jxcksjournal

[jxcksjournal]

Submission Ready!

This is the final post on my blog for the semester, everything i have learned and gone through in order to get here has really increased my skils in not only Gdevelop but the concept of developing games and the process surrounding it.

Fullteron's textbook has a lot of valuable ideas around this topic that i never had thought of before reading and explained a lot of the throught processes that i found myself having in each development cycle.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog! I know it is long but it takes all of my thinking and puts it into words that i can come back on when i need :)

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment 3 - Post Mortem

Now that submission of Assignment 3 is complete, i am able to go into the post mortem portion of development. This is the largest project that i have ever taken on for game development and took a lot of research and learning curves before i was able to even begin implementing some of the features required.

My biggest struggles came with the littlest of things throughout the process, i either looked over things or doubled up on certain events that caused game breaking issues. Due to the fact that i had several scenes in my games and some of the event sheets had over 50 events throughout controlling multiple different features. There was a lot of room for mistake and is the reason we had multiple play test and development cycles in order to iron these out.

In general i was really happy with the way it turned out partly because i would like to keep the concept and redevelop the game on my own time to potentially have it released oneday.

The ideas that i have for this game came from no where specific, it is something that i think i have curated from previous games and experiences that i want to put into one game. This is an idea i found in the textbook i have been reading, and it explains where a lot of the inspiration came from that i did not understand (Fullerton, Page 170, Chapter 6)

To do so i would need to change a lot of things, even though the fundamental features are ironed out if i had a lot more time the process would be much more streamlined and clean. Our lack of artist really made some of the art i had to make ugly as could be and that definitely affects the players want to play the game as well.

I would add more enemies and the point shop to customize Neo (main character). Players love having this agency and choice when it comes to playing and it is something i would like to add, it just didnt fit the scope of the game in terms of this assignment.

Now that Uni is over for the semester, i would love to push a lot of energy into NIPPED and prepare it for a full release one day :)

#post mortem

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment 3 - Nipped Final Ver.

NIPPED Opening Screen

This is a screen cap of the final version for NIPPED, and personally my favourite part it is an interactive screen for the player to learn the controls before being able to start their game. This screen acts as a mini instruction booklet for the player as well, outlining their goals and controls to make it through the game. Undergoing at least 6 different iterations to get here each adding a new text object for clarity. The final iteration the only change added was the use of images rather than words to enhance player understanding and claroty so the player knows what exactly they are collecting and what it looks like.

Each development phase took about 2 days to complete sometimes more as it required a lot of fine tuning before i was happy to send it off for play testing.

A lot of small visual changes were made throughout the game as well, colours of resource bars and platform colours required a few iterations before players were happy.

Smal features such as the meow and helper cat were added to increase engagement and give the player something else to find other than catnip, a challenge of sorts for player to overcome before they can pass the level, a mix of this with the need to keep stress low creates tension (Fullerton, Chapter 2, Page 39). Additionally more dynamic movement was added in the final version such as a double jump, while easy to add i needed to move around a lot of level design to support this new jump as to not make it overpowered.

I also added buffers for the level changes to allow players time to process the first level and move on to the next not immediately but soon after.

The win/loose mechanic focuses on stress, while not greatly changed over the course of production it was a huge feature. Requiring the player to keep their stress levels down as to not fall asleep. Rats affect their stress levels in a negative way while catnip affects it positively. Collecting all the catnip, is the only way to win. If the player does not collect it all but reaches the end of the level they are prompted to collect the last catnip before moving on.

These are the main features that were changed throughout and a final version video is included below to outline how this final changes look and play :)

Final Version Video of NIPPED!!! :)

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment 3 - NIPPED V3.0

As you probably have not noticed, i have skipped an entire version in my game and we now land on version 3.0, this is intentional due to the fact that all of the playtest data for 2.0 was essentially no different to version 1.0 except for the fact that i removed all of the bugs that were originally found.

While i did fix most of what was found on the playtest analysis there was stuff that needed a lot of tweaking. Just little things that kept coming up not just from the playtest but in my own playtest. Below is a copy of one of the Analysis sheets

Playtest 3

This was a copy of Playtest 3's analysis, as you can see the feedback still maintains the need for clarity and engagement. At this point all of the feedback i recieved was incredibly important to the next release and i got onto fixing it as soon as possible for the next and technically final version of the game.

