Imagined World – Evaluation

Introduction

As the imagine world project draws to a close I wanted to create a blog post discussing the project as a whole, talking about; how my team has performed, communicated and our work flow throughout.

My Team & Their Roles

My team consists of six members; myself (3D / UI / Concept Artist), Nathan Richardson
(3D Artist), Matthew Dickson(Programmer), Bence Franko,(Animator) Luke McFarlane
(Programmer) and Max Ansell(Animator / Programmer).

Game Highlights / Role Breakdown

Game Highlight Video

Feedback

Your project looked great from the early stages and you were always well on top of the technical, animation and construction elements, which is excellent and will serve you well if repeated for the synoptic. Your organisation and work ethic were you strongest asset throughout production, which says a lot considering how good everything else is. Make sure you maintain your approach in the new year because it will guide you to success regardless of the project you choose. Your actual demonstration to the rest of the students significantly undersells just how impressive your project really is – you could’ve demonstrated so much more of it! Be careful with how the synoptic project presents itself because there may well be VIPs at the end of year show. All in all, you’ve done fantastically well and produced the crowd’s favourite project! You should all be very proud of your work.

– Feedback from lecturers on Next Gen Course.

Feedback Review

Obviously we are all over the moon with the amazing feedback we have received, from everyone, regarding our Imagine Worlds submission. As well as this, we are all humbled by being voted the best Imagined World out of the 21 projects submitted.

My Contribution

Below I have included some renders of my key contributions to the project. Further Breakdown of each asset will eventually be found on art station.

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Overview

To conclude, I couldn’t be more happy with the out come of the Imaged World. Obviously there is so much more I would add and tweak, as would the rest of my team I’m sure. However, for 3 months work I couldn’t expect anything more from my team.

Number Game – Programming Exam Prep.

Today in Ant’s lesson we spent our time preparing for our programming exam, which is in April. The basis of the game that we made, is that a random number is generated and a player is required to add either 1, 2 or 3 to their current number to equal the target number. This process repeats until the player makes a mistake or the player’s score reaches over 100. As this is exam prep I made sure to comment on my script as much as possible so that when I look back on it I know exactly what is happening and why. Below is an example of the game and the main script I used. I don’t normally post my scripts but I feel like it is a good way to show how I have commented on my script and how it helps me prepare for this exam.

Obviously the game is very basic visual wise. However, the main premise is working and can be adapted to make puzzle games and learning games. By adding artwork, timers and high scores, for example. I would add all of these myself if I had the time.

Platform Game Update (Effectors)

Today in Chris’ game design class we learned about effectors and how to use them in a 2D game. The three effectors I have introduced to my game are; platform, surface and buoyancy effectors. All have different effects, but I found all of them to be useful for different reasons.

I started off simple by introducing platform effectors to my game. I did this so that it is possible to jump up through the bottom of a platform and land on the top without falling through it. I found this very useful and it is actually a feature used in my platform style games. For this effector to work, the effector needs to simply be added to the object along with a box collider (that uses effectors).

Secondly, I introduced a surface effector, to create a lift effect, on one of my levels where the player is required to wall run. Essentially, the surface effector propels the player up the wall. To use this effector, all that is required is for the direction and magnitude to be select in the sidebar. Once this is done, simply set the box collider (that uses effectors) up to the area you want the character to move in, and it’s setup.

Finally, I worked on adding buoyancy effectors to my water. so that the water object acts like water should (the player bobs up and down). I haven’t got the balance, with the parameters, perfect yet, but as I develop my game further I plan on animating the water and adding particle effects. When the time comes and I am improving the water, I will modify the buoyancy effector to get it perfect. To use the buoyancy effector the target object has to have a box collider on it along with the buoyancy effector its self. This effector has plenty of parameters which can be modified to get the perfect look for most games.

Overall, I am very happy with how my game is turning out, I am looking forward to developing my game further, to get it to not only a complete game (eventually), but also a high standard.

Ball Brawler Game – Beginning

For the Ball Brawler game we will be working in a team of 6, however today we were all working on various aspects of the game. Working in duos to gather ideas of how the balls can behave and then trying to make them behaviors happen. The work in this blog post was completed by myself and Liam, with a little bit of feedback from my other team mates.

Firstly we started of by programming the ball so that it would have a force, meaning it would bounce in the air every time that the ball collided with the ground (rather than dropping “dead”). This feature is going to be present on every one of the balls to make them intractable and more fun. The ball in all of the videos featured in the blog is a standard red, just for connecting, colours will vary in the actual game.

