Professional game design, from large and well-known companies
in the industry, to experimental indie and serious game production, is
inherently a group-work activity. Working in a team allows the individuals to
function symbiotically as a larger organism. This organism has the potential to
achieve far more than the best efforts of the individual. Much of this is due
to the division of labor and the creative benefits of developing ideas within a
team dynamic. Capitalizing on these same strengths, while also providing a
professional model of instruction, this final project will be achieved through
group work. As a team you will design, document, and present a complete 2D game
based on an environment concept. You will then proceed to implement a proof of
concept that illustrates your game with selected details explored in depth.
Teams will design and present a project plan and game design
document.
1. Teams will work on creating a game based on the project
plan and design document.
2. Progress critiques will review early game development.
3. Beta tests will be reviewed for assessing game
development.
4. Final presentations of games will be shown in class.
5. Post production, packaging and distribution complete the
assignment.
Groups will be self-assembled based on the chosen individual
concepts previously presented. All groups are subject to final approval of the
course coordinators. You will expand the original individual proposal into a
game design document, which:
1. Outlines roles and responsibilities for each team member
in as much detail as practical
2. Outline the scope of the proof of concept
3. Set game requirements, and consider priorities
4. Outline game narrative and gameplay
Living in the Wire
Living in the Wire, is the original name for the game that
we are going to create. The concept of this game was for the player to navigate
a robot within the wire through, to safely turn the electricity off. However
after a discussion and brainstorming the concept was modified to “Living on the
wires” were the robot was within the walls, travelling along the wire, though a
maze of obstacles in order to turn off the electricity and allow his friends
safe passage.
Within my team I was put in charge of doing most of the
flash animations and designing and creating the background for the game and
menu screens.
Our inspiration was as followed;
• Layout inspired by Super Meat Boy
• Background inspired by Machinarium
• Character loosely based on Jetpack
Joyride
Flash animations;
Obstacles within game
To begin as a team we discuss the types of obstacles within
our game, settling on the following, lighting bridge’s one type being harmful (yellow) and one helpful (blue) (which
is a theme kept throughout the game), a moving electric orb (harmful), a
lighting gate (harmful), jump pads (which help the robot jump to reach raised
platforms), and finally the end button
Bellow are the animations which
I created using flash:
The Harmful (yellow)
lighting bridge;
This obstacle is a
yellow in order to clearly show what type of electricity is. In this case
harmful. Touching the lighting bridge will result in an electrocuted death for
the robot, and the gamer will have to begin the level again.
In designing the athletics
for the yellow(harmful) electricity I wanted to create a more lifelike appeal.
I believe the jumping of the static images of the lightning rods seen within
the animation helps demonstrates a similar movement to real lighting, thus
helping enforce the harmful connection. Mikaela Young who created the blue
lighting bridge modified her animation in order to create a smoother animation
in order to enforce this connection.
The Moving Orb;
For the electric
orb obstacle I continued with the lifelike appeal, thus again continuing the
enforcement of harmful electricity. The orb also contained a glow within the
centre, to help demonstrate the power within, and show a pulsing effect,
similar to other objects powered by electricity. However the circular shape of
the orb is among dispute, as its almost too perfect for its effect. However a complaint
that was also made throughout the test runs was the lack of outline within the
orb, as this made it a difficult object, thus I decided to leave the orb more
circular.
The lighting gate;
The lighting gate
was another harmful obstacle within the game, the gate, as seen in the
animation turns off and on, blocking the path of the robot, and making the
level harder to navigate through. Similar to the previous animations if the
robot touch’s the gate when electrified it is resulted in the death of the
robot. When producing the electric gate
I stuck to the same theme as I have for the other harmful animations, thus
creating a lifelike effect.
