Juan Fernando Almendro
Hi! I’m Juan Fernando, more shortly known as Fer, and I have been a member of the design team and also colaborator in art, during the development of Guardians of The Galaxy: Battle for the Universe. This has been my first big project since I've worked completely as a designer, and for me it has been a pleasure to be part of this game. I have learned a lot in game design and how to work properly in big groups and with my colleagues.
I’ve always loved video games since I was a child, playing different consoles like psp, nintendo, starting with games like Pokemon, Mario, Ratchet and Clank, Dexter… I continued playing until now so that’s when I knew that I wanted to be dedicated to video games mainly. I’ve also always played team sports and I really like to socialize. That's why I have facilities for working with teams and getting along well with my partners. I really love designing and creating different worlds, and characters for it, and I have special debility for the enemies and villains as I’ve always loved them, for example Bowser is one of my favorite characters, like in star wars Darth Vader or in Lord of the Rings for Sauron and the orcs.
During this project I have learned how to work in a Top Down Shooter, in which I had less experience and that helped in learning more, and being able to design mechanics in which I’m less used to. I’ve also learned a lot from my teammates and how they work, and the best way to achieve the objective together.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
During this project I had the role of a designer. Firstly with the team we were working on the main mechanics of the game, and the different elements of it. After that I was specially in charge of the enemies of the game, that means balancing them, designing them, their behavior and main mechanics. I also worked in the Boss Ultron, and some Items and abilities for the player.
Finally I worked with the Environment and Hub team, in the environment mainly with the art team, and in the hub, in the art and also designing the training zone.
First design elements
At the beginning of the game, the game designers were working together with the main aspects of the game. So I wrote in the GDD some elements like similar games and part of the game mechanics. I also participated in Voice Over.
Finally I did playtasting and Q&A to give feedback to the team to make the improvements.
Enemies
The enemies of the game are from the Phalanx race,For the enemies I first added some enemies which were finally not implemented So we ended up having a melee, a ranged, another more powerful ranged (the subjugator) and the explosive sentinels. I worked on their behavior and stats and I playtested to balance them. Also for the subjugator, I added a second attack to the variant which is different from the main attack adding variety and difficulty.
I created variants for each enemy, in order to have more variation as more enemies couldn’t be implemented. Melee has a tank, and a faster one, the ranged has one with higher Rate of Fire, and another one with stronger bullet, and finally a subjugator with a more challenging attack.
I also did the design of the animations of the enemies, and played with the stats of the variants and base forms for balancing and having a proper gameplay. And worked alongside the great enemy programmers to have entertaining enemies.
Final Boss
When my designer partner Jose Antonio Atencia left the boss design to join the environment scrum group, I retook it and polished the attacks, I modified some attacks and designed others alongside the programmer in charge that was Albert Ramisa. I did playtesting to give feedback to programmers and supervised and helped with the implementation with Albert Ramisa. I also did the design of the animations of the boss and the balancing of the stats in both of the phases.
Boss Stats:
Boss Animations:
Items and Abilities
I also participated in designing various Items and Abilities with Pau Garcia and balancing them, for example I did for the actives: Yondu’s Fin and Groot Seeds, for passives Star Lord’s Walkman and for Buffs Martinex Thermokinesis.
Playtesting and Feedback
Finally for design I did the playtesting for the different builds given by the programmers and I gave feedback to correct different bugs and errors that the game could have.
Art
Enemies:
For the enemies, I did the model of the sentinel that is the Explosive enemy, which was later animated by Laura Isidro and textured by Sofia.
Environment:
For the environment scrum I did some props that were used, I created a prop in which there is a Kree inside, some plants holder, and other props used as decoration. I also retexturized some props in order to have a phalanx style and have a wider variety.
Modeled Props + textures
Retexturized Props
Voice Over
Finally, I was part of the voiceover team, and recorded the voice lines for Groot and for the Melee Phalanx subjugator.
Jose Antonio
Hi there! I am Jose Antonio and I am a member of the design team, also a Goose (yeah don’t think about it). As a person with great imagination I love to create new things like enemies or environments for games and RPG systems. I don’t know how I do it but I alway bug out something in a game.
