Personal Reflection

This trimester has been quite interesting and I feel I have learnt a great deal about being an effective designer and leader figure. I believe both my soft and hard skills have increased over the past trimester however struggle to recall a lot of what I've learned as it is easy to learn something new and have it fall into your long term memory banks without realizing it has happened. That being said I'll do my best to cover the work I have done over the past trimester and the knowledge I have obtained working on the projects and with the team at the end.

Sorrow

Sorrow was the one week project were players control a character who's goal is to help as many people as possible while running the risk of gaining negative effects to his own mental state.

I am quite pleased with the projects I have completed this trimester. The goal was to overwhelm players with stress of helping others and make them feel bade for taking time for themselves. Sorrow wasn't just a lot of fun to make but turned out as intended. Of course there were a few changes made that weren't apart of the original design and I would have liked to alter if I had given myself the time. The primary one was the ending. By removing an end state players were meant to feel the constant and overwhelming stress of being the sort of person who cares for others but never takes the time to care for themselves. Unfortunately the intended result did not take effect, instead players assumed the game was not finished as their was no ending, even a lose would have sufficed. Thankfully the majority of players understood what the message was so I consider this project an overall success.

I didn't get the proper animations in, although I have made the and they work. Because of the way I made the sprites the animator in Unity did not like me using a single framed sprite with the walk animations. However, thanks to what I've learned about animating in Unity (and animating in general), I now know how to split up animations in Unity via time frames. This means I can have all the animations for each sprite in one Gif and split them up based on the time they begin and end. I am yet to test if this actually works with 2D animations but as it works with 3D I believe it will work the same. This will be useful for the personal projects I intend to start over the holidays, both my 2D and 3D game ideas can use this technique.

This is also the first time I have used separate sprites for one entity. As I needed to change the facial expressions of the player character and NPCs and keep them walking I didn't want to create a massive sprite sheet with variations of the characters' walk cycle with different expressions. So instead I made a sprite sheet for the walk cycles but had the heads separated. I am very pleased with how effective this was and will no doubt use it again in the future. I felt that players would become more emotional when the NPC's died so I took inspiration from The Binding Of Isaac and modeled the characters after the Isaac character.

There were some things I struggled with on this project, mainly the spawn cycle for the NPCs. I wanted to spawn a set amount in random locations over a series of waves. With the help from Ian and Sean I was able to complete this task and learn a bit more about for and while loops.

Apart from scripting, which I always feel I need to improve, audio is the only thing I am not confident about. I made the sound effects for this game myself but they turned out terribly and were unfortunately removed from the final product. I understand how to format audio and use the proper software, but making sound effects to record is not my strong point.

First Horror

First Horror, originally called First Day Horrors, was about a young girl being terrified of her first day of school. It visually shows her emotions as a dark and terrifying forest filled with monsters. The goal of the player is to reach the gate at the end while pushing back the monsters using the light of the child's teddy bear.

I was unsure if this game would create the intended emotion from the players. Thankfully the horror aspect work better than I anticipated. By making the player a young child, having the camera high, creepy sound effects and jump scares players were meant to feel as the child would, frightened, alone and afraid to move forward. I took inspiration from Dead Space after watching a video about how it's effects were created. A lot of the sound effects and sudden changes to the environment were merely meant to scare players and didn't put them in any actual danger. I did this with the sound effects and wolf that runs past the player.  I remember hearing that people, both male and female, are more protective over female children than male,  however I'm not sure how accurate this is, this is why I went with a female child for the player character.

I also tried to incorporate film theory into this game by having quiet moments just before a jump scare or an attack. After attempting this I learnt that in films they actually give the audience a chance to begin a moment of relief before suddenly scaring them. Just something to remember for future projects.

Unfortunately the final scene was incomplete because the teacher animation wasn't working. I'm not entirely sure what the issue was, the animation would run just fine in the editor but screwed up in the scene and builds. I was unable to fix this issue before the final play through.