The jump pads:
The jump pads were
designed in order to help the robot reach higher platforms out of his reach. In
order to continue without theme of good and bad electricity i produced blue
jump pads, However in the first trail of these jump pads i created a blue base
to go upon the wires (as shown bellow), but this blue base looked strange upon
the wired platforms Mikaela had produced, thus i modified them, so the incorporated
the wire within the design,
VIDEO DRAFT
The end button;
The end button
resulted in no animation and robot was able to code the animation into the
game. (as all the button did was sink into the wired platform). However originally
the colour of the button was blue,(as shown bellow) though as we continued into
the game we modified the colour to red, as to distinguish it from the blue electricity
and make it an object of its own accord
Flash animations; Transitions
Instructions;
The video shown above was one I had created within flash to
play when the instruction button was clicked. However due to the size of the
animation produced and the lack of time we had, this didn’t make it into the
game. This is an aspect I would defiantly include in the second version of our
game “Living on the wire”, and i wish we had the time to place it in the original
version.
Transitions;
I created transitions for each of the screens that are
displayed within our game, (the sliding brick, them fade out to new screen) as shown above however due to similar reasons of lack of time and
the size of the animations we had to leave them out of the final product, These
are also an aspect that i would include in the second version of our game.
Title;
Another animation that I began but didn’t finish was the
animation of the title when it appeared on the screen. The final look would
have been similar to the writing we used in the final version, however this wasn’t
continued due to the lack of time, and the size of the finished animation
Photoshop: Background
For the background
The original idea was to have bricks.
Developing further on this I came up with the concept of actually travelling into
the wall through the bricks, revealing concrete. This would be displayed
through the use of a brick boarder around the outside of the frame.
For the overall BG i continued with this concept and i also showed areas where the concrete has faded,revealing the other side of the wall. Thus helping create a more realistic atmosphere. I added the plumbing to help the gamer feel that are inside the wall.
For the overall BG i continued with this concept and i also showed areas where the concrete has faded,revealing the other side of the wall. Thus helping create a more realistic atmosphere. I added the plumbing to help the gamer feel that are inside the wall.
Bricks;
As shown above you
can see the development of ideas leading to my final bricks produced through
the use of Photoshop. Our original bricks contained very simple use of
Photoshop filters, which was pointed out to me in one of our class sessions. Leading
on this i decided to create my own set of bricks utilizing many different
effects within Photoshop. This I believe has helped enhance the overall look of
our game, and helped inspire me when producing the concrete look for the in
game background.
Game Background;
Learning from
creating the bricks within Photoshop i decided to continue down that route and produce
my own background for the game play. Researching about the insides of walls i
decided to incorporate some plumping into the image to help enforce the
atmosphere that we are attempting to create within our game. I also enforced
this by showing some worn down areas of concrete, were more worn down bricks
show through. Bellow are some images showing the stages of my BG
Bricks For the menu’s;
For the bricks
images for the menu screens i came up with the idea of looking into the wall I
created this by removing the center bricks from my brick image, leaving a
boarder around the screen, thus helping create the illusion one is looking within
a wall. I produced two of these images one for the main menu screen and one for
the instruction screen. As shown above.
Character texture;
+ORGIN.jpg){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
I also used
Photoshop to add some texture to the robot and darken his colouring in order to
make him more cohesive with our game, and the background.
Final product
I am very proud of
our final game, i think we came a long way in the final weeks of design.
However i do believe we should have worked more cohesively as a team, as we
spent most of the first few weeks doing our separate tasks. I believe this is
what let us down the most. However i do think we pulled ourselves together well
in the last few weeks and produced a nice final product.
There are a few things as well as my transition screens that i would have liked to incorporate into the game if we were to make a 2.0, these are the following;
timer – wave of
electricity that kills you when time runs out
robot animations in instructions
robot animations in main menu
robot animations for his friends
animation showing his friends moving through the maze
More levels and more obsiticles as the levels continue
robot animations in instructions
robot animations in main menu
robot animations for his friends
animation showing his friends moving through the maze
More levels and more obsiticles as the levels continue
