Game Design Blog

Josh Crane

[joshc5]

Time for an Update

It’s been a while since I last made a post and with the end of year project starting last week I have a heap to write about!

So in short my game went though, I have an amazing team of 6 currently and the dev process is in full swing, but last week I came to a realization of the workload behind a clicker game. I mean I knew what I was signing up for but at the same time I wasn’t ready for this:

Formulas/Maths

Arr, Maths! Working towards our proof of concept for industry I’m focused heavy on prepping the first moment the player experiences in the game and trying to make them perfect. I’ve been reading articles by Alexander King and MrHen on studies about why clickers and fun, the maths behind them and more. 

Here’s my current findings:

Cost of the thing you are buying needs to be exponential, without this the gameplay is repetitive and boring. However from what I’ve read most game don’t employ an exponential income rate increase due to their income is multiplied every 25 levels or so to add incentive to upgrading low level things, giving them a polynomial increase as opposed to just a linear.  In my game however the income will only multiply at key stages (250,500) meaning there is a lot of time where the cost can exponentially outgrow the income given.  What I’ve done to try to avoid this is add some exponential growth to the income as well however to the extent where it will never overtake the cost and in theory the benefit will get worse and worse per level (by tiny amounts). 

However with this system at levels 250 the income is multiplied by a bonus and the product that was once useless is now viable, but only for a short period of time again. With multiple things to purchase and upgrade things will hopefully always be viable with each other, never following the trend of clicker/idle games of making the first few purchases useless.

I’ll post more updates soon probably with more pretty visuals and more about the actual game :) 

[joshc5]

Cosmic Colours!

2 Day game jam made in a team of 3 (Sean Beyer, Gurkaran Singh and I).

- Game out soon on Itch.io

[joshc5]

New profile pic courtesy of the very talented Nicole, find more of her work on her twitter @__nuwu

[joshc5]

Squiggle, still kicking, still alive (barely). I took a break briefly as admob reward videos were getting to me and instead chose to focus on some more feedback and minor things.

Pretty new particles! Made some more visual colour changes and gem pickup, still tweaking these to not be overwhelming. Using unity particles is also something I haven’t played around with much so this was also a good test with them. WIth this I also added a tiny screen shake when you die, this will need a little tweaking but it looks good for now.

I also added tonnes of tiny animations such as a little bounce to your score total when you get a point, a grow and shrink ping pong for the ‘tap to play’ on the main menu and probably like at least 3 more.

I replaced some of the hard to see colour palettes with more vibrant, distinct colours such as the following.

BEFORE

AFTER

The biggest issue still looming over me is admob reward videos, I have banner ads working no worries but the reward videos just aren’t having any of it. 

I also have small bugs with flicking colours which I ‘think’ I’ve fixed but it works fine for a while before breaking again so I have no idea what’s happening.

Lastly I haven’t implemented audio yet as I do want to spend a lot of time on that and I worry that if I spend too long on that I might end up pushing the release date further back than I anticipated.

There was never a goal so to speak to release this game quickly, learning from other games I might as well spend more time here making it pretty before releasing it then worrying about prettying it up afterwards.

Hence my release date ideal goal is in a months time, this may be pushed back but no longer than 2 months. On this as well there is no way it’ll be released before the month is up, if I think it is ready early I’ll bust out some more testing and iterations before releasing it.

[joshc5]

Space Shot

A 2 day game jam made within 2 (8 hour) uni days!  The game is simple, drag and draw lines to fire your rocket in that directions, the distance of the line determines the force. Reach as high as you can while avoiding planets, asteroids and more!

Download now on: iOS Android

[joshc5]

Squiggle App Icon Design

I spent a bit of time today making a few icons as I wasn’t settled on the first one. So far my favourite is the first one, followed by the standard “S”. Opinions?

[joshc5]

Squiggle - More GIFs

Since last week I spent most my time working on UI and some quality of life features (such as the continue function and the highscore popup). I also spent a day randomising the obstacles which makes my score average 5 instead of 30 so I might end up removing the randomising.

Squiggle is moving a lot faster than I thought, a problem that has arisen that I didn’t think would be an issue is that I’m not sure when to call the game ‘done’, when do I decide that I don’t wanna add anything else. This is only an issue because I keep finding small things that make the game feel 10x better but aren’t required (such as the ‘new’ icon on the shop when you can afford a skin and the highscore popup).

The last big things left to do; Create UI for when you’re playing, Parallax background (maybe), Visual bug fixes,  Testing.

More progress soon!

[joshc5]

Burn Out

I started working on this game on Wednesday and since then I have been working on the movement to make it smooth and responsive. I took Saturday off and avoided the game for a day and on Sunday I had and idea of how to fix it, the new version is shown on the right. 

There are also some other changes like gems now counting and spending as well as the ‘new’ image on the shop when you can afford a new theme.

Also scrounged around the App Store to find some similar games, a lot help show off small mechanics but none show off what the game will be like.

[joshc5]

Where did I go?

