Home » Uncategorized
Category Archives: Uncategorized
2D Game Project: Things I have learned in the process
The end is nigh
Final week, final blog for this project. As I have stated previously the game will not really be finished. It will work but it will not really be a game. No objectives will have been implemented and the levels after the first one have practically not been worked on at all. But it is all to be expected from the first game me and my fellows. I worried that we would overscope so from the beginning I tried to limit the production. Apparently we overscoped anyway. Much because of poor planning on our part. But again it is hard to know all the factors when it is something that we never have done before and something tells me that it will continue to be hard throughout our career. There are so many things to take into consideration, the skill level of the team, the amount of people who work on a project, their ability to work together and their level of ambition.
I have learned a great deal of things from working on this project. Mostly things about myself that I have never thought about before and things about planning and overall designing games. I know that I will make a better job the next time than what I have done now and the experiences from that project will carry over to the next and so on and so forth.
Regarding things I have learned about actual game design, feedback is important. The more you have, feedback appropriate for your game that is, the better. Subtle things like muzzle flash, camera shake, sound effects and many more things can really lift your game. Speaking of sound, this is something that I feel like I need to learn more about. I know that when you are making amateur movies, it is better to have good audio than good picture. I think that this is true for games as well. Audio feedback. I will get on that as soon as I have a moment to spare.
Moving on. No blog is complete without an artifact from the game. This will tie into things that I have learned. When making spritesheets, take a look at them before they are implemented into the game.
Our game is made up from tiles on a sprite sheet using coordinates from that sprite sheet to place the in the game world. For awhile we noticed that there is tearing between the tiles and this was thought to be some kind of glitch from the code. My theory is much simpler, it is because the spritesheet has pink lines between every sprite that show through inside the game world. Why this happened I cannot say but I know that it is there as seen in the picture. Look especially in the white areas.
The solution would be to just generate a new sprite sheet but the way out game is build this does not work because all of the coordinates would be wrong and have to be done again from the beginning. So remember to check your assets before basing a great deal of your game on them.
This is all for me this time
A doory problem
The weeks are starting to get few and the days are starting to get long. Only two more weeks left after this one before the game is suppose to be finished. I can tell you now dear readers that it will not be finished, at least not the way it was suppose to in our head. We we need another month or two for that.
But we have learned a lot during these weeks so the next game will be better in every way. I mean, it is hard to know how much you can do regarding a thing when you have never done said thing before.
Anyhow, the struggle continues.
Recap: In my last post I was talking about the props I have been making to fill the game world with stuff to make it look like people have lived there. I will continue this trend again this week.
I have made this generator thingie.
I looked at sci-fi generators for inspiration. A cylinder shaped thing with blue light emitting from the core. The blue light is according to our design the color of the ship is blue so in accordance with this I used blue for the inner workings of this machine.
Next up is what I call the piston machine.
What it stood in my papers on what to create was pistons. I thought about this for a while, how to I make pistons that look like they belong. So I took inspirations from the engine of a car where there are a bunch of them in two rows. I also made the pistons slightly tilted to make it more interesting instead of just making top down cylinders. If there is time, these will be animated in the final product.
The game designer said, “Let there be doors” and there were doors. As in the case with human habitations doors are a thing. For many reasons I might add, privacy, safety and to protect against fires. So these should be needed in space as well.
So first I made this door. It was more of a placeholder item than anything else. Or rather, I made the placeholder item look like a door instead of a single colored block. When used in the game this did not really work. It did not fit the doorway and it could not be opened.
So I upgraded my design to this. Because of limitations in the code the player will never see the doors being opened. But for clarity I made the line in the middle to make them stand out from the walls.
This is what it will look like when it is opened. They player should recognise the previous shape and see that it has slided apart to create a passage that they can pass trhough.
This is what it looks like when it is in the game.
Unfortunatly I can not show you an image of when it is opened in-game bacause it is not implemented at this time.
Thats all for this time.
2D Game Project: Stuff and things
It’s blogging time!
For the last week I have been on art duty and have been trying to produce a couple of art assets. But first some backstory. The world of the game I am working on, The Last Signal, is suppose to be an abandoned space ship. To be exact the game is about a science vessel traversing the final frontier gathering knowledge about other planets in hope of finding resources and easily habitable planets. But when approaching the latest planet the ship is damaged by an asteroid. Life support and artificial gravity stops to function and collected specimen of an alien species is let loose on the ship. Most researchers and staff are killed by these creatures. All except for the player character actually. Thus the player has to use a space suit with jet propulsion to navigate the ship and restore all functions to send an SOS.
At the moment we have a map made by our level designer where the player can move and encounter enemies. But the world is lacking. No place where humans live for a long time and especially not a science vessel is void of things placed there by human hands. Things like furniture and machinery depending on in what part of the ship you are in. This is the case at the moment, all corridors and rooms are completely empty save for enemies and some powerups.
So my big task for this week has been to create the art assets to fill these rooms and corridors and also to keep with the set style for the game so that the things I produce does not deviate and look out of place in the game world. Even though they are there the player should not notice them, just like a good soundtrack in both movies and games.
First off I have made a space toilet:
I looked at actual space toilets but I realized that in the environment that the game takes place artificial gravity has been around for a while and with this in mind it would make no sense to use space toilets. So I just designed a normal toilet. But it has a unique feature. In case of emergency, like gravity failing for example, a hatch is activated and stops sewage from leaking out into the ship.
