End

The end is coming and that is a relief. Our first GDD (Game Design Document) was poor. But when we got back the feedback, we did not even get any feedback cause it was accordingly to our teacher so so utterly crap that it was below him. I might agree to some extent that parts of it was really underworked. So I decided to redo it myself since our programmers are having a ruff time making it in time. Basically it feels like we planned it all very bad from the beginning and a lot of miss communication lead to a faltering motivation in the group. A lesson to be learned. That makes it hard to redo the GDD but I simply started with putting in some more level design on art. Short example on HUD and sector 1:

Example picture from HUD chapter.

HUD

Left side of the screen as shown in the picture under the chapter HUD. Starting from top: Score, four mini maps of the sectors that needs a red line animation on each one of them to indicate when a sector is under attack, Power Up bar with grey pictures of the power ups and coloured ones for when the player unlock them and at the bottom a mini map of the whole planet that represent health. Score and currency will only be show with text.

Sector 1

With a grey background of the city of New York during a star clear summer night. Will be filled out with different houses placed in straight lines above the background and filled out with fitting style of the country and season, roads, trees, parks, animation on stars and people walking around etc. Size: 1024×1000.

So the problem in the beginning of this course was that we did not dedicate enough time for this, we had already had begun with our game following the orginal Game Design Document for the previous course and we were so focused on just getting on with that and this was a mistake. Cause we mainly felt that we wanted to change some stuff even from the start. Well, atleast we manage to create a game. But in my opinion we could have done a lot more and better. It is sometimes hard to work in a group. We had great personal chemistry but I do however felt that the working chemistry fell short and some point.

Well, you are here to learn.

Morgan out.

Finale

Good evening everyone. I have mainly reworked our game design document this week on my own to let the rest of the group, mainly the programmers, focus on what they are doing. But we are in the finale stages of the process so due to the programmers not having enough time we had to take a different approach in some important design areas. The game world was to be destroyed by particle effect, meaning destroyed by alien ships impact. Spliting like in Minecraft. But the game world will be in full screen from now on and that positive thing. Which has, due to earlier misunderstandings been 1024 x 1000.

So we had to break down the layers ourselves. Beginning with a small amount of destruction. Tearing down the bakground world and causing more visual destruction on what was meant to be the ”game-world”, originally.

And as the day goes on we are reaching the point of total destruction, when losing is imminent. Well what can I say. I painted a line over the houses which i just followed and made each house by house. Made a black outline to make it more visable and cracks mostly surrounding the part of the houses that are gone, where the alien ships and part of them supposedly have collided. I also destroyed some trees and stuff in the surroundings to get more effect.

 

I have also made different colours of red with low opacity to be programmed in over the game world to further indicate the player that he or she are about reach the end if they do not step it up.

However, I see some problems with all of this and closing in to the end of the project. If we remade this cause of lack of time I deeply fear that we will not be able to get in any type of effect for whenever the ”health points” drop and the game world will take new shapes. Then the feeling will be like just switching between different pictures. So if we do not manage to get in a proper effect I do believe that it will be BAD for us. So we will see how it turns out.

Outside from that game balancing is our top priority from now on out. Its vital for our game.

Anyway, It is going to be fun to try out all the finished games.

Best regards

Morgan

Hello!

Hello, I am back. Yey.

This week I have mostly been working on small objects like crosshair, end screen fonts and so on, but I have remade our start menu and I would love to get outsiders opinion and tips on what you think about it. Constructivly of course! 🙂

So I will show it to you first, then break it down. Here it is. The menu text will be implemented by the programmers.

So what I have basicially done, for starters, is to change the font to a more clean pixel font due to the clean pixel art we have chosen to use. The last one could have been in one of the first mario games! Remade the stars to pure pixel art like in my earlier post about the sectors of our game. I struggled a lot with inspiration what to do, before I put out the houses around the intended backgrounds for the menu buttons it fell really nude. By doing so I think I have managed to frame in the menu in a part of the game. I feel as it is a sucess. So I came up with this idea to build in the menu in a city of our houses from the sectors. I struggle a bit on the colour of the text and the background for the buttons and I wonder what you reading this think of this? On the earlier one I also had star animations which makes it a lot more alive and better looking, I had no time to finish this to this post but it I is something I feel vital for making the start menu atleast feel a bit more alive. However, the planet in the background are made with real clean pixel art I have heard from some that it does not feel like pixel art. Here I am split due to the clean type of pixel art we have choosed to use through out the game. But I do get there point and have not quite yet figured out how I shall takle the problem. I feel that it is less of an nuisance now that the main meny are covering most of hit. But this is something I must consider.

The project is now getting in to its later stages and we have our pre beta tomorrow and are closing in on our feature freeze. It is hard to tell how the outcome will be. We will see.

 

Til next time, sleep well.

Morgan

 

Remake

Hello there! I am back to tell you some of my week.

