Dogedouge's Blog @dogedouge - Tumblr Blog

About me

Hi there, my name is Tony. I am student in IGB220. My favourite game is resident evil and Xenoblade series.

My personal favorite book to read is The Art of Design wrote by Jesse Schell, he tries to use a philosophical way to make you understand what the most basic elements of a game are. If you don't know much about philosophy, I don't think you can 100% understand about book.

Me and my friend Josh (Tan, Jiaxi) are going to develop a pixel art style Metroidvania-like game made by Unity. If you are good at pixel art, you are welcome to come and cooperate with us.

If you guys like stand-alone game, we think we will have opportunity to cooperate in the future.

Contact

Email：[email protected]

Discord: Doge_汪星人#6743

Submission & GG!!（it's BG xd）

This group assessment was full of surprises, which taught me a lot

Because when our character dash to the right, it will suddenly shift to the left.

(but the dash feels good)

In the choice between gameplay and art, our artist chose art and modified the character's sprint animation, but the sprint feels like shit.

Why am I so lazy? If I have a better sense of time, the game made in this way will be more complete and closer to the picture in my mind.

Why do I need to rely so heavily on team members? If I can both design and program, I think I really have nothing to do with them, so I need to learn C# and unity skills during the vacation.

But I don't, there is a saying in China called "越挫越勇" means that when you know the difficulty, you will be braver to face it

what a shit we make it :) BG.

#Submission & GG!!

Assignment 3 Postmortem

First of all, for the team, I think the division of labor in our team is very chaotic, and the time management ability is also very poor. There were even behaviors that some people didn't want to do before (he did it later).

We also encountered a lot of problems during development, for example: our main game project file is in the artist's computer, because Gdevelop can't share it, we can't create new programs at will (only screenshots can be found on google document). As a result, our game levels can only be built by our art. (Actually it should be the work of the designer, that is, me) In addition, because we did not start our project immediately, our development time was very tight later.

For the evaluation of this game, I think our game is very rubbish. This may indeed be considered a general quality for a student, but for my personal standards, I think it is a rubbish, and I will never play it a second time. . I have to be serious about my games because I don't think I can double-standard between other people's games and the games I make

#Assignment 3 Postmortem

Assignment 3 Iteration and Changes

Changed scene order

Before, I imagined that the scene where the character gets the sword will be placed on the far left, and then when the character gets the sword, the scene will be automatically transferred to the previous scene.(The scene character came before)

But after the group discussion, we felt that this method might make players get lose. We put the scene where the protagonist gets the sword between scene 2 and the Boss scene. The game experience has better fluency.

Reduce game scene levels

This week we took a look at our current game development progress and thought we should reduce some unnecessary scenes, so we removed hidden levels.

Iteration of character death effect

I think the character dies and then immediately respawns it's too strange for the player experience.

So I think that when the character dies, some particles need to be triggered, with the effect of Camera Shake, and then the scene slowly turns black, and then returns to the scene at the save point.

If it's further iterations, I'd use After Effect to make a transparent fade in video (fade in black)

when the player dies and the screen goes black a little and then goes back to the original save point, which will make the player experience a lot better.

#Assignment 3 Iteration and Changes

Game Discussion

Hollow Knight

I used the time of Mid-Break to clear Hollow Knight and reached 112% completion.

In the beginning, I actually played with a little bit of resistance, but when I gradually played this game, I gradually felt that this game is very good, and the feedback is very good.

Because this is a small team work, there are actually a lot of things that can be learned from the developer's point of view. After the end of this semester, I will use the vacation time to try to analyze the map design of Hollow Knight and guess how it guides players. . Learn about their per-item assignments for each map, as well as the excellent CMS style map design.

Action system

Hollow Knight has a simple and solid action system. The core mechanism of this action system perfectly integrates game combat and parkour decryption. Although the mechanism at the beginning is very simple, with the gradual increase of the action system, the upper limit of the player's operation has been continuously increased.

