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Hello! This is my blog for IGB220 that follows my design and testing process throughout the semester! 

[thedevbug]

Week 12- Final Game, Game Testers Feedback and Post Mortem

The game has been finished (to an acceptable level)!!

There are a couple things I wanted to talk about before showing this level. The first one being that my group ended up using a preloaded background for the game, so it did not match the character at all. Secondly, we underestimated how difficult it would be to create a rhythm based game, so all of our efforts went into creating one good level. While this definitely is not the best case scenario, the level was made to reach the upper most limits of how long it can be, ranging to around 30 seconds long.

We also made a few changes from the original vision in the one page. The most obvious being that we did not include the float and dash skill for the character. The main reasons is because if we continued on this game, we would want to incorporate it on a touchscreen, mobile device, which meant the controls had to be simple to understand. If we added the float and dash button, it would potentially allow people to skips difficult sections of the map.

Cooper, the person who did most of the level design, did a fantastic job of utilizing just simple jumps to create a challenging but playable level.

Playtesting

Our playtester's were very vocal about how, while the level was difficult, it was able to not infuriate them too badly. This is also evident in the fact that all playtester's continued playing more despite the 5 minute limit. As well as that, all playtester's said that the controls were intuitive and easy to get the hang of.

Post Mortem

Now, would I gave a couple of thoughts on the process of making the game, as well as the game itself. Firstly, the major change I would make to the game would be to get rid of the rhythm based aspect. In terms of gameplay, I am not sure the way my team implemented rhythm was doing much to the gameplay. Alot of our testers said that they tuned out the music, which was the opposite of what we wanted.

Secondly, I would make the character bigger and for the map to be less spread out. There is a MASSIVE area of unused screen above where the running is taking place. If I did not get rid of that space, I would somehow utilize it, maybe with something like a flipped world level at the top of the screen, similar to something you would see at the end of "GRIS" (released on Nintendo Switch).

(One of the end levels from GRIS)

I would also just add more levels and different music, so that the game feels more fleshed out

In terms of communication with team, I would've liked us to communicate more. While the job was done, it did feel like we were on different pages, and that the work we made could have been way better. Of course, it is no ones fault (I know myself in particular can fall off the face of the planet for days at a time), just next time I am in a group assignment I will try my hardest to encourage weekly meetings or study sessions at the very least.

Ending Thoughts

Thank,,, god holy cow I am so glad this is finished (love you tutors). Even though I understand the purpose of this unit and making sure you understand the cycles involved in the game making process, I am very much looking forward to the units directly involved around the art side of things. I have definitely found more about myself in terms of work ethic and the things I would lean towards more for jobs (I definitely need to polish my art skills if I want to be a concept artist).

I hope the lovely tutor who is reading this has an amazing holiday! And I hope to see you in the remaining years that I am at university :)

[thedevbug]

Week 11- Development

Alrighty! We are on the home stretch of this semester!

As per the previous post, you can see the kind of game the team I am with are going for. The type of feel we are going for is 'Optomistic CyberPunk'. Thankfully, the people I was teamed up with let me mainly do the art, and while I was not able to get to the background, the walking cycle of my character turned out pretty well.

This was the initial character design that was heavily inspired by the artwork in the one page document made by Jinwha Jang, a Seoul based artist who specializes in illustration. I found that her works tend to fall into the optimistic cyberpunk category really well, as was instantly inspired by it. Here are the initial sketches for the character.

I also designed a poster idea for it, but was not able to complete it due to time restraints and the fact it no longer fit with the theme.

As optimistic as this drawing was going to be, I had no idea on how to translate it to 8-bit pixel art style, so as a result, the pixel art character ended up looking completely different from the concept art.

Our character was to be drawn in all black and white besides a singular colour. We decided that the silhouette was going to be simple as we did not feel that the design needed alot. While this character took some inspiration from the concept art, it was still a vastly different from the initial design, as well as that despite the fact that the initial character design met the criteria (kinda), I felt like something was off and decided to restart.

I did not save the initial drawing of the final character, but I do have the GIFS of the running animation.

As you can see, there is a coloured version, as well as a black and white version. This fits with our initial lore of the game, where the character slowly regains their ability to see colour again. I felt like this design stayed truer to the original concept, and was unique but familiar enough that it appeals to all audiences.

In terms of how the final product turned out, it still looks a bit choppy. When I was animating it, I did not have a sketched walking cycle to follow, so all I was doing was copying the previous frames, then erasing and redrawing one limb at a time. While this kind of worked, you can tell the first and final frame of the animation do not line up enough, which is why you can see a slight jump in the fact the character looks like it has a limp. This is all good for experience though, and this was my first attempt at animating a walking cycle!

Unfortunately, due to time restraints and life, I was unable to create a background for the game. I wanted to do a background that had 3 different layers, and when added to the game, it would create a depth of field called the parallax effect. Which is the effect you see when driving in a city, when buildings far away move slower than the ones closer to you

[thedevbug]

Week 11- One page document

When our team first got together and had a big brainstorm, we initially were going to use my Pumpkitty Patch game idea as the jumping board, but quickly we decided to try use a different one called Archers Escape by Cooper Heinrich. Cooper wanted to try doing a rhythm based game, which is what we ended up doing. The weapon use was also dropped, and instead the only skills the character had was to jump, float and dash.

