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Submission and GG!

After finishing the three games for this assignment, I have come out of this with a newfound respect for Gdevelop as a beginner game engine.  Starting the first game, I was a bit unsure about Gdev and a tad disappointed that we weren’t learning something more useful like Unity or Unreal Engine.  However, the platformer game gave me a taste of what Gdev could do, and by the time I was finished with the racer game, I was truely blown away at the capabilities of the engine.  It has a very nice and intuitive physics engine, and many other behavoural traits like top down and platformer, that can be quickly applied to sprites to get the desired events without even needing any code.  It’s conditions and events page for the code (if you can call it that) is very intuitive as well, making it easy for beginners to gain a fundamental understanding of If/Else statements.  Even though I would’ve preferred to learn a different game engine, I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a great time making games in Gdev.  

Reading Fullertons book gave me a deeper insight into what makes a good game, and methods developers can use to help improve gameplay.  Playtesting was a key feature that was used over this unit, and has really showed me the importance of it when it comes to gaining feedback on a developing game.  

Overall, I am quite happy with the final products of this unit and have learnt a great deal.  Thank you to the wonderful teaching staff who gave up so much of their time to answer questions and for creating a friendly online  environment for us to interact with one another and share knowledge.  I would strongly recommend this course to anyone looking to do game design at university.   

Thats all from me, GG!

Resources used in this blog:

Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition (4th ed.). CRC Press LLC. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=5477698

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Racer Post Mortem

I was very pleased with the final result of the racer game, and I believe it is a substantial step up from my previous two games, (although there is still plenty of room for improvement).  The custom neon graphics turned out great, and the overall user interface feels intuitive and easy to use.  The moment to moment gameplay can be catered to each individuals’ playstyle through the added options of difficulty and number of NPC cars on the track.  If the player doesn’t like the music, no problem, with the added music on/off button, the player can easily change the playstate of the music in the home screen settings tab and also in the in-game pause screen.  

In chapter 9 of Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fullerton talks about the importance of playtesting, and how developers can use it to gain a better understanding of how their game works, issues that they may not be aware of and to collect overall feedback and constructive criticism.  This is a vital stage to any games development, because it causes the developers to take a step back and be open to suggestions on what might make the game more enjoyable.  Fullerton talks about the importance of having ‘naive’ playtesters to play the game, meaning people who know nothing or very little on what the game actually is.  This is important as it means they are viewing it with fresh eyes, free of any expectations, biases or prejudices - they have know idea of what the game was looking like leading up to the playtest.

After getting some friends to playtest the first and second iterations of the game, they gave me very important feedback that ultimately helped shape the game into the final version seen in the video above.  As I plan on continuing development for the game, I will endevour to have more naive playtesters play the game at each stage of development, until I am happy with the overal gameplay experience.  Of course no game is perfect, but listening to others feedback can greatly help in broadening the target audience of the game.

If I had more time to work on this game, I would have liked to include a screen where the player can change the colour of their car, as well as adding more maps to race on.  I would have also liked to have added a ‘wrong way’ message on the screen if the player goes the wrong way on the track, although I think this would require a lot of coding to complete and unfortunately goes too far beyond the scope of this assessment.

All in all, I am very happy with this game, and look forward to working on it more in the future.

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Final Playthrough of Neon Drift

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After giving the game to some friends for playtesting, some common issues were picked up or noted.  A common issue amongst playtesters was that the game got a bit boring after the second lap, as the bots weren’t a challenge at all, and there wasn’t a lot happening in the moment to moment gameplay.  This was useful information and I realised I had forgot to add in the power up ability and oil spill mechanic mentioned in the elevator pitch.  Similarly to the bot mechanic, I added spots around the map that would randomly spawn sprites each lap for a speed boost, granting the player a 3 second boost in speed; and a mine that would cause the player to spin out when they hit it. I then read chapter 9 of Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, talking all about playtesting and it’s importance to the development of any game, as it allows for other players to point out problems you may not be able to see and give suggestions that could enhance the overall gaming experience.  She talks about the importance of having multiple people playtest throughout the development of a game, so I decided to give my game to a few more friends to playtest.

It was recommended by two of the playtesters that a timer showing the race time and lap times should go up the top where the current lap is shown.  That way they can see in-game if they are making good time or not.  So, I added the timer which outputs the total race time, and three text sprites below for each lap’s time.  Everytime the player touches the finish line, it records the time for that lap in that lap’s sprite.  I also added the difficulty meter in the settings menu that ranges between ‘easy’, ‘medium’, ‘hard’, with each one adding speed to the bots respectively.  I also added a setting which allows players to choose how many of them that they want to verse.

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Now that the basic functionality of the game was finished I got to work in photoshop to create the neon coloured graphics I wanted.  I used separate layers to create the glowing effect and added some post processing effects such as bloom inside of Gdev.  With this, I was happy to give it to some friends for playtesting.

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Updated Functionality

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Once the bots were completed to a level I was happy with, I started working on the core functionality of the game.  This included the menu screens and the addition of some basic UI elements such as the current lap, finishing times and the pause button.  However, I ran into a slight problem with the pause button, due to everything being a physics object.  These next videos detail the issues faced and show the working UI.  This ultimately makes the gameplay more enjoyable for the player and ensures the immersion isn’t broken.

