One of the first things that Seth asked us about in the Game Design Document was the game flowchart. As I don't have problems to understand or work with flowcharts (without mention that I actually like them), I started to work on it right away. I knew that Hector will be helping us with programming so I didn't go into too many details. Because he is an excellent programmer and we will probably be making changes over the semester, I treated the flowchart just as a visual representation of the game functionality. Even so, I tried to make it as logical as I could.
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This week I finally could focus on content. We need to sketch several protagonists and situations so we can vote for our favorites later on. That's how we will be selecting the final events and characters.
I have been working on these sketches for characters and events. Nothing is final yet. We should be choosing 3 characters and 3 events among all our proposals so we can start dialogues trees, storyboards, etc. I want to show hard dilemmas and drama but stays politically correct. The tone was supposed to be mature and serious so that what I tried to achieve with this 3 events and 4 characters with different backgrounds and themes. This week I didn't have problems creating the player game object and attaching the colliders to it. In the following lesson, we suppose to create 2 light sources (one per side) for the player spaceship. So It won't seem so dark in contrast with the background. But if you put 2 light sources the ship then it seems too bright (to me at least). So my initial idea was to just let one on, but then again, when you tried to move sideways the dark part confused with the background making the ship looks weird. In the end, I had to adjust the intensity of the second light source to leave it slightly low. That's how I finally like it.
The first step we should complete before doing anything else is to consolidate the idea in the Game Design Document. As Ariana wants to do a "relaxing experience" where you can freely take care of different plats with just hands gestures, It was tricky to establish winning/losing conditions. I liked to see it as a Tamagotchi-style game. So the mechanics should be easy enough to anybody enjoy them but not too complex to avoid technical problems with the Leap Motion. Because we only have half of the semester we should only be focusing on a few to make sure we will be able to finish them.
I collaborated with Larry today in a little brainstorming regarding mechanics. We though in mechanics as plating, watering, defending the plants against bugs, whether condition influence, digging to bury seeds, life bars and time limits (which I didn't really love them). After Ariana validation, we kept just plating, watering, bug catch and day/night cycles. I think is enough to start. In the second week, Jade asked me to focus on marketing. So I have been working on the competitive analysis, adding references games what Matt already had and specifying which ideas for these games we can use. I also did a little research in Steamspy to see what kind of game are a trend in Steam right now. We should also considerate other stores as GOG or itch.io just to be closer to our kind of customers, which is away from AAA games. Finally, I tried to figure out a target audience who should be "young adults". Overall I feel I need more data to complete this analysis.
After setting up the scene and importing the assets. I started to apply my own customization to the game. Although I knew that it supposes to be a shoot them up, I wanted to have a wider playable area. It appears that the game was originally designed for smartphones, but I was thinking in a PC version. That why my camera it's going to be the same but with full space for the players to move sideways. I will design the entire game with this changes in mind editing future assets or features accordingly.
I have never heard of Leap Motion before. I must say it is an interesting gadget. The demonstrations that come along with the hardware picked my curiosity. Although the response is not always 100% accurate I think this technology still has a hidden potential.
As we will be working with it this semester we had to pitch some ideas. I wanted to make a virtual Lego for the user to grab and assemble but I didn't win. Ariana's virtual garden was the most popular idea so we will work on that. I don't mind at all, I think is also interesting and the fact that we are only 5 people also motivate me. It is always easier to collaborate with fewer people. For the first week, Jade asked us to give our thoughts, point of view, references and original ideas about the game we want to make. So I made a small presentation about some narrative techniques we could follow. I especially like the dramatic choices that Telltale Game use to force the players to make. So I thought that could be our main mechanic.
The consequences of this decision could be measured by their social impact in the world. So I came up with 3 categories of influence: personal, social and class. In this way, we will be able to control how important player's decision would be regarding the world/environment. Finally, I thought that the game should give some "return" to contrast player's decisions. Silent Hill Shattered Memories does this fairly well by showing the player a report of their actions along with the credits. We could do something similar. After failing to find a better option for the last credit I was missing, I ended up in the Pre-Entry Evaluation class which didn't even exist when I started here. I pondered some English classes but in the end, I chose this one because of schedule and accessibility.
I didn't love the idea of going through a Unity tutorial again but It is true that I still have a lot to learn about this engine. So I guess it should be that bad and relatively easy for me. |
AuthorI want to study Video Games in a theoretical way. Archivos
May 2018
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