Recently I’ve been away from a lot of social medias, mostly due to me being really burnt out over the last project I was working on (and buying a PS4 might have a bit to do with it). None the less I have started a new phone game which I am hoping to release in a month or so, this time I am doing everything by scratch!

So far I have all menus done, and I’m about to start moving onto audio and I’ll have to learn how to seamlessly play one track after the other using a few samples I have lying around.

** Note all theme names are temporary and better name suggestions are appreciated **

[joshc5]

Completed a purchasing screen for characters, themes and coins. Using temporary art (Obviously) it allows the player to buy characters with coins or money and keeps track of all information between sessions using PlayerPrefs.

PlayerPrefs can be used for things like High Scores, Unlocks and more.

Quick Guide on saving using PlayerPrefs

This line will set the value of “Char4Unlocked” to 1, this starts as 0 by default so by setting it to 1 after the player has purchased character 4 I can use a line like: 

Here I can set what happens if the player owns the item, I can use this just after they purchase the item and at the start of the script to ensure the player keeps the everything they purchase.

Lastly ensure to have something like this:

This will be useful for testing as your values on PlayerPrefs won’t reset if you restart the game.

[joshc5]

New week, New game

Started a new module at uni this week and for this module I decided I’d keep the phone game train going! This game is an endless runner in which the player must keep 1 finger on the phone at all times or they will lose! The GIF shows movement with the A and D keys however on phone the character follows the finger with no delay, meaning players who have faster reaction times will be able to get from one side of the screen to the other very quickly.

Total work time so far: ~15 hours 

More Info:

Crates/Coins

These are randomly spawned in set locations and the crate can give anywhere from 1-5 coins. These coins will be used to change the theme of the level and unlock new playable characters.

Side Barriers

The side barriers were definitely the most annoying part, they change colour the further you travel from light green to dark green to yellow to orange to red to black. This might need tweaking as I haven’t actually been able to reach black yet however one of my testers were. Will watch this topic as the game progresses.

Generation

This game is very similar to my missile game from last years programming module except this time around I fixed a lot of the issues that game had such as; When the speed reached a certain point the level couldn’t keep up spawning floors, walls and obstacles so you were just left with a skybox. The delay the player had moving side to side as well as the lack of variety in obstacles.

[joshc5]

Angry Reacts on the App Store

Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Angry Reacts. Download Angry Reacts and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

We made it, we finally did it, it’s over. I never thought releasing a game with apple would be such a hassle but it’s out! There might be an android version soon assuming we can fix the issues we noticed at iOS launch, also might be a post-mortem soon. Give the game a download, all feedback is welcomed!

[joshc5]

Puppy Pairs

For class we were tasked with making a board/card game over 2 and a half days and this is what designer @cassandra-jade-gray and I alongside artists Emily, Michelle and Damian came up with. It’s fun to say the idea started as a Trump V.S Hilary board control game and through the magical creative process we ended at breeding cute puppies to make money.

Free Download Here (ITCH.IO)

[cee-jade]

Game Jam #1: Day One

As part of our second year studies we do four game jams this year, the first of which is taking place this week.

I was a little worried about it as we’re doing non-digital (board) games for the first one, with just designers and artists being paired up. I enjoy board games, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with any ideas or that we would have nothing for the artists to work on. 

Luckily however, I was paired up with an amazing team. My co-designer for this round is @joshc5, who’s pretty good at both coming up with ideas and brainstorming.

Keep reading

[joshc5]

This is what I’ve been working on this week, I’ll write a full post at the end of tomorrow including a video and most likely a paper version you can download!

[joshc5]

One Page Design Document 

After watching the GDC talk from Stone Librande I was inspired to create one of my own. This is my first attempt and there is definitely room for improvement (more pictures not from google images). What do you think, is the game clear?

[jessegamedesigner-blog]

Dice Dungeon Crawler

Just completed a quick design exercise in class, given 5 yellow squares (chests), one blue (the player) and a map we were set the task of designing and testing a mini dungeon crawler economy. By using probability our group managed to create a balanced game that is both challenging and rewarding. Encounter rates were the key to managing this as we could average the amount of encounters it takes to reach a chest and return and base the difficulty around that.

Economy

Player Starting Stats: Max Hp = 10, Strength = 1, Gold = 0.

Gold Found in Chests: Green zone = 10, Blue zone = 50.

Gold Gained From Enemies: Green = 4, Blue = 10, Red = 25.

Cost To Upgrade MaxHP + 10 = 10 / 40 / 80 / 120.

Cost To Upgrade STR + 1 =  20 / 50 / 100 / 150.

Cost To Heal 1 HP = 1 Gold.

Enemy Stats on Image.

Rules

Roll once per tile to check encounter (player moves 1 tile)

Roll once per strength stat for enemy and player, damage = dice result.

Player attack first.

On player death lose half gold and reset to start.

Thanks to @joshc5​ @julian–hunt​ for working on this with me

[joshc5]

A little paper-based RPG with the focus on economy

[joshc5]

Made a thing?

Something I love to look at is Low-Poly art, coincidentally I am very bad at making said art so I decided it might be worth practicing some art. This was a small (thing?) made in about 3 hours, defiantly need some more practice!