2D Game Project: Control Freak
New week, new adventures.
I have been promoted so to speak to Lead design for our game project The Last Signal. With this comes a whole new bunch of responsibilities. One of which is ensuring the game is as good as we can make it. And a big thing with a game are the controls.
After we had our first playtesting with a bigger crowd we got a lot of feedback on the controls of the game. Some felt that they were hard to grasp, others had an easier time once the grasped the concept while still others really loved it.
The controls were as follows:
The A-button fires the left thruster making the player rotate counter clockwise
The D-button fires the right thruster making the player rotate clockwise
And pressing both at once enables the player to move straight ahead in the direction the player character is facing.
Also, when the player is rotating the character rotates around its own axis.
Then we had our Alpha presentation where the teachers had a say in the matter and they thought that the controls were unfair to the player, that it was too hard to move away from danger like enemy projectiles and the like.
Thus it was clear that something had to be done. But what? I have spent a lot of time this week to analyze the problem. First I had the programmer iterate on the controls so that the player could move more freely in any direction but still would be bound to rotate the same way as before. Also there was the addition of the hyper reverse but this was more for fun than for actual gameplay. See picture.
But this was too far from our aesthetic goals, which are to navigate a big object that is not the easiest to control. The controls became to easy and the enemies were to easily dispatched. It felt more like a fast paced action game than what we were going for.
Then we tried to implement a slight side movement to the original controls. Now the character does not rotate around its own axis but more to the side and finally in a complete circle.
See picture
This became even harder than the first controls and just passing through a door became almost impossible. The previous iterations had a logic to them that this version lacked. It made absolutely no sense that the character moved like this.
Something was definitely lost to the original controls. Something else needed to be done, but what?
I came up with a new idea, or rather a modification of an old idea. So if the player would feel that it was unfair to just be able to rotate, perhaps some kind of reverse mechanism could be used. So to stay with the logic of the original control scheme, rotating around its own axis, two new thrusters were added, on the exact opposite side of the player character so that now there are two thrusters for each direction. I know that this might seem to complicated but as I previously stated, in the context of the control scheme it makes sense. Two thrusters to move the player in the direction that the player character is facing and two thrusters to move the player in the opposite direction. Also if the two thrusters that rotate the player the same way are activated at the same time the player rotates faster. See picture.
This way the player can rotate faster if needed and back away from potential dangers without losing the the feeling of controlling a big thing that is hard to control.
I know that there is still more to be done. Fine tuning and tweaking and lots more of testing to get this absolutely right.
I sure hope my programmers do not strangle me in the coming weeks.
May the space be prosper
2D Game Project: State Flowchart
So another week is soon at its end and the game is coming along nicely. I sent it to a couple of friends to try it out and we also had a game testing session with the other groups from our class. Not only did we get a lot of feedback for our game we also had the opportunity to test the other projects. I personally is very impressed with the lot of them. Its really insane that we all have come this far in just a few short weeks when most of us never made a game before. I could also see that the project I’m working on is not far behind the other, quite to contrary actually. But it was an even batch of things. Looking forward to see the completed games.
Now on to my stuff.
I have made a flowchart for the different states needed for the game. I have also made placeholder images for these states so that the programmers can make it work more like a real game.
The flowchart shows the different states of the game like the start screen, options menu, the actual game play state and pause menu and so on. It also had colored lines with arrows that shows what option in the menus leads to what state. Also if one looks at the line to the high score and options states from the start menu one can see that there are to arrow that point in both directions. This is to indicate that it is not a one way street. Because it would be really worthless to be able to get to the options menu and then not be able to go back and actually playing the game. It is the game we are here for, right?
The thought process behind the different states are not so hard. We asked ourselves, what do we need? Well the “game state” where the game is taking place is good to have. Hard to have a game without it. This will not be covered in this post.
The start menu was conceived as a homage to old school arcade games. Since this is suppose to be a space shooter it needs to have a start screen where the player can check options (I will get back to this) and highscore since this needs to be in the game. I wanted to have a “insert coin” just to have that true retro feel but eventually decided against it since there are no actual need for coins. Please note that all of the following pictures are placeholder images. But the final design will probably look quite similar.
Every game needs an options menu, that is kind of standard. But what would be in the options menu? There are no options to change the graphics and no subtitles. It was decided that the player would have the ability to turn off sound and sound FX. Also the player would be able to change the control scheme if needed. I know from personal experience that when creators use layouts that make less sense the lack of customizability can be frustrating.
The pause state is very good to have since the player might need to take a pause from the game for some unexplicable reason.
To make the game experience easier a couple of options were placed here. The ability to go back to the start menu of course. If the player want to quit the game or start from the beginning this has to be available.
Reload checkpoint. Maybe the player realises that it is impossible to continue, maybe the energy for the rockets is too low or maybe some kind of glitch makes the game impossible to complete, this is a good option to have so that the player does not have to start from the beginning. To minimize frustation for the player.
Also of course the ability to go to the options menu if something needs to be changed.
These are the most importatn states for the player. This game also features a intro and outro cinematic which are two different states. A reload last checkpoint state that has no placeholder really since it is invisible to the player. The end highscore that shows the point earned during the course of the game and last but not least the game over state. And the credits so that people know who made the game.
We were told to have a very negative game over screen and this is what I came up with. Im actually quite fond of it. Aliens attacking and killing in a zero gravity environment. Ofcourse there will be blood floating around.
I am looking forward to developing these states further so that the esthetics match the rest of the game.
Over and out for now
2D Game Project: Player Bullet Design
A few weeks ago we finally started to make an actual game. A 2D “space shooter”. The definition of space shooter is that the player Avatar has to be able to shoot and that gravity is not allowed. So no 2D platformer here.
From the available concepts to choose from my group, named Team 5, chose a game called “The Last Signal”. Compared to the other concept available this is a game that actually takes place in space! The player takes the role of an astronaut who is trapped in a spaceship that has been overrun by an alien threat. Since there is no gravity the player controls the character by controlling two thrusters located on the backpack. Fire up one and the avatar rotates, fire the other and the avatar rotates in the other direction. Fire up both and the avatar takes off straight ahead. This control scheme together with the ability to shoots the aliens will hopefully become an intriguing game.
Since this is a shooter there needs to be some kind of projectile involved. This is what I have been doing. Since the character is carrying a plasma rifle the lead designer and I looked at different kinds of plasma and settled on the look of these glass balls that you can buy in stores that has what looks like lightning in them that is drawn to your fingertips if you place them on the glass. I have no idea what they are called. The lead designer told me to capture the feel of that ball but instead of glass surrounding it some kind of futuretech forcefield would be utilized.
I looked at photos for reference and started working.
I began with the layer furthest down, that layer represents the force field, and worked my way up. A clear core where the energy is emanating from streaming out to the outer shell. I made all these things in separate layers in photoshop so that they can easily be animated in later stages of the production.
This is what I finally came up with.
But! Since I worked in a greater resolution than the final product (80×80 pixels) a lot of the detail disappeared when it was shrunken down to the correct size (20×20). Also when I saw the projectile being used in the game engine i realized that it will probably have to be tweaked because it was a bit hard to read both because of color and size. More testing is required to determine where to take it from here.
There is also another kind of projectile in the game, something called Compressed Plasma Rounds (CPR). These are smaller and a bit differently colored than the normal projectiles.
They look like this.
Lots of work is left but I am confident that it will pay off in the end.
Aesthetically Pleasing To Me 