SUPER UPDATE – How was the last days of VFS/NML [Part 01]

Posted by Matheus Pitillo on Feb 8, 2013 in Life at VFS | Comments Off on SUPER UPDATE – How was the last days of VFS/NML [Part 01]

Maaan, that’s insane. It was more than 4 months since the last time that I posted on my blog. Loads of things happened and the game was finally done, and so were the classes at Vancouver Film School. I couldn’t update this before with the ending of the development cycle of NML, the presentations and also classes. So, here I am now with a SUPER UPDATE to cover a big part of what happened during these last months. So take a chair and read it! 😉

• THE LAST TERMS

Last time that I covered our school terms I stopped in Term 03. We had three more terms, and in Term 04 we finished the classes focused in the streaming that we had chosen before. After that, the two other terms were focused on important things for our Final Project, plus how to prepare ourselves for the Game Industry.

Term 04:

– Technical Design
– Project Management
– Project Design
– Online / Multiplayer Design
– Mission Design
– Level Design 3
– Character Design
– 3D Modeling 2

Term 05:

– Business of Games
– Presentation Skills
– QA for Games

Term 06:

– Post Mortem
– Portfolio Development
– Employment Preparation

• FIELD TRIP TO EA GAMES @BURNABY

In Term 05 during one of our QA for Games Class, we did a Field Trip to EA Games in Burnaby. It was super amazing to visit the company and to see how huge, organized and impressive the company is. From the building architecture, to each floor  with its own game theme – the company impressed everybody of our class in a good way. Personally I would never believe that a Game Company could have such a huge structure as EA Games. (Yeah, I guess I’m super innocent 😛 LOL).

We had a tour around EA with some of the employees. They showed us how each area works, as well as the huge server rooms, theatre, restaurants etc. In the end we had a quick chat with some ex VFS Students who are working there now who explained us how they got to work at EA.

Here are some pictures that I could get from the lobby. I hope you enjoy it! 😀

• NATIONAL MECH LEAGUE IS DONE! THE TRAILER, THE GAME, THE DEVELOPMENT! 

Oh Yeah! Of course we finished the development of NML. And of course we finished it in time and we had a good final product. 😀 So let me show you some of the things that happened around the last months of the development of NML, including the Industry Night, the DigiBC Competition and finally the VFS Game Design Awards.

The final days of development were pretty busy. As Project Manager I started to realize that we would need to cut loads of features to finish the game in time, focusing on what we really wanted to present. Always keeping in mind that our 3 pillars were: the FUN, the COWBOY MECH and the THEME.

After some features were cut out of the game, we finally were able to start recording the commentators dialogues and to make the game even more fun to play. We had the help of James Perry and Kayla Tetreau for the Voice Over, and all the help from Raul Fukunaga, who helped us in the recording studio. The final result was amazing and we had loads of fun doing that. THANKS, GUYS!

In the end, that was how looked like our development space, post its and tasks done:

For the highly anticipated Industry Night we needed to have our Game Trailer done. Omar Gonzalez took care of it and did a very clean and sweet trailer that could translate very well what NML is about. So, check it out below NML Trailer and some screenshots of the game! 😀

Do you want to download the game? Do you want to read more details about NML?

National Mech League: Details and Download!

And stay tuned for the second part of my Super Update, with information about how the Industry Night, DigiBC competition, Graduation Night and VFS Game Design Awards turned out. Thanks for reading and please leave a comment! 😉