Project 3

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.

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; 

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