Last week we talked a lot about marketing and got a bit side tracked with how Steam sells games and draw in the viewer. None the less I feel like I got a good deal out of it and I think I can use this knowledge when selling my own games. There is a certain amount of money people will pay for a game, tail of tails put up their game sunset on Steam for $20 which a lot of people were not willing to pay, for a game like that I think around $10 is the most I would pay. Because I'm just starting I think my first games shouldn't be priced very high, at the moment it's more about creating a port folio than making money.
Our VIRION prototype is going pretty well, all the models, scripting and UI are complete, as well as some place holder sound and particle effects, now we are focusing on creating the main menu and adding the effects before Thursday. There is still a lot of polishing to do but I'm sure we will be ready by the first play test (unless something bad happens or we aren't as "up to date" as I have been led to believe). I'm glad Sean is a good programmer, we probably wouldn't have made it this far without him. I'm interested to learn how he did the tile generation, path finding, and saving the previous tiles captured, but I think I can study this in my spare time. I need to focus on the tasks at hand. Sean also updated the task schedule on Trello so now we know what is required and what is a desirable. From the look of it most of the required tasks left have to do with scripting which Sean is on top of, the only other things, apart from the desirable tasks, are the sound and particle effects and the Play test build itself.
I managed to learn how to animate in Blender over the weekend, it was a daunting task re-teaching myself as all the tutorials I could find were based off an old version of Blender. But now that I know how to do it I can start animating my personal character. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while but now that it can go towards my LOs I have the necessary motivation to get it complete.
Recently I also came up with a new online RPG that I would like to make, it's currently just an idea inspired by 'Ark: Survival Evolved' and the "cute" design of "Cube World". I'm not sure if this idea will go anywhere but from what I've imagined I feel like it may have potential, it's certainly something to write down and plan whenever new ideas come to mind. Currently I think I have a problem with coming up with game ideas but not writing them down, This I really need to start doing. I have plenty of time to and from uni so I should make the most of that time.
Tuesday 30 June 2015
Monday 22 June 2015
Post 22-06-15 : Prototype 2 Pitch
The pitch went worse than I was expecting, but at the same time made our game better. Our concept was broken, playing out our original game in my head was fun but there were a lot of scenarios that didn't work, most of our units were poorly balanced. The Volatile (now known as the Trojan) was too powerful, the Scout (Spyware) was only useful if there was a Volatile on the field, and the Soldier (Malware) was okay but felt like it would be the only unit being created.
The battle system was also broken, every time a unit was converted by the opponent's units then another of your unit(s) would convert the same opposing units because their health was low enough. This situation happened way too often and created the illusion of "success".
The game we have now is a lot more simplified and woks (more or less). We removed two of the five units and now only use the three upgraded units (Malware, Spyware, Trojan). Each unit can take out each other and they all move differently. The Trojan moves one space at a time but claims all tiles connected to the tile it lands on. Malware moves three spaces at a time and claims those three tiles. Spyware can move four spaces but only claims the last tile it lands on. I'm a little annoyed/paranoid about the Malware unit. After watching a quick play test on Thursday, between two people who have never played this game, I noticed that the Malware unit moved around two times the entire match. I think there could be more to this unit. Maybe if you have more than one Malware then after moving each of these units the space between each of them is claimed (probably a bit too over powered but it's an idea). I like the idea of keeping the maps small, it has the potential to shorten game play time and create more conflict between players.
About an hour before the pitch we had to alter most of our game. We kept the hexagon grid which, people liked, and the only three units that actually did something that helped the player reach the end goal. Surprisingly the pitch felt like it went better than my first one. I didn't feel more confident, I think it had to with the fact that everything I talked about I wrote an hour before. I'm not pleased with how the pitch went but I'm not annoyed either, I am content. Hopefully for the next prototype we won't have to rethink our game the day of the pitch. Now we are just getting the documentation done, There is a lot of detailing and images/diagrams we need to add so that if someone else was to make our game they would know exactly what to do.
Being leader of this group feels sort of natural... I'm not sure I'm doing it right. Everything seems to go pretty well when we are all communicating properly and the other guys come to me a lot with ideas and opinions which is something I'm not used to but having knowledge and experience as a team leader is required for my future career. Last week Steve mentioned that we should have some idea on what we want to do in the future so we can start working for it today. This is something I've thought about often and still can't make up my mind between two different career choices, so I'm going to work towards both, freelance concept artist and founder of a games company creating the next "World" (an MMORPG greater than WoW). So that's my plan, that is what I'm going to work towards.