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Fourth step of NPC programming

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Third step of NPC programming

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Second step of NPC programming

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Now that I had the basic player movements done, the next step was creating the code for the NPC’s, or bots.  I researched a bit to see if there was a way I could draw out a path for the bots to follow, although I couldn’t seem to find any helpful tips and I’m not sure if it’s even possible to do.  So I tried a unique approach which in theory I thought would work.  The following videos detail my approach and development for creating a randomised path for the bots to follow each lap, and is designed so that it is relitively simple to add more bots to the scene.

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It’s default velocity however was recorded in Newtons, which was not desired, so I changed it to Km/h using some maths.  This makes it far better and easier for the player to understand when playing the game.  Although not a majorly important element, I was trying to adhere to Fullertons advice about the inclusion formal elements.  This serves as a progressive element, that continues throughout the game to bring another level of immersion for the player.  It will also help show the difference in speed when the player picks up a power up ability.

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The first step in developing this game was to create the controls for the player car.  As I wanted to incorporate the drifting element into the movement of the car, I decided to use Gdevs’ Physics engine as used previously in the asteroids game.  This gave me a really nice drifting motion as the car turns around.  I then added a simple function to record the velocity of the car to a variable, and then call that variable to a text element on screen to show the player the speed of their car.  

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Physical playtest versions

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Neon Drift Elevator Pitch

Neon Drift is a top down, neon styled racing game where players drive around a futuristic track in pursuit to beat the other racers.  This game is aimed at anyone who loves racing games, but would be best suited for casual PC gamers.  For this reason it will be created in a 1920x1080p format to suit most PC desktops.  The aim of the game is to beat the other racers on the track 

and get the best lap time, with the added ability to drift around corners.  The neon asthetic gives it a fun and interesting look that will engage the player and entice them to keep playing.  

During the race, the player will be able to pick up power ups that give them different abilities, as well as having to dodge out of the way of oil spills.  At the end of the match, the players’ total race time and best lap time will be recorded.  The player will also have the option to change the number of NPC’s they verse and the difficulty of the NPC’s which will change their speed slightly.

If the player tries to cut across the track, they will get a warning telling them to turn around or reset their car.  This will prevent cheating and create a fairer form of gameplay, where players will be forced to stay on the track.  If the player leaves the track and goes onto the grass, their car will dramatically slow down, causing them to go back to the track as quickly as possible.  These elements of the game will cause the player to learn the importance of staying on the track.

The music will reflect the neon theme, with futuristic style synth pop music playing.  A less intense song will play in the menu screens and a more intense song will play for the actual game scene, to increase the feeling of haste in the gameplay.

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Ateroids Post Mortem

I was quite happy with the final iteration of Crystal Crusaders, however there is still room for as lot of improvement.  Although the style and asthetic was looking nice, the core moment to moment gameplay was very similar to the normal Asteroids game, and could have used more variety in the enemies or objects seen in the game.  Chapter 5 of Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, talks about the formal elements of a video game, including the players, objectives, rules and procedures, resources, conflict, bounderies and outcomes.  After reading this, I had a better understanding of the key aspects that make the overall gameplay more unique and engaging for the player, and how changing any of these can create a completely different playstyle.  

If I had more time to develop this game, I would have added in objects that spawn in to give the player abilities such as rapid fire or invincibility, and also medkits that randomly spawn in to give the player extra health.  Combined with this, I would have liked to implement an enemy ship to come in at the end of the map as a sort of Boss fight.  I feel like adding these ideas into the game would not only give the player more objectives, but improve the resources and add more conflict into the gameplay which ultimately would result in a different game outcome.  

Chapter’s 7 and 8 dive into the importance of prototyping, and the two different methods: physical and digital.  As video games are a digital form of gaming, I was surprised to read about how helpful physical prototyping is for there early development.  As changes can be made very quickly in a physical setting, developers can make on the fly adjustments and even new implementations without losing time to coding.  This makes physical prototyping very useful when starting a game.  

Once some of the main issues have been taken car of, digital prototyping is the next most important method of game development, however is much more time consuming due to the necessity of coding and asset creation.  It also takes much longer to make the required changes, however allows for the game to be experienced closer to the intended outcome.  Fullerton states  "the takeaway from a digital prototype should not be the code, but the ideas, algorithms or gameplay concepts", relating back to the formal elements of a video game, which go hand in hand in pushing the game into the right direction.

All in all, in my opinion the quality of the game is a step up from the platformer game, and using the newfound knowledge from Fullerton’s book, I hope to create the next game with more in game elements such as pickups and the inclusion of NPC’s.

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Playtesting

I then gave my game to one more friend who said he could it very fun, but wanted the ability to restart the game quickly before she had won or died, so that she could try and speed run it and didn’t have to go to the menu everytime.  So I simply added a small restart icon next to the menu button.  Now the player can restart the game at any point if they wished.  She also said tha the game would look more interesting if the crystals glowed too.