I always loved video games, starting from the N64 with Mario 64 I always played them. After that, DND showed up and the world of RPGs was showed to me. As time passed I saw that you could create your own worlds and games, and when I saw that there were studies about it I knew it was the time. Being a designer, what I like the most is the creation of things, like enemies, races, or the world itself. Creating the life that surround them or the things that could happen. In the future, I hope to work as a designer in a company creating some sort of rpg or fantasy games.
Being Furi one of my favourite games, creating a top down shooter was a wonderful thing to learn. When creating GOTG game, I was able to work in what I love the most, characters with powerful abilities or powerups and a big boss with moves to kill those characters. Thanks to being a designer, I was able to refine my skills and being more formal in my documents and QA tickets.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
For this project, I had the role of designer. At first I was the one creating the characters, abilities, pskills, and the final boss. After also doing some iterations for the UI, I changed my path and I was in charge of the environments designs and creation of them.
Basic design elements
In the early stages of design, a lot of the team design members were working on similar things. We did the game pillars, main design elements, and the mechanics. Apart from that, Gerard and I did the progression from the game and the unlockables that you gain.
Characters & Abilities
For the characters at first I created more characters that were finally not implemented. We thought that for the moment having Starlord and Rocket should be sufficient enough. Both of them are different enough in term of stats and mechanics to have some changes in the playstyle (my favourite is Rocket).
Skills
People can buy upgrades in between the runs with the money took from them. This power ups range from basic stats upgrades to unlocking new passive abilities. Also, as you complete more runs, you unlock new skills to buy.
Final boss
As the leader of the phalanx, having Ultron as our final boss was a must. After searching more information about him, I thought about moves and abilities that Ultron could have if the guardians tried to stop him. From shoting a mass of energy that explode in bullets, or a big lasser ray to incinerate his enemiesm ultron has a lot of power in his arsenal.
Environments
One of the tasks that I was spending most of my time was the environment, the creation of 2 different environments representing the steps that the guardians need to take to arrive to Ultron in his tower. At first, we had to create the design and blockouts of each room, constantly redesigning them and creating variety and complexity. After the blockouts and creation, I put them inside the engine with all colliders to see if the scales and consistency were followed.
QA
From my part I also did QA testing from most of the builds, thanks to that, we were able to reduce the bugs significantly for the final delivery of the game.
Fernando Freixinet
I’m Fernando Freixinet and I’m the lead designer of Guardians of the Galaxy: Battle for the Universe. I’m good at working in teams and I love to encourage creativity creating comfortable spaces to share and discuss ideas. I’m very curious about the iteration process and the integration of the player feedback inside the design production pipeline.
Videogames have accompanied me all my life and I love this type of art creation. Video Game design brings me the opportunity to know how videogames work, what drives motivation and, ultimately, how they can be fun. As the lead designer of this project I’ve been able to work and direct a production environment for the first time. That let me learn a lot about design, like the development of ideas through user experience and iteration, and about general teamwork like organization, communication and workflow management.
I’m proud of this project because I’ve been able to create ideas, expand, polish and develop them through a real production plan, achieving a completed game made with all my classmates.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
As the lead designer I have been responsible for the main mechanics of the game, game pillars and references. I have also been responsible for the management of the design team and the supervision of all the ideas of the game during their conceptualization, development and iteration. I have designed many aspects of the game and helped the different members of the design team with many others to ensure that we accomplish a coherent, balanced and fun game.
I’ve also been responsible for the time management of the design team and the communication with the rest of the leads, the producer and the teachers to complete the different objectives of the production process successfully.
Finally, I have worked inside the environment and UI scrum teams and I’ve participated in the testing and quality assurance of the different builds of the game.
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General design of the mechanics, enemies, game pillars and inspirations
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Management, supervision and polishment of all the production of the design team
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Quality assurance and play testing of the implementations inside the game
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Communication with the rest of the teams and between class members
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Level design creation, polishment of the levels design and implementation and support to the environment scrum group
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User interface design and support to the UI scrum group
Pau Garcia
Hi! I’m Pau Garcia, but most people here call me Gachi. I’m the lore guy for Guardians of the Galaxy: Battle for the Universe, which makes sense when you consider that I’m a complete geek for comic books. I’ve also done more things in the game (of course), but being able to adapt and create dialogues, characters, and worlds is what I consider the most fun aspect of designing the game.