About the player operation feel problem

At first, the player's left hand is only responsible for the Z and X keys: the index finger is X and the middle finger is Z.

But with the addition of the Dash key C, the position of the fingers had to be re-adjusted (ring finger Z, middle finger X, index finger C) This will cause most people to subconsciously make wrong buttons when faced with some emergencies in battle. (It is easy to press to attack when jumping, and easy to press to dash when attacking)

Soul storage system

Attacking any monster can store the soul, which can be used as the mp of the spell and can continue to restore blood. This mechanism greatly improves the fault tolerance rate of this game.

#Another Interesting Mechanic/Book Chapter/Game Discussion

Assignment 3 Playtesting

We try to let our friends try our game demo and let them honestly give their feelings. The feedback everyone gives us is relatively bad. We pick out some reasons, for example:

The way the characters move is somewhat counter-intuitive and unnatural

Character's attack interval is too short

The character's health is only 1, and it is always difficult for players to pass the final Boss level

The performance didn't quite meet our expectations. (cutscene)

After discussion, we still believe that the main reason is the low completion of game development. We need to give demos with higher completion degrees to them for trial play, so we need to spend more time in the next week or two game is complete, and then get more valuable feedback.

#Assignment 3 Playtesting

Group Formation and Assignment 3 Team Discussion

After our discussion, we chose my platformer to develop, so I drew a rough map for the game.

This is a simple, one-way CMS style map where players will explore from Scene 1 to Scene 5 and back again.（sry for write complex language in my design picture XD）

（The flow of the scene is 1→2→6→2→4→5）

Among them, Scene 6 is the place where the sword in the stone is stored (where the protagonist obtains the attack mechanism). In this scene, the protagonist's previous abilities will disappear. The character needs to take the lantern and slowly explore the position of the transparent block until he gets the sword.

It was also quite a design challenge for us, but I liked the feeling of challenging myself. (Just as a preview for IGBT100 XD)

#Group Formation and Assignment 3 Team Discussion

Assignment 3 Development Progress

The size of this game is a bit beyond our expectations, so in order for us to have a clear goal, I wrote a goal table for the group, which contains the program functions that need to be implemented, the art style.

Below is a table of target I set for our game:

Mechanism

Ability：

Jump (jump can kill enemy)

Double Jump

Dash (Press C)

Lantern （hand held）

Attack (Press X，Need to set the attack interval)

Functional System：

CheckPoint

Death

Health System（For Enemy）

Level interaction：

Horizontal platform (X-axis)

Vertical platform (Y-axis)

Ladder

Trap Door

Invisible Block（Transparency is 0）

Destructible stone gate（When the player attacks the stone gate, the stone gate will shake）

Trap

Spike

Regularly descending spikes（spikes that have been falling from above to below, but the attack interval needs to be longer）

Continuously regularly deformed spike（Change back and forth between getting bigger and smaller）

Trigger Block：

Trigger the block that breaks the platform（Orange）

Trigger the Block of the show animation（Blue）

Trigger the Block when the door is closed (Yellow)

Trigger the Block that changes the protagonist to change the size of the lighting range（Green）

Performance：

The opening of the door of the final goal (provided that the heart item is obtained)

Monster Design：

Horizontal moving monster

A monster that does not move and sometimes emits flames around it

Vertical moving monster

Ranged monster that shoots bullets at you

Boss Fight Design：

The first stage：

Not decided yet.

The second stage：

Continuously fires bullets at the player

When the player jumps to a platform, the platform above him is revealed

The third stage：

The character touching the boss's image will not lose hp, but if character attack it, boss will lose hp.

Boss has a regular combination of moves, allowing players to learn how to avoid.

Items dropped by bosses:

The heart from protagonist.

Art：

Different forms of the protagonist after getting the item:

Get Power Jump Shoes: Character Change his shoes

Get the cape: The character wears the cape

Get the Sword in the Stone: The character holds a sword

Scene Transition：

Video(fade in black) and it playback

Video(fade in white) and it playback

Scene 1 and Scene 1.5 (these two scenes are in the same big scene)

Medieval scene：Limbo + Deadcell

The scene above scene 1 is scene 1.5 (the set height is the height that the player can't even see the double jump)

Scene 1.5 is high in the sky, so the base environment consists of some clouds (try the cloud design with a different layer if we have much time.)

