Saturday, 11 July 2015
Post 11-07-15 : Play Test 2 and marketing Virion
The play tests went fairly well, it was a pretty busy day. There were five or so in 2.6 and around four computers in use in 2.9 but we ended up setting up more computers as more people showed up to play our game. Unfortunately I ended up coming in about an hour late so I didn't get to help set up most of the computers and see what levels they chose. There were a lot of people coming in from the other room expecting a different game which made me wonder if people were actually enjoying it. I still need to look over the answers to the questionnaire and watch the recordings so I may be overthinking this.
Apart from the play test we met some animators and got our new brief. I was happy to meet Hamish and Jo and I look forward to seeing their skills, as for the brief I was surprised to see that we have to make a prototype about a child. Or not necessarily about the child but the player has to operate a child character and feel wily. We started brainstorming but kept thinking of what can a child do to feel wily, until we started thinking that it's not the child that needs to feel this emotion but the player.We came up with the idea, among others, that the player has to get their child character into as much trouble as possible, it's an interesting idea but I'm not sure where we can go with it so I don't believe it will be our final decision.
I look forward to working on this project but I feel that the last half of the trimester will be extremely busy considering the game Sean, Adam and I are making for CIU and the possible job as a freelance artist for a small indie group that I have applied for. Hopefully the work load won't put me under too much stress over the next seven weeks.
Sean, Hayden, Nick and I also want to start working on VIRION as a professional project and start an indie team together. Apparently this will take more money to accomplish than I was expecting which is why I applied for that job. As exiting as it is, start a small company is also very scary and I'm paranoid about how successful it will turn out. We still need to have a meeting to discuss this as well as what we need to continue doing for VIRION, I was told that we may be having that meeting tonight but I haven't heard or seen anything about it as of yet. I would like to talk about this as soon as possible to work out time and task allocation. the new prototype 3 group also needs to have a meeting this weekend to work out what we are going to do for that project.
Friday, 10 July 2015
VIRION Postmortem
What Went Right?
VIRION looks really crisp and runs exactly how we wanted it to. All the bugs we came across have been fixed and the scope was met as well as a few of the desirable's. We all worked really hard and got a lot done early giving us more time to polish and create new maps. Practically everyone who played VIRION liked it, more than I was expecting, which has given us the motivation to continue working on it.
The models all follow the same sharp design and fit the computer virus theme as does the hexagon tile grid and colour palette. All in all this is a game we are proud of creating.
Even though level design was mostly focused on what looks cool rather than game play, we did gain a lot of knowledge from it.
We spent around a week on paper play testing and it was very useful. Because our game could be played as a physical board game it was a lot easier to create a paper play test. We managed to specify the rules and the unit abilities because of the play test.
What Went Wrong?
Our original idea was broken and we ended up scrapping most of it on the day of the pitch. Luckily there were a few salvageable aspects that we carried on to the current design and VIRION turned out better than I imagined.
Communication could have gone a lot better. The only time we really had meetings was during classes and the few times we met up on Skype. We talked a lot on Facebook but not as the entire group, most of the time it was just two to three of us on at any given time. Communication was our weakest point and is something we need to fix for future projects.
Documentation was not kept up to date. This was because no one wanted to write it and after a while it lost its usefulness.
Level design wasn't very efficient, yes we made a lot of maps but we didn't think about overall gameplay when designing them. When selecting the final three (or so) maps we pretty much only considered which ones looked cool. In the future we need to take gameplay, player stories, and strategies into consideration.
Future Changes
We need to move away from Facebook and find new alternatives to discuss and hold meetings. Using Skype was a good start but there were very few Skype meetings. We should allocate more time each day for meetings on Skype or other means.
In order to keep documents up to date we could have those focusing on particular aspects of the game work on those parts of the documents.
There is a lot we need to consider when designing the levels rather than aesthetics alone. Creating level design documents before creating the levels will be really useful in designing more elaborate and entertaining maps.
Saturday, 4 July 2015
Post 04-07-15 : Virion Play Test
The play tests for VIRION went a lot better than I was expecting, everyone who played enjoyed themselves, Tony and Steve both liked it and it's given me the motivation to continue working on it and hopefully put it on Steam or the app store. We still have a lot of polishing to do. Textures, better sound effects, animations (though I'm not sure if we are still adding animations), new maps, a unit selection screen, and more detailed instructions still need to be added, witch is what the next week will be focused on.
We covered a few things after the play tests about why people were saying that the Trojan and Spyware were overpowered. They only appear to be overpowered because it's a new game, no one knows any strategies yet and the style of the map may have caused the Trojans to appear to be more of a hassle than they are worth. We decided that we won't change the range or abilities of these units, except for the Spayware's ability to pass through other units, and instead design new boards to see if the layouts change anything. Allowing people to choose what units they want and where they sit may also change gameplay and strategies.
I've started working on a small side project of mine but I think I need to find a better way to animate sprites other than making each frame on Photoshop. I will also start writing up documents for it too. I should also go back to working on my previous personal project but I'm not sure how successful it will be at this point. I should write up some documents for this game too to keep me from getting off track and making a mess or making it too complicated. Perhaps I will keep this one for the holidays, my new idea feels a lot more simple if I can get the sprites complete, They may be able to go towards my LOs as well.
We covered a few things after the play tests about why people were saying that the Trojan and Spyware were overpowered. They only appear to be overpowered because it's a new game, no one knows any strategies yet and the style of the map may have caused the Trojans to appear to be more of a hassle than they are worth. We decided that we won't change the range or abilities of these units, except for the Spayware's ability to pass through other units, and instead design new boards to see if the layouts change anything. Allowing people to choose what units they want and where they sit may also change gameplay and strategies.
I've started working on a small side project of mine but I think I need to find a better way to animate sprites other than making each frame on Photoshop. I will also start writing up documents for it too. I should also go back to working on my previous personal project but I'm not sure how successful it will be at this point. I should write up some documents for this game too to keep me from getting off track and making a mess or making it too complicated. Perhaps I will keep this one for the holidays, my new idea feels a lot more simple if I can get the sprites complete, They may be able to go towards my LOs as well.
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Post 30-06-15 : Working on Virion
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.
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.
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.
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