IGB120

This week I finished off my section of the assignment which was to help write up some of the findings and completely write the participants demographics.

The thing that I would change about how I developed my prototype sprites would have to be looking at examples before I created them. This was due to the fact that when I was creating them I just experimented with colours and my imagination which is how I ended up creating the asteroids. However, I feel like I could've done a better job when it came to creating the player as I wasn't quite sure what I was going for.

I feel like the only thing I would change for the prototype would be the background or to add some sounds/music to make the game come to life more or finish off the arcade theme aesthetic.

This week as a group we finished off the remaining play test and started to integrate the feedback we got. The feedback that was mainly tailored towards me was the designs of the sprites, this reflected that some of the asteroid sprites designs needed to be tweaked or remodelled. The first sprite I worked on was the large asteroid because users thought that having it the same sprite as the normal asteroid was a bit confusing so I made this sprite a little bit brighter as well as the frames rotate slower too. The next asteroid I worked on was the mine asteroid which we found out that it spins too fast which realistically they thought should spin slower as theres a heavy bomb inside of it. I also tweaked the design as well making the bomb more pronounced in the asteroid. The last feedback that was toilored towards me was that the users thought the design of the player was too basic and needed to be bigger as it was hard for them to tell where abouts they were on the map. The new updated sprites i created this week are displayed below:

This week I did playtesting with my younger sister who is completely naive to the game. I started off the test by interviewing her and asking her a few basic questions such as what game genre she enjoys playing and if she likes arcade style games. Next I put the game in front of her and watched her play while I took some notes, while playing the game she said that she enjoyed it but it would start to get boring after 5 minutes because there were no more stages which caused her to get bored. After she played the game I asked her questions regarding the game hoping to get data that we could as a group improve our game. The questions that I asked are below:

Please answer with a 1-5 being 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 being Strongly Agree

        1. The game was easy to learn how to play:

        2. The game was fun to play:

        3. The game was frustratingly difficult:

        4. The game was boringly easy:

        5. The game's controls made it easy to do what I wanted:

        6. The game's main character was enjoyable to look at:

        7. The game's enemies were enjoyable to look at:

        8. The game world and background were fitting and enjoyable to look at:

        9. I felt the game challenged me in a variety of ways:

        10. Which enemies did you find the most challenging to defeat?

        Did you find anything about the challenge frustrating or could it be improved?

        11. I always understood what I should do next to achieve my goal:

        12. Do you have any general feedback:

Group Formation

This week in class we had to form groups for assignment 3 which I formed a group with the students who I regularly sit with each week.  We discussed during the tutorial what kind of game we wanted to create as well as whose assignment we would use. We decided to use Ben's asteroid game, however in doing so we scrapped the sprites of the game but kept the core mechanics.

Assignment 3 Group Discussion

Race From The End Post Mortem

The thing that I would change about the design process of this prototype is that I would completely plan out the game before I start to create it. This makes sense as I would be able to view what direction the game creation is going towards rather then designing sections of the game, then figuring out what I should make next.

The one thing I would change about the design of the game is incorporate an end goal or something for the player to work towards. Currently the players score only goes up for each second that they stay alive and in all honestly the game becomes boring quite quickly. So to resolve the issue I could create an end goal or add stages to the game where it progressively gets more difficult.

Assignment 2 Final Design

This week I focused on and completed my one page for my game A Journey Home. The final design of it looked like this:

I wanted to keep the same look and theme as my one sheet which was a blue background and the words and designs were all white to stand out. On the left side of the page I have the main information of the game such as the x statement and a screenshot from the game pointing out all of the key features. On the right side of the page I have the lore section and the Additional features to be added in future versions. This section was created to show my A3 group members what direction I wanted the game to go, which is why I also left a lot of white space for notes on the right side.

Here is also the final design of my One Sheet:

Race from the end Development

One of the key things that I have been trying to achieve in GDevelop this week is making the background of the game loop and feel continuous. I learnt that I needed to start by creating a sprite for the background, next I had to create an event with an image y offset which made it so the background was continuously scrolling upwards. The design idea for the background of my game was heavily inspired from Looney Tunes cartoon, The road runner show, I don't know how to explain it but when I think of what the end of the world landscape will look like I always think of a cartoony style desert. This week I read from chapter 9 of the textbook which was all about playtesting which I found quite intriging. The section that stuck out the most to me was the playtesting with your target audience, I applied this by getting some of my friends who enjoy this genre of games to playtest mine and give me feedback. Which lead to some more design concepts being added into my game.

Assignment 2 Progress

Asteroid Post Mortem

The readings didn't really inspire my design process as I initially came up with the core aspects of the game (lore, and how I wanted it to be played). From there I found a mouse sprite and created the player object, which also led me to create a mouse trap sprite and object. While creating the first object that they player had to dodge I came up with the idea that the mouse could shoot acid and could destroy house hold objects such as trash bags and rotten food lying around. After the objects were created I finished implementing the mechanics of a asteroid game and then it was all about play testing and seeing what the players feedback was.