Scene 2

Continuing the overall style of scene 1, there is a small river at the bottom left of the scene.

Scene 4

Tower scene

rising liquid（water，poisonous water, lava）

Find a BGM for each stage of the boss (3 in total)

Scene 6

Dark Cave Scene: Dark, relying on ambient light to embellish the environment

Scene 7

Snow scene: After everything is over, character walks away alone in the snow. (A very long scene, because it has to be performed with the subtitle.)

#Assignment 3 Development Progress

Assignment 2 Final Design

As for the Final Design of Assignment 2, I think One Page and One Sheet look unreliable because of the low completion of my personal demo (if I am a player and I also will doubt their authenticity)

So from this experience, I realized that if you want to make One Sheet and One Page, you must have a demo that seems to have potential, which will be more convincing to players or investors.

One Sheet

For One Sheet, Selling Point and X Statement are the two most important introductions in my opinion.

For Selling Points, I have clearly written in my first Platform Journal why I want to use them as Selling Points.

But I thought about how I should write my X Statement for a long time, but I didn't have a good answer. I feel that I haven't played enough game examples, so I don't know what combination of games my concept fits.

One Page

#Assignment 2 Final Design

Racing Post Mortem

I still let the original players test the game, and their feedback is still think the game is boring.

I am trash XD

The most intuitive thing someone told me was that as a racing game, why don't players keep pressing the forward button and keep going, they feel like they are playing an obstacle avoidance game.

The speed of the car on the road is too slow, player can't feel the feeling of chasing and escaping life and death.

The gap between cars on the same road is too small, and Player is easy to hit them directly.

Some unrealized effects

make the car run forward, the camera can track the car at the same time.

ART

Through the effect of layer perspective, the art of the game looks better.

#Racing Post Mortem

Assignment 2 Progress

Hollow Knight once won more $50,000 in crowdfunding for them through their wonderful publicity. From this incident, I saw the importance of game promotion for a game.

So I think this assignment is very pedagogical for us, all we need to do is to accurately introduce my game concept and design to other team members with minimal text and images.

So we need to know how to make a One Page and One Sheet as a game producer.

Since I have never heard what these two things are, in order to understand their concepts clearly, I checked the information on the Internet.

One Page is a document which shows the main features of our project in a brief, attractive and effective way. ("How to design your One Page", 2016)

First, I need to analyze my game, what aspects can be analyzed from myself, and secondly, what aspects may be interesting to players.

Reference

How to design your One Page. Game Developer. (2016). Retrieved 16 October 2022, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/.

#Assignment 2 Progress

Racing Development Post

Player Movement

In the process of testing, it was found that the car would drift automatically and unconsciously. It turned out that the Rotate Objective in the new version of Gdevelop 5 was turned on and off.

Through testplay by myself, I found that the scene where the protagonist directly dies and enters the death screen is too abrupt. It is necessary to add an explosion effect to the death to make the death more natural.

Learning from the experience of the last development, this time I added a death scene to the game, the player can restart the game by pressing the R key

Death Screen

Programming Design

#Racing Development Post

Racing Elevator Pitch

This is a competitive racing game where you need to dodge randomly generated forward or backward cars (and trees) on the track.

www.pexels.com/zh-cn/photo/248747/

A driver has a life-or-death race with his followers to escape a mysterious group. There are many cars on the road, and the driver must keep his car at the maximum speed at all times to avoid the pursuit.

#Racing Elevator Pitch

Asteroids Post Mortem

I got some friends to try out the game I made and their feedback on my game was not very good

Most of the reviews I hear tend to find the game boring.

It's not surprising to me because they look at my games by the standards of the best-selling indie games on Steam.

