Bachtheboy

Bach Ulziikhutag n10788387

[bachtheboy]

Week 13: Submission & GG!!!

Finally!!! I am very pleased that I did all my assignments and finished this incredible unit for the semester. First of all, I am very thankful for my teaching teams. They were a big part of why I really enjoyed this unit. It was a fun and amazing semester for me and now it is time to go further. Thank you to teachers, lecturers, and students of the IGB220. Peace Out!

[bachtheboy]

Week 13: Assignment 3 Postmortem

Elevator pitch:

In Elemental Chase, the player will attempt to traverse a myriad of levels that have the potential to spontaneously change elemental conditions. Not only will the player be faced with treacherous level conditions an ever-present threat of the chasing animal will loom over them, being caught by the chasing animal will have disastrous outcomes. This 2D platformer will be fast-paced and high intensity resulting in players having to think and act quickly, adapt to changing playing conditions and effectively utilize power-ups and level additions to successfully complete the vast range of side-scrolling levels.

Controls:

Move - A, D, or left and right arrows

Jump - Spacebar

Use abilities - Q, W

To this point, I already learned a lot of possibilities in Gdevelop, thanks to the previous projects. This knowledge of the previous projects helped me to work well with my group, we are a group with little experience of game design but we manage to work out this game which doesn’t mean that I did not learn anything new, in fact rather the opposite, I learned more new things about creating other features inside of Gdevelop. Such as creating a level design that the player allows to play around and making scenes and doing their scene management. 

In this project where I got the role of the level designer and game designer, I started to follow some advice from the book “The Aesthetics of Play” by Brian Upton to be more precise the chapters 6 - 11. It helps me to set some points for our group work on how our project should start and progress. Concepts were taken under scope if there were some issues, a skeleton prototype was created to check if our level design works out, this prototype got more and more visual as well as gameplay updates to be fun for a player. Playtesting was made with relatives of each member and it seems the difficulty of our levels kept them playing; however, there were also some playtests which we needed to end because of the confusion of our tester. The structure inside the book helped us to construct our work too. This project showed me that I need to change and add a lot of things to keep our game interesting and there are many factors that could kill the play fun of our gamers.

To sum up, our projects meet our concepts and ideas from the beginning. However, it is a very good game, there are too many aspects that we didn’t implement well, like the dramatic elements mentioned in chapter 4 of the book. Our game is not in the slightest interesting or dramatic, many features are too mediocre and there is a bit of a bug. It was a great experience working on the small game with good teammates. And finally, I am able to say that I have experience with Gdevelop.

[bachtheboy]

Week 12: Assignment 3 Iteration and Changes

A week after our playtesting and collecting of feedback (user and own feedback), we used this week to change and implement the issues and missing features we noted down.

I implemented a starting menu before the game for the starting scene because it was one of the first points all testers and all of our group could tell what is missing. Also, I changed the win and lose screen a bit to look good. 

Our main issue is the abilities of the game are not working so we were straight to working on that. Also, we have changed the game’s main character to the bunny, which is an original idea of the game. 

For the level design, I changed a few platforms to make it from easy to hard. Because most of our playtesters could not reach the end of it. And now it’s much easier at the start and getting harder at the end. 

[bachtheboy]

Week 11: Assignment 3 Playtesting

This week, we collected 5 playtesters from our environment, let them play our alpha version, and asked for their feedback.

The procedure of our playtesting:

We started with a form where our playtester has to answer. This form gives us a simple insight into what type of player we are testing at the moment. After that we read a script to inform our playtester that they need to play the game without our help, we can take breaks and our playtester can decide when to stop. Then we come to the playtesting part where we let our playtester play our game without any help. In this phase, our player needs to describe what they think should be done aloud while we take notes of their action at each event of our game. This testing phase should be done with three members of our group, one communicator, one event writer, and one note-taker. I was one of the note-takers of this playtesting session. Here are the notes from each playtester:

After the playtesting we let our testers fill out the last form about their playtesting experience and the game. Finally, we collect all the information and create a plan for how to improve the game. 

Overall there are many things we need to improve and change for our game, there are several bugs and a lack of visual art. We will now take this information to heart and work the table through. 

