Platform Game Progress Week 2

By the end of this week I aim to to have completed all of my sprites for the platform game and also complete some of the backgrounds for my levels. I will then try and implement these sprites and backgrounds in a prototype level to check if all the dimensions of the images and the level are appropriate. The part of development that is taking the most time and effort is the running animation of the main character. Because of the slightly front on perspective I have to re-draw every single frame of animation and it is taking a long time to create.

I first started with a concept drawing that I drew on paper with a pencil and coloured pencils. This gave me the basic idea for the main character Max.

I then created a concept drawing for the main character sprite in Adobe Illustrator.

I then draw out each individual frame of animation without colour to get an idea for how the animation would look. These are some examples of what the animation frames look like.



I then coloured and shaded all the sprites would took about 3 hours of my time. Here is the entire set of animations that I created.

This is a video of the full animation cycle.

 



Maze game Progress Week 1

Maze game in GameMaker

Level 3 Diploma in Video Games Design

Client Brief

Create a maze game for the students to play that also helps them develop their mathematical skills

The main character of this game “Brainbox” has to move from level to level solving increasing difficult maths based problems. Each level should show a different maths problem and the level of the maths problem should be GCSE grade C Mathematics. It must have at least 5 levels of increasing difficulty with collectables, enemies.

Target Audience – The target audience is people who are aiming to improve their maths skills to GCSE grade C level. This would most likely be GCSE students studying for their GCSE’s who are around the age of 15 and 16.

Aim of Project – The idea is to create a game that is both enjoyable and helps people learn better maths skills. I will aim to do this by combining fun gameplay with maths based puzzles. I have created a setting of a futuristic school where the teachers are cyborgs and have malfunctioned. The player will play as Brainbox, a similar cyborg, who must defeat the teachers and improve their maths skills along the way.

Own Brief

I am aiming to make a maze game that will teach GCSE grade C maths to people playing the game. The target audience will be mainly students of age 15 and 16 so I will have to make the game exciting and engaging to someone of that age. I will also have to be aware of creating content that will not be suitable for people of that age. This is something that I would learn through Pan European Game Information or Entertainment Standards Ratings Board. These bodies govern over the age ratings that games are given which warn people of the content and make it illegal for people under the appropriate age to buy the game. I will aim to make at least 5 levels of increasing difficulty. This will be both in maths and maze difficulty. It will include a “time limit” mechanic whereas the player plays through a level there will be a countdown clock that when it reaches zero the player will have to start the level over. This ties in to the idea that the player has to quickly make their way to a ticking time bomb that they will have to defuse with a maths problem. It will feature obstacles such as electrical discharge that bounces around the room that the player must avoid. Enemies will roam the levels and try to catch the main character.

Progress Update

By the end of the first week I plan to have familiarized myself with Game Maker and have created the main character sprite of BrainBox.

After some experimenting I have decided that 1280 by 768 is the resolution I should use, the resolution of the screen is 1920 by 1080 so if I can figure out how to snap it to full screen when the game runs my 64 x 64 sprites will be more size appropriate for the game. I want to have 64x64 sprites because I can put more detail on the sprites especially when editing them in GameMaker's sprite editor. I have decided in the end to reduce my sprites size back down again and just have a windowed screen.

I more or less scrapped all of the work I mentioned in the last paragraph. In the end I decided on a room size of 1024 by 768 and attempted to use views to zoom the players view in.

I created the main character sprite which was inspired by these images. From top to bottom they are: Robobrain from Fallout 3, Brian the Brain from Cel Damage, Wall-E and a bomb defusal robot.

Here is the design for the main character Brainbox that I came up with. The original

This was more of an original concept design than a final image. In the end I had to change the image to adjust the dimensions of the sprite. This is because the original image was far wider than it was tall. This meant that if I was to create a maze game around this sprite the paths in the maze would have to be rectangular. This would deviate from the norm of what a maze looks like as normal mazes have square paths of uniform size. This is the final version of BrainBox that I settled on.

Notice how the arms are much closer to the main body of the robot and the main body is actually taller to give a more square shaped sprite.



Platform Game Progress Week 1

Platformer Game

Client Brief

Create a Platform game for the students to play.

The main character of this game ‘Max’ has to move from level to level solving fighting (and/or dodging) monsters which either chase Max or block his way. Max progresses from level to level collecting weapons to fight the monster and/or avoiding the monsters.

Max gets score from collecting diamonds and from killing monsters. He has to collect certain items to unlock doors to progress to the next level. This is a platform game so I would expect Max to be able to jump over obstacles / monsters.

