Second Project - GreyBox and Scripting Plan : 13-10-15

I now have two animators and an audio student helping me complete the next project, I've filled them in via the HCD, assets list and mood pitch document, now they all know their work load and dead lines. I began working on a greybox today and all i need to do now is the scripts before the others have completed their tasks and I start implementing them into the scenes.

Sean helped me polish my TDD on Monday so now I have a pretty decent idea on how I want to lay them out. I'll have scripts controlling the behavior of the player and monsters, camera positioning, audio and spawn triggers, and a game controller. I want the monsters to appear at certain times so I've created trigger objects that will spawn a certain amount and different types of monsters within a given time frame, same with the audio triggers which will play some ambient sound effects to hopefully frighten the player.

Originally I was going to make the player controls the basic vertical and horizontal inputs with the mouse as rotation but Sean thought that having a mouse click as movement would keep thing simple and create more stress or anxiety for the player (being forced to stop shining light at the monsters to move around), so I will give that a try to see how it feels.

I think the only issues I will have will be in the monster behavior script and some desirable actions (like having the camera shake when monsters get too close to the player), no doubt I will come across bugs and other functions that I will need help getting passed but I will worry about them when they reveal themselves. The amount of scripting involved with this project doesn't appear to be overly immense and should be fairly quick to get though (a couple of days or so) which will leave time for polishing and allow me to help the animators with texturing (and modeling if they need help there).

Second Project - Pitch : 10-1015

The pitches went well considering I didn't have a voice the entire time. After the first pitch Christy and I change the original story from child running from parents fighting to a child running from their first day of school. The player is no longer guided by a spirit and instead has to make their own way through a maze like forest using a lantern filled with fire flies to ward off the monsters. At the end instead of a house there is a large golden gate that turns into the school gate and the monster turns into the teacher.

Unfortunately my voice worsened before the second pitch so I'm not sure if the audio student's became interested in helping out or even understood what the game was going to be like. Apparently a few of the audio students were interested but I am yet to hear from them and Hayden has told me the same. I'm a little paranoid that this will turn out the same as last trimester. I may end up using text instead of voices but I wasn't expecting to get any voice overs to begin with, the sound effects will be the harder task.

I found a page on Gamasutra that could help Hayden and I induce fear in the players.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/172168/fight_or_flight_the_neuroscience_.php?

It has given me a few ideas on how and when to show the monsters and how to use sound effects and the atmosphere to to create anxiety during situations where the monsters are away.

Second Project - Brainstorming : 10-10-15

Started brainstorming for our next project on Friday and tried something different. Usually I would just research games or themes based on the topic but Christy brought in cards and dice with images on them to help us come up with more unique ideas. At that point I only had dot points and pieces of ideas but over the weekend I cane up with a few different game ideas that I wasn't happy with.

First one had to do with the player being in the point of view of a creature just hatching from an egg in a cave, they have no idea what they are as they escape the creatures trying to eat them. When they get to the end they see the cave is on a cliff overlooking a beautiful forest and the creature they play as flies away. I believe this idea would have been too far out of scope.

For the second idea the player controlled a young monster in a town of monsters under siege. The goal of the player was to guide the young monster through danger and terror to find its parents. Simple point and click but I don't think it would have induced fear in the players.

I ended up creating a red riding hood styled game where the player controls a young girl being guided by the spirit of a dog through a dark and dangerous forest as she is being hunted by dark monsters. The player can use the light of the dog to scare away the monsters by holding it and pointing it in the right direction. At the end of the forest the player comes across a house, but when they get too close the house changes to one that has been burnt down, the spirit disappears and the monsters reveal to be the girls mother trying to comfort her.