The battle system was also broken, every time a unit was converted by the opponent's units then another of your unit(s) would convert the same opposing units because their health was low enough. This situation happened way too often and created the illusion of "success".
The game we have now is a lot more simplified and woks (more or less). We removed two of the five units and now only use the three upgraded units (Malware, Spyware, Trojan). Each unit can take out each other and they all move differently. The Trojan moves one space at a time but claims all tiles connected to the tile it lands on. Malware moves three spaces at a time and claims those three tiles. Spyware can move four spaces but only claims the last tile it lands on. I'm a little annoyed/paranoid about the Malware unit. After watching a quick play test on Thursday, between two people who have never played this game, I noticed that the Malware unit moved around two times the entire match. I think there could be more to this unit. Maybe if you have more than one Malware then after moving each of these units the space between each of them is claimed (probably a bit too over powered but it's an idea). I like the idea of keeping the maps small, it has the potential to shorten game play time and create more conflict between players.
About an hour before the pitch we had to alter most of our game. We kept the hexagon grid which, people liked, and the only three units that actually did something that helped the player reach the end goal. Surprisingly the pitch felt like it went better than my first one. I didn't feel more confident, I think it had to with the fact that everything I talked about I wrote an hour before. I'm not pleased with how the pitch went but I'm not annoyed either, I am content. Hopefully for the next prototype we won't have to rethink our game the day of the pitch. Now we are just getting the documentation done, There is a lot of detailing and images/diagrams we need to add so that if someone else was to make our game they would know exactly what to do.
Being leader of this group feels sort of natural... I'm not sure I'm doing it right. Everything seems to go pretty well when we are all communicating properly and the other guys come to me a lot with ideas and opinions which is something I'm not used to but having knowledge and experience as a team leader is required for my future career. Last week Steve mentioned that we should have some idea on what we want to do in the future so we can start working for it today. This is something I've thought about often and still can't make up my mind between two different career choices, so I'm going to work towards both, freelance concept artist and founder of a games company creating the next "World" (an MMORPG greater than WoW). So that's my plan, that is what I'm going to work towards.
Saturday 13 June 2015
Post 14-06-15 : Prototype 1 Play Test And Brainstorming Project 2
I got some useful tips for the questionnaire on Tuesday like try to be specific, stay away from pink elephants (did you find the game boring?) and don't make the player design your game (pretty much a given). This information should prepare me for future play tests.
Thursday we had our games play tested Which made me a bit nervous but was actually pretty fun. Unfortunately I had some major issues that morning with my game. I came in early to try and get a couple of bugs fixed (lighting not working at start of game and arms array became jumbled after first game play) but because SAE is still using Unity 4.6 and I made my game in 5.1 I could not open it due to compatibility errors. Thankfully Sean had his laptop with 5.1 on it and with Steve's help my game became fully operational and ready to be play tested.
After watching others play our games and trying the others' games for myself we practically got straight into our next assessment. There were a few things I wasn't expecting, one was we pretty much had a theme agreed on that night and two I am the group leader. I'm a bit nervous about that, I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing but it's something I need to learn if I ever want to start my own company. So far I've just been getting a Facebook group started, contact details and base outlines for the HCD, GDD and TDD. We haven't talked about the scripting yet so there isn't much I can do in the TDD and I'm not entirely sure what goes into the GDD, but I've started on the HCD by putting in headings and filling out the gameplay part. I want to get feedback from the others to know if the details are correct and also if there is anything else we should add. I'd also like to know all their skills to know what position best suites them as well as what they need to cover in the LO's. I know Nick is good at level design and Sean is a great programmer but I don't know Hayden's skills yet. At the moment I'm paranoid about whether or not I'm being a good team leader and if we will be prepared for the pitch, I would like to get a meeting going tonight and/or tomorrow to get the basis of these documents done and prepare for the pitch (Powerpoint, what needs to be covered and who will be covering those topics).
Thursday we had our games play tested Which made me a bit nervous but was actually pretty fun. Unfortunately I had some major issues that morning with my game. I came in early to try and get a couple of bugs fixed (lighting not working at start of game and arms array became jumbled after first game play) but because SAE is still using Unity 4.6 and I made my game in 5.1 I could not open it due to compatibility errors. Thankfully Sean had his laptop with 5.1 on it and with Steve's help my game became fully operational and ready to be play tested.
