Nicholas Winters Game Dev

We have now completed the final deliverable for our studio 3 project. It is now time to reflect upon the previous thirteen weeks to show what went right, what went wrong, and what I have learned.

During the last thirteen weeks, I have developed my skills in games design. I have worked on my 2D art skills, which has always been my weak point. These artworks turned out much better then I could have hoped and were implemented into our game, for the better. I worked on all of the dialogue for the game, this is something that I have done for several other game projects. The dialogue did manage to make it into the game, which enhanced the gameplay experience for the player. I also developed the audio assets for the game. While not all of the audio was used in the game, the assets that did, helped the player understand what was happening in the game.

There was plenty of things that I learned during this project about the game development process. As we worked on the project, we fell more and more behind on our scheduled work. This affected the quality of our work, by us not having aspects of our game that made it enjoyable. Alongside this, the timing issue we experience affected our ability to play test our game, leading to some very fixable aspects in our game that we did not find out about until too late.

Personally, I found that I needed to be more hands on with the management of the team. A lot of the issues we encountered could have been solved had I worked with the team to complete the project. I would often only talk to them during the prescribed class time, which was also the time we did the most work. Had we worked more outside of class time, and had I been more hands on, the project would have been more complete.

During the next trimester, I will be working on my major project. The main thing I will need to work on is my management skills. In order to make sure that the game gets completed on time and at the level that I am looking for. The other thing I will need to work on, is my communication skills. A big problem for the previous project was our team communication which did hamper our progress. With a proper communication line, we can make sure work on our project will continue smoothly.

Funding is an important part of games development, also most things but that’s neither here nor there. There are plenty of different ways to acquire funding, getting a corporate backer, a private sponsor, a government grant, crowdfunding, etc. All of these methods have pros and cons and some work differently for different projects. I originally thought that the government sponsor was the way to go, specifically Screen NSW. Upon further reflection i have come to the conclusion that I was completely wrong.

While Screen NSW has funded game projects in the past, it is not their main priority. This has lead to the game projects that did get funded to jump through many hoops in order to get the funding, namely rebranding the game as an interactive story experience. This would be massively difficult to accomplish with our game as the story is quite lacking with a focus on the gameplay of the Mars rover. In order to secure the funding, we would have to move the focus of our game to a story, which would represent a large shift for us and this project. We would end up with a project that has more in common with popular movies that the “player” can make slight, non-impactful choices. This causes a slight ethical concern. Do we edit the project, taking it down a less gamey route just to get the funding for it?

In my opinion, if we want to make a game, we should find a better way of funding it rather then change the core aspect of it.

We had our first playlets session for our game Project Ares. While it was a bit small in size and a fair bit late, there was a lot of information gathered from the testers.

Long story short, we have our work cut out for us.

The good news is, with this feedback we have plenty of places to start.

One of the biggest complaints was that the game was unclear on what to do and how to do things. We put the player into our game with no instructions except for a one page word document. This lead to players not knowing the objective of the game. This in turn lead players to become annoyed with the game. Out of all the issues that arose from this play testing session, this was, in my opinion, the biggest problem that must get fixed before the final submission of this project. The best way to communicate to the player what the objective of the game is, is to tell them. We could use the message system that we have inlace to feed the player information, like the goal of the game at the beginning, or how to pick up and place the packages. The other, smaller, issue that we can fix with this is we can inject some more story into the game, making the player feel more involved in it.

The next biggest issue to solve was the events. The biggest complaint here was that they happened WAY to often. There was always a new event before you had completed the old one. This also lead to an issue with the alert tone for the event system, which played to often and would not stop until you had looked at the event. In order to fix this issue, we will need to playlets this demo more. We will need to find the balance between the events occurring too often and them not occurring often enough. As for the audio issue we had, we can remove the constant beeping so it will only beed once at the beginning to let the player know there is a new event for them to look at.

This week I worked on the following

- I created the art for the logos of the two corporations for our game

- I worked on a basic version of the main menu, to be updated in the upcoming week

- Continued to edit some of the audio for our game (I’m not sure how to add audio to this so have a link to it) (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8VFMD_kMLsvQ296N0FjWGVEY0E)

- I worked on some world building for a different project

The two logos were created so that the sponsors in our game can have an immediate visual representation. It just makes things a bit more interesting to look at while you are playing the game. In the upcoming weeks, we can use these images to add a bit more visual flare to other aspects of the game, by including them in more places. The interesting thing with the creation of these is that this is outside of my skill set, which may show with the quality of the images. This proved to be a small challenge but something that I found enjoyable to have a go at.