[thedevbug]

Week 10- Post Mortem

For this mini cycle and creating a racing game, I have noticed a few things. Firstly Gdevelop is very good once you know how to use it. At the beginning I kept thinking "Gdevelop is so restricting", "I can't do anything". But the reality is that I just didn't know how to use it. Of course, there are limitations on what it can do, such as changing where the camera can focus and for how long, but a part of me believes that is just me not knowing how to code properly.

For any potential changes to the game, I would probably make it a more 3d, similar to the original Super Mario Kart.

Mario Kart (1992) Nintendo.

Other than that, I am not to sure about what I could add that is different, but similar enough to other games that exist.

I have found that personally, I need to learn how to create art I am not particularly passionate about. I understand that in the work places you don't always pick and choose what you can make, as to prioritize profits.

Anyway, that's the final mini cycle before the group work, which will be the home stretch!

[thedevbug]

Week 9- Racing development post

I have never really liked racing games besides Mario Kart, and even then I only played because I was versing my friends (and if I was anything but 1st or 2nd place I would stop playing because I am a sore loser).

I do not have any inspiration for the visual aesthetics so it won't be anything fancy, just using what has already been provided.

Here is some of the code.

Movements for the car.

Timer for the cars that will spawn in occasionally.

For the trees!

I have had a very difficult time trying to come up with some form of special ability for driving, but the closest I could come up with was shooting. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me) I could just copy and paste my previous code from the asteroids game, but with a few changes.

The same can be said for help from the asteroids game, the only change being if you get hit once you die.

This is the final product.

It is a bit disappointing, but I do not have enough experience around driving games to have a better understanding of how to make them entertaining.

[thedevbug]

Week 8- Racing Elevator pitch

I forgot to mention that I am not including weapons, as I don't want to

[thedevbug]

Week 7- Development post 2/post mortem

I fixed it! I managed to get the space rocks spawning properly. I was only missing the 'reset or restart scene timer' which is a bit embarrassing...

I feel so accomplished!

The original spawn time I had them set as was too slow, so I decided to speed them up. My play tester agreed that it was a good move, as they were getting a bit bored because they were destroying the rocks faster than they were made.

I also managed to add what happens when you shoot the rocks! Like the original game, when a rock was shot, it was split up into the smaller rocks. I managed to make the rocks shoot out at different speeds and different directions by combing the code used for spawning the bullets from the ship, as well as spawning the rocks.

I came across another issue after this. By the time the rocks had been spawned, majority of the time, they would instantly be deleted again, as the same bullet had not travelled far enough to get passed the hit box (that a long sentence). I tried 2 different ways to counteract this.

The first way was to delete the bullets after they hit a rock.

It did not work.

I'm not sure as to why as its pretty simple code. Bullet hits something and it deletes. Simple. But uh,, apparently not?

Second attempt was delaying the spawning of the new rocks for .5 seconds, which is just long enough for it to avoid getting hit. For some reason, this gave the rocks immunity? You couldn't destroy any rocks? So I instantly dismissed that idea.

Anyway! It's a working game now. Overall, I really enjoyed working on this one. There are a couple of things I would like to change/add. For example, I would like to add alien ships, and when you defeat them, you can get upgrades or find out some sort of lore. What lore I am uncertain, but I would like there to be a reason for the aliens trying to kill you/you trying to kill aliens. As well as that, from an aesthetic standpoint I would like to try making an actual background and textured rocks, otherwise the game just looks,, not great.

[thedevbug]

Week 6- Development Post

Before I attempted any coding, I wanted to try designing at minimum, the ship that the player would play as. Based on the story seed I decided on, the ships main goal is to get through a thick asteroid belt. After a little bit of research I found that the Oort Cloud surrounding our solar system was filled with icy rocks that ranged in sizes. Using this information and what little I remember from previous aerospace knowledge I learnt in highschool, I decided that the best ship design has very little width. The more wings you have, the higher your chances of getting hit are.

(Side note, Pixel in Gdevelop sucks! It kept crashing on me!)

These were the animation frames for the ship. Once I figure out how to make a GIF I will post it!

Once that was finished I started the coding process. First steps were to get the ship to move the way I wanted. I directly took inspiration from 'Space Invaders', as it didn't make sense to have the ship flying in random directions in space if the goal is to leave the system. So the ship ends up at the bottom of the screen.

(Once again, if i get GIFS to work I'll use them)

The ship can only go left to right, and is always facing forward.

This is the accompanying code.

Next I have the ability to shoot. As is seen on the ship, there are 2 rectangular objects poking out of the wings. These are supposed to be guns. So when I code the bullets, I have to code it twice, only changing where the spawning of the bullets starts

As you can see, the speed of the bullets do not match with each other. I'm unsure as to why, but for the moment, I just want to put all the basic elements into the game now, then iron out the wrinkles later. You will see that throughout this blog post there are multiple things that do not work the way I would like them to.