The feedback they gave, although radical, may seem to some to be the behavior of trolls（ubisoft scare player's suggest xd）

But I think aggressive feedback is often the player's first feeling (same as intuition)

I believe that every player has their yearning game in their heart, and their original intention is to play an excellent game.

Therefore, as game producers, we need to have an accurate understanding and absorb their suggestions.

So I asked them how boring the game was in their opinion, why？

"Actually, it's boring for everything," a player once told me.

Just remember one thing，don't snowflake as a game designer. XD

In their opinion, monotonous gameplay design, monotonous monster design (meteorite only), monotonous weapon style, bad moving feel.

Moving feel aside, this is a problem with the game engine itself.

Let's not talk about feelings for Player Moving, this is a game engine problem.

As for what keeps players playing, Jesse Schell said that people have an experience when they play a game, and this experience is what game designers really care about. A game that lacks experience is worthless.(Jesse Schell, 2018)

I fully agree with this point of view, and I also fully agree that the game I made is really difficult to make people experience, so people think it is "boring" and I understand that the reason why this game is boring is that "the elements are very monotonous"

It's like people get fatigued easily with the same style of artwork.

Some unrealized effects

There are no various bullet designs

No diverse enemy designs

After GameOver there is no button to restart the game

Need make the UI look more beautiful.

Effect

star twinkling effect in background (made by Particle)

Reference

Jesse Schell. (2018). The Art of Game Design. A book of Lenses, Thrid Edition. Publishing house of electronics industry.

#Asteroids Post Mortem

Book Chapter/Game Discussion

Through this process of making Asteroid games, not only me, but the testers I found really felt that not only was my game boring. the Asteroid genre was boring compared to mainstream games right now.

I pay attention to the current independent game production market. There is almost no chance to see games like asteroids, and there are no popular asteroid games in recent years.

Let's analyze, the operation logic of Asteroid game is actually a game in which the protagonist can attack 360° in the middle of the game screen (the enemy will also appear from 360°), and their goal is to continue to live. This is It made me think of roguelike games like The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and Enter the Gungeon. Of course, the most perfect expression of my point of view is the recently released game 20 Minutes Till Dawn. This roguelike shooting game completely absorbs the essence of Asteroid, and has more possibilities and uncertainties for players than Asteroid. Sex, for players to add more fun. So I personally think that Asteroid is a game type that should be eliminated for the current game environment.

Jesse Schell once said about the rules of game iteration,

"The Iteration Rule: The more you test and improve, the better your game will become."（Jesse Schell，2018，p106）

This rule can also be applied to game types, and the iterations of game types are jointly carried out by various top game designers.

Reference

Jesse Schell. (2018). The Art of Game Design. A book of Lenses, Thrid Edition. Publishing house of electronics industry.

#Interesting Mechanic/Book Chapter/Game Discussion

Asteroids Development Post

First of all, I'm not a hardcore Asteroid player. I don't understand the meaning of 'score' to the player. I still think it was because of the poor performance of the machine at the time, which did not bring positive feedback to the player on the screen. This is a "forced design" by game designers.

This is why we can see more and more AAA games stop using this design, so I want to delete this meaningless design.

For both the spaceship and the meteorite, I used the simple physics system of Gdevelop 5, so that the spaceship or the meteorite can directly collide with each other, which is more realistic.

For the design of large/medium/small meteorites, when the bullet of the spaceship shoots the large meteorite, the large meteorite will split into two medium meteorites instead of disappearing directly, which will make players feel more rationalized.

I set a range outside the game scene, if the ship flies outside it will lose a life.

#Asteroids Development Post

Pitch for Asteroids

This is a game about exploring the universe in a miniature spaceship, in which you need to dodge meteorites, defeat enemies and survive.

The spacecraft has only one life, just like a speck of dust in the universe. With or without him, the world will still run as usual.

www.pexels.com/zh-cn/photo/galaxy-2150/

In this game, I think the design challenge for me is how to make the player experience the game with a difficult design. This is the question I have to think about.

#Pitch

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