The main menu was created so our game is easier to navigate. There isn’t much more that the main menu does. Again, this is just to have something done for next week and can be updated and refined in the upcoming weeks. This proved more difficult then it should have, when it turned out that something in the code prevents me from playing the project, so I had to use the asset viewer to do all of this work. Next week I will fix this issue, if possible, or find a way to use other computers.

The audio was created in response to some of the feedback for our game. Once again, this is outside of my normal skill set, but did not prove to be too difficult to work on. This audio is closer to the final version then the other aspects of the game that I worked on, but I will update it after our playlets session next week.

Games rarely get everything right. After they have been completed, its a good idea to review how the game project went, what went right and what went wrong especially.

The world ends with you (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132401/postmortem_square_enixs_the_.php)

What went right Getting to go wild with original IP and gameplay concepts - One of the main things that Square Enix wanted to do with The World Ends With You was create something that wasn’t one of their main two IPs, Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. This turned out fantastic for them as years from its original release, hardcore fans still organising tours to visit the area the game is based in.

A story created by committee (and free of those pesky RPG plot holes) - Each director was given their own writing team which brainstormed the general story background, plot and characters. After they had the story finalised, they had the QA team run through the story just to make sure everything worked the way they wanted. This proved fruitful as they picked up some inconstancies that had been missed in all of the other testing.

Implementing a player-controlled risk vs. reward system - This was implemented in three different ways. The player can set both their level, difficulty and the length of each fight. The lower the player sets their level, the less health they have but the higher the item drop rate is. The higher the difficulty, the better random item drops they will get at the completion of the fight but the harder the enemies are. The more enemies you fight at once makes the fight more difficult but also increases the drop rate.

Going full-bore 2D - Square Enix thought that the 2d art and graphics worked better on the nintendo DS’s screen, so they recreated the city of Shibuya by spending time on location.

Working closely with our middleware provider to cram a full vocal soundtrack into the game - One of the things they wanted was a vast variety of musical genres that really captured the feeling of walking around Shibuya. Once they realised that that was possible, they realised they could get full audio tracks for voice acting.

What went wrong Time management and development culture clash - Both Square Enix and Jupiter, the two companies that developed The World Ends With You Had two very different development styles. After sometime, both companies reached a happy medium but it had eaten up a lot of time in the development process. Coupled with that was their geographical distance meaning that they did most of their communication across conference calls.

Story creation scheduling - While they were happy with how the story turned out, it only started going smoothly about halfway through the design process. They would often change things rapidly throughout the project and only settled on the final story weeks before the final submission.

Overloading the player with new concepts and game systems - They added a feature to the game, the ability to scan and read NPCs thoughts, however it had no further purpose then that, it was rarely used to solve the in game puzzles. Another issue they encountered was with their unique combat system using both of the screens on the DS. While this was an interesting feature, a lot of new players didn't fully grasp how it was meant to work.

Dual-screen battles, or "What's going on here?" - Each of the fighting styles worked exactly as they wanted, the top screen was simple and the bottom screen was interesting. The issue was the blending of the both of them into a seamless combat system.

Animation quantity and quality - While the 2D animation was interesting, it required more time and money in their creation. With so many people on the animation team, it was hard to control the quality of the project.

Lessons learned (by me)

There are a few things to take away form this, both positive and negative. 

Firstly, the positive. The ability to make a unique IP can be challenging but ultimately worth it. The main thing to consider is keeping people involved in the creation of the story and world, do not create it in a vacuum. 

Released on October 9th, 2007, Portal was a small game that was given to people alongside two of valves big titles if the year, Half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2, in a bundle called The Orange Box.

Portal turned out to be much more then originally thought. On its surface, it was a simple puzzle solving game that used a rather interesting mechanic, the portal travelling. However, when people started to play the game they found something that made the game far more memorable then originally expected. GLaDoS.

GLaDoS is the robotic controller of Aperture Labs, the place where the game takes place. She guides the player through the first part of the testing process with tips and encouragement. However, once the testing is complete, she tries to murder you. 

With fire.