I was also required to create some of the models for the environment and didn't get the teacher animations until the night before the final build was due. This is when I decided to work on being a better team leader for the third project.

As a bit of an added effect I wanted to create fading transitions between scenes. This gave me the opportunity to learn about lerping the color/opacity of images and use coroutines. There is still a lot I need to learn about scripting but I feel my current amount of knowledge will allow me to create my own publishable projects in the future.

Zurvivor

Zurvivor was the major team project shown at the gallery exhibition. It is a four player non-violent survival game where players are trapped for five days in a zombie infested town. They must gather food and medicine and remain uninfected when help arrives.

The primary goal was to create distrust between players and by giving them a means to back stab one another I believe this goal was met. Although we had some major communication issues during this project I am pleased with how it turned out. Players act as intended, the game allowed them to both use teamwork, work alone or completely stab the other players in the back to survive. The documentation could have been done much sooner, before production started in fact. I did, however, learn a template to use for writing the various documents including the design documents, team and project management, and gantt charts.

I also learnt a lot about enhancing the feel of a game. Like mechanics, there is a near unending amount like particle effects, screen shakes, pauses in frames, color, size and variety of objects. After watching a video on enhancing game feel I learnt that games like Street Fighter actually freeze the game for a fraction of a second when an attack contacts the other player to increase the feel of the impact. I found out that you can use the alpha is an image to create ripple effects on the scene and separate and alter the position of the color channels. These are things that I would like to learn and experiment over the holidays.

I decided to take the time of this project to learn and work on becoming a more effective team leader. Unfortunately I failed to be a decent leader (I may be being hard on myself), but I did learn how morality can significantly affect production and will need to take this into account during future projects as well as making sure that team members are not only skilled at their field but also enjoy the work/learning new things. This I find is the primary cause of why communication failed during the majority of this project.

After attending the exhibition I have noticed that I've become a lot more self confident and sociable, it has become easier to talk to people and pitch the games I have made or contributed to as well as their functions clearly and in a more natural manner.

Since completing Zurvivor I feel video games is one of the best forms of social interaction we have to date. I still like seeing it as a form of art medium but where as television shows and movies develop trust between the audience and characters video games, and games in general, also allow the trust to develop between the players themselves along with in game characters.

Close Out

As stressful as the final half of the trimester was I am happy with the way it all turned out and feel I have learnt a lot about myself and new skills. I have learnt a bit more about scripting as well as new techniques that will help me create more entertaining games including new animation techniques, creating emotion and ways of enhancing the feel.

Holiday Period

Over the holiday period I intend to use what I've learnt this trimester to work on my own personal projects as well as continue working on Virion to get it out on market asap. From what I've seen the games industry in Australia is primarily indie which is why I've been trying to increase my knowledge in scripting, as a designer I feel it is a part of the job description to have multiple skills, or wear many hats as they say. I am still unsure as to how to become an effective world builder but for online games but for now I think I will focus on getting into the industry. I know world building does not just focus on MMOs so I intend to work my way up from indie to AAA and finally create my own team dedicated to creating an immense MMO. I would like to do more research on the lives and work process of current designers of online games to get a better feel as to what I intend to be and the work that goes into building worlds which I will also do over the holiday period.

There is currently an App game I have been working on for a while now but it has been mostly concept work, so I will be making it my primary focus along with Virion over the next two months. I am unsure if I will be attending the Make A Thing this time or if I would use the time to do my own personal Make A Thing where I will focus on getting as much done on my personal project.

The final year is also upon us and so I will need to prepare myself for getting a job in the industry. This means I will need to update my portfolio, online profile and resume over the holiday as well, just so that I am fully prepared and not leaving anything to chance. I have already begun my own itch.io ccount nd may continue using that as my games porfolio, I also have an old art portfolio that I should update. I look forward to a busy holiday period and hope to learn a lot more before the beginning of the next trimester.

