Unit 5, 6 & 7 - 2D Game Production

 

Game Design Workshop With Mayamada

On 24/11/2023 we met two members from the London-based company Mayamada. They hold a Japanese-inspired streetwear label. Including the publishing of their own manga, Samurai Chef, Serious, and Hot Lunch. The aim of the workshop was to implement our own knowledge of job roles in the games industry and teamwork to create a playable board game with the provided materials. The game had to include the following criteria:

- Family Friendly

- 2-4 players

- In the theme of buying and selling

In the games industry, there are many roles and skills to create a successful game. Those include the Director, Producer, Artist, Developers, Coders, and Audio Artists.  

When comes the the important fundamentals of game design those are spacing, components, mechanics, goals, and rules. 

Space - The spacing is essentially the environment that a game is set and played within.

Components - The components are the objects that exist in the space, such as characters, and props which the player can interact with.

Game Mechanics - The mechanics are used to guide a player's actions.

Goals - These are the missions and quests that a player has to complete they set a pathway for a character to pursue. 

Rules -  The rules are essential to make sure that the game has some standards. They are directions which help and ensure the game is played as expected. 

Here is the game that we managed to create in a given time:

 

I enjoyed this activity quite a lot and I'd say that we made a neat working game. While making the game there were multiple changes that we made in order to make the game playable and not too easy or difficult for the player.  From the starting point of the game the difficulty is quite easy however as you progress through the level it gets more and more difficult. 

DDS 8 - A Place Called Home

 30/11/23

 

Introduction to Construct 3 

On 04/12/2023 we were introduced to the different fundamentals and tools that takes to create a basic experimental 2D Platformer Level. When creating a new project we are met with a few windows, including the Properties Bar, Project Window and Layout.

The layers are used to organise all the different objects, whilst the objects are the building blocks that make up a project to which a code can be attached to.

The properties bar is where you can find all of the properties and information about a selected object such as the name, position, colour and opacity. This is also where you can find behaviours which is what you set an object to do a specific task. 

The projects window is used to help and keep all of the game assets organised used for easy access.

With that information in mind, we began with creating a character sprite. This is done by right-clicking on the screen ->  Insert new object  -> General -> Sprites. Here we created a simple design for our character using the available animation editor. 

It is important that when drawing the character that the frame is cropped to fit the character, this is as if there is space in the bottom it will seem as if the character was in the air.

We also added a platform where the character will stand on which is done by again right clicking -> Insert new object -> General -> Sprites. However, unlike the character sprite, this time we had to add a behaviour to it right click -> Add -> Behaviour -> Attributes ->Solid. Making it solid is important so that the character sprite can stand on top of the platform.

Design-wise, we added a tile background for the flooring and background. Another behaviour we added to our character sprite is Scroll To this is used to make the camera follow as the 2D character moves through the level.

We had to be able to make the character walk and that had to be done by using the event sheets and individually mapping each key and telling it which direction the character should move. In this case the character for my test was mapped using WAD keys, including the space bar which can also act as a jump key. 

By telling the sprite to be mirrored and not mirrored this allowed us to make sure that the sprite mirrors or generally flips around towards the direction that it is moving.

Ive also embedded a couple of animations for the character

When creating the background I used several sprites and on different layers and made each layer has a different parallax, this essentially means that each individual cut out moves in a different speed in order to give it a sort of 3D feel when the character moves left to right.

This can be done in the properties bar in each level and the furthest scenery such as the back mountains in my case should be put at a lower percentage on the x-axis as they are further away.

After creating that I have mapped out a simple layout with a few solid platforms. This is the same behvaiour that I have applied to the main floor. Above I have added a new object particles, by messing about with the settings for it I was able to recreate something that seemed like snow and pasted it all above the whole map.

Ive also decided to add a bunch of sprites to be coins this was in order to give the game an objective and in this sense it is to collect all the coins. In order for this code to work I had to add a new Global Variable meaning that for every coin collected the count goes up by 1.

When the objective is so easy such as collecting 20 coins there has to be a challenge. This is why I implemented three Ai that move back and and forth on three platforms. When the player touches them they take away 50% of the players health. This is why I also had to create the character a health bar. In that very sense if the character falls and touches the lava below they immediately die and the level restarts.