And to accompany the toilet I have made a sink.
Nothing special about this, just a normal sink.
And to stay on topic with toilets I can top it off with a bunch of pipes.
These could be used for a number of functions within the ship. Sewage for one, coolant, pumping air from the greenhouse and a number of other things.
That is all for this time.
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
A few weeks of game design
So a few weeks has passed and a lot has happened so I am going to try to summarize a bit.
I have learned quite a bit but as usual, the more you learn the more you realize you do not know. But the thing with game design, I think, is that no matter how much you read from books or learn from lectures you still have to try it out. That is where you learn the most. Luckily I have been in a bunch of group projects.
The first one was a workshop where we were tasked to come up with a concept for a game based on keyword that we got. My group got “My dream is to drive a rally car through the Sahara desert”.
Based on this we came up with kind of a first person survival game where the player drives around in the desert to find fuel for the car. The player could also get out of the car but only for a limited amount of time, without the protection of the car the harsh sun takes its toll. There was also a story as to why the player is in the desert. It was the players fathers dream to roam the Sahara but he died before he could do it. Thus the player embarks on the journey instead. A photo of the father could be seen if the player looked around inside the car.
The second group project was to reverse engineer a digital game and make a paper prototype of it. Basically a board game.
My group chose the fantastic game “Faster Than Light”.
We named it “Pirates of the Saharabbean”. Here are the rules we came up with:
Pirates of the Saharabbean
Rule Compendium
Set up the Game Board and select a Game master if not one is already decided. The Game master act the role of the shop and play for the enemy ships.
The Game master will also hold the Random Occurrence Cards for the player to choose from.
The Game Master starts with:
1 D20
Shop Cards:
Shop card
Lazer 2
Lazer 3
Cannon 2
Cannon 3
Dodge 1-4 indicator
Dodge 1-7 indicator
Dodge 1-10 indicator
Random Occurrence Cards:
2 Zone one enemy Random Occurrence Cards
2 Zone two enemy Random Occurrence Cards
2 Zone three enemy Random Occurrence Cards
1 Empty Dunes Random Occurrence Card
1 Loot-Wreck Random Occurrence Card
The Player starts with:
1 D20
The player ship gameboard piece
Player sheet
1 Shield marker
1 Dodge 1-2 indicator
Lazer 1 (2 damage, minus shield value)
Cannon 1 (2 damage, ignores shield and costs ammunition)
30 max HP
The Player starts at the location marked with start and can move one movement step in any direction on the board.
Once the Player has reached a new step, one of four Random Occurrence Cards will be drawn and provided by the Game master. Two of which are enemy cards that are based on the current sector the Player is in.
Green for sector one.
Blue for sector two.
Red for sector three.
The other two Random Occurrence Cards are Loot-wreck and Empty Dunes.
Shops will be located on specific locations on the board.
Shops are the only way to buy upgrades for the ship, weapon upgrades, dodge upgrades and shield upgrades. The shops are also the only way to regain HP and is also a way to regain ammunition for the canon. Everything is purchased here with doubloons (db for short). Doubloons are a currency that are looted either from finding Loot-wreck or defeating enemies.
The Player can not stay too long in a sector due to that the Player may only move in a forward direction. The Player can not move backwards from current location.
Once the Player draws a enemy card combat ensues. Combat is turnbased.
A D20 must be rolled too see who initiates the attack. The one of the Player and the Game Master who gets the higher digit starts the round.
When the round starts the initiating ship picks which equipped weapon they want to use to attack with. Two weapons of the same type can be attached to the ship at the same time.
A D20 will be rolled at the start of every round as a Dodge roll to see if the attacker hits or misses the target. If the number exceeds the Dodge roll value, the attacking ship hits, if not it misses.
Lazer attacks do the damage mentioned in its respective card minus the shield value of the targeted ship.
Cannons do the damage mentioned in its respective card, ignores the shield value and removes one cannonball from the inventory.
When HP reaches zero, the targeted ship is destroyed. If the Player is destroyed the game is lost and the Player has to start over from the beginning of the game.
When the final boss is defeated, the Player wins.
Set sail and go forth, become a legend among The Pirates Of The Saharabbean!
This is the gameboard that I made
After that I ended up in another group and we were to make another game concept based on what a randomize story generator gave us.
The concept became a survival horror stealth game about a 40 year old woman seeking answers about her husband that got lost at sea. Set in the 19th century harbor town.
And lastly the current group project where we are to come up with a concept for a space shooter. Space in this means that the game do not have any gravity. Also we got key words this time as well, desert and noir.
First time blogging
Hello world!
I’m a student at Uppsala Univeristy Campus Gotland and I’m studying “Game Design and Graphics”.
I’m suppose to share my work and experience with the world so this is what I am doing.
I’ve never done this kind of thing before so bare with me on my first lousy steps into this blogging thing.
I want to make game better for everyone, a better kind of experience, that’s why I’m studying this. I think it’s going to be one heck of a ride.
So far it’s been kind of fun learning how to analyze games. But the road is long and there are a lot of steps still left to take. I hope I don’t disappoint myself.
Ciao for now
Aesthetically Pleasing To Me 