Increase In Size

Once we had the ball bouncing we began brainstorming what we could have the ball do. The first idea that came to mind was to make the ball grow in size upon every jump. This was a simple bit of programming to add to the original force script. The ball’s scale is simply multiplied by 2 in every axis every time the ball collides with the ground. This will only happen when the ball collides with the ground and not anything else.

Decrease Then Increase In Size

The next step for us seemed fairly obvious, we had the ball growing in size so why not make it decrease in size. However, we realized that a lot of people would likely go with this alternative so I decided to program the ball so that it gets smaller every time it collides with the ground, just like the ball that gets larger. But the difference is that once the ball gets to a scale of 0 it becomes larger upon every bounce. This is clearly demonstrated in the video below.

“Jump Pad”

The final idea which I had was to develop a jump pad which could cause the ball to bounce two times as high as the regular ground causes it to bounce. I feel like by adding these to an arena randomly placed, on angels, would cause more of a variety in the way the balls interact. I also personally think that this will make the game more fun to play as it will feel more interactive because more will be happening. If the game is developed enough, we could even consider allowing the players to change the way the platforms are positioned (this is up for debate).

Overall

To conclude, I am very happy with the progress we have made so far and we are looking forward to seeing what we are able to do with this game. I think it is easy to say that my entire team is curious as to how the game will develop and what direction we will take it.

Team’s Blog Links

• Liam
• Matty
• Nathan
• Luke
• Josh

Game Jam – “Escape” (1hour 30mins challenge)

On Friday, unfortunately Chris was off so we were set no specific work, therefore my group of friends decided to have a friendly game jam competition. The theme was chosen at random and was ‘Escape’. The team’s were; myself, Nathan and Liam vs Luke, Josh and Matty. We had 1hour 30mins to come up with the working game concept.

Personally I feel like both teams did very well for the time we had, and I personally think that we all proved that we can work effectively, not only as a team, but also creatively. As well as this I know that my team also showed that we can turn our ideas from ink on a piece of paper to on the computer screen.

Below is an image of my teams ‘scribbles’ for when we were thinking of ideas. Excuse the mess of the page, however, it did prove effective as it is very similar to the final result showing in the short gif below.

In the group we divides ourselves between game design, programming and art. Liam focused on art, making the game blocks and goal for the game (experimenting with different styles, trying to match the idea we came up with). Whereas, myself and Nathan focuses on game design and programming, myself mainly working on programming, and Nathan mainly working on game design, but both of us collaborating to be as effective as possible – helping each other out with different things we were trying to achieve.

The concept of the game is to control a glowing green ball and to navigate round a black abyss, avoiding black objects (only highlighted by glowing red light). Upon contact with anything glowing red, the level will restart. To make it to the next level the player has to make it to the portal which transports them to another abyss which they have to navigate. We didn’t get any further than this as we spent a lot of time getting the player controller and camera follow working, as well as the visual effects (glowing effects and motion blur).

Obviously there is many changes we can make to improve the game, such as sound effects, keys, etc. However, I am very happy with how the game turned out for the amount of time we had to work with. I’d just like to say well done to not only my team (Nathan and Liam), but also to the other team (Luke, Josh and Matty), as I feel like both our games turned out quite well, and I am proud of both teams attempts.

Final note: apologises for delayed posting, my current situation (room being redecorated) has caused my routine to be slightly effected. My routine will be back to normal soon.

2D Platform Game Full Game Progress

Overview

This blog post will cover an in-depth look at my progress with “Rabbit Hop”, my 2D platform game, and all the steps I have taken to get to the stage I am currently at. As well as this I will also be talking about my future plans for this game (both long and short term) as I plan to push this game to its limits and achieve the best quality game that my abilities will allow me.

 

Game Play Video

Below is a video showing different features and Mechanics, I have included it as it demonstrates many of the subjects I will be mentioning in this blog post.

One feature which isn’t shown in my video, which I accidental dismissed, is the pause menu which I have created. I will make a blog post soon showing how the pause menu works and as people have been asking me how I have been doing it I may do a simple tutorial which people can follow, if they are interested.

 

Basic movement / Character Animation

The basic movement of my character is fairly simple, the character is scripted to face the way the player wants to face, by flipping the character in the X axis. The character has a fully working animation system (all made from scratch out of pixel art). Below is the only pixel art images that I required to make my character animate.