A lot of the feedback that i received did affect me in certain ways, while this feedback was condensed and greatly appreciated the transcript from the sessions was a lot more confronting, some of what was said was very blunt and while i know i needed it, it felt unfair but i tried not to take it the way i saw it but the way it was meant (Fullerton, Chapter 6, Page 172)

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment 3 - NIPPED Development Progression (1.0 Playtest)

First design iteration of NIPPED

Above you can see the first ever functional copy of my game NIPPED, it included all the base mechanics required to function and nothing more. The movement was incredibly choppy and buggy as well as the collision system for enemies and featured nothing more than what you see. No home screen no ending and no win action.

While it was rough it was only the first prototype V1.0 of the game, so it was sent off for playtesting yesterday and i have just recieved the first set of feedback.

There was a very large amount of feedback for me to digest and a lot of it related to clarity and function of the game, they had no clue what to really do or think about while playing the game and that was a huge issue.

Another really big problem was with the bugs, i had a lot of them. Players could fall off the map and get stuck in areas that they should not be able to get to. These are realy easy to fix though and won't take me long. The only other feedback generally came from the lack of features which was expected as i had not implemented them yet. I will need to spend a while fixing up these early on bugs before i can work on furthe features.

In my next post i will hopefully have ammended these things for the next playtest..

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment 3 - Team Creation

Coming out of assignmnent 2 i felt pretty confident about the ideas that were discussed about the next task, in terms of forming my team i and my team members formed the team quite late due to a few different reasons but once we were formed, we immediately got to work on the assignment. The team was incredibly efficient and communicative making the process of Part A and beginning Part B really easy.

There is nothing i could have hoped for more than getting a good team in this assignment. Due to our late comings we had to select our game quite quickly, we all sent in our work done for task 2 and it was quite quickly decided that NIPPED would be our game of choice, since i had already set up a base for the game on Gdevelop :)

This lead to our team roles being set as well, i was to be the lead developer for the game itself and focus on the results from playtesting that was done by the other two members. At this point i begun developing the game and sent them the first prototype 2 days later.

[jxcksjournal]

Assignment Two - One Page and Sell Sheet for NIPPED!

This is the small "Sell Sheet" that i created for the game, i wanted to stick with that neon city theme throughout the two pages so that explains the heavy neon influence. This is essentially the sheet that would be put up in public to attract players as a sort of poster for my Game.

And this is the "One Pager" this is a more indepth version of the prior sheet that explains more about the main features and displays a little bit more complex ideas relating to the game.

#assignment 2

[jxcksjournal]

Highway Pull - Post Mortem

All said and done this was probably the easiest game that i have created so far, whether it be because of the increased experience in Gdevelop that i have gained or just due to the simplicity of the mechanics.

If i was to furthe the development of the game past the scope that i set out in my elevator pitch, i would deinitely implement a lot more interactivity and engagement features. This would include a more random scheme for spawning the cars, as yes it is random it is incredibly predictable and i feel it would look much better haveing each car spawned randomly individually instead of remaining on the same tracks each time.

More map dynamic and different scenes would also be a great implementation in order to keep players returning. A sort of player agency addition of being able to customise your car would also be incredibly easy to add in, only requiring a home screen and a customization screen that stores your total points and subtracts them depending on the different options that you select for your car. A fun little extra that encourages players to continue playing.

But in terms of the games actual scope i think it fits perfect and the game functions exactly as expected.

#post mortem

[jxcksjournal]

Highway Pull - Design Process

Highway Pull - Screenshot

The game itself was incredibly easy to setup, only requiring really basic event sequences to make and even to further the game it did not require much. I used Craiyon to create a pixel background for the game to simulate a sort of sunset as if the player was driving during this time. In terms of a win/loose mechanic the loose side was preset already in the workshop and was fairly self explanatory, crash and loose. This was made clear to the player through an explosion and the deletion of the two cars on collision.

My only real addition to the game from its base was to add a win mechanic as i did not want to overcomplicate the idea since it is intended to be a simple game almost mimicing the old style retrol arcade games such as Pole Position (1982) and the popular Chase HQ (1998).

This used a very simple event that compared the score variable to my desired amount and created a prompt exclaiming that the player won the game. Before any cars are spawned another prompt was made dictating how many cars the player must pass in order to win which gave them their goal. This was done using an event so that as soon as the first car entered the play screen the prompt would disappear, allowing players to know what their goal is or 'procedure' (Fullerton, Chapter 2, Page 34).

