Games Project : Design & Planning Week 12

This is our last week for the design process. It has been a hard at times but it has really has shown that we can pull together as a team. Going from week 1 where we had a loose idea of what game we wanted to try and create we have pushed through each stage of the design phase and always given, what we feel, is the best of our ability. It has just been week 12 where we gave our presentation on our prototype and, speaking for the team, I feel that we all feel relieved and happy with our results. We got a lot of positivity from our lecturer and the only real concern was that could we pull this off in the time we have.

It has been a great 12 weeks from when we started talking about our pitch to the full prototype of our game. As a team I feel that we can keep this level of quality and deliver what will be a completed game that we can all feel proud that we have watched it grow from bare sketches to a fully fleshed out working game. Our last task for 2015 is to complete all of our documentation, deliver the prototype and then start looking at what we have to do for next year.

Overall as a team we worked well. We all worked to our strengths and performed exceptionally well considering our relative inexperience with game creation in 3D software. The hardest part will be to create our game and implement all of our design into it however after a time of rest at the new year I feel we will come back refreshed and ready to dive into this project and make sure that it is done to the best of our ability.

Thank you for anyone who has been following these blogs. If you would like know more about our final game we should be aiming to have it finished by May 2016. Look forward to it!

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 10/11

Unlike the previous 2 weeks of Unreal Engine work the next 2 weeks would be heavily focussed on level development and the creation of a main menu. We felt that designing levels would be easier than programming as at this stage we only needed to block out all the builds, enemies and cars which could be done with relative ease when compared to programming and animation. 

Throughout the level creation process we would refer back to the concept art that we had created back in weeks 4/5. We would also consult with each other and think about the genre of the game and discuss the possible locations, appearance and layout of the levels. With all this in mind we decided that the tutorial level should be all to do with the setting up of the story so in reference to the hospital setting it would only make sense for the tutorial to be a hospital transitioning into the streets where the first level would begin. 

This is a screen shot of the completed tutorial level. It is very basic and needs much work however this is what we had aimed for. We would block out a handful of levels so that when it came down to it we would be able to texture them all in the creation process of the full game meaning that the hard stage would have been done already. 

This shows that the concept art and level design have merged into one as here we can see that the artwork that was created for a level concept has been implemented into the blocked out level. We want to maintain this style of design and creation and stick to the original plan as much as possible rather than deviate. I believe that as a team we will be able to pull through and create the final prototype because we are constantly looking back at our work to reference it and make sure that we stick to the book. 

The important part of any game is the menu which I feel was done very well for a first time user of this software. This is all very basic but with the module next year I feel that as a team we will produce a great game that we can all be proud of creating and showing to our lecturer, our friends and even the public, who knows where it will end up going. 

.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 8/9

For the next few weeks we will all be focussing on one primary objective. Now that we have finalised most of the details on our game we will be working on building and completing our prototype and bringing together all of our documentation which will include the concepts of our game, the technical details and design, concept art and minutes from each week along with our on going team blog and our critical appraisals. This post will contain updates of our work including screenshots of the prototype as it progresses and then in week 12 we will include screenshots of the final product.

The initial steps of creating the prototype involved learning how to navigate and use Unreal Engine 4 which was no easy task. We needed to demonstrate proficiency in the software in order to create the prototype and, later on, the full game. This journey was made easier as Unreal supply basic set-ups for different genres of games.

As shown above there are many options for developers to choose from but obviously we picked for the basic side scroller. This gave us a very simple movement system that had been programmed for us and a small level to navigate. After spending time looking into the layout and design of the software we looked online for tutorials and tips on how to develop our prototype. Luckily there was an official Unreal YouTube channel which provided to be a great source of information as there were plenty of videos that guided us through the first steps of Unreal Engine. I highly advise checking it out if you are learning Unreal Engine. 

Our week ended with our team leader reinforcing that these next few weeks would be spent mainly on just documentation and prototype creation.