Itch.io page : http://rowan-patman.itch.io/

Third Project - Postmortem

For the past six to seven week a team and I have been working on the development of our trust based game Zurvivor. We were tasked with creating a game based around trust and so Zurvivor focused on the idea of distrust between the players of this game. We found that it was very easy to fall into the trap of developing the game around team work as trust and teamwork contain very similar properties and as trust is more easily established between people than NPCs we chose to make this a multiplayer game, however this did make it easier to accidentally focus on teamwork. Although teamwork is involved I feel the trust aspect remained the central point for the primary mechanics.

Overall I think the game was a complete success, all the core mechanics were in will only one known bug/issue unsolved and there were no complaints during final playtests and exhibition. All the main mechanics were essentially complete by week three even though the documentation was incomplete.Having the game functional so early gave us plenty of time to get the assets and polish in before the final exhibition. The map looked good in the end as did the particle effects and audio.

I feel the game gave the intended results. It allowed players to work in teams or be selfish and stab them in the back, it plays out as intended. I think the level of trust in this game is adequate.

Documentation took forever to complete as things were constantly changing and because things were always fluid it made it difficult to keep a solid idea down. The first week was wasted trying to create a decent idea. I imagined my first one to be pretty entertaining giving players the ability to use each other as bait to allow themselves to escape with their loot and the other players’. I’m not entirely sure what the issue was with that idea, apparently the trust aspect was not strong enough. People liked the next idea however I did not. It was nothing more than a re-skinned Ultimate Werewolf, so I went with the final idea but took aspects of the others along with it, primarily the distrust between players found in the first idea and the voting mechanic of the second.

The art assets were never completed. We had one placeholder animation for the player running and placeholder containers. We got the zombie walk animation online and I ended up completing the final versions of the map and containers myself with help on detailing the map. The art assets were our main concern for roughly three to four weeks.

As usual communication was a major issue, either people weren’t replying or took forever to do so. I also think morality was a big problem, with people getting sick and stressing about other work a lot of the time was taken out of this project. Me being pushy probably didn’t help either, however if I didn’t push to get the work done on time then it would never get done, I still need to learn how to be a more effective team leader.

Although all the mechanics were in by the end I feel like some were lacking or needless. There could have been more for players to do during the day stages and the night votes weren’t really needed. That being said it was not bad work for six weeks and work can still be added in the future.

There was one bug by the end. The safe zone would occasionally not register if a player was inside the zone. This wasn’t a major issue, because we added the “drop box” mechanic, where players drop 70% of their resources in a crate, any lost resources would be within the safe zone. The only time this would be an issue is if it was the last/only player to have resources and their was no food in the team resource pool and that player passed out due to starvation. The only other issue was if players passed out on another floor, the arrow on other players would point outside the border because of the way the levels were laid out.

Before production can commence the documentation needs to be complete as do deadlines, risk management and work delegation. Though the GDD will constantly be changing over the course of the project the HCD needs to be completed before so. I need to learn to either stick to an idea or burn it, too much time was wasted coming up with a decent idea. Communication has gotten a little better, the problem wasn’t the sources used for communication and collaboration but the want to do so.

Mortality was low considering the amount of stress everyone was under. This meant very little work was done over the course of this project, I will need to develop better risk management and take moral into consideration in future projects and figure out a way to deal with it. I also think working with 2D animation had something to do with a lack of moral, the university focuses on 3D animation and so very little know how to efficiently create 2D animations causing them to shy away from it, focusing on work involving 3D animation.