• All four for the run.
• The first one for the idle.
• The second one for the jump.

 

A fair few people actually asked me for advice on how to set up simple character animations like this, as the method we were told to do didn’t work for many people. There is a tutorial on how to do this on my blog post about character animation.

 

Moving Clouds

For the moving clouds it was actually fairly simply yet very effective in my opinion. I started by creating a nice sky blue background, and setting it as the back layer. I then created a cloud, on Adobe Photoshop, which I placed on the layer above and added a simple movement script to (with public speed and range variables). By having these variables I am able to create variety other than just the size of the clouds. Finally, I created a spawner script which would spawn the the prefabs clouds. I altered some speeds and rate of spawn on the clouds until I got a look I was happy with. The short clip below simply shows how I have implemented this cloud effect throughout my levels and even the main menu. Personally, I feel like it makes the game have more personality and I am very happy with the look it gives me.

Collectables (Carrots)

To add a more fun dynamic to my game I decided that I would add a score system so players have a goal to aim for and to beat. I was originally going to go with traditional coins, as I love traditional 2D platform games, however carrots made more sense with the style of the game, and the character choice. Each carrot the player collect will gain them 100 points which is displayed at the top of the screen. For the collectable I made a simple carrot sprite in Adobe Photoshop which I feel is effective as it easily stands out.

Main Menu

Personally, I feel like the main menu of a game is very important as it is not only the first thing the player ever sees once the game has loaded, but it is also how the player navigates between all the key scenes of the game (for example; starts levels, changes their settings, etc.). In my opinion my menu is fairly simple and could be improved, however it is fully functional, simple to navigate and most of all, fairly nice to look at (with the pleasant blue background with moving clouds). The small clip above highlighting the moving clouds also shows off the games main menu so I won’t bother repeating another short clip.

Enemies

As of current there is only one enemy in the game which is featured in the game on level 2. However, more enemies will be getting introduced as the levels progress. Never mind that though because I am actually very proud with the achievement I have achieved personally when making the enemy in my game. I have set up the enemy so that if it hits the player direct on it will kill the player, however if you jump on the enemies head it will kill the enemy, product a particle effect and will eventually reward the player either with score or score and a power up. Below is the enemy currently in my game.

Particle Effects

As of current my game only has three particle effects in it, but I will be introducing many more as my game progresses, to “juice” it up more. The main particle effect in my game is the carrot particle effect which is triggered when the player collects any carrot in the game. I created this effect to give the player feedback (other than +100 score) when the player collects a carrot. Personally, I am happy with how this particle effect benefits the game, but I do want to improve this effect, possibly with the help of Gary.

Other particle effects which I use are for the lava and for when a player kills and enemy. I created the lava particle effect to make the game more lively and interactive, as well as hinting to the player that the lava is likely dangerous. To add to this I plan on animating the lava with a simple, subtle animation to make the game more interactive. Finally, the last particle effect which I current have in my game is a very basic particle effect which is triggered when a player kills and enemy, this is done in order to give the player some feedback so that they are aware that they killed the enemy and that it is a positive thing.

Game Future Plans

• Improve main menu
• Add more enemies
• Add health (hearts)
• Add power ups
• Add more particle effects (when running/finishing level)
• Add sound effects (killing enemy, dying, completing level, collecting items)

Game Background / Dedication

This game is a compilation of many ideas, I have had for a long while now, which have came together quite nicely (in my opinion). I have always enjoyed 2D platform games and have actually made a 2.5D game (Acclimatised) before making this game. I did enjoy making Acclimatised, and Josh, Liam and I do plan on working on it more in the future (when we have more free time). However, I have far more enjoy making “Rabbit Hop” as it is a game I have had the ideas of making for a while, but haven’t known how to make until recently. I am completely enjoying my experiences making it and I find myself learning more and more new skills and tricks. “Rabbit Hop” is actually dedicated to my girlfriend Charlotte as we came up with the rough idea of the game together and I have begun creating it. Once the backstory / dialog of the game begins to be added it will start to elude to this and the main character will also be name Charlotte.

 

“Fun with physics” Game Jam Style Challenge

Ant set us a task today in his game design class. He set us the challenge of using a basic 2D mechanic and transforming it into a fully working game within about 1 hour. We would then have to show our game to our peers which had been given a different mechanic and explain how the game worked and how we had implemented other mechanics using our own knowledge and they would do the same for us.