Create a draft of the game show a word document of each level showing the sprites you are proposing to have and how it would look.

Create 5 levels, each getting harder, with progressively harder monsters to fight.

Own Brief

My game that will be called something like "Radioactive Adventure" is a 2D platform/shooter game where the player controls the hero "Radioactive Man" who must escape each level while avoiding or shooting enemies, to save the world from the evil master hippie "Earth Flower". The game is set in a dystopian industrial universe and will be developed in Game Maker for the PC.

The game will feature several levels and stages where the gameplay will vary between a platforming and shooting enemies. The early levels will consist of a power plant scene where the hero will have to fight small groups of radioactive sludge enemies before progressing to the next section. Later levels will feature platforming segments where the player must run away from a radioactive tidal wave from the left side of the screen while navigating tricky platforms and enemies trying to stop them.

I would of liked to create beat 'em up sections that will feature a basic combat system where the player fights groups of enemies trying to build up a combo meter that then lets them unleash more powerful special moves. In some sections there will be a group of enemies that the player must defeat to progress to the next section. I hope to add a level of complexity to the combat by unlocking new moves as the player progresses through the game, much like the game Guacamelee. There will also be jumping orientated puzzles and interactive objects to add some variety to the gameplay. I will also feature different hazards such as spikes and pits to add more complexity to the platforming aspect of the game. Players will often be pressured to make split second decisions, that if made incorrectly, may lead to instant death. However these are all hypothetical ideas and because of my inexperience with Game Maker I may decide to create levels where the player can shoot or avoid enemies. I feel this would be a much more simple way of creating the game and would give me more time to create a more polished experience.

Because this game is centred around a superhero theme and is likely going to be a platformer/shooter I will mainly be targeting the game towards teenage to adult males as I feel both these things attract more of this demographic than any other. The game will feature moments of humour and immaturity that will be aimed towards this demographic. I hope to suit the characters personalities towards this audience as I have chosen very comical characters for both my protagonist and antagonist. It will be aimed more towards the "nerd" culture that enjoys media such as Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a good example of a show that mixes fantasy with comedic and witty writing.

I am making this game because I have been given the task to in my Games Design class and I firmly believe that this is the kind of game, a semi casual gamer who plays platformers and shooters, would enjoy. I aim to make the game fun and charming with intrinsically enjoyable gameplay. I want players to be able to finish the game in a few short hours so it is an experience that is easily sharable with others. If I was to sell this game I would probably price the game around £5-£10 so it is an affordable fun experience.

For this game I could probably make it in Game Maker but if I wanted to add functionality that Game Maker doesn't have then other software would be needed. I would create all the sprites and sounds myself with software such as Audacity and Adobe Illustrator. I would most likely need to outsource to freelancers for music and complex artwork if needed.

The story of the game will be that the hero is an office worker in a nuclear power plant. Something unknown will cause the nuclear power plant to go into meltdown the staff along with the player will be forced to flee the facility. Parts of the building are falling apart and the hero falls down into a lower floor followed by some radioactive waste barrels. The hero lands safely but a barrel falls onto his head and becomes lodged there. Through this act the hero now gains superhuman like strength, just in time as there are radioactive sludge monsters heading his way. After escaping the power plant the hero finds out that the disaster was actually a terrorist attack by a hippie named Earth Flower who wants to rid the world of any pollution in an attempt to save a ravaged earth. The hero then sets out to find this antagonist, slowly realising that although his methods are unethical, the hero might just agree with Earth Flower's motive.

Progress Update

By the end of the first week I plan to have completed the animation and sprite for the main character Max. I decided that since the main character will be the focal point of the game I would focus a lot of time on the main character and try  to make him look very appealing to the player. This is the main character sprite that I drew using Adobe Illustrator. I also wanted to create at least some of the environment sprites that I plan to use. In the previous game I made there was not much emphasis on the environment and so the backgrounds and scenery was very generic. I decided that I wanted this game to have a much more believable and aesthetically pleasing setting.

 I decided that I wanted a setting of a nuclear power facility for at least the early levels of my game. I therefore decided that a conveyer belt sprite would be an appropriate platform in this setting. This is the inspiration I used for the conveyer belt sprite and my creation process for the sprite itself.

-First I took the inspiration picture and copied it into Adobe Illustrator, dimmed the image to 30% and locked it as a single layer which I can then trace over.

- I then drew a basic outline for the conveyer belt and tried to construct the gears that propel the conveyer belt. I am trying to create a 2 and a half D perspective that gives the illusion of a 3D environment but only has two planes of movement.