Personal - Research Part I : 12-12-15

I've spent the weekend researching and reading chapters about meaningful game design, metaphors and mechanics, along with getting over a sickness. I read some stuff from Rules of Play talking about teaching a player the rules of a game and how completely changing the rule can arbitrarily punish the player and make what the player had already learned worthless. So keep things consistent and don't break the rules unless necessary, same principles apply to film too and I have already learnt this in film at high school. It goes on to say a way to remedy the situation could be by adding visual details that tell the player the difference between to similar objects. This will tell the player between right objects and the wrong objects, "Blue buttons open secret doors. Red buttons unleash fireballs of doom." Again something I already know, but perhaps revealing the difference after the player has interacted with it could be a way to teach the player? After reading this I thought of Fallout and how players require terminals to open security doors or red buttons to open secret doors. This doesn't just apply to doors and buttons though, it could be any mechanic, What attack can be blocked, what enemies can be hurt, what terrain can be traversed, etc. Having the difference between mechanics creates "meaningful play".

Something I didn't think of is how mechanics, like traps and secret doors, using similar objects could cause players to pay closer attention to their environment searching for anything new that may lead to new mechanics an experiences, as stated in the chapter Games as the Play of Meaning. Players are curious and when they discover something new to interact with they will most likely try it out. If the already know blue buttons open doors and come across a red button, they may press it and learn that it activates a fireball trap that automatically kills them. Curiosity really did kill the cat, but at least it now knows what red buttons do. This could be considered an intentional death by the game or a death by player mistake if the player had a means to press the button through another entity like another player or a bullet, But the player won't know how to do this if they don't already suspect the button to be hazardous. Teaching the player by making them interact with the mechanic could make them frustrated if the mechanic is designed to punish them. Not sure if the author of this book thought of that has I haven't come across them mentioning how to avoid the negative effects of learning through interaction.

I'm going to space what I've learnt across multiple blog posts as it would be too long a read having it all on the one post and also I'm still reading the chapters myself. In an unrelated note I have completed the new helicopter image and will begin working on the zombie eating sprite. I have made the chopper and blades separate so the blades can be spun through script without affecting the chopper.

Third Project - Assets, Final Level Layout : 06-12-15

Still haven't received any new assets from the animators so as a precaution I have made my own containers as well as sprite sheet versions to use while we wait for the final assets if they are ever completed. I have also created new stairs and the particle effects for blood and spray paint fume. The blood will be dropped by players when they are injured by a hazard. The pain fume will appear around the player when they are painting marks around town. The particle is white but will be changed to the color of the player creating it in game.

I did hear from Jo asking if I wanted her to do anything on the final map, I told her that she could make it look a little dirty by adding mud and cracks to the roads, pathways, and buildings and add some abandoned vehicles around the streets. Hopefully this fills the town a bit more making it look like there were more people but have left before the quarantine came into effect. Right now the map looks quite bare with only the houses having furniture.

I've been keeping the GDD up to date and have also created a small "project management" document highlighting communication source, file locations and milestone checklists. It needs more work but I'm not entirely sure what else goes into it, this may be something discussed with Brendan tomorrow.

Third Project - Documentation, New Level Layout & Place Holders : 23-11-15

I created a Level Design Document for Sean covering the new map layout, floors, buildings, resource point locations and items and hazard locations. I believe the everything should now be in the GDD apart from more images and reorganizing, currently I've been working on a story board for it showing what a player will see from beginning to end.

The new level is much bigger than the grey box and has more than just houses. I've added a fuel station, corner store, arms store, warehouses, and a hospital. At the moment there is no interiors or way to make out which building is which, apart from the coloration and size, but this is just a place holder level to use while waiting for the proper assets to be completed. I may change the arms store to another corner store depending on whether or not people would prefer to keep the current melee attacks or have it changed to ranged attacks, I think I'll add it to the Questionnaire for the next play test. Hunger will also be re-added as it will give players a proper reason to leave the safe house. Right now if the players wanted to they could just remain hidden in the safe zone all game and now that we are keeping the zombies from entering the safe zone players may be able to exploit this problem. Also to keep them from running back into the safe zone every time things get too dangerous the players won't be able to enter the safe zone, once they have left, until the final thirty seconds.