Overall a very simple game that played on the style of "retro racer" that was commonly popular in the late 80's and early 90's. That for some reason i played when i was a child also, my dad enjoyed racing games and so i was brought up on them. (Fullerton, Chapter 1, Page 10)

While an easy game, it is a fun way to kill time :)

#development

[jxcksjournal]

Highway Pull - Elevator Pitch

Made with CrAIyon

Game Title: Highway Pull

Genre: Action Racing

Setting: Set on a long american highway

Pitch: Highway Pull is a 2D topdown racing game, focusing on an illegal high speed race down the freeway. As the player you have to pass as many cars possible, avoiding obstacles to not blowup on your mission to the end.

Control Scheme: The game will utilise the arrow keys for "movement" or control of the car.

Intended Audience: Due to the nature of speeding cars and explosions it is intented for mature audiences or for younger teenagers with parental guidance. (PG)

#elevator pitch

[jxcksjournal]

Space Attack - Post Mortem

Now that the development for my game "Space Attack" is complete i can complete a post mortem look at the entire process. Overall i was really happy with the game durin production and even after until i started to actually play it. While the game still worked and functioned how i expected, i realised that i put a lot more thought into the aesthetics of the game rather than improving functionality.

One of the main issues was with the style of tracking for the player, due to the face that it used the mouse if it would collide with the player it would gitch and not allow me to move. While i could see this i did not quite know how to actually stop it from doing so. I wish i was able to fix it but i think i need a bit more experience with Gdevelop to fix these little issues.

Other than that i had no real complaints with it and there is nothing else that i would change if i was to continue developing. Anything else would be out of scope for this style of game.

#postmortem

[jxcksjournal]

Design Process for Space Attack - Part Two

Start Screen Screenshot (The ship moved across the screen)

Picking up from the previous design process post, after making a redesign of the ship i playtested the prototype and thought it was a bit dull when you would hit the asteroids. I added very simple collision condition/event pairs for both the bullets and the ship so that when collision occured with the asteroids they would disappear. Seemingly unrealistic i went back to the tutorial notes and added the lives bar. Giving the player 15 lives, losing 2 for a large asteroid, 1 for a medium and nil for a small (Players can just destroy them with collision instead of bullets).

From this i moved onto a different approach to the levels, instead i added a survival timer. The longer you survive in the game the more the timer increases. Higher the score the better you do, players goal is to essentially try and beat their previous score.

Finally i added some effects to the Game Over screen, restarting the game after 4 seconds and a glitch effect to simulate a sort of broken screen you'd see on a space ship after crashing.

Game Over Screen

Finally i did the last playtest and had a "finished" game. I was able to play it and was quite happy with how the aesthetics and physics looked i added some sound for the overall game also (8-bit space theme). All together this was produced and in the end there was no further changes to be made to the elevator pitch. Here it is:

Playtest Clip for Space Attack

Thank you for Reading! :)

#development

[jxcksjournal]

Space Attack - Revised Elevator Pitch

Since working on the prototype for Space Attack i discovered issues in the control scheme for the game. I intended for it to only utilise the mouse, but this was uncomfortable on a laptop trackpad. I experimented with a few different key options but learnt that the space bar was the most natural option. This is both suited for the trackpad and if you were to be using a mouse and keyboard also.

Next with the genre and themes, after beginning the styling for game it quickly became a pixelart game, i based most of the design of this including the fonts and background.

#elevator pitch

[jxcksjournal]

Design Process for Space Attack - Part One

This workshop we begun work on creating the base for our asteroid game, this was incredibly similar to the previous game and was quite quick to setup. I created a new project and set up my scene to be used for the game. I then imported the assets provided into the project folder so that i could add them to the scene.

The first thing i did was create the little space ship and its physics, e.g., it's movement and shooting system. These were both very simple processes and just involved adding a few events and settings their conditions and actions. It looked like this once complete:

First Preview of Space Attack :)

This was a very simple and limitless model, the bullets would shoot incredibly fast and there was no limit to the speed you could shoot either. Another issue was where they were shot from, i had to add a new point dubbed "cannon" to edit into the actions, this made the bullets shoot from the point of the ship. I then added the timer that would slow this down, it was called firerate:

Example of the Timer Used.

Once this was done all we really needed was a few asteroids to avoid or destroy. There were three different options for the asteroids all having different sizing, a large, a medium and a small version:

Asteroid Physics

This process was replicated for each of the asteroids, it was essentially just a list of constraints that determined the spawn rate and location of them. Once these were added i did a small play test on the game and learnt incrediby quickly that the control scheme was quite awkward for the laptop trackpad. Attempting to move and shoot at the same time was tricky so i opted to change the fire key to the space bar instead, making it much smoother for the control scheme.