Ive also had to also add for when the player walk sfx and background music. Both of the audios had to be set to looping so then don't only play once and stop right after and the files had to be .webm files instead of regular .mp3s. They were imported in the Project Window in Construct under the Sounds and Music folder. In Construct 3, not all audio files are accepted. The primary files that are accepted are .ogg files and .wav files.

To follow up with the level in order to create a timer for the game a new Global Variable had ot be set where when each second passes 1 second gets removed from the timer until it reaches 0 and restarts the level. I set the global variable to 60 meaning that player has 1 minute to collect all 20 coins.

Lastly Ive added three different visual effect for aesthetic purposes.

I really like the wway this text turned out and if I were to improve something it would definitely be the hitboxes as when the player jumps from one platform to another they sometimes clip into the sprites.

DDS 9 - Planning For A Game Project

07/12/2023

2D Game Pre-production

On 11/12/2023 we began by recapping the different stages of the development cycle those including the:

Pre-production

The planning stage for testing and iterating on all the various elements of your project, this is the time when different mechanics can be tested and prototypes can be made.

Production 

The actual beginning of the making of the game, it is also where you test and implement solutions to problems.

Post Production

When you make changes based on the results of play-testing it, it is where you implement fixes and checks it is also called 'gone gold' before the game is actually released to the public.

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 1

On 11/12/2023 we began the pre-production of our game. We first compiled all of our ideas into a presentation. Having said that, we all got the same idea of creating a horror game.

After discussing our ideas, we received our criteria.

-The deadline for our project is the 5th of February

-It must be created using Construct 3

-It must fall in one of the following categories : Adventure, Puzzle, Shooter or Platformer (sub-genres are fine too)

With that in mind, we brainstormed our ideas and began writing our GDD (Game Design Document)

The GDD is a document which is used to communicate information to the different people on your team. This document is not written in one go as it developed through the making of the game.

Knowing our different skills and what we needed to work on, we created roles and a schedule to help us with time management for our project and make sure we had it completed by the deadline. 

This week we will be working on three different parts of our pre-production including our storyline, our concept ideas for the characters in the game, and the level design concepts.

2D Game Project Visual Experimentation - Reflective Journal 

On 14/12/2023 we were working to develop the technical knowledge of designing 2D game visuals linking back to our 2D game production.

Over time in our course, we have completed different artworks to help us build our artistic ability and with that, we were introduced to a program called PyxelEdit.

PyxelEdit is a drawing pixel art software designed to work with tiles. This software can be used to create tiles which can be used to form a level. We were taught about all of the basics of the program including setting up a document, the toolbar, tool properties, and how to navigate around the canvas.

Having said that, our task was to choose between 3 different characters and translate one of those characters onto PyxelEdit and create a pixel art version of them. 

In my case, I referenced the character Cisna from the White Night Chronicles. 

‘Cisna’. White Knight Chronicles Wiki, https://whiteknightchronicles.fandom.com/wiki/Cisna. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.

The software was really easy to navigate thorught and easy to pick up on. Something that I have realised when working with pixel art especially on a small canvas you would need to cut of quite a lot of the details but everyone should still be able to tell which character you are making. In this case the most imporatant features of cisna include her long blong tied hair and her armour so I knew I had to keep those outstanding features and make them pop out the most. I enjoy pixel art but I aren't to say that it's easier than regular art.

On 21/12/2023 we were taught the basics of animating using the software Pyxel Edit. Using that knowledge we were given 30 minutes to create a small animation of our own using the tools available.

To do that we first created a new file and chose our canvas settings which in my case were 4x4 tiles with a tile width and height of 40. Our minimum requirement for this task is at least 3 frames long. My animation consisted of 7 frames. 

I've animated a flying bird and here is the animation:

I am quite happy with the way this animation turned out,  if I were given more time I'd most likely colour it in better and also would most likely remove the black outlines.

Linking back to our game project, me and my team discussed whether we should use pixel art in our game. We decided not to and rather than pixel art we will use normal digital drawn-out animations. 