This week began with myself and the other team member working on UE4 discussing different methods and animation techniques for our prototype. We had both looked into various tutorials to try and gain a solid understanding of how the movement system worked as we wanted to learn how to make a character run and walk on our own so that for future projects that knowledge would be already at hand.

The above image is the basic layout of  the character mesh which allows the user to add materials onto the mesh to create a different aesthetic appearance however the key part of that image is the animation tab at the top right which we used to bring together our running and jumping animations and, later on, our punching animation. The animating section of Unreal allows the user to view the animation from all angles which allowed us to watch for any discrepancies in the animation.

After some trial and error the running animation was smooth and worked perfectly. With that out of the way we focussed on level creation as our character's movement had been completed. We decided to leave level creation till after we had managed to get the movement perfect as we felt that would be the most challenging part of learning Unreal Engine.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 6/7

This blog entry will be split across 2 weeks as we felt that we had assigned ourselves just a little too much work and believed that we would rather extend our work for 2 weeks and produce a good quality of work than have it for 1 week and produce something of low quality.

Our task list for the next two weeks were as follows :

. Develop and present one piece of concept art for a level
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for boss character.
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for a basic enemy.
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for protagonist character.
. Download Unreal Engine 4 and become familiar with the software

As a team we decided that this would be a two week long task as we would be creating a lot of art work and as none of us are very creative we felt that rushing this task would only create unneeded stress and in the end we want to produce high quality and work we can be proud of so we felt that having this task scale over two weeks would be beneficial. Having this over two weeks allowed us to spend more time honing key points of the game and start to brain storm different ideas that we could bring to our game.

Looking at the work that has been produced so far by our team I believe that it was definitely worth taking the two weeks to produce all of our work and take that extra time to complete it. I will post a few examples of our concept art below but I will also make a few posts containing all of the concept art we have worked on so far. Here are two examples of a basic enemy that you could encounter in the game.

Our focus on Unreal Engine was because we know that we will be using it next year in our Honours project so we felt it would be advantageous to learn how to use it now and then we would be one step ahead when next year comes round. We believe that by using UE4 we will be able to create our game just the way we want it in the sense that we will have the 3D effect we want but still remain a 2D side scroller. With this in mind we felt that spending time during this part of the year would mean that we would spend less time when we have to create the game learning UE4 in effect meaning we would be able to start straight away without delay.

Since working on the concept art for the design process I feel that myself and my other team member have gained a fuller insight into the genre we are working to create as to draw each of the characters and storyboards we had to go and look up gangsters, graffiti, gang tags and research the style of clothing they wore meaning that we are developing an understanding to this style and genre of game.

I feel that as a team we are really starting to show where our strengths and weaknesses lie and we are able to combat those. After these 2 weeks I feel that we will really start to blaze through the last remaining parts of our design. 

Our next tasks for the upcoming week will be :

. Discuss and present reasons why we chose this platform/genre

. Discuss and present the design aspects we wish to implement 

. Discuss and present the market and sale potential for our game

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 5

Our progress on our game design continued once again with a creative theme this week as our targets for this week were to design a vertical level, present 3 boss characters with personalities and discuss ideas for melee weapons to be used by both the main character and enemies throughout the game.

The whole idea was that our character would make his way through each level but after a some discussion in the previous week we came to the conclusion that it would be best to split the game up from being completely horizontal by having a vertical based level so that the player won't be always moving to the left or to the right of the screen.

This concept was for a night club themed level as I had also based a boss design on being a sort of pimp and once the player progressed through the night club they would then have to fight against him. 

We are still discussing the vertical level and what theme it shall have but we are always bringing good ideas to the table and sometimes even merging a few together to give two okay ideas something to make something great. 

The character that I had designed for this was originally inspired by a character from the 'Saints Row' franchise called "Zimos" as he has the unique 'pimp' style that I was looking for with the stereotypical flamboyant hat with a feather, the cane and the platform shoes. This style was one that I would hope to use to inspire a concept for a character and looking at the final piece I hope it shows that it has been an inspired piece. 