With the bullets working, now its time for the main enemy,,, ROCKS! In the traditional game of asteroids, there were 3 different sizes of rocks, but no matter how small, they would always result in a K.O. In a way, it was a disadvantage to have too many small rocks, as they are the hardest to shoot and get rid of. Using the assets I was given, I coded it so that the each size of rock would have 3 different looks and spawn at varying locations going in different directions.

The code!

We now have 3 rocks! But do you see the problem? I had coded it so that multiple asteroids can spawn at different places and times, mimicking the original asteroids game. For some reason, I have only gotten it to spawn a single rock of each size. I'm uncertain as to why its not working, but once again, I will iron that out later.

The last portion I want to implement at this stage is lives and respawning.

This was the code to ensure that when you were hit by the rocks, you would either loose HP or die. Unfortunately, 2 problems occurred, only one of which is easy to fix. The easy-to-fix problem was that the hit boxes for everything was too big, so you wouldn't even be close to the asteroid and you would die. All that was needed to be done is to make the hit boxes fit the shapes better.

Only downside is that you can't have inverted points, so the shapes have to be very simple.

Second problem was that the small and medium asteroids killed the player instantly, instead of just taking a few HP. I will have all the problems presented ironed out by next blog post, as well as have some user testing done!

[thedevbug]

I tend to develop the story before the actual game mechanics, as the game mechanics are inspired by the story. The story is the seed, and the rest is the plant that grows from it.

The story is-

The sun is expanding, and scientists predict that in 50 years, it'll burn up the earth. You (the player) are one of the people sent out to find a way through the asteroid field that has engulfed the solar system. There is no way around, only through. It's a basic idea, but it doesn't make sense as to why the ship would be flying around without a strict forward path if they are trying to escape. That's why the ship is stuck to the bottom of the screen. The further into the level you get, you do start seeing alien ships. I'm uncertain as to how that fits into the story but its gonna happen.

[thedevbug]

Week 4- Post Mortum

This is the final product!

I really have enjoyed the process of creating characters and implementing them into the game, but there are a couple of things that I don't think work well.

The type of gameplay I have chosen, does not go well with platformer style games. I say this because the cat is hunting down rats. I don't believe that a 2d style game play that is limited to 2 directions of movement (up/down, right/left) give the player a proper experience (or as close to authentic experience) of what it would be like as a cat in a pumpkin patch. If I were to redesign this platformer, I would make it so it was at the very least, an isometric type of gameplay. Alot of farming games utilize this type of playstyle, and I think adding an extra dimension would greatly enrich the players experience.

I would add extra skills for the player. At the moment, the only skills the cat has is jump and attack. I feel like this game would greatly benefit from extra abilities such as climbing trees to knock out rats, sneak so that the cat can hide from those particularly pesky rats and surprise them.

I would add more enemies, as only rats existing gets boring. The different enemies would also have different attacks, so it would force the player to really think about how they play the game.

Better aesthetics. I know I am knew to animating/designing, especially in pixel art, but I hope that one day I can revisit this game and update the cat, the crates, the background and add some funky other background features (I'm not redoing the pumpkins they are perfect in every single way).

Anyway, this has been a good learning process and I hope I can continue improving throughout this semester.

[thedevbug]

Week 3 GDevelop- Development for Platformer

For the general game play style, there are 3 main functions; jump, double jump and attack. This helps the player kill the rats and rodents that are plaguing the pumpkin patch.

Character movement and rat movement code. The rats are pretty predictable. They don't jump and do anything crazy, similar to the goombas from Super Mario.

Jumping on the rats to kill them code.

Hitting the box!

By hitting the box it can often reveal more rats. This brings in the aspect of rats hiding in hard-to-get-to spots! It adds an interesting gameplay aspect which encourages the player to find ALL of the rats, which includes hard to get to spots.

Health bar for the character! Its 9 because cats have 9 lives :)

This is the health bar. The picture slowly empties every time you get hit. You can only get hit 9 times before you die.

Overall, the developing process is going smoothly and I am decently happy with the progress. I definitely find that I enjoy the artistic side of game creation more, as I believe it gives me more freedom to express what I truly want from a game.

[thedevbug]

Platformer Sprites

These are some of my favorite sprites I made for the game. I got a little carried away but I am very proud of myself.

I'm gonna call this one Murray. He seems like a Murray.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Gerald

This is the Patch ProtectorTM

Uhhh it's supposed to be a pumpkin vine (there are multiple iterations of this one)

The RAT

There are more I just want to save them for the development post :)

[thedevbug]

Next blog is going to include some sketches and ideas of how the kitty is going to look. It's going to be very base level as my experience with creating pixel art and using Gdevelop is very limited and I don't want to set the bar astronomically high.

After that, it's the first test in Gdevelop!

[thedevbug]

Hello! This is my first post for IGB220, where I document the creation and design process for a game prototype! I've never been a big gamer, but I have absolutely adored multiplayers and indie games since I first understood what they were, due to how happy they made friends and family. My biggest goal is to create something I can be proud of, whether that ends up being creating my own indie game or being part of a massive team. I'm excited to see where the future takes me!