreed upon in the group, and we then discussed movement and combat. We had a couple of suggestions but decided upon turn-based combat and a grid-style movement. We then wanted to discuss the game's player character, and after discussion with the Story Writer (Caoimhe) and as a group decision, we thought it would be interesting to have the character be a robot. This was an idea liked by the entire group, and a robot is a fantastic choice as it offers a variety of storylines, which is very intriguing.

7/2/25

Week 2 was pretty productive as I had to download all the software and familiarise myself with the new software such as Godot and GitHub; GitHub was going to be used as a repository to store all the sprites and pieces of code. After doing the Unity Tutorial, I was familiar with the look of a game engine, so when I looked at Godot, I could understand how it worked. I also joined the group Figma board, an online Whiteboard used to share our ideas and expand on the ones we already have. During the meeting, we discussed the movement in more detail as during the week, we were still unsure of tile-based movement, but after further discussion, we agreed to stick with it and use turn-based combat and movement. A menu pops up on your go, and you can move or attack an enemy.
After discussing the (Instant Single Action) Turn-based combat, We then discussed the Roguelike Aspect of the game. We spoke about it being similar to Permadeath, where when you die, you start from the beginning of the game; the only difference is that there is the option of permanent upgrades, which helps players progress throughout the game. We also spoke more about the game's theme and decided on a cyber-gothic feel as it suits the storyline. After the meeting, I was told to do some sprite work for the weekend and to design a Tech Pillar for the map generation.

14/2/25

Week 3 was a little bit unproductive for me, as i wasnt focusing on making any new sprites it left me waiting for something to do, When we had our meeting the topic of level design came up and since i wanted to try as much as i could i put my name forward for this job. I then Disscued ideas for it with the other two doing level design which where Pedro and Caoimhe. We had bumped we bumped into a problem with the storyline, so i had to wait for the level design ideas to be posted with more detail before i could try adn sketch a basic level design. This left me with not much to do for the weekend/week so i took the time to practice the Pixel art software some more and get used to the features, This is what i thoight would help in the future when i am continuing my work with Sprites. We also disscued the topic of programming language came up again as some members in our group wanted to change the language as they thought teh GDScript would be easier previously C# was decided upon because of its similarity to Java which was the only langague some people in our group knew inlcuding me but when it came time to vote my opinion on it was if i was to do any programming tasks, it would be a new lanagauge fro me to learn regardless, so it did not bother me what langague they decided on.So the decion was made ot change to GDScript, i look forward to working on the level design

21/2/25

Week 4 was a bit better than the previous week i retreated to doing some sprite work for level design. I did some work for the Underground Facility, making various wall sprite for the facility, I struggled with designs I ended up on maing a brick wall design that i was very happy with, but after making the designs and reading the story and the design ideas, I felt that the brick wall didnt suit the story as it is an underground facility and a brick wall would not survive underwater, So i had to scrap those ideas, the benfit of doing those walls were it helped me understand spritework and the software asperite a bit more.