For the potential boss list we each had to create a name and a personality for them as this would give us something to work on later when we started to create assets. 

Below are just two examples of the sort of work we were doing:

. Darryl 'The Swift' King

 The idea behind this character is that he would have a large frame and  would be a slow heavy target. He would use his fists or knuckle  dusters as a weapon.

.

Our last task was to each present our own ideas on what weapons could be scattered throughout the game that an enemy or player could use to fight with. We each had to think about what items could be found in a 'hood' or gang area.

Here are some of our ideas :

. Police Baton

. Crowbar

. Stack of Cash

. Baseball Bat

. Sledge Hammer

. Fire Extinguisher 

The fact that we all have shown our artists and creative abilities and is continuing to give us confidence in ourselves as we have something physical to show for our steady progress we are making to coming closer to completing the design process.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 4

This week our focus was mainly pointed at concept art/level design and character development. Our task was for each team member to create 3 gang names, 1 protagonist name, a back story for the protagonist and then design 2 side scrolling levels. It was a week for each of us to express a lot of creativity and then display physically rather than vocally so it was quite interesting to see what each of us would produce.

Although one of our targets for this week was to give a reason for our protagonist being in the hospital we did decide to go with the idea that our team leader brought when he originally pitched the concept except we believed it would be better if he was visiting a fellow gang member rather than his mother. Moving onto the next part of the job list for this week we each discussed different ideas and spoke about the concept art and story boarding we had each completed. In particular our team leader told us that we had nailed the task and exceeded what he had expected. His original idea and meaning was a simple storyboard but myself and fellow team member had gone above this and designed a scene from a level as shown below.

Our next task was to come up with some gang names and protagonist names that we could use throughout our game and possibly enhance our back story. Each of us had to think about a potential gang name and then decide whether or not that it was already taken and then if it would fit with the theme and style of our game.
Here are some of the gang names we came up with :

. Backstreet Rollers
. Shingleton Project Mafia
. Four Fingered Fists
. Macks
. Dread Sons

Our next task was to decide on a main character name however each of us had already thought about boss names as we had looked into this for week 4 but decided to add it onto week 5 because we didn't know how much time concept art would take. In the end we decided to use a combination of a potential boss names and create our protagonists name "Marquise  ".

Looking at this week I feel that we are far ahead as our team leader specified that he was going to add in concept art in week 6 and since we have already completed some we can focus on other things that week instead. All in all this design process seems to be going well and we are making good headway to completing this game.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 3

Week 3 began with our team meeting where we all brought forward our ideas for a team name/company name. After much thought and discussion we decided on 'Insoluble Studios'. Once we had sorted out our team name we moved onto talking about the risk analysis and research for our game. The research that we looked into and studied mainly focussed on the theme of gangs in games and films/TV because this would give us a clear idea of how successful and how well a gang related game would be received.

Our research mainly took a financial based approach as more often than not the revenue of a game, TV series or movie will give a good idea of how well it was received by the media and consumers. 

. Gangster Squad - $60 Million Budget - $105.2 Million Revenue - Overall Positive Reviews

. Get Rich or Die Tryin' - $40 Million Budget - $46.4 Million Revenue - Mixed/Poor Reviews

. Straight Outta Compton - $28 Million Budget - $196.5 Million Revenue - Very Positive Reviews

. GTA: San Andreas - Sold 27.5 Million Copies *1- Very Positive Reviews 

. Legend - $25 Million Budget - $18.3 Million Revenue *2 - Overall Positive Reviews

Our conclusion after looking at these figures was that in general gang related games and films do tend to sell and will be received well by the consumer however another point of research for our games focussed on the fact that violence is a predominant theme we decided to look into how violence is received by the media and what publicity can follow.