[bachtheboy]

Week 10: Assignment 3 Development Progress

The working title of the game: Chase game

Pitch: In Chase Game, the player will attempt to traverse a myriad of levels that have the potential to spontaneously change elemental conditions. Not only will the player be faced with treacherous level conditions an ever-present threat of the chasing animal will loom over them, being caught by the chasing animal will have disastrous outcomes. This 2D platformer will be fast-paced and high intensity resulting in players having to think and act quickly, adapt to changing playing conditions, and effectively utilize power-ups and level additions to successfully complete the vast range of side-scrolling levels.

Game feature:

Only one big level but 4 different elemental platforms

2 slots for the abilities that choice of 4 different abilities

Different enemies depend on the elemental platform

Progress:

We decided to continue working on the base level design that I created on my first game of assignment 1 which was a platformer game. That game already has a chasing animal and some assets in it so we just need to elaborate and upgrade this.

I am working on the enhancement of the level design and when I finish the level, we will start to modify it into the 4 different elemental platforms. Here is the one part from our one page of the game.

[bachtheboy]

Week 10: Group Formation and Assignment 3 Team Discussion

This is the time to work in groups! I already planned to make a team with my friend (Blake) so we only needed to find one other person who wanted to create an incredible game with us. Fortunately, it was not that hard to find a teammate and we got a great programmer (Nic) for our team. After we discussed and talked about what game we were making, we decided to stick with the first game idea of assignment 1 which was chasing the platformer game, and combine with Blake’s game idea that elemental platformer. Nic is responsible for any additional coding, Blake and I will have a role as a game designer.

[bachtheboy]

Week 9: Assignment 2 Final Design

For my final design, I’m confident that this is going to be a great one-page and one-sheet design. I followed and included all the details that CRA required. Also, my game idea is simple but interesting to develop thus it was easy to design. Due to my artistic skill, I could not create any assets or sprites for it but I used royalty-free sprites that fit well on my game. To sum up, it was an amazing experience to create a one-page and sell sheet of the game that I want to develop, and pretty sure that I will use this one day in the future. Here are the designs.

[bachtheboy]

Week 9: Racing Post Mortem

The playtesting session went great compared to the previous two. Because I gained good experience during the last playtests and started to figure out how to playtest the game well. Also, to this point, my knowledge is more advanced compared to the platformer project. I have learned new things I could implement in this project. I also encounter similar errors and problems as in previous projects. Among them was the managing of hitboxes which are a problem with large size sprite, to fix it I use a similar method like from my space game where I edited the hitbox to my wished size in gdevelop. The ideas from the playtesters are basically about the power-ups and things to do with the car such as destroying other cars and drifting. Other than that the playtesting session went great. Here are the notes from the session.

[bachtheboy]

Week 8: Assignment 2 Progress

For assignment 2 where I need to create a one-page and one sheet about a game. I decided to create it about my first project which was the platformer game. I have been working on the rules, mechanics, and challenges of the game that can be helpful for creating the one-page. Also, I have been thinking that I should use royalty-free images for this because I don’t trust my drawing skill. So far, I got the game’s name, mechanic, and concept so it’s time to work on the one-page and one sheet.

[bachtheboy]

Week 8: Racing Development Post

The tutorial showed us the main mechanic of the racing game so I was not worry about mechanics that much. The car movement is a bit hard to control and I could not fix this problem but it is playable. I decided to use the sprite that the teacher gave us because there’s no difference between this and the one that I got from the internet. I could not add any challenges except the car coming at the player. It’s not gonna be one of the great racing games but it’s worth playing. Before the playtesting session, I will try to add more assets and challenges to it.

[bachtheboy]

Week 7: Racing Elevator Pitch

Title: Grand heist

This is the top-down 2D racing game that you play as a thief and after you stole all the bills from the bank, the police are chasing you. You have to go on a road that has many obstacles such as roadblocks, barriers, and pedestrians. While running away from the police you can pick the objectives up like explosions and speedups. The goal is to get lost from the police and reach the final checkpoint which is the airport. 

