Unit 68 - Computer Games Design

Research and Developmet

Pitch and development

This unit is about designing a game in a group. Me and a group of four others came together and put a bunch of ideas to come up with a game. I assigned everyone with tasks I knew they were most strong at doing i.e Carl was good with modelling, Luke and Alex was good at drawing and Phil was good at programming.

I started off by doing my own game research by filling out a table with various games. I'd have to right next to the game whether the game is a 1st person game or a 3rd person game, what genre it is, when it came out etc. Here is the research below:

The two games that I am going to compare/bring up a lot which are Sonic the Hedgehog with Portal 2. Both those games are massively different in so many ways and this is what we are going to compare. I will also be including other examples of other games as well as an extra source of research and to show that I am capable of explaining into further detail about more than just two games. 

Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2D Side Scroller Arcade game. Portal 2 is a First Person Puzzle game that uses two portals to complete various puzzles throughout the game. The difference between 2D and 3D is that one uses sprites and the other uses polygons, Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2D that involves very little control. Games throughout the generation has evolved into a more complex state. Allow me to explain. In 1991 (The year the first Sonic game was released), to move your character, it was a simple left or right button, than maybe another one to jump and another one to attack. Thats literally four buttons to press in order to interact with the game. Games now-a-days use many other buttons that could trigger a combo with some games or in this case, fire portals, walk around at any point in the 360 degree angle. 

Games that were made back in the 90's were brilliant for it's time. It was new to people and had an addictive value towards it which encouraged people to play more and more of these games. Technology was limited as well back in the 90's so having a highly graphical game back then really wasent going to happen. With the technology and resources that games developers have available to them now, it was possible to make games like Portal 2, Crisis 3, Divinity: Original Sin etc.

Despite what year we live in now, games are still influenced and are remembering the type of games we had back in the day. A good example of this would be Limbo. Limbo is a greyscale side scroller that uses sprites like Sonic the Hedgehog. It uses various elements in the game to solve (what turns out to be) quite complex puzzles. Like Sonic, Limbo uses a very basic control scheme, left and right to move, one button to jump and one button to grab objects. Because of Limbos greyscale theme, it adds atmosphere and depth to the entire game making it immersive for the player and a fun experience when you complete it. 

I'm comparing Portal 2 to Sonic simply because it's really clear to see the how much gaming has improved. Sonic the Hedgehog came out when the genration of games started, making it one of the first games. Portal 2 came out in 2011 and was really hyped up about the new elements that had been added to the game and wanted to uncover the dark plot behind aperture science. This all evolved from games like sonic, one of the first games that encourage a massive variety of what we have today. People would go as far to say that games like Sonic are the birth of life changing experience.

Rather than go straight into making this game, I had a look at another game with my friend Cameron. This was a great source of research for me because I was asked question about a game that I hadn't played before which got me thinking more about it and the overall mechanics of the game.

The game I played as a source of research was BTD (Bloons Tower Defence) which is a strategic tower defence game all about destroying the balloons that go around the path. The video below is footage of me playing BTD with Cameron.

As you can see I got really into the game and was able to answer Cameron's questions quite fluently and easily. This was because I found the game fun and easy to play, making me more interested about it and picking things up about the game more easier.

Now, onto our game itself. Well all had really good ideas and were all becoming more enthusiastic about these ideas and then decided to just throw them all together and see what we end up with. Believe me when I says this, is was the easiest success I've ever I'd ever done.

Our game is a first person horror maze game which is about a 27 year old man named Jack that has been put into a coma due to a fight that broke out in his own house between him and a robber. This robber broke in and murdered his daughter by hanger her in the center of the living room, this is the first thing Jack sees when walking into his house. He runs up to his daughter and takes the rope off her neck then turns around to see a guy all dressed in black swinging at him with a metal pipe. Jack is now in a coma and you are playing what he is seeing during the coma.

My involvement in the pitch was video editing. Using Sony Vegas I done several edits into making the pitch although I feel that I can easily improve it and make it so much better. I'm not so happy with how our pitch turned out but due to the lack of time, I had to quickly put it all together.

PITCH

After we completed the pitch, we all worked on a 10 page project. Everyone in our group got given specific subjects that we would write about, mine being the character page, gameplay and budget. Our Tutor Mike sent our pitch over to the industrial pennel for them to watch and give feed back from, here are their comments and thoughts:

Industry Person 1 -

• Very bad start – talking head is not interesting,  first 15 seconds vital
• Weird music in the background – either picked up unintentionally, or not a good mix and level for the game theme.
• Video of creating the levels is good – need more
• Talking head explaining what he’s done is not interesting or relevant.
• Would not make it more than 30 seconds into the video
• Game concepts come out of nowhere – teleport is first bit I understand, came out of nowhere.
• Finally got to the Live action trailer – they need to start with this, it has impact. Although using a toilet
in that video is questionable unless they can make it relevant.

Industry Person 2 -

A man comes home to find his daughter hanging  form the ceiling. This is a very brutal story line that
might appeal to some people but I think it might be a bit much for many people to swallow. I like the
idea of portal doors that take you through to other areas of the map. This could be an interesting puzzle

challenge.

Industry Person 3 -

Great to see a lot of detail in the dev process, but it would have been nice to see some snippets of the game in action – there wasn’t a lot explained in terms of moment to moment gameplay. It’s a popular style of game though, and people are actively looking for indie horror games at the moment.

My thoughts on all three industry comments:

A you can see there are a lot of mixed reviews here regarding mine and my groups pitch. Industry person 1 didn't seem to happy with the pitch and seemed like he would quite happily let our game fall to the ground (aslo i've saw the games he's made and they are just meh). I agree with him when he said that the first fifteen seconds of the pitch is vital, we need to grab the viewers attention almost immediately to keep them interested. The background music I added into the pitch didn't suit the style of the game due to the fact that our game is a first person horror maze game so getting some music that would fit that style of genre could be an improvement. On the third point, Industry person 1 did state that the footage of the creating the levels was good and that we should include more, this I also agree with because that then gives the viewers a more clearer image of roughly what our game is going to look like. This could then possibly increase our chance to reaching our kick-starter goal of 25p.

After the editing process of editing the pitch, I didn't have a role left to get on with, so I then took on the position of making one of the levels.

It may look like i;ve skipped a head bit, but essentially all that is, is a block that has been extruded a lot. I managed to get the basic "shell"of the level, it was suppose to represent a hospital.

Me and a friend of mine (Carl) designed some m
models and props for our level such as the bathroom area. This obviously includes toilet cubicles, sinks etc. We would have had a lot more in our game, but the group was no in most of the time so me and Carl had to make do with the amount of time/resources we had in order to get something done for the deadline.

Was was left was to then get textures. At this point the deadline was in a few minutes, so we didn't have enough time to make our own. We got a few from the internet that we feel would suit out level.

2D Game (On my own)

Unlike the 3D game, the 2D game was an independent project that I was putting together myself. The program that I am going to be using is called RPG Maker XP, which program used to specifically design and create your own RPG game. Hence why it's called "RPG Maker" ....

The plot to this game is completely different to the one in my groups 3D game. In fact my 2D game is going to be a simple quest. I had the idea of you play as boy, who wakes up in his bedroom. There's not much to do in this bedroom besides the fact that you can look around. Eventually you will see a staircase that indicates is going down, meaning that you're on the floor above. Once you get downstairs, you will trigger an event that your mum with give you, indicating to go get a special item for her that is locked away in a chest somewhere. She says that she has lost the key somewhere in the house and it's your job to find the key, get to the chest taking on any threats that stand in your way and obtain the special item to hand over to your mum.