This may seem like a simple task but to be give a random mechanic like we did and only working in a team of two (myself and Nathan). It was a big task to ask, as we had to think of how we could firstly implement the mechanic into a game , then create the game so it is not only playable but also fun to play as well.

Essentially, the mechanic we had allowed the player to click where they wanted the ball to move. So what we decided to do is create two versions of what the game could potentially be, both obstacle course related but one a maze and the other more with the aim of avoiding moving objects.  Below are examples of how we built our game. There will also be a downloadable version of the game on my games page for you to try out if your interested.

 

 

2D Platform Game (Rabbit Hop)

In my latest game design lesson I have began setting up the first tutorial level for my 2D platform game (Rabbit Hop). The animation (Sprite sheets) my not yet be implemented however, the character movement / jumping is set up and fully working, as is the carrot collectables and the rabbit hole which takes the player to the next level.

I am very happy with the progress I have made this lesson as I can already feel the game becoming to come to life. I can’t wait to get more levels built as well as a main menu system. However, obviously I need to implement the sprite sheets first, but after that the games main features will almost be complete and the majority of my time can be spent setting up the levels and designing how they will play out.

Overall, I am liking the looks of this game and I am personally excite to continue making it and seeing how far I can go with it. I like the look I have went with as I feel like it is visually appealing to the majority of people and it doesn’t exclude younger generations especially.

Acclimatize Alpha version 1.1 Update

I am gradually working on improving Acclimatized every passing day now. The game was put into the very first Alpha stage on Friday and was then played by my peers and lecturers. Currently only one character is available and only one level is playable, however, more levels will be in the demo when it is released. Only a few people have been able to play the Acclimatized Alpha 1.0 but I have recently made a few adjustments, fixed some of the most important problems, such as the majority of the clipping errors and I have made version 1.1 which is available for download for a limited amount of time to allow people to play it and give feedback. 1.1 overall plays a lot smoother but it still has a lot I would like to do it before I release a full demo.

I am very happy with how this game has turned out and I am really looking forward to building the rest of the game. Below is a short video of how the game works, but there is also a download link for you yourself to try it out. Below that is a link to a feedback sheet if you could be as kind to fill that out after playing it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to share this game with your friends but bare in mind this is just a taste of what the game will be. No one apart from my teammates and a few of my lecturers will fully know what the game is about until the full game is released.

In this blog, I have also included the feedback which I received from people playing the original alpha of Acclimatized, all of which is being taken into consideration during the progress of improving this game. feedback

 

Download the Acclimatize Alpha 1.1 version here completely free and safely. After playing the game if you would like to leave feedback that would be greatly appreciated thank you.

Give us some feedback

Acclimatize Improvements

Once again today I have dedicated a lot of my time to working on Acclimatize. I am very happy with the progress I have made as I can now feel the game slowly coming together. The game still requires a lot of work, however, the game is technically fully functional and can easily be developed into a finished game. Today I have fixed the scripting for the character movement and jump animations, admit ably with a bit of help from my lecturers as it was reasonably difficult setting the animations for the commando character to work correctly. The movement animations may still not be completely perfect and still require a bit of tweaking but this will be done over time make the best possible game.

The main difficulty I had when setting up the movement animations was having the animations flow together correctly, while also looking correct. What I mean by this is that making the jump animation look natural (realistic) was difficult when trying to scripting it in with other animations.

As well as improving the scripting of the game I have also begun properly constructing the first level using the modular block system I have created; using grass blocks, dirt blocks and stone blocks. I plan on using this system with various other textures to construct levels in other biomes for the other demo levels.

Unfortunately, our original aims for the game demo may no longer be possible for the Christmas portfolio deadline. However, the official demo will most definitely contain everything we originally planned. Whereas, the Christmas portfolio demo game will likely only contain the Commando character (with the other characters “coming soon”) with three out of the 4 biomes having levels that are playable. This is simply because we are limited by time and restricted by the amount of us there is, resulting in work taking longer than the larger team can produce.

Despite this we are still aiming to make the best quality and most optimized game possible, avoiding cutting corners as much as possible so that is game truly represents the abilities that we currently have. We have already discussed our ambitions for the game and they may be large but not out of reach. We are planning on working on this game throughout our two years here at Sunderland College and possibly after. However, aims are to have a fully working and published game hopefully by next summer. It will take a lot of dedication but we want this to happen so we are going to push for it. Ultimately it will hopefully at least result in a good game to be featured in our portfolios.