Controls:

Left and right arrow - left, right 

Spacebar - brake

Selling points:

Extremely fun and exciting

Require a high driving skill

Great experience for the short period of time

[bachtheboy]

Week 7: Asteroids Post Mortem

The playtesting session went pretty well. I received many helpful and great ideas and suggestions for my asteroids game. The problems and bugs of the game were rotation and score system. I could not fix the rotation bug that when mouse and ship get closer, the ship glitches. For the scoring system, that was just a small mistake that I forgot to fix the UI of it. Otherwise, the game was a good mini-game. The playtester gave me a lot of new ideas that can improve my game to the other level. Here are the notes from the playtesting session.

[bachtheboy]

Week 6: Asteroids Development Post

The tutorial showed us all mechanics and things that we need to create an asteroids game so I started to search around good royalty-free game assets due to my low drawing skill. Finally, I got assets that fit my game very well. The initial plan of mine was spaceship battling with the aliens but I changed it to just big spaceships. Thus, the gameplay is the player needs to shoot all enemy spaceships while trying not to collide with them. The player has 5 lives and they will win if the score hits 2500. The big spaceship is 100 and the small is 50 points so it won’t be a difficult game to win. I created a win and lose screen so I’m sure that it is going to be much better than my previous platformer game. Let’s see what is going to happen in playtesting.

[bachtheboy]

Week 5: Asteroids Elevator Pitch

Name: Planet 616

You just crashed on an unknown planet far from the earth and your spaceship fell apart. Fortunately, you found an alien ship with armor and weapons to get away from that planet. But it will not be that simple, you are going to face aliens who try to eliminate you. By destroying all aliens, you can go back to the earth.

Controls:

Move - W, A, S, D

Shoot - Spacebar

Mechanics:

-Shooting

-Dodging bullets 

Selling points:

- Fast tempted soundtrack

- Fun & frustrating challenges

- Short game for a great experience

[bachtheboy]

Week 5: Platformer Postmortem

Quite a few of the last playtesting feedback have treated my game in a good way. Both playtesters liked the game’s difficulty, concept, and challenges. However, there were some things that went wrong. For instance, the game should be going from easy to hard at the end but mine was not because I spent more time in concept level and design stuff instead of the difficulty in the game. As the last week’s lecture mentioned, I should have manage the fiero and relief well. It was basically the frustration at the first and the boredom at the end. 

The good thing about the game was how challenging it was. The coins make the risk and reward element in the gameplay. If player collects it, they will get catch easily. If not, they will finish the game with low score.  All in one, I would say I learned the basics from the experience, for example how to create a platformer game in the gdevelop. And I will probably create a more advanced game next time.

[bachtheboy]

Week 4: Playtesting and Pitching Insights

It is time to get roasted but it is okay, I can take it. So I playtested my game with two of my classmates and they gave great feedback and suggestions. The starts with no warning and the bird chasing the player. It made them both confused and frustrated but in a good way. One of them said the bird chasing pushes you to the goal which is a great start. On the other hand, the bird was too fast and spawns quickly. The player has three lives and if they lose one, the player starts blinking for 3 seconds. And they both liked the idea of it. The coins were located in a difficult position to get so they had only two options that pick it up and lose one life or leave it and finish the game. I think it is a good thing that my game gives the players options. They said it is a kind of addictive game that they really wanted to see what is the end.

 For some suggestions, it would be great if the player has something to distract the enemy because it is just chasing you nonstop and need to change the background, it is too dull. I am pretty sure that it was a great playtest and they liked it. Here are some questions that I asked them:

1. What kind of emotions or feelings did you feel/notice as you played?

2. What was your favourite part of the game?

3. Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn't?

4. What were your 2 favourite things?

5. What were your 2 least favorite things?

6. If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be?

7. How would you describe this game?

[bachtheboy]

Week 4: Platformer Development Post

After learning the basics of gdevelop, it is time to create a little game of mine. I downloaded a few free platformer assets from the internet and tried to set the right mood for my game. I found great assets except for rabbit sprite for the main player so I just used the cute guy that previous tutorial materials. The game’s mechanics are pretty simple that just run and jump but I made my enemy chase the player consistently. I mean, it is actually all mechanics that my game needs. And now, I have a big responsibility to create a difficult level that makes you frustrating, nervous. The player is running from the enemy and collects the coin to break the high score and coins are in a hard place to get. I made a short simple level for the playtest and let’s see how it goes.