After watching others play our games and trying the others' games for myself we practically got straight into our next assessment. There were a few things I wasn't expecting, one was we pretty much had a theme agreed on that night and two I am the group leader. I'm a bit nervous about that, I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing but it's something I need to learn if I ever want to start my own company. So far I've just been getting a Facebook group started, contact details and base outlines for the HCD, GDD and TDD. We haven't talked about the scripting yet so there isn't much I can do in the TDD and I'm not entirely sure what goes into the GDD, but I've started on the HCD by putting in headings and filling out the gameplay part. I want to get feedback from the others to know if the details are correct and also if there is anything else we should add. I'd also like to know all their skills to know what position best suites them as well as what they need to cover in the LO's. I know Nick is good at level design and Sean is a great programmer but I don't know Hayden's skills yet. At the moment I'm paranoid about whether or not I'm being a good team leader and if we will be prepared for the pitch, I would like to get a meeting going tonight and/or tomorrow to get the basis of these documents done and prepare for the pitch (Powerpoint, what needs to be covered and who will be covering those topics).
Friday 5 June 2015
Post 05-06-15 : Prototype 1 Pitch
So on Thursday I got I lot of good and useful feedback for my prototype, a lot of which I didn't consider like making a setting for the blind or changing the position of the player around the outside of the circle rather than the center to make it easier to see oncoming objects. Needless to say I have changed my prototype quite a bit.
I have completely removed the need for a manual color regeneration (so no more blue mana bar), removed the middle triangle, added a color blind mode, placed the arms along the outside of the tunnel (pointing towards the center), the player now starts with one arm gaining up to a maximum of five, and the need to hit the correct colors is removed. I think I might add bonus points for hitting a color with the same color on the wheel but for now it is a desirable.
I have also watched my pitch tonight and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I did stumble a bit because I was nervous and there were a few extra things I could have remembered to mention or explain better like how the player increases time or how what exactly causes the player to loose (e.i. hitting the wrong objects or time running out). Next time I should make a list of the things I want to mention in my pitch to help keep myself from forgetting and stumbling.
I have completely removed the need for a manual color regeneration (so no more blue mana bar), removed the middle triangle, added a color blind mode, placed the arms along the outside of the tunnel (pointing towards the center), the player now starts with one arm gaining up to a maximum of five, and the need to hit the correct colors is removed. I think I might add bonus points for hitting a color with the same color on the wheel but for now it is a desirable.
I have also watched my pitch tonight and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I did stumble a bit because I was nervous and there were a few extra things I could have remembered to mention or explain better like how the player increases time or how what exactly causes the player to loose (e.i. hitting the wrong objects or time running out). Next time I should make a list of the things I want to mention in my pitch to help keep myself from forgetting and stumbling.
Tuesday 2 June 2015
Post 02-06-15 : First prototype Brainstorming
Started working on brainstorming ideas for the first prototype at 5 and finished at around 9 (following my new schedule). I went through a lot of different ideas (themes, gameplay, etc.) before coming across something I like and think is achievable... hopefully.
None the less I have decided to use this idea as a template of sorts for a future iOS project. I have already been working on a game (I'm hoping to develop it for iOS) and have another phone/Xbox Arcade based project to follow. Unfortunately my scripting skill is not at the level I wish it to be and I don't think I'm quite ready to produce any iOS games yet, which is why I am putting the personal projects on pause and using my spare time to work on my scripting (along side keeping my art skills up to date and increasing).
I looked at the games listed in the brief and enjoyed the style and gameplay (especially in 'Audiosurf' and 'Duet') and it reminded me of another game I played recently called 'StratO' made by Mark Chong with Unity. I was pretty impressed by this game and would love to see the scripts behind it. This game is close to what I was hoping to be able to achieve by this stage but perhaps I am being a bit ambitious.
None the less I have decided to use this idea as a template of sorts for a future iOS project. I have already been working on a game (I'm hoping to develop it for iOS) and have another phone/Xbox Arcade based project to follow. Unfortunately my scripting skill is not at the level I wish it to be and I don't think I'm quite ready to produce any iOS games yet, which is why I am putting the personal projects on pause and using my spare time to work on my scripting (along side keeping my art skills up to date and increasing).
I looked at the games listed in the brief and enjoyed the style and gameplay (especially in 'Audiosurf' and 'Duet') and it reminded me of another game I played recently called 'StratO' made by Mark Chong with Unity. I was pretty impressed by this game and would love to see the scripts behind it. This game is close to what I was hoping to be able to achieve by this stage but perhaps I am being a bit ambitious.
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