I have created place holder assets for the UI and tutorials, they include the inventory box, food, meds, and weapon (melee and ranged) icons, arrows, vote icons (player colors, and sleep) and button icons. Just in case we do go with ranged attacks I have created the ranged icon along with the rest. I still need to create the "straight to helicopter" icon for the end vote as well as a border for the hunger and stamina bars (which will probably be UI scroll bars). I'm still waiting on the other place holder assets from the animators and haven't heard much from them. So far I've seen Ben working on the animations and has completed the player run place holder animation. Hopefully we will have the place holders completed before the next play test.

 

Third Project - Documentation & Grey Box : 15-11-15

The GDD is has become a lot more detailed and practically has everything cover, just a few thing here and there that need tweaking or adding, just answering questions that the animators and programmers have. The assets list is also completed so now we can start delegating tasks and we should be able to start the grey box tomorrow, however I wish could have started sooner but unfortunately I've been a week behind because the game idea kept changing. I think it's pretty decent now though.

I'm not sure if the programmers want to set the grey box up a specific way to make things easier, but I have an idea on how it could be laid out. Because it's all 2D we can have everything on separate heights. The ground will be on its own and the players, walls and resource point will all share the same level. Higher and lower rooms will be above and below the "main floor" level high enough and low enough so that the cameras don't clip through the levels above. The camera should already be fixed to the player so when the player goes up or down stairs the camera will be showing the right room. The underground rooms I think should have a black background (behind the room) to show that it is underground while the upper rooms should remain transparent so the player can still see the outside world, I think this makes it feel more natural (can't see the streets from under ground but you can from upper floors).

Third Project - Documentation : 08-11-15

Finally got to work on the documents after a stressful week of working out mechanics figuring out weather or not add networking. I'm still worried that networking won't work at the gallery but if it does then we will be going down that road. Just in case it doesn't work I've created two versions of the game in one document, one for networking and one for single screen, so essentially I've been documenting two different games based on the same concept. I've also created a card version of both as a paper build to help with play testing the mechanics.

I did a bit of research to understand why the mechanics didn't feel right and thought that they may just be lacking. Originally the mechanics were inspired by the Garry's Mod mini game "Murderer" and what I remember from the social game "Werewolf" but after discovering the card games "Cash'n Guns" and "One Night Ultimate Werewolf" I realized that there is a lot more I could do with my game "Zurvivor". I added a new player type called Suicidal based off of the Tanner card in Ultimate Werewolf who's goal is to be voted and killed at the end of the game. I created a Watcher type based off of my experience with Werewolf but change its mechanics allowing it to see both the Infected player and the Suicidal player but thought this to be a bit over powering and changed it to can only see one chosen player (Will try both types in paper play testing).

There were other type such as the Troublemaker (changes the cards of two other players) and the Hunter (if killed at the end, choose someone else to die with you). I thought of having my Survivor types being like the Hunter type but for now it doesn't have an added perk considering with the card game both styles can be put together, but if this is the case it would create an eight player game with four Survivors increasing the chance of two players dying at the end of a round. This may be okay and should be tested out during play testing.

In Cash'n Guns each player has a set of five lives and start off by putting their chosen amount of money into the middle of the table (as you would in Poker) and then pulls a gun out on another player at the end of the cycle. They can then choose from a limited amount of cards each player has to either shoot their chosen player three times (loses a life and can't shoot another that cycle), shoot them once (only loses a life) or shoot a blank (nothing happens). The mechanic of all players shooting each other at the end inspired my decision to let the players (all but the voted player) pull out a gun and try shoot the voted player (sort of a gimmicky style) with unlimited ammunition. The round would end if they killed the Infected player, if they didn't then they lose their guns, the Infected player turns and begins chasing and devouring the remaining players. All this is player controlled and add an extra level of entertainment. It could also work for both versions of the game.

I still need to write up the HCD and TDD as well as create a mood chart so the animators can get a sense on the art style I'm going for. I too will be working on assets but most of it may be personal work to increase my skills especially with animation (both 2D and 3D).