-Next I draw the gears part of the conveyer belt out in more detail and copied it so I could see how it looks when it is coloured. I also draw out the individual parts of the conveyer belt for the top layer.

-I then copied the top part of the conveyer belt to a new layer to represent the bottom part of the conveyer belt. I then used the eraser tool to rub out the overlapping lines to create the perspective that the bottom layer is behind the top layer.





-After that I coloured the image in various colour scheme to try and decide exactly what colour I wanted. I wanted it to appear fairly realistic, so I didn't want it to be incredibly vibrant and bright. But neither did I want it to be black or grey.

-I also wanted to see what the colour scheme would look like with the main character in the picture. I decided that the red design was the best and so contrasted this design with the main character sprite.

-Further on in my sprite creation I put together this mock up of some of the environment as it would appear in the game



Maths Maze Game Assignment Progress Week 4

By the end of this week I aim to have created most of the levels in the game. This means programming the objects and creating the level geometry. In the second level I wanted some simple enemies and obstacles to overcome so I started exploring the use of paths and objects. I added in the lightning bolts and tesla coils to add a simple horizontal back and forth moving enemy. This is the simple path of the lightning bolts

I then created several lightning bolt objects that have varied speeds but use the same path. This is a quick walkthrough of the first level. If the player is hit by the lightning bolts they are sent back to the start of the level.

In level 3 I decided on a simple maze design. My initial idea was to have the player search a maze for particular collectables such as wire cutters and then chase a moving bomb around the maze to try and defuse it. I could not make this work however as when the player collided with the moving bomb, if they got the maths question wrong then I wanted the bomb to move off in the opposite direction. I couldn't figure out how to do this and the result was when the bomb collided with the player they got stuck together and neither could move. I decided instead to have a moving bomb that the player could not interact with and when the player found the wire cutters the moving bomb would change to a regular bomb and become defusable. This is the Game Maker code for the wire cutter object.

1. The event is a collision with the BrainBox object which is the main character object.
2. First it destroys the Wire Cutter object.
3. Then it displays a message that congratulates the player and tells them that they Moving Bomb is now defusable.
4. It then changes the Moving Bomb object into the normal Bomb object.
5. Finally it ends the path of the new Bomb object, making it stop altogether.

 

I wanted to put some background music in the game and I spent some time picking out appropriate music for each level. I went for a distinctively futuristic sound. It was mainly techno and electro type music. Unfortunately when I tried to implement the sounds into the game, Game Maker didn't recognise the music properly and it sounded incredibly distorted and was not good enough. This was very confusing as I had tried to upload the music in mp3 format, which is a very recognisable format and is compatible with a large array of software.

For levels 2 and 4 I used lightning bolts with varying speeds. This meant that for each individual lightning bolt I had to create an individual object. This led to me creating about 10 different lightning bolt objects that had varying speeds. This is not ideal as it clogs up the object list and creates unnecessary assets that increase the file size and slow down the loading speed.

In level 3 there is a bug where one of the Teacher Enemies gets stuck and fidgets back and forth.

I don't know what causes this problem but I changed the dimensions of the object to make sure that it was not that the object was getting stuck on the walls of the maze. It didn't fix the problem so I decided that it is most likely due to the path of the object.

For the final level I did some concept designs for the final boss BrainBoss. He is an evil genius and is not dissimilar to the main character. I started thinking that maybe the main antagonist could be some distant relation to BrainBox himself, such as another bomb defusal robot that went rogue. Here are some of the concept designs for BrainBoss.

Jetpack Design

Walker Design

Main Bomb Design

I then did some basic level designs for the final level. They mainly revolve around the idea of collecting items from each corner of a small maze and then using these items to open doors or defuse bombs on the way to the final boss. The player will have to answer a maths question each time they defuse a bomb and then will  have to answer a series of questions in sequence to defeat the boss. If the player gets a question wrong they will have to start the sequence over again. Here are the concept designs for the final level.

 

These are some concept sketches made in Adobe Illustrator of what the last level of my game will be. It is a boss level where you come up against the main antagonist BrainBoss.

1.       Player Spawn: this is where the player starts

2.       Keys: the player must navigate the maze to find three keys

3.       Doors: the keys are used to open up these three doors to get to the boss

4.       BrainBoss: the player then has to answer several maths questions in succession to defeat the boss.

Below is an alternate version of this level where the player has to collect wire cutters and answer three maths questions to defuse each of the three bombs to get to the boss.––