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 2

15/12/2023

This is week two and based on schedule this is the final day of Pre-Production. This week we created two documents to help us begin production. Those conclude with a few mood board slides linking to our original ideas and a concept sheet.

This is the mood board it consists of different images to use as a reference relating to our game project. It is a sum of the previous ideas that we all agree on. It is really helpful as it allows me to get a visual idea of what the initial mood would be for the game and be able to create appropriate assets to fit that very mood.

This is a concept sheet, similarly to our game ideas this is a written document further explaining the motives of the game.

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 3

22/12/2023

This is week three of the making of our 2D game project and we are around halfway through our production. The designs the concept art for the three different game enemies have been completed by the main artist in our group.

The three enemies include the:

The Lamb

The Poltergeist

The Demon

Each of these character have a written description in the now-updated GGD. 

The Protagonist

The protagonist is a homeless man in his late 20s with a dishevelled look and raggedy damaged clothes.

At this point of the project, I've discussed with several group members about how many levels are needed to be completed and each level setting and by taking that information near the end of the week I began creating sketches of each level.

DDS 10

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 4

12/01/2024

This is week four of the making of our 2D game project and we are currently in the production part of our game. So far I have created three different sketches for our three levels on paper: The House, The Forest, and The Hospital.

whilst creating the layouts for the levels I tried to think strategically beforehand to make sure that the player has a good experience.

Having said that, on 11/01/24 I began creating the visual game assets digitally for level 1, as we currently have only placeholders in the game.

Today we collected feedback on the current effort of our project through play-testing and we used critiques as a part of the iteration process in the game development in order to be able to apply that critical language effectively in our project.

This is the feedback that we got from that:

By taking the feedback we looked at common responses and created a to-do list we things that we each are going to prioritise for the week being.

DDS 11

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 5

19/01/2024

This is week five of the production of our 2D game project. So far we have, our Foley sound files recorded and edited.

The sounds that I have personally contributed in making include:

Walking on gravel

Running on gravel 

Walking on broken glass

As we couldn't walk on actual broken glass we instead substituted and used a thick metal chain to replicate and create a similar sound to that of walking on broken glass.

This week I mainly focused on actually creating assets and the making of level 1 on Photoshop. I asked for a list of all of the assets that may need to be drawn for levels 1, 2, and 3, this is so I can keep track of every asset that I need to complete.

At this point of the production, I have made about half of the assets for level 1.

These are some of those assets:

Considering that our priority from our previous play-testing on 12/01/2024 was to:

• Fix enemy AI (slower + less damage per hit)

• Add some kind of tutorial, whether a screen before going into the game or a sticky note you interact with in-game

• Fix key binds to something universally known, such as E to interact for example

• Fix level hitboxes for both walls and objects as people clip into certain objects

• Lower range of vision for AI

On the coding side of our game production, those have all been met. Including the addition of the implementation of the systems for levels 2 and 3 into construct.

Today we conducted our second week of general play-testing and we have received the following feedback:

2D Game Project Reflective Journal - Week 6

This is the end of the final week that we have on creating our game. It seems that we have fallen a bit behind schedule and have had to make the decision of either having three uncomplete levels or two completed levels. The more logical option was of corse to stick and make sure that two levels work since I believe that quality matters more than quantity. Therfore thats what we did, we scrapped everything that had been done for level three including the code and enemies and focused on the other two. This is the week that we made our final touch ups on everything including when the animations and final sound was added to the game.

Background Ambience

This is definitely the ambience that I was imagining when we first created the moodboard for the game. It goes really well with the initial vibe of the game.

Character Animations

I think that the animators on our group did a great job in making the animations pop and I love the way that they were able to relay the concepts for the characers in the animations.

Final Outcome

02/02/2024

Our deadline to present our game to others is finally here and we asked three individuals to play our game.
Beforehand we created a list of questions that would be asked as feedback from our play-testers and those include: 

                              -Is the game fun?  

-Do you understand what to do? 

-What do you like/dislike about the game?

-What other games would you compare this one to? 

-What do you think of the initial visuals and overall gameplay? 

