#dancedanceretribution

It has been a very long journey but we are finally here in Week 13. This will be one of my last posts and I am sad to see my blog go(and be marked). Since we are here, it is time for the final iterations made to Dance Dance Retribution.

Unfortunately, our final week will be catered towards the written aspect of our Playtesting and Prototyping assignment, which means DDR must be laid to rest for now. Over the last week, I have made a few cosmetic changes and attempted to eliminate our aforementioned "Racing Game" bug. In an attempt to search and destroy the pesky "feature", I had to sacrifice what would have been the autogenerated "AI" opponent. GDevelop is just too simple to be able to implement such a gigantuous task. Damn.

In the future, I will probably move DDR over into the Unity engine just to implement an AI feature that genuinely works. From what I have learned about game design and development over the last couple of months is that it's an easy task to start and improve upon.

Unfortunately, I've exhausted myself with Dance Dance Retribution but I would really like to develop a short game along the same lines. For now, I will let DDR rest, but in the future, it will definitely become more defined.

I will be submitting our final design and reports tonight. I've learnt a lot from this course that I will most definitely be taking into my future years at QUT.

On our final playtesting session we were able to dissect our game a little further to introduce future mechanics in the event that we take our game to the next level. It should be mentioned that, in total, we allowed 6 people to playtest DDR, one of which was a regular play tester that had given us feedback on multiple occasions.

Our final play testers will be called PersonC and PersonD. Both of which gave us differing advice and proved extremely useful to our final report.

PersonC suggested tweaks to post gameplay, honing in on player rewards and, of course, moment-to-moment gameplay. They suggested:

Stats screens at the end of play to display scores

Within the control screen page, players should be able to test the buttons by having said buttons respond.

Combo streaks and hit recognition & rewards

As well as an improvement on character sprites and animation - adding a character customization screen and so on.

PersonD was one of our most informative playtests, they broadened our perspectives on how the game could evolve and the potential tweaks to make it "Streams Best Seller". They had noticed the right side of the screen stayed static throughout their gameplay, something that other players had not noticed, because of this they pointed out a potential AI mechanic. AI is something GDevelop, our current game engine, would not cope with, there is just not enough coding freedom to be able to implement such things but if our team were to move this over to Unity, for instance, that could be something we could successfully implement. Other than this, they also mentioned:

That they loved the feel of the game and the overall aesthetic

The implementation of a learning curve difficulties would be extremely useful - maybe a tutorial for those who aren't rhythm game veterans

Combo streaks and player rewards

As well as visual queues for our players to let them know they are close to death, since their focus is at the bottom of the screen rather than the entire screen

With only 2 weeks left till submission of Assignment Task 3, some serious changes were made to help our playtesters experience Dance Dance Retribution the way it was supposed to be. The following are a list of improvements and bug fixes we accomplished over the very busy week:

We updated the game so that the notes would not be auto-generated, rather they were hard coded to match the song we had chosen - unfortunately we did run into a bug with this that turned out to be the auto-generated right side code, it was deleted.

The right side of the screen now remains static due to conflicting code.

A controls page, difficulties page, winning page and losing page has been implemented - below is a visual representation of the current flow of DDR

Animations have still not been added to characters, but that is a very small problem at the moment

Other than these changes, the base game remains the same. I have started to notice there are some issues with notes that occur after each other and the collision box (which is a transparent .png just below the grey arrows). The arrows seem to disappear even before they hit the collision box, however moving it hasn't fixed this.

Week 11 introduced Dance Dance Retributions first play testers, and even through DDR was in a very raw form, we were still given some very insightful feedback.

The following content are each play testers feedback and my own insights on how to improve our game.

Our first play tester, who will be named PersonA, brought us our very first bug. Something that was unnoticed to all of us and made our game seem extremely unpolished. This was brought about by the instinctive use of the arrow keys rather than WASD - WASD being the keys I had instinctively chosen - in pressing said keys the arrows spawned by the computer would tilt whilst moving faster or slower. This was in response to the "Racing Game" workshop code that the game had been based upon.