Even with the whole ‘trying to murder you’ thing, she quickly became a fan favourite for several reasons, her humour as she ‘encourages you’ during the testing, her comments while you try to defeat her, her bizarre love of cake. 

The most memorable thing about her, in my eyes anyway, is the fact that she is the only character who talks throughout the entire game, and one of the few characters in the game period. This is very interesting in such a story driven game.

Halo 1 had some highly advanced Artificial Intelligence, for the time that is. 

Enemies would cower from you once you had killed their commander, they wold take cover from surprising fire, they would dive out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, they would flank attackers if they could, allies would turn on you after killing too many of them besides doing all of the things that the enemy will do.

We see these things as common place for games nowadays, but this was a very new thing for 14 years ago, seeing as how before this the games we had played were things like Doom and Quake, who's AI were not highly advanced. 

You know when your playing a game, just enjoying it, being completely focused on the task at hand, only to find that half the day has passed?

You have just experienced the concept of Psychological Flow.

This is well documented state of being, that is seen in work, sports and all sorts of games, both analogue and digital.

Games are often developed with flow in mind, with getting players into this state being the goal. In order to get players into flow, it requires the correct ratio of challenge to feedback for the player.

One of my favourite games is the Square Enix title, The World Ends With You.

This game follows the story of a teenage boy called Neku Sakuraba as he travels the city of Shibuya competing in a city wide game with some mysterious implications. Throughout the game, you meet a wide selection of other characters, each with their own story and personality.

The next thing I look at isn't a game, but a game company which have made many games, two game series in particular; Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.

The dialogue in these two games are done in a more traditional format compared to mass effect. 

Accessed from http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/22650/?

Accessed from http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?185230-Gripes-about-the-writing

Both of these games use the list of choices, each choice being exactly what your character will say as opposed to a snapshot of the general tone of the conversation. Unlike mass effect, there is no way to tell if the option you choose is aggressive, positive, inquisitive, etc. The only way to know is to look at exactly what is being said and take your best guess.

While not a traditional RPG, the Mass Effect series used player driven dialogue almost as much as it used combat and action sequences. Instead of having a normal list of things you can have your character say, it had a radial wheel, that worked well with the game controller, with a rough example of the way you want the conversation to go

Accessed from http://forum.bioware.com/topic/518601-remind-me-again-why-bioware-dropped-their-excellently-balanced-dialogue-wheel-from-me2/

Each of those options will progress the conversation, but down a different path depending on which one you choose.

Accessed from http://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/mass-effect-2-a/88949-mass-effect-2-insanity-walkthrough-strategy-guide.html

So after the first two days we have a broad concept of our design

“You are a ____that trades memories that give you different abilities/skills to complete certain tasks and you are inside a city in a globe that is floating above the earth”

So far we have some very broad strokes of the game play. Currently it is a dialogue heavy, story driven puzzle game. 

Asylum has been submitted. While I am not 100% happy about how the project has turned out, it was better then what I was thinking it would be a few weeks ago. If we worked on it for another few weeks, I’m sure that we could get a completed game.

While the game didn't go as expected, I've learnt a lot about games design. This small look into the game design process has been very interesting.

I’ve learned how to create and edit audio assets using such programs as audacity and reaper. This is pretty cool as I’ve always been interested in audio in games, seeing how much impact the correct piece of audio has on a game. We changed the overall feel of the game, from horror to realism, with the change of a single piece of audio.

I created several 3d models that would be used in our game. I had never made a 3d model before this project, so learning that was really interesting as well. I feel that i managed to create 3d models that represent what they are meant to be, e.g. a bed or a bath. 

Working on the design has been entertaining also. This game was not a style of game I have much experience with either playing or designing. This helped me expand my design skill set. Hopefully this will not be the last time that I work on something that is so far outside my design wheelhouse.

Creating the world that our game is set in has been the best part about this experience, world building is what has kept me interested in game design for so long. Getting to write in a style of language from 1950(ish) and creating an interesting story and setting was challenging, something i found to be immensely enjoyable. I hope to keep this level of enthusiasm going forward into other projects.

With only a few days left before the final deliverable for our game, we’ve begun trying to get what we can done for our game. This is not going to be what we were wanting to create at the beginning of the trimester, however, it will be more then we thought we could do a few weeks ago. Hopefully we can use what we have learned here in order to make the next project we each do a greater success.