 

Our game is called Quiver and is a puzzle horror game.

I asked for feedback from a few individuals on what they think about my attempt and the main good points were made out on how they like the way the trailer begins with the showcases of the levels. Some suggestions were to add text or some type of narration of the game, to possibly give the player an idea of what the game is about.

The feedback that we received from the three play-testers was:

Individual 1:

- They found it constructed well and visually appealing.

- They enjoyed the animation and said it felt float-less. 

- They exclaimed that the gameplay has potential and really liked it as a demo. 

- It was misleading in terms of objective but they did manage to follow the blood trail with instructions.

- Sadly it wasn't scary but it was obvious that it was a horror game

- They didn't encounter the lamb in level 1, but he did encounter the poltergeist, likely because the areas are more open.

  

Overall Rating:

8/10 (7/5)

Individual 2:

- Good game

- Found that the second level had little direction, and he spent about 5 minutes on it alone.

- They found that the puzzles on the first level are a lot easier as it's a tutorial level.

- They voiced that the health bar provides no use due to instakill hits from enemies.

- They liked the visuals and could tell it was hand-drawn but it didn't take away from the experience.

- When asked to compare it to other games they name Life is Strange, Little Nightmares 2, an unnamed MMORPG, and Dark Pictures Anthology. 

- They didn't find the game to be scary

Overall Rating:

8/10

Individual 3:

- Found the game quite interesting 

- Said that it was unfortunate that you couldn't fight the main enemy, he felt powerless.

- Found the characters' animation to be buggy, but he did like the design.

- Really enjoyed the atmosphere as the backgrounds mixed with the sound design felt very real when in conjunction.

- They were impressed and unnerved by the jump scares 

- When asked to compare to another game they said that it reminded them of an unnamed top-down Adventure Time game. 

- After completing level one they didn't want to play the second level due to a general dislike of the horror genre.

Overall Rating:

N/A

Game Project Evaluation

It is finally 05/02/2024 and therefore the deadline for our group game project. It had to be created using Construct 3 and it had to fall under any of the given categories; Adventure, Puzzle, Shooter, or Platformer with the option of sub-genres which is a mix between those. The theme for it was elements. After a discussion, we all agreed and decided to create a horror puzzle game. When I heard that we were going to work on a game project I was quite excited about it and so was my group. To meet that criteria we were thinking about how we could implement elements and after an exchange of ideas, we took a scientific approach to it. We thought that the idea of implementing blood sacks could comply with those requirements.

Throughout the project, we kept the same concept for what the game was going to be about, we wrote up a GGD and stuck with it. However, one thing that went through a couple of changes was the drawn assets for our game. After the concept artist for The Enemies in our group created those first designs we looked at them and changed them to comply with all of our tastes.

During the project, there were quite a lot of issues regarding the technical, practical, and organisational aspects of our project. Technical wise the team coder for our group faced a lot of issues in getting things to work just as they were supposed to. As a result of this, there are a couple of assets that were scrapped and not imported into the project. Those include the cutscenes, originally the game was supposed to have a sort of a storyline with cutscenes for the second level of our game. However, it proved a bit too difficult and was never used. Having said that, the game in the first instance the game project was to have three different levels; The House, The Forest, and The Hospital. That all was proven way too much by the deadline so halfway through the project we discarded focusing on the third level because having two working levels is better than three broken ones. It was unfortunate that we were not able to make the assets up to level three but quite strange why on the coding part of a game level three was being made without levels two and three were even completed on the technical or practical part. 

I'd definitely say that we had organisational issues for our group. In terms of keeping things to schedule and things being requested way too last minute, this added too much pressure on creating the animations and there were general disputes in the group with the correlation between the assets and codes as we noticed that we had our deadline nearing. Personally, I found making the assets for the first level not too difficult as I asked the producer in our group for a document with all the assets listed for levels 1 and 2 and this definitely helped me keep things organised on my part.

I wouldn't say that I personally had any challenges in communicating with my team members during the project however if I were to take the whole group as a whole I'd say that they were unquestionably there. 

When creating the assets for our game project I took inspiration from the angles used in Binding of Issac for the initial look of the furniture. Having said that creating the first piece of furniture was quite strange but the more I did it the easier it got with the addition of looking at 3D models for the innovation for the final look of the asssets. To save time so all the essential assets can be completed reusing assets and changing them up a bit such as the brightness and contrast for them. I was using Photoshop to create those pieces and ended up using many different transform tools such as the perspective tool and skew tool to create those particular angles. To create the eerie atmosphere for our game we had to record a list of sound effects with both the Shotgun Mic and Reporter Mic. Using our previous knowledge about foley and which microphones would be suitable for which Sfx we recorded, we created sufficient foley for both level 1 and 2 for our game. As for the sound acting we had a team member create several grunts to give the protagonist a sort of life. All recordings had to be run through Adobe Audition so they could be mixed to really create that chilling feeling. I'm really happy with the way the sounds turned out even though it took multiple tries to get them to sound the way they do.

Judging from the ratings out of 10 from the three individuals that did focus testing on our game we have a pretty good average rating of 8/10. However, if we were to look at the number of positive and negative points that were given during the feedback there seem to be more negative points than positive. Taking in the final feedback that we received for our final outcome we should have definitely focused on making the game scarier, as it really didn't follow its purpose.

To conclude this evaluation as a whole on the final build of the game, I'd say I'm definitely glad we actually have something to present as a group project. I am quite disappointed in the fact that we couldn't get the game to be completed to the expectations we had written up on our GDD in terms of having level 3 and everything in it such as the boss fight. The number of issues that were left untamed was also quite sad to see, such as proper collision boxes and the appropriate size of everything for level 2, it seems that the main protagonist is as big as a tree which is quite inaccurate. Nevertheless. from my point of view on how I individually worked throughout this project I believe that it went pretty well, though I would like to mention that I spent too long to do complete my individual tasks, and I shouldn't have to work until the last minute. Looking at my previous team project which focused on creating a 2D animation, I would say that this one went better in terms of how much work was completed in the given time. Consequently, looking forward from this experience on to future projects, the thing that I learned is that it is very beneficial to strictly follow schedule deadlines. Rather than looking for the final due date for the overall project, I should focus on when the final due date is for each section of our project (pre-production, production, and post-production) and make sure they don't leak into each other.

Game Advertisement

On 08/02/2024 our goal was to produce our own individual game trailers based on our understanding of game advertising so far by using our previously learned skills on Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Previously we looked at a few different game trailers and analysed them:

FORNITE OG

showcase of skins 

gameplay in different environments and maps

a showcase of the logo with the game name for a few seconds at the end

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

mainly narration talking about the environment with a comparison of how the game is improved from previous Zelda games

they show a bit of the gameplay of previous games they show a little cinematic of the new game showing off one of the main attacks in the game being used against an enemy.

CLASH ROYALE

It starts with the showcase of the company name and quickly begins showing off gameplay, it shows different items that you can collect and it ends with where you can download it for the price free.

Using those previous notes we picked the three main key points that we would personally use in our own trailers. Those include:

The criteria for our trailers were that they had to be created using Adobe Premiere Pro and had to be either 30 seconds or a minute.

There are many different objectives that game trailers aim to achieve:

My idea was to import a few Pngs of the maps of the two levels in the game; The House and The Forest, previously captured gameplay footage from the game and cutscenes that were supposed to be imported in the actual game but never were. My sound choice was to use something eerie and creepy as it is a trailer for a horror game after all. 

When creating a game trailer its important that they include a form of these aspects:

-Showcase of General Gameplay

-A display of the games environments

-A showcase of enemies 

-Expressing main points players can expect from the game

-Showcasing Unique features by highlighting any unique gameplay mechanics,graphics or technological innovations.

-Setting the Tone and atmosphere by establishing  a narrative style for the game 

-Captivating the target audience to explore the game further.
-Communicating the games main aims. 

 

I asked for feedback from a few individuals on what they think about my attempt and the main good points were made out on how they like the way the trailer begins with the showcases of the levels. Some suggestions were to add text or some type of narration of the game, to possibly give the player an idea of what the game is about.

Stop Motion Animation