First Project - Play Test : 10-10-15

In my opinion the play tests went horribly. For the first half of the session my game, 'Sorrow', was broken. For some reason the most recent build was messing up, the NPCs faded to black way too quickly and the player's ray casts were too long. Half way through the day I had to tinker with the timers and lower the length of the rays. Unfortunately the game was still not at the level I wanted it to be at this stage, the audio was rushed and so wasn't implemented in the final build and the sliders on the title screen were running too fast.

I think the biggest disaster was that half of the feedback was based on the broken version of the game. Surprisingly a lot of the feedback was still what I was looking for. Most people understood the message, felt overwhelmed and picked up the controls... somewhat quickly.

Christy showed me a good site (Incompetech) where I found some instrumental music that I could fiddle with to create the sound effects for the player and NPCs. I've also been creating sprites for the walking animations of the player and NPCs, I've changed the models of the player, now the head and body are separated so that when the player gets close to an NPC their hand will stick out towards the NPC but the head will remain what it originally was. I am yet to try it in game and am unsure if it will work because it may conflict with the walking animation.

First Project - Art Assets : 27-09-15

I was inspired by The Binding Of Isaac when creating the characters. Originally I was going to do a jrpg sprite style (like Gameboy pokemon games or something) but I decided that it wouldn't have enough detail in the faces, the faces and the change from "okay" to "overwhelmed" expressions is the main mechanic that will tell the player the message; being the one helping everyone else and not helping yourself will leave you overwhelmed and mentally drained.

I want to animate the sprites and have already completed a couple, the problem is the amount of frames I will need to create. There will need to be a sprite for each facial expression as well as the endgame animations. I may need to leave this for version two, I would like to continue working on this over the tri.

I also need to texture the ground and walls and create the main menu background, I still have two days to complete it so I'm not worried about getting it completed. I want to create sound effects too, because I'm new to creating sound effects I will focus on that tomorrow after uni before I continue working on the visual assets.

First Project - Scripts : 27-09-15

I was focusing on the script writing this week and got a lot of useful help from Sean. I spent too much time trying to fix the NPC's movement script before contacting Sean, the problem was the new vector with a random x and z position kept changing each frame in the updates function. Sean managed to fix it by changing the vector to its own function.

I also had an issue with reading a script in an object being hit by a ray and transforming the position of a UI slider to match the position of the player character. The first one was easy to fix just by showing hit.collider.gameObject.GetComponent under the raycast if statement, but I had to create it twice for the left and right sides of the character. Sean sent me a blog post that greatly help the problem of changing the sliders position.

blog.manapebbles.com/world-space-overlay-camera-in-unity/

I now have most of the scripting completed, just need to fix the current bugs and create a main menu script.

A New Trimester - Meaningful Games : 27-09-15

Back at uni starting Studio 2, this time it's all about emotions. Only been back for a week and I've been enjoying it so far. I would have written this blog sooner but I've been hooked on completing the first project.

We have been looking at meaningful games lately, or games that send a message. Personally I think most games have a meaning or secret message behind them. We played some games about personal issues early this week, I don't remember ever playing a game like these, they focused on telling a story that sends a message. I tried an RPG styled game about gender... bending? Transgender? (I'm not entirely sure what it's called, probably has a new name now), but it wasn't until I left the house and ran into the NPC's that I realized what it was about.

Thinking about it it looked like the designer was trying to show that this could be a male being female through stereotypes. The female side included changing into nicer clothing (dress) and putting on makeup (need to take a bath before being able to do this) and the male side included possibly playing video games and sleeping in. I didn't notice that these could be stereotypes because it all feels like something a woman can do, it wasn't until I started thinking about "there's a reason for everything" that I came to this idea.

The game may also be about being yourself and not changing to fit society. The player character got the  same negative reactions if they wore the lesser clothing and no makeup or change one of the options but got entirely new positive reactions if the wore the pretty dress and makeup (the player character also gets noticed by the guy she like in the end of this event).

I would like to try making a very artsy game in the future that sends out a meaningful message but I think I would make something a little more cryptic, something that focused more on the art than telling the player what it's about.