Bootie and Bossy: Eat, Knit, Play - Postmortem (werignac)

Bootie and Bossy: Eat, Knit, Play was a different project for me to work on this time around. Typically in projects, I'll spend much more time working on core mechanics than polish and design (as that work is typically delegated to others). But since I was the only developer working in-engine and the project had a relatively short deadline, I found that I spent about four times as much time on polishing the game as I did making the mechanics, which finished relatively early on in development.

Since all artists for Bootie and Bossy: Eat, Knit, Play were more familiar with working in physical mediums than digitally, we decided to scan and import hand-drawn (and painted) assets into Unity. The assets that Thomas and Clio produced didn't require much processing (in Photoshop) after scanning because of their well-defined contours and roles in the game (e.g. backgrounds don't need to be cropped very much). My assets on the other hand were a different story. The sprites I worked on needed to be heavily cropped and have the paper be turned transparent; but, the problem with doing this with colored pencil drawings is that colored pencil produces fuzzy contours and heavily relies on the paper to produce its colors. Making all white transparent didn't work well for light sprites like the yarn ball and the plate of Tarte-a-tin, and most forms of marquee select don't produce entirely desirable crops on their own. In retrospect, it may have made my job easier if I had chosen a different way to stylize these assets, like by crumpling up my paper to create a background texture and then doing a wide cut-out of each sprite. In other words, make it look like my sprites were collaged onto the in-game background instead of trying to make it looks like they were drawn on top of the in-game background.

The art team could have also used some more coordination on the particular style we were going for in the game. We generally understood what mediums we were working in, and what looks good in these mediums, but we were never on the exact same page about the look of each other's works would be.

Here are some additions I think the game could use (this is not a todo list, these are just some things I could see the game using):

• Quick
  • Adding friction to the yarn's hinge joints (how the yarn is simulated is a little obvious)
  • Pause menu
• Medium-Length
  • Levels with physical obstacles
  • Shadows cast on gameplay background
• Long-term
  • Online multiplayer (so Bootie and Bossy can play together)
  • CPU agent to play with a single-player
  • Wrapping world (instead of walls)

I'd also like to shout out my computer graphics TAs and professor who gave me suggestions about how to improve the yarn strand simulation and my playtesters who gave me invaluable insight into how to improve the game

werignac