Something that I would change about my prototype is making the trash bags and traps spawn less frequently as the game needs to be balanced so that the players feel like they can reach the next level of the game. This was inspired from the week 6 lecture where we learnt about how important it is for the game to feel balanced.

Elevator Pitch

Race from the end

Lore

The impossible has just happened, all of a sudden a massive bang can be heard across the world. The lights turn off and without a second thought everyone is piling into their cars trying to leave the city. Will you make it?

Race from the end is a game where the world has come to an end suddenly and everyone is panicking trying to leave the city. The player must evade the cars that have been abandoned on the side of the road however the player is driving a really old and rusty car so if the player collides with another car the car will fall apart.

The game is aimed at teenagers who enjoy racing car games but who also want to spice up the experience with a storyline.

The game will look like the image below however there will be destroyed cars left on random parts of the road.

Game Controls

In order to play the game the player must use the left and right arrow keys to move the car around.

3 selling points

The first unique selling point is that each time you pick up the game the layout will never be the same, as each of the obstacles spawn randomly throughout the game.

The second selling point is that there are different types of obstacles, such as stationary obstacles and obstacles that are moving and you have to evade.

The third selling point is that power ups can be found throughout the game such as speed up, shield and more. The speed up makes the player drive faster which increases the score of the game by .5 for each time they collect the power up. The shield power up allows the player to run into obstacles and not explode for a limited duration of time.

In GDevelop this week I focused on completing my asteroid game, Mouse escape. This week I added a second collision object which was the trash bag, the object was set to behave in the same way as the mouse trap. When destroyed the trash bag gave less points then the mouse trap however more trash bags spawned more. The lives component was also implemented this week where if the player collided with one of the objects they would lose a life and the object would get deleted.

Something I learnt this week while using GDevelop was how useful timers were and how much of a necessity they are to asteroid style games. Without timers the obstacles would be spawning constantly and the players would be unable to move around the map without constantly colliding into one.

Playtesting notes

This week we also did playtesting, while conducting the interviews the testers found that my game was fun to play although there was a few things missing. One of the main components of the game that was missing was a win condition to move onto the next stage. The other issues was that they felt that the game was starting to get a bit repetitive and needed another challenge or obstacle to face.

Mouse Escape

Lore

The mouse has lived in the house for over five years now and is sick and tired of constantly stepping on mouse traps and trash being left around the house. Due to this the mouse studied and gained the ability to spit acid to destroy these objects, and now seeks revenge.

3 unique selling points

The first unique selling point is that when are you ever going to play a game where you’re a mouse running around destroying mouse traps. Normally the mouse is trying not to avoid these traps but now the roles have reversed.

The second unique selling point is that there are not just only traps that the player can destroy to earn points as there are also trash piles the player can destroy. The trash piles do give less points than destroying the mouse traps.

The third unique selling point is the player is able to spit out acid. Realistically mice shouldn’t be able to spit out acid but after the mouse had finally had enough with having to avoid the traps it studied and learnt the ability to spit out acid. 

Week 5 Mouse Escape Development

In the workshop I was able to get majority of the game scenes completed as well as the mechanics. I got the first object collision set up which was the mouse trap. The mouse is able to at the moment destroy these traps by shooting them, also if the mouse collides into one of them the mouse trap is destroyed, and once the coding is finished a life will be subtracted. The second object that is in the works at the moment is a trash bag icon which will act as another obstacle object. So far at the moment there is no win condition and no lives have been set.This is what the game looks like at the end of the workshop this week.

In the lecture we learnt how vital it is to have moment to moment gameplay as players will lose interest in the game quite quickly. This was further reflected while playtesting my game, the game only consisted of a few platforms and slimes. It did however have coins you could collect but the coding behind the score wasn't quite right so you could only collect them.

This week in gdevelop I learnt how to add checkpoints or finishing lines. This was a feature in my platformer where if the player reached the end without dying they were able to move onto the next level. How I did this was I made it so if the player object collided with my newly added finish line object, the scene would then be changed to a different one. However, one of the interesting things that I learnt was that you have to recreate all of the objects and behaviour for the objects as none of them transfer over.

Journey Home

Journey home is a platform game where you have to get the alien (the player) back home to their family. Throughout this journey you will find portals which lead you to new dimensions where you can find valuables to take back home however, each dimensions have its own unique hostile creatures.

Lore

The alien is a scavenger who travels to different dimensions to find valuable loot to be able to bring home to sell to provide for their family. However, their portal gun is broken and they must find their way home manually.

How it’s played

The player will start off with three lives and they must complete a series of levels and collect the valuables to unlock the final portal home. To do so the player must avoid or defeat all creatures at all costs but if the player runs out of lives it is all over.

3 unique selling points

The first selling point is that there are several different portals throughout the level which means  that the player can decide which location they want to travel through next, so they are not tied down to the one set journey.

The second selling point is that there are different types of hostile creatures in each dimension so once you’ve encountered a creature in one dimension you won’t encounter it in a different dimension.

Hey I'm Josh,

This blog was created as a design journal for IGB120 throughout the semester.