Now that the basics were completed, i moved away from the tutorial and begun working on making the game a bit more personal and giving it more aesthetic. This started with me editing the art for the player ship, i coloured it white to match the back ground i selected, the general theme was pixel art to i maintained that throughout. After these were changed it was starting to look a bit cleaner.

New Player Ship

Design Process part two will be posted soon!

#development

[jxcksjournal]

Space Attack Elevator Pitch

From M3rØj on Artstation

Our next task in IGB220 is to design and create an asteroids style game, below is my elevator pitch for the game that i will be creating. It is a rough copy of the traditional asteroids game with a more modern style!

Name: Space Attack

Genre: Space themed Shoot em' Up

Pitch: Space Attack is a modern remaster of the original Asteroids game first created for the Atari 2600. The goal is to survive as a small gunship in space, avoiding the oncoming asteroids by blowing them up with your guns.

Control Scheme: The base of the controls will be your mouse, the ship will rotate to follow the pointer and your left click will fire the weapons. Point and shoot style.

While there are countless makes of the asteroids game my goal is to remaster the original. Using the simple point and shoot mechanic for all users to be able to enjoy the game. Targeted for all audiences there is no perfect player, it is a simple game to keep the player occupied.

In my next post you will see the process of creating this game!

#elevator pitch

[jxcksjournal]

Coin Quest - Design Process

When first thinking about what i wanted my game to be i had only one requirement, for the game to only use the included assets given to us. Once i settled that i began working on the reasoning behind the game which was outlined in my elevator pitch post, that it was loosely based on the ideas of finding shiny objects as a kid.

I started out with the base of what i created in my first few hours of learning GDevelop, which lead to my first prototype looking like this:

Prototype V1

This just allowed me to work out what kind of jumping potential my player had.

From this i was able to work on the mechanics of the game, including the "Pinkies" or slimes, i wanted them to be non-lethal characters that just acted as an extra thing to work around, making it so that they just wandered back and forth between invisble barriers that only affected them.

Slime Movement Physics

These were mostly just conditions and actions that the slime followed throughout the game and made them act like this depending on where i placed the barriers:

Slime Movement Example

The coins that you see scattered around the map at first had no real use until i looked into the different things i could do with them, including collecting them to add to your score. I was able to make them disappear on collision but had no real idea how to correlate them to my score. Using the tutorials provided on the canvas i was able to create this action to update and add my score:

Coin Conditions

Once these mechanics were sorted i got to designing the world and changing colours and such to a more attractive and fun scheme, the design of the map was intentionally simple as it was to be the first level of a kids game, this is what it came out to be:

Prototype V2 - Final

This was the final look of the first level in the game, the player must navigate the terrain and get rid of the Slimes while collecting the coins in order to reach the final coin, if the player arrives with a score of 6 they win!

My first prototype for IGB220 Is now complete and my next elevator pitch will be out shortly!

Thank you for reading :))

References:

Fullerton, T. (2018). Game design workshop : A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, fourth edition. CRC Press LLC.

#development

[jxcksjournal]

Elevator Pitch for "Coin Quest - The Beginning of the Pinkies"

For my first IGB220 prototype i will be designing and creating a lightweight platformer called "Coin Quest - The Beginning of the Pinkies"

As a general rule of thumb i used concepts from the textbook "Game Design Workshop" by Tracy Fullerton to fuel my ideas for the game. The main being the concept she explored from one of Nintendoes lead designers; Shigeru Miyamoto. Who mentions that your childhood is a great place to start e.g., hobbies, experiences and feelings from when you were young.

Elevator Pitch:

Coin Quest is to be a loose representation of one of my favourite activites as a kid, collecting shiny things around the woods around my house. Including collectable gold coins that add to your score, that must be collected while overcoming harmless obstacles such as the slimey creatures named "Pinkies" as well as using simple jump physics to navigate the vertical terrain.

The whole game is designed to be simple and have no tough/intimidating obstacles due to its target audience, it's rating of General (G) is reflective of this.

Target Audience = Younger kids aged 6-10

Designed to be a sort of replacement for the real life version of finding shiny objects when they are unable to e.g., weather issues, location and such.

Future posts will explore the process of creating the game and look at the mechanics i have implemented.

Thank you for reading!

#elevator pitch