We're almost done! It has been a wild ride over these last few weeks, and we've gotten a ton of stuff done--but I want to talk about our Rockstar meetings first.
For those unaware, we have been meeting with a team of Rockstar developers just about every three weeks to review progress and get feedback. This has absolutely been the most valuable feedback we've ever been exposed to at Champlain, and I really would like to see more industry involvement here at Champlain. Getting direct feedback from people who have done (or attempted) some of the same mechanics & styles has given us the edge.
I'd also like to point out that this sort of direct interaction seems to be getting us all noticed on an individual level. Alex has been contacted directly by one of the Rockstar producers, and I know Julia has also been noticed by one of the technical animators. I wish there had been some engineers present, as we never got any feedback related to engineering and I don't feel like the programmers got the same exposure as the designers & artists.
I think it would be highly valuable for game studio professors and administrators to reach out to other studios to come in for feedback sessions like this. Of course, it's only really going to be valuable to seniors, and studios will likely be more interested in senior games anyways. The exposure we get from meetings like this is completely unlike career fairs because it's just so direct, and we're able to point directly at something in-build and say "I did this". There is no better opportunity to pitch ourselves.
Onto some actual development! Last post, we had really just gotten Steam integrated, and we didn't even have a multiplayer level; now, we've got a full level and our Steam page has been approved! We will be going live in the next few days in preparation for the full release. Until then, we're in the scary zone of a full code lock. After Wednesday April 28th, nothing new will be added to the build, and this is actually the first time most of us are releasing a product so it's also the first time we're experiencing this sort of hard lock. For me as a lead programmer, it's a total relief. Over the last semester of development, we've had so many issues as people learn to use correct Git workflows and the intricacies of Unreal. Almost every single week we deal with overwrites, rebase issues, and old bugs resurfacing as feature branches are merged into our development branch. Of course, these are normal things in any team development scenario, but at some point I expected the onslaught to slow down. It did not; therefore, a code lock sounds fantastic to me!
Overall, I'm just excited to see this project getting closer and closer to our original vision. See you on Steam on May 14th!