Other than this, PersonA was intrigued by the colour scheme and appreciated our art work. In an attempt to understand the game a little better, they begun exploring what DDR has to offer, unfortunately, most of the game was very raw. In the end, PersonA recommended the following fixes and extensions to Dance Dance Retribution:

A punishment introduction with more impact; instead of just loosing health, maybe streak loss

Introducing sound mechanics to promote player rewards and moment-to-moment gameplay

Our second play tester, PersonB, navigated our game the same way in which PersonA had. Opening the game, discovering it was quite raw and playing until they become bored with the aforementioned moment-to-moment gameplay. PersonB recommended the following fixes and extensions to Dance Dance Retribution:

They mentioned that they didn't know if they were actually playing the game correctly - because of that lack of moment-to-moment gameplay.

The visuals of the game make it a bit hard to notice certain elements of the game such as the scoring system

PersonB also mentioned accessibility as being a pathway we could move down, to allow people who struggle with articulate movement to experience and enjoy our game.

Oh boy, am I excited! Ever since the end of Assignment Task 2, I have been thinking of making Dance Dance Retribution into a functional game. Today, ladies and gentlemen, that dream comes to light.

Throughout this last year, I was able to meet some lovely ladies within my Game Design course! Fortunately, we agreed to team up to complete our last assignment and put our very first project into our portfolios.

In a rushed decision to present our pitch, our team decided to select DDR as project for Assignment Task 3: Prototyping & Playtesting.

From the get-go, I was able to complete produce a prototype of DDR and that allowed us to begin playtesting. So far, I have implemented the following mechanics and features into Dance Dance Retribution:

Note hit recognition

Health bar animation change to signify note misses

The Main Menu to direct players to Credits and Controls

A Pause Menu to allow players to stop playing or leave the main game

Music Implementation (there is a limitation with this as GDevelop seems to stop the music after 30 seconds or so)

My final "racing" game produced a very raw product of what I wanted DDR to look like. So, in my free time, I decided to incorporate the pixel art I designed into my final game! Unfortunately, I have built upon that original product to produce Assignment Task 3 and therefore cannot showcase its original form.

Apart from this, I was able to produce my final One Sheet and One Page for Assignment Task 2. The One Sheet, shown below, came out to be exactly what I wanted aesthetically. A combination of Photoshop and Publisher helped me to produce a poster I am more than proud to call my own design. All of the assets used were completely original, apart from the font which was provided by one of the internets many resources.

As for my One Page, or as I like to call it the Dev Document, I was equally impressed with myself! I can admit that there is a lot going on, and yet I still feel as though I didn't have enough information. In the end, I believe that the Dev Doc had a good mix of visual elements and mechanical evidence.

After expressing my interest in a DDR clone to my tutor and grasping at straws to connect the rhythm mechanic to that of the Racing Games Mechanic; I got to work.

The original idea for my game was a basic 4 lane game were the arrows "notes" moving down a set y-axis at various times. This randomness was decided by GDevelop since it would have been too time consuming to hard code an actual song. This code came down to this:

One thing I have noticed with GDevelop is its many, many limitations. Hitboxes, and hit recognition, are very lenient and allow players to spam an arrow before the arrow has completely covered its respective point.

This will be something I will work on in the final design of the game if chosen for Assignment Task 3!

Keeping in mind that Assignment Task 2 had recently been released, I decided to run with my common theme of Dance Dance Retribution. I sketched up a design for my One Sheet, as seen below, and got to work on the graphical side of my game. Producing these "Screen Captures" of what I wanted the final product to look like:

The third and final installment of my IGB220 GDevelop journey is a dive into the racing game scene. We will be required to build upon a base model of the game, and I believe I have just the right idea to follow through with into Assignment Task 2.

My idea is a "Guitar Hero/Dance Dance Revolution meets Street Fighter" inspired game. Players will have to repeat the "enemies" actions in a fight/dance-off type of style, with the use of arrow keys. They must get as close to the beat as possible in order to attack and defeat their opponents. As the game progresses, off-beats (which will correspond with critical hits from the enemy) and tempo changes (the faster the tempo the harder the fight) will become an increasing issue. Power-ups can be used for more attack damage and your character can be customised.

In terms of aesthetics, I am heavily inspired by something rather unusual; that being the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Google Game, specifically their "Artistic Swimming" mini-game as seen below: