#developmentpost

Game development for the Racing game has been proceeding smoothly, with little difficulties. This week i wanted to learn more on the coding side of GDevelop and specific instances where code can be really useful. During this week I learned that Develops coding side is fairly easy compared to other programs I have used (mainly unity 6) and that brainstorming what to do for the game with a mind map is very useful.

Currently the Racing game has

The main gameplay loop complete of racing in-between cars

Score has been completed

All the animations for players, enemies and environment

Other UI elements have been completed

Above shows the basic layout of the game with the red car being the player and in this example black and pink being the enemies

There are two plans for future development

Add trails behind each of the cars so it looks more 'spacey'

Multiple levels increasing with difficult

The readings this week were helpful as chapter 6 allowed me to start brainstorming possible ideas for what I want my upcoming Assignment 2 and possibly assignment 3 to look like by "Putting it on the wall" and the mind map method as with the quote "This helps spark even more ideas" in chapter 6 it allowed me to come up with the idea to put a death barrier off the road as when writing the ideas of winning down I found the flaw of being able to stay off the road.

In my next post i will be going over the post-mortem of the racing game.

Sources used in this post are:

As I was put in charge of particle effects, visual effects, and sound design, I got to work making the game world a bit more lively, this began with making footstep particles that spray out whenever the player is touching the ground and moving, this was a complete success and really immerses the player, making it feel a lot more natural. Additionally I added some blood spray effects to both the player and the enemies when they are damaged, I made it so that the blood is affected by gravity so it falls downwards towards the floor when it is created. Maybe I should make some blood puddles that dry up after a while.

Going into this project I was completely new to effects, both auditory and visual. However, with my experience working on projects solo, as well as my experience playing games, I knew what I was looking to achieve, and I knew the role I wanted these effects to play.

Tracy Fullerton’s game design workshop had some interesting ideas on the effects that visuals and sound could have on a players experience so I knew I played an important role in the stimulation of the player. Therefore I wanted to make a couple of different effects that make the world more natural and full of life. 

I initially wanted to create an effect that mirrors fireflies, spawning them in momentarily to fly in a random direction and then fade out. As it turns out I ended up spawning way to many of them, and they seemed to be drifting downwards erratically. I utilized this ‘bug’ and turned it into a feature by repurposing it into some leaves falling. This effect made the forest more lively, and seemed like a fine addition.

Things to consider:

Effect for interacting with healing statue

Game soundtrack, something mystical to fit with the forest theme

Effects for skeleton, mushroom and bat (death, attack, hit)

The first order of business was to create a satisfying and responsive driving system that didn’t feel to fast or too slow, this was achieved with relative ease. However one thing that took me quite a while was the pathfinding for the fleeing vehicle. I had to have the car try to escape but also weave between buildings and find the fastest path available. This will obviously need tweaking as the number of obstacles and options expand through the development of the prototype, but for now it’s working quite well

To complete the previous task I had to do quite a bit of research on pathfinding in g-develop and as it turns out there are quite a few ways to do it efficiently. Ultimately it came down to setting different values for objects (cost) which determined the easiest path the car could take.

Chapter 3 of the game design workshop book gave further insight into the core mechanics of the game, this allowed me to form a sort of checklist of design features, consisting mechanics relating to, lives, powerups and enemies. This kept me on a steady path through the development of the prototype. Some examples include the life regen system, which is based on how many rocks are picked up and the powerup system, which give various abiilities depending on the destroyed ship.

Here are some things I have discovered while analyzing playtesters:

Problem: Often times the player was having trouble catching the getaway car

Solution A: Integrate a delay between decisions that the car has to make, this slows down the ai making it easier to catch

Solution B: Create difficulty options the player can choose from, easy, medium, and hard. (this would probably implement solution a)

Solution C: Make more obstacles the player can utilize to block the car

Problem: The gameplay can be a bit repetitive

Solution A: Create more levels with different environmental hazards, obtsacles and gimmicks

Solution B: Experiment with automatically generated levels, although I have no idea how to implement this effectively.

Positive Thoughts:

The players really enjoyed the core gameplay loop, catching the car is enjoyable and rewarding. The obstacles are fun to place and require preplanning to be effective barricades.

After nailing down the basic movements for both the player and the enemies, I was able to create the mechanic that splits up the meteor as well as rebuilds it when you fly over the pieces. This is the main mechanic of the game as well as how the lives system works. (with the player having one life in their smallest form and four lives in their biggest)

I am getting a bit more comfortable with using g develop as I initially struggled with creating variables and some more difficult functions, however with the creation of this game I think I’m getting better.

Tracy fullertons game design workshop book had some interesting concepts regarding balance in games, so I kept that in mind when introducing enemies throughout the levels, ensuring that it wasn’t too hard.

I had someone in my workshop play the game to test it out and they found the controls to be intuitive and straightforward. The player was able to effectively launch rock fragments at enemies.

I forgot to mention but the character is controlled with the wasd keys as well as the mouse for aiming what direction the rocks are shot in.

Things to consider:

Powerups

Magma shot

Fragmenting shot

Solar shield

Unlimited ammo

Enemy variety

Smaller faster enemies

Medium paced basic enemies

Larger stronger enemies with more health

Moving background

Stars blinking

Comets flying across the screen

After completing the required workshop tasks, I was able to create the mechanic that spawns a solid corpse at the players' death site, allowing the goal to be reached

(Note: I changed the player model but have not yet updated the platform that is spawned)

I'm very new to gdevelop but have had lots of experience with other programs such as Unity and a bit of Unreal engine. Therefore there was a bit of learning to be done regarding this.

Thinking about some concepts I've read from Tracy Fullerton, I focused on keeping some of my mechanics relatively unique. This also allowed me to brainstorm some ideas to add.

Things to consider:

Adding a variety of traps: Spikes, sawblades, lava, arrows

Changing some of the sprites to fit the dungeon theme: character, terrain, traps, background.

Creating some ui to display lives left

With development going steady on Fish Whizzard, I got to work creating the single page sell-sheet for the game!

For Assignment 3 my group and I decided to continue development of my platformer game Kurranji. I teamed up with two art majors for this project so most of the art work was delegated to them while I focused on level design, UI, and game mechanics.

My team mates created a new background, new platforms and a new tree sprite. I integrated the new sprites and models into the current build and began working on a new level. In the second level an enemy is introduced to the player and they will need to avoid it in order to complete the level. This adds another element of danger to the game and makes the second level more difficult than the first. As we had not yet created a model of a dog for the enemy a placeholder sprite was used.

Along with this I added a title screen, controls screen, and intro screen to the game. The intro screen gives the player some information about the theme of the game as well as the basic controls and goals. With this build of the game our team moved onto playtesting.

EXTRA POST - GROUP FORMATION

I attempted to do playtesting for this game slightly different than my other two games for the subject. Rather than giving the player the background of the game straight away I just let them play to see what they thought. The player was only told that the arrows control the character. I tested the game with 4 participants - some my peers and some my personal friends.

As the game was fairly simple at this point, players were able to successfully play it quite easily. After the test I asked some questions based on gameplay, the theme and the testers feelings during play. These questions were:

What did you think the goal of the game was?

What did you think the theme of the game was?

Where did you think the setting of the game was?

How did it feel to control the player character?

Are there any features of the game that you did not understand?

Are there any features you would like added to the game?

The testers generally came to understand that the goal of the game was to avoid the enemies. I noticed that some of the testers who regularly played games tested the what the enemies were by aiming for them initially (this is likely because the enemies model was only a placeholder). After they were 'killed' by the enemy and level restarted they knew to avoid them. Testers who were not so familiar with video games were a little more confused by the simple box shaped enemies though still learnt to avoid them.

For the theme and setting, most people were able to work out that the player character was a bird, though (understandably) no one correctly identified it as the extinct mega fauna.