Last week we had a Alpha presentation of our game. We got some critics for mixing different styles of graphics so my main job this week have been to fix some of this in the menys and sektors. The sektors as you can see from my previous posts are mostly, but not only, pixelart and since we decided to focus on pixelart that is now what we have done.

Sektor one. I made some different stars in seperate dokuments in pixelart and replaced the old stars and constellations with them. The bakground city was to light due to the dark sky so to make it all more fitting we had to make it a bit darker. I also decided to remove the moon completely due to that it will be a lot of other stuff and boards on the screen and my opinion is that it only make it messy for the player. The animations on the star constellation and fountains will remain. And i added some roads, just cause it felt fitting 🙂

Sektor 2. I wanted to create the feeling of a cloudy eastern day in Paris. I did that by putting a lot of gray in blue sky and adding dark coulds. At the start I was intent to make the whole sky cloudy, but it proved to be to messy and not fitting at all. Instead I put in small animations on the clouds to make it feel like the coulds are moving even thou they are not.

As the marketvalue sinks, basically the player health point as described in earlier posts, meaning the player are doing poor the all over colour will, together with the music, switch gradually. Becoming darker with a tone of red to make it feel more dramatic. Also to make the feeling more dramatic and destructive the city in the bakground gradually will get destroyed and if you reached this point some of the alien invaders will have wrecked some of the houses too. But that is for the programmers to put in! The houses are destroyed in partikel effect, meaning they will split on collision.

Its been a bad week. Flight strikes and due to illness. But it is just to grab life my the trouth and come back stronger next week!

See you next week.

Best regards

Morgan

A brave new week

Last week i wrote about my work with the gameworld which have been continued this week. Earlier in the week we had our first game testing and got some great feedback from other groups, teachers and older students. Feedback on our color, design and gameplay choices. We realized that all of us working with graphics need to schedule a sit down where we looked over everything we have done so far and together do some last finish work on colour and details. We also felt that we need to put in some more work in our menu. But atleast we have something to start with. Overall it has gone real good, but we see that we have both time and need for some change. So back to this week!

This is one of the more finished new sektors of our game. Also in process at this very moment is both a winter and sahara inspired sektor.

This sector is obviously inspired by the eastern season in Paris. I know, the grass is too Green! At the moment I put in the same houses from the first one, but we have made different houses for each sector. We got a good response for the graphics on the game testing but one of the things several people pointed out was the moon. Too dark, not fitting in the graphics and also our turret, which you can see below, who people thought were boring and not as detailed as the rest of the gameworld. Which I totally buy.

What we also will begin working with next week, when we have most of the basic graphics, is to put in more small animations. For example people moving around between the houses, the destruction of the city bakground as the marketvalue reduces and a colour difference which slowly appears in the world as the marketvalue are getting closer to zero. This will, together with sound, indicate that the player are doing poor and are getting closer to losing the game. I have also collected a lot of sound effects from different libaries and started to pick out possible ones for testing. Our programmers are working super hard with implementing more worlds and the function to switch between them. Gradually we are getting there. Tomorrow, friday, we have a presentation of what we have achieved so far and what are coming next. After trying the other groups first outcast of their games I am really looking forward to try the finished products in a few weeks. I hope and do believe that we will make it.

Til next time, ja mata!

GameWorld

Hello. My name is Morgan Johansson and I am a gamedesign and graphics student on Uppsala university, Gotland. Right now me and my group are working on our first game project. In a few weeks we shall create a 2D spaceshooter from a game design document created by another group. We choose the concept of Planet Suburbia. We’ve made some modfications but it is basically a planet who has reached the point of an utopia, gathered under one state, and alien invaders are trying to destroy the living standards on earth to make the people flee the leading planet of the galaxy. Your job is to shoot them down with as little means as necessary to maintain a high marketvalue on earth. TThey game is seperated in four sector whom you can unlock the longer you survive, making the game harder and more rewarding for your score. Basically you have to switch between the sectors you have unlocked and protected them all at the same time.

We have made the game in mostly pixelart and this week I have been for example working on the power ups effect, animating effects, sound which im psyched about! Styling the four different sectors, gameworlds, of the game. This is one of them.

What you can not see in this picture are the animation on the stars, fountain etc. All the AI turrets, avatar turret And HUD are also missing. Together with the houses, tree etc it will be programmed in separately but I put some in to give you a clear picture of what we are trying to achieve. We decided to make the background a bit darker and spacey with a lighter background of a bigger city to make the world seem bigger and clear of what is part of the game. For the acctually world we choosed to use light pastel colours. All sectors are inspired from different real cities, seasons of the year and different star constelation constellation. Even some of the styling and houses will of course be different.

A short reflection of how the week has gone. Everyone in the group have done great job this week. We have been sitting every day in school, early morning to afternoon and soon we have our pre-alpha (A short part of the game to try the basic gameplay) next week and it the feeling is good. We are in phase and looking forward to a new week of creating!

Best regards

Morgan