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