BACKGROUND
As cliché as it may sound (especially in a video game development degree) I’ve always had a burning passion for video games. My gaming journey started with old PC edutainment games, and from there I moved on to the DS, Wii, my friend’s PS2 & 3, Steam, the GBA, the Wii U, the PSP, & the most recent acquisition the Switch.
I’ve always had a lot of interest in video games, not just in terms of entertainment but also academically. I really enjoy learning about video game history and acquiring geeky knowledge and secrets about the development of video games, consoles, & developers.
I’ve always wanted to create my own video games. At first I thought I’d be able to make one all by myself, but after some experimentation I realized that coding and art weren’t for me, but design was still on the table. I’ve always loved coming up with characters and worlds, and game design has been the main way I’ve come to address this for the past few years. Creating worlds (or researching and adapting, like I did in GOTG) is definitely my favorite part of game design, and I wholeheartedly hope to one day be able to work doing this.
Of course, the other parts of game design also appeal to me. Creating mechanics & interlinking them with the story, or explaining the story through mechanics is something I find fascinating. Something I’ve been pretty obsessed with lately is the potential of stories which can only be told through video games (through mechanics, nonlinear storytelling, etc.), so much so that my TFG (Treball de Final de Grau) will focus on nonlinear stories through branching paths.
Moving away from video games, my other two loves are comic books and Doctor Who. Being a comic book fan has definitely helped me in this project. I've been ecstatic at the possibility of adapting the characters I grew up reading into a video game, and I’ve enjoyed cramming as many references to the Guardians of the Galaxy comics as humanly possible.
Finally, Doctor Who hasn’t had as much of an impact on this project, but to talk about myself without talking about Doctor Who would be like ignoring a big chunk of my personality. I’ve been completely obsessive about Doctor Who since I started watching it in 2015, and if you have a personal conversation with me there’s a 50/50 chance that Doctor Who will come up at some point.
CONTRIBUTION
For this project, I was a designer. My main contributions to this project come in the form of the lore, the storytelling, and a bunch of playtesting. For most of the development I was part of the Player Scrum group, adding and tweaking items & abilities, as well as the NPC & Storytelling Scrum, where I designed the NPC System, and wrote the main story and dialogues for the game, as well as adapting the mechanics of the game to the lore of the Guardians of the Galaxy comics.
Lore
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Research: I’ve read a lot of Marvel comic books, but I’d never read a stand-alone Guardians of the Galaxy comic before this project (unless you count the Korvac Saga, but I digress). To get the tone, characters and setting right, I decided to read a bunch of Marvel Cosmic comics. The comics I read for this project are the following ones (in the order I finished them):
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Annihilation: Conquest (2007-2008)
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2008-2010)
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The Thanos Imperative (2010-2011)
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Nova Vol. 4 (2007-2010)
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Annihilators (2011)
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The Black Vortex (2015)
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Legendary Star-Lord (2014-2015)
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2013-2015)
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Guardians of Knowhere (2015)
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Howard the Duck Vol. 5 (2015)
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4 (2015-2017)
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All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (2017-2018)
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 5 (2019-2020)
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Main Story: The main story of the game was heavily inspired by the 2008 comic “Annihilation: Conquest”, which is where the seeds for what would become the modern Guardians of the Galaxy were planted. Using this as a base, I adapted this to the game’s format, changing a lot of aspects to make it make sense with what people know about the guardians nowadays, and making it more straightforward and simple for this game (since the focus of this game isn’t really in the story).
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Dialogues: I wrote all of the written and spoken dialogues you see and hear in the game.
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Adapting Items to the Lore: I adapted most of the contributions of my fellow designers to be related to the Marvel universe, trying to make the items make sense in the context of the game. In other words, I came up with the names and visual appearance for most if not all of the items. The stats and behaviors for some items were provided by my fellow designers: Juan Fernando Almendro, Jose Antonio Atencia, Fernando Freixenet, Gerard Martinez, and Ogylandy Yespagambetov.
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References: I looked for and provided references for the character designs, environments, and everything that was needed; taking them from the comics, movies, or video games.
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Intro Scene: I wrote and storyboarded the intro sequence which can be seen at the start of the game. In addition to this, I also edited it with a video editing software, adding the music, the voicelines, the subtitles, and moving the visuals. The art for the Intro Scene was made by Anna Metreveli.
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Trailer: Alongside Anna Metreveli, we worked on the conceptualization of the trailer. She made the animations, while I provided the gameplay clips and put the video together using video editing software.
NPCs
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NPC System Design: Inspired by Hades’ NPCs, I came up with the NPC reward system for the game, in which one of 3 Watchers (Uatu, Aron, or Ulana) appear and make the player choose a reward.
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Dialogue System UI: I designed the look of the dialog system for the game, with the characters by the side, and the variable speech bubbles.
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NPC Reward Menu: I designed and did some of the art for the NPC Reward menu. I was provided a basic shape for a button by Victor Falcón, using that shape I made the rest of them, adding the visuals. The icons in the buttons were made by Anna Metreveli, and I collaborated a bit with her for the Active, Passive, and Buff icons, changing some colors and changing the shape of the Buff icon.
Player
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Item Design: I designed 4 of the 6 active abilities in the game, as well as some buffs, and passives. I also tweaked the stats of most abilities after playtesting. Like I mentioned previously, my design teammates also helped with this (Juan Fernando Almendro, Jose Antonio Atencia, Fernando Freixenet, Gerard Martinez, and Ogylandy Yespagambetov).
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Stats Definition: I created two excel documents. The first one layed out all of the possible stats the player can have, this was made to make the player’s stats something quantifiable for the programmers. The other excel document defined the timing for the player’s animations, explaining where they would be used and adding references and a description whenever needed.
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QA: I did some quality assurance playtesting for the game, to test that the systems worked properly and to look for any unwanted bugs.
Audio
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Voice Acting: I voice Aron, the Ranged Phalanx, and Ultron in the game. I also served as the “voice director” to some extent, explaining to the voice actors how to say the lines. I went to CITM Terrassa’s facilities to record voice lines for the game alongside Juan Fernando Almendro, Lewis Allen, Pol Farreras, Gerard Martinez, Sofia Liles, and Ogylandy Yespagambetov.
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Dialogue Editing: Once the dialogues were recorded I edited them using Audacity. I edited the voices for Uatu, Ulana, Aron, Groot, the Phalanx Melee, the Phalanx Ranged, and the Phalanx Sentinel.
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Abilities SFX Editing: I created the SFX for the active abilities. With audacity, I spliced, edited, and added different sound effects together to create satisfying sounds. The only exception to this is Yondu’s Fin, which is a raw sound effect from soundsnap.
Gerard Martinez
Hi there, my name is Gerard Martinez and I have been part of the Design team during the development of Guardians of the Galaxy: Battle for the Universe from Pixel Playground. As my first major design role and contribution to a video game, it has been an honor and a pleasure to be part of this incredible project, and I think that this experience has been truly eye-opening, revealing the endless possibilities life has in store for me.
I am a person who is actually interested in being able to enter this industry that I am so passionate about, which is why I entered the career Video Game Design and Development. I love creating, designing and being part of the development of amazing worlds and universes.
As I mentioned before, this project has shown me what life has in store for me, the opportunity to contribute to numerous projects within the video game industry. Not only in design, but also in other areas. For instance, I am passionate about ensuring things go smoothly and I greatly enjoy managing teams and projects within the game development process. Therefore, I am also highly interested in the field of Project Management as I love working together as a team to achieve a common goal.
On the other hand, I would like to highlight that I have a great motivation to be able to participate in this industry, since it has been accompanying me for more than 15 years.
Finally, in terms of goals, my objective is to constantly enhance and refine my skills. I aspire to design and manage everything that may come to me in the near future within the industry, in addition to being able to learn from the best. For example, in this project, I have learned a lot from other people and teammates thanks to being able to work as a team with them. And I have also created and developed new ideas through a real production plan, achieving a completed game within a team of 24 people.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
During the development of this project I have been a Designer, specifically in charge of the feedback that the player receives at every moment. This includes visual feedback (particles) and auditory feedback (audio), which have been the main parts of the gameplay since the beginning. Since with these parts we have tried to transmit to the player everything we wanted, sci-fi/comic environment.
