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Week 13 Meeting

This will be the final post for this semester of work. The feedback we received from the practise pitch suggests that we need to re-focus our pitch so that we’re presenting top-down. In our first run we focused on diving straight into the game mechanics when we should have spent more time introducing the game and explaining the concept and its place in the market.

In the intermission between semesters, we plan to make more levels for the game and integrate them after the programmers have re-built the engine from the ground up.

#week 13 #meeting

Week 13 Summary

This week was relatively quiet as most of the team was busy with end-of-semester assessment. I spent most of my time preparing the practise speech for Friday. The focus was to show off highlights of our game in consumer trailers and visually engaging stills. The aim of the practise speech is to be concise and communicate our game design practise within our short 10 minute window.

#week 13 #summary

Week 13 Presentation Preparation

I spent most of my week preparing a script for our practise presentation. I also storyboarded the animation sequence for Jordie to make our first trailer. In the spare time I had between preparing the speech and PowerPoint, I spent some time with my new software – Sound Creator 6.

#week 13 #presentation

Week 12 Team Meeting

Today we covered some of the more advanced gameplay we wanted to include in our prototype. We talked about how we wanted to visually alert the player that they had pressure in the system; a couple of suggestions included having a “pressure box” that shakes when there is pressure, and having end nodes pulse lightly when pressure can be released. James confirmed that one of the mechanics – fill the node – was now working in the prototype, although it has not yet been visually represented. We also talked about the meeting next week and how we planned to present our test run of the final pitch. I volunteered to do a lot of the talking and get Jordie to do the “Let’s Play” and help to answer questions after the speech.

We then spent a while working out what to put in the script: introducing the concept of pressure, showing game mechanics, making a trailer and designing the PowerPoint. We also want to include sounds in our presentation if we have time. Corey and I will work on storyboarding animations for Jordie, and Nick and James will continue to improve the quality of the prototype build.

#week 12 #team meeting

Week 12 Summary

I spent most of this week creating sounds for the game. A lot of these sounds were generated at home using a sound recording device. I also purchased Sound Creator 6; I spent a while playing around with sound synthesisers and coming up with percussive soundtracks. During team talks, we started to talk about the presentation and started preparing the speech.

#week 12 #summary

This video shows how to add 'juice' to games. It shows that by adding aesthetic qualities and personality into a game, the game becomes more interesting appealing to players. This could be applied to our game Pressurizer. Our concept is simple and well demonstrated, but lacks the 'juice' shown in the above video. We need to consider how to engage players through audio and visual design. The first thing that comes to mind is player feedback. We need to let the player know what's happening through audio representations of our gameplay and build on the sense of progression and achievement by making little victory sounds when the player achieves something. We also need to decide on the pacing of the game and create an ambient sound track that fits with the mood.

#video game juice

Week 12 Sounds

I’ve been recording sounds this week to add personality to our prototype. My work has focused on recordings the sound effects for in-game events, such as pipes filling with water, pipes breaking, level completion etc. However, I’m also experimenting at mixing the sound effects together to make soundtracks for the trailer and ambient music for the gameplay.

#week 12 #sounds

Week 11 team meeting

The presentation went well. We decided to start preparing for the final presentation over the coming weeks, making sure we showed the full potential of our game concept. We need to spend the next couple of weeks putting our idea in an engaging context by including sound design, tweaking the art style and showcasing the game mechanics.

#week 11 #team meeting

Week 11 Summary

I created 5 new levels and 2 existing ones using the level editor. These were then tested using the latest build of CosCos2D-X. Our focus for next week is to add personality to the game through the implementation of sound and graphic design.

#week 11 #summary

Week 11: Level Editor Redesign

The editor has undergone several redesigns lately. I created 5 new levels in Editor 0.2, but due to the upgrade to 0.3, I will have to recreate these levels. Thankfully, I took screenshots of the levels, so recreating them shouldn't be too difficult. The key feature I've asked for is the ability to save the layout in the HTML file to allow for easier editing later on.

#level editor

Week 11: Designing the levels

Jordie mocked up an editor using HTML/CSS/Java, meaning I can go ahead and start building some of the levels. This editor is a simple placeholder for the main game and its main purpose is to provide a graphic representation of nodes and links which can be output into a table format. The values from this table are then copied into a text file, which recreates the game in our latest build of the prototype in CosCos2D-X. I created 5 levels to show the progression of challenge and to showcase the variety of game design assets we’re including (wide pipes, star nodes etc.).

#week 11 #level design

Week 10 Summary

Jordie, James and Nick ironed out a lot of the creases in the prototype, and can now look at creating a level editor for Corey and me to build levels in. I’ve started doing up sketches to put into the editor and have started thinking about sound design for our game. Next week I will be creating levels using the editor and the following week I plan to implement sound design into the game. The biggest priority right now is turning our representation of the game into an actual game. This involves creates multiple levels, linking them together, implementing a difficulty curve and showcasing game mechanics.

#week 10 #summary

Meeting 8: Fixing the prototype and making the game

The prototype has been iterated on by the programmers and a lot of the bugs that were present last week are now fixed. The plan for next week is to create a level editor so that we can generate multiple levels to show off our game. We also need to consider the game from a design perspective and show the player how it works, how the challenge progresses and what the player wants to achieve from this.

#prototype #bug fixing

Week 10: Level sketches and challenge structure

The programmers are currently working on putting together a functional level editor, which means Corey and I have to wait a bit before we can start building levels in the game. In the meantime, I’ve started sketching up new possible levels and am playing around with ideas. Right now I’m experimenting with the shape of the trees (star shape, pyramid etc.) and different ways to increase the complexity of a level through layout and deception, without increasing the number of nodes.

#week 10 #level #sketches #challenge

Week 9 Summary

Now that we changed the focus of our game, the team split the development between two groups. Jordie, Nick and James built a template level in CosCos, while Corey and I created levels with varying difficulty to demonstrate our prototype. Although I aimed to create a dozen levels in Googledocs, I did not reach this target – I was very recently hired for a full-time job and my availability to contribute to the project has decreased significantly. Instead, I converted three of my existing Googledocs levels into the format specified by the programmers. With the current build of the engine, we are able to create levels by filling out a form to specify the position and function on nodes and connecting lines. I filled out the forms for my levels, which were then used to demonstrate the prototype on Friday. Feedback suggests we need to add lots more art assets and consider implementing basic sound design.

#week 9 #summary

Meeting 7: Prototype consolidation

We reviewed our feedback from the presentation of our new concept in a quick meeting. While the concept itself was approved, it was suggested that more art and sound assets should be added to the game. We were also advised to think carefully about level design and make sure to focus on quality over quantity. Jordie, Nick and James will work on building a level editor so that Corey and I can rapidly generate more levels to build upon our prototype. Filling out forms is time-consuming and limits our creative potential, but an editor will make level creation and testing much easier later in development.

#meeting 7 #prototype #coscos

Week 9: Game levels for prototype

While the programmers are finalising the new build of our game, I’m designing levels with Corey using GoogleDocs. GoogleDocs drawings are an easy and efficient way to create and test levels, since the levels are readily available to the rest of the group on Google Drive. Corey and I are creating several easy, medium and hard levels to test a variety of scenarios for when the prototype build is ready. My understanding is that these levels should be easy to implement once the initial build is complete (hopefully by the end of this week).

#week 9 #level #prototype

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