. GTA: San Andreas - Violent themes and sexual assault were scrutinised by the media

. Hatred - Extremely negative criticism and a very controversial game over the mass killing that takes place

Although just two examples there the fact that the presence of violence in games will be frowned upon so we believed that we would still have violence as it is necessary but the risk of the negative media provokes the thought that bad publicity is still publicity as demonstrated by the game 'Hatred'. This game was surrounded by negativity however we do not believe that our game will be anywhere near as controversial as this but we still had to look at the fact that our game could be looked at as a game that is promoting violence and gang warfare. 

Overall this week we have made strong progress and have pressed forward with our design process and I feel that we will keep ahead of schedule.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 2

This week began with our continued discussion on a team name and our game idea. We believe we have finalised our idea and the genre/style of the game so hopefully we can fully flesh out and develop this idea and next year create and present it. The original pitch was given by our team leader, Ben McLean, and he really sold us the idea of the game. His passion and flare for it convinced us to pursue this idea and create this game.

"We're going to create a 2D side Scroller in the Unreal Engine. The game is going to be set in a fictitious city similar to that of California. The character you play as is a man known as (X) a local known gangster who is visiting his mother in the hospital far away from his "Hood". The point of the game is to get from point A to point B in the grand scale of things like all 2D Sidescrollers. Each level will be referred to as 'Hoods' and will gradually get more and more difficult. In order to make it more platform like there will be opportunities for the character to jump up on roofs/climb scaffolding. We can implement a boss system so occasionally the player will have to fight a Boss character which will be the Kingpin of that gang which can have different mechanics in order to create a diverse experience. We can also implement a shop system in order to obtain new weapons and health."

In the later weeks we hope to expand much more on this, however, as far as a pitch goes he put his heart into it and we really believe that we're onto something here. Once we start to research similar themes and how we can pull this together I reckon we will be able to see our idea and game come to fruition.

During our meeting we discussed the topics and points we wanted to have completed and once again I think that we on target and, even though it's on week 2, I feel confident that we will be able to stay ahead of the game and keep ahead.

. Each member to create 3 team names 

. Finalise our game idea and platform

. Provide marketing research and give two reasons why our game will succeed

. Provide one risk of our chosen genre and style

. Investigate team name copyright laws and legislation 

Week 2 ended with very positive feedback from our lecturer and as a team I believe we all feel much happier to know that the way we are working through this design process is exactly what he is looking for. We are feeling confident that we can produce a high quality document and eventually a high quality game.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 1

To all those reading this blog over the course of the next 12 weeks myself and two others are designing a game for a University module called 'Games Project : Design & Planning'. This module is the first stage to a full year module called 'Games Project' and in the second trimester each group will use their design document and research to create a full working game. Each week this blog will be updated with our team meetings, ideas, concept art and our research.  It will track our progress from the start of our design process through to the final touches and overall completion of our project. 

Week 1 of this process began with the creation of our groups so that we would know who we would be working with for the next 24 weeks of work. Once our group had formed we had our first group meeting and discussed some main topics we wished to begin or complete for the meeting next week.

. Plan a team name

. Assign the team Blog to a team member

. Assign the Gantt Chart to a team member

. Assign the task of meeting minutes to a team member

. Discuss our game ideas and what genre/platform/style we will be using

After compiling this list of on our minutes we then had a meeting with our lecturer and presented what we would hope to achieve for the following week and how we could accomplish each of these goals. Throughout the upcoming 12 weeks our lecturer would play the part of an outside company or developer and would give us advice or suggest changes if he felt we were potentially biting off more than we could chew.

Last year we completed a Games Design module so I feel that all of the information and the process we used during that module can be replicated in this module and that will give us a good standing for this design process this year. We will need to bear in mind that this game will be created next year so it has to be realistic and not something that is beyond our skill level and time scale.

Overall week 1 went well and seemed to give us a good start with our design process so hopefully week 2 will continue to keep this strong start going.