On the other hand, I have also been in charge of other design parts such as the first iterations of the UI, the creation of the questions in the Feedback surveys for the playtesting and the design of some rooms (levels) that are now in the game.
Finally, and in addition, I have been helping as much as possible during the project development, even in areas that were not my field, such as improving some boss animations or creating audio for the main characters.
Visual Feedback (Particles)
As I said before, during this project, I have been in charge of the feedback that was transmitted to the player, and in this case, for the Visual Feedback, I have been working on a document where I described all the Particles needed for the game. For example, in this 70-page document, you could find short descriptions together with a lot of references, when and where the particles should appear, and also, visual videos so both artists and programmers could be guided during their creation.
Auditory Feedback (Audio)
On the other hand, if we talk about Auditory Feedback, we can also find a document where the Audio has been designed, in which we find all the necessary specifications that we wanted for the audio, as well as references so that the art group or in this case, the colleague who has commissioned to implement them may have certain references and ideas of what we wanted to achieve.
Voice-Over & Voice Lines
Since I was in charge of designing how we wanted the audio to be and what it had to transmit at every moment, I was also in charge of organizing and recording together with Pau Garcia, the narrative designer, and the entire group of volunteers the Voice Lines of the characters.
In addition, after the recording, I was editing the voices of the main characters such as Star-Lord, Rocket and Ultron (Boss) in addition to Howard's voice. Using Audacity in order to edit and minimize the recording errors and look for the effects needed for voices.
Boss Animations
On the other hand, I also worked even in areas that were not my field, I was in charge of improving and making the last iteration of the Boss Animations. In addition to making sure, together with the boss programmer, that they were timing well with the gameplay, to have a fluid final boss gameplay as spectacular as possible.
Level Design
Then I also helped Jose Antonio Atencia with some concepts and blackouts for the level design, designing some rooms (levels) that are actually in the game, for example, some combat rooms and the shop.
Playtesting (QA)
In this case, for this part of the development, I formulated the questions that would later be added to the survey when creating it, in order to be able to ask about specific aspects of our game on which we wanted to have external feedback.
On the other hand, in this section, we can also consider the fact of having been doing QA with other designers from most of the builds to be able to reduce the bugs significantly for the final delivery of the game.
Ogylandy Yespagambetov
My name is Ogylandy Yespagambetov, simply Oga. I’m a member of a designers team in which I had the pleasure of working with.
I’m a student that has been engaged in video games ever since I can remember myself. My most favorite fields of work are narrative and level design. The reason for that is because I was engaged in many different deep story games and books such as Bioshock, Fallout, Warcraft, The Hobbit and The Lord Of the Rings that made me wish for creating my own worlds with their rules and laws. Worldbuilding and creating stories through stories and the environment is what I like the most. But I like to do that not only through paper and pen, but also through visuals and music, and that is why I like the game industry more than films and writing.
Project III gave me the opportunity to test my dedication to my ideas and values, and that is why being included in the design team was the best opportunity.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
Throughout the time on project III I was switching to many tasks depending on the situation. At the beginning, like every other designer in our team I was contributing to GDD to help with creation of general ideas. After that, during the first vertical slices I was participating in level design with others, and then I was relocated to marketing group and unofficial voiceover group. I believe that I don’t have the qualifications to be the leader so I was trying to not command others, on the contrary I was trying to ease the duties of the leaders and simply giving my opinion rather than arguing with them.
I will divide my tasks chronologically.
Starting with GDD and first vertical slices I helped with early concepts of the level designs, specifically creating schemes and blockouts to understand the the general idea of how the levels will look like.
After that, I was designated to marketing group as a designer. There I helped the artist(Carlos Arnau) and programmer(Albert Chica) to create the early concept of the webpage. (put them like a grid)
Another task that I did as part of the Project III was voicing the in-game characters such as Rocket and Howard Duck
Furthermore, I was one of the volunteers that was sent to Terrassa as part of the playtesting groups alongside the des igner leader and producer.
