Week One- I started my first week by being informed by my teachers on what we will be doing in the next few months, which is that we will first have to make and present 3 game ideas. So I started with finding out types of themes for games that I could use as inspiration then I moved on to researching art I could use in my game by getting a big list of them both. I also set up my Trello Making a research, design, art, engine work and reflection tabs then I add in Week 1 to them all so this could help me identify what I did each week I will continue to do this for each week I work on my ideas and game. Also set my WordPress to show what work I have done each week, All I have added this week Is a Final Major Project tab and within that, I have a Project Management tab and in Project Management tab I have Trello within my Trello tab I have a link to my Trello website I have also added a Reflection Journal tab for me to type up what I did this week and summarise it. Overall this week has felt like a good start to my Final Major Project and I hope to keep this up as I know did not have that much work to do this week.
Week Two- This week I continued with my Powerpoint getting ready for my presentation of my 3 game ideas. I started with making some mood boards for my 3 games ideas which are an Action-adventure Survival horror, Strategy Card game, and a Strategy turn-based game. The mood boards were to help me flesh out my game ideas, after this, I was still not sure on what to do so I also made a mind map for each of them. I also went on to typing a Detailed description of each of my game ideas, after making my mood boards and mind maps for each game as it helped me quite a lot to get a mental image of what the game would be and play like. This week once again felt like I did a good job of keeping a nice pace and getting my work done still hoping on keeping this up.
Week Three-On my third week I continued working on my powerpoint getting ready for my presentation of my 3 game ideas this week. This week I did some market research to see what the game ideas I have would maybe sell like, after this I did some culling up on my PowerPoint by getting some images and practicing my presentation by testing on my friends and family to see how long it takes me to do and if I could change anything to make it better. On Wednesdays I did my presentation I think my presentation went okay I could of been better I think I was a bit to nerves, the feedback from my presentation was very useful as I now know what my game will be and we made sure that I will be able to do it in the time I have. At the end of this week, I feel okay and that I tried my hardest to do my presentation well and I can not wait to get started on my game and designing it.
Week Four- I have now started my game idea, I started with typing up some basic rules and guidelines for my self to help me to visualizes my game and so I could find out what I could research and what I need to learn in order to make my game. After doing this I did some research on Space Ships by making a mood board and mind map as after this to step I fell confident in what I want and what I want to do. I have also stared on some basic coding to get a character moving about so I can set up a block level maybe I have also got the Character look at mouse also made a Dice roll code. Seen as I have done these three things I also had to add in a Research tab, Design tab and a Practice Journal tab to my WordPress. This week has been a good start to my game and I’m glad I got a nice set of basic rules and thing I want in the game to help and guide me in the next few weeks.
Week Five- Sadly this week I’m ill but I have tried my hardest not let this get in the way of my work this week, I only did a bit of work on reworking my Trello and cleaning up my blog and also worked a bit more on my game idea and the how the rules would work. So sadly I feel like I could have got more do and hope to correct this next week.
Week Six- This week I had long thought about the game and what I want with it and after talking to teachers and friends I made plans to reworked and have a new design approach for my game also documented in my design tab on WordPress. This was quite annoying because I spent about 6 weeks of my time on my initial idea, my time was not totally wasted but I wish that I went to my teachers and friends for advice beforehand because now I have even less time to do my research and make my game. I plan to rectify that in the weeks to come and try to get back on track.
Week Seven- On the 7th week I did a lot of research on games the games that I researched include Rimworld, FTL, Outlast, Prey, Alien Isolation and Dead By Daylight.
My reasoning behind doing Rimworld is the art style and the interface of the game, And for FTL (Faster Than Light) the same reasoning behind it is that I like the top-down art style it had and the interface, I then also choose to do Outlast the reasoning behind this was that I like the atmosphere of the game I did mention this in my research but I liked how that you would be looking around in the darkness and you don’t know what would be jumping out at you and you had to run away from the enemy and you could not actually fight back this really appeals to me and my game idea, The reasoning behind choosing prey was that it struck me as a 3D version of my game that I originally wanted to make. The next game I picked was Alien Isolation as I thought this game will give me a lot of ideas as it’s the same concept of having to run away from an alien inside a spaceship I also think it showed me a good aesthetic of having the game quite dark and dingy. Then the final game that I researched on was dead by daylight the reason behind researching this was that it had mechanics that I would have liked to have in my game if I had the time to implement into my game.
I think I did good research this week on the games and how they inspired me. helping me to think what mechanics a could research to further my game ideas and could get a better mental image of how it would play.
The reasons behind the Mechanics that I researched were ways to help me to when I come to make the game, also another reason behind why I researched the things that I did was because I thought they were very core components of what I wanted my game to be. The things that I did research was player movement and smoother camera movement, player pick up, health and damage, moving platform.
This week I feel like I manage my time quite well and I got a lot of work done on my game research the plan is to keep up a consistent pace but spread out my work so it’s good quality also not rushed.
Week Eight- On this week, I did my Alien research, the reasoning behind me doing alien research is that when I come to design my creature I can think about what skills and abilities the alien might have to stop the player from fixing the engines and winning the game this also helps me imagine what mechanics I might need for when making my alien scripts, includes a mood board of different styles of aliens that I found on Pinterest I did this as Pinterest is a really good resource to get inspiration as it has some great artwork, after researching and looking at different designs of aliens I thought it would be a good idea to research the anatomy and different skin types of just normal animals in the world, reasoning behind this is that it would get my brain thinking about what the creature would actually be using to hunt prey aka the player.
That is all the research I did this week I think that once again I kept up a consistent pace of work and I’m sticking to the consistency of having good quality work each week so right now I feel like I’m managing my time well and in a unique way.
At the end of the week, I also did my design work for my map I did this as I thought it would be a good time as I pretty much had all the mechanics in my mind what I wanted in the game so I could actually plan and make the level the way I wanted to make it.
I feel like the way I design my level was very good I started out with a basic block out with letter represent in certain rooms I then went into a bit more of a natural shape keeping the letter after that I did a detailed version and then I color coordinated it and labeled. And doing this step-by-step really help me hone in on what my level would actually be about and where things go and what things do what. Also, color coordinating it and labeling it is going to be very handy when I actually start making my game in unity. After I finished with making my Map I got the great idea off a friend to make a Potential Asset Locations list the way I did this was pretty much type of all the assets that you could find all over the ship, what you could perhaps find in certain rooms, what you would find the in main control room, and then what you would get in the engine room.
This will come in very handy when I come to actually make my asset list as I already know kind of know what I want and what’s important as some things would just be useful to make the game look that bit better and over other things that are I actually very important asset that I need to prioritize over other ones like my player and enemy assets.
Week Nine- On the 9th week I did my character research, taking from what I did last week with my alien research I went back to Pinterest and I made another mood board as once again Pinterest has some really good artwork on there and it really gets your ideas flowing for what your characters that you could possibly make. I feel like the mood board just alone has given me enough inspiration for when I come to make and design my character I’ll do a good job.
Sadly this week I think my work definitely fell off I feel like I could have done a lot more research for my characters I feel like I had a quite a lazy week, I didn’t really get anything to productive done, so this week I think I failed to keep the consistency and pace of work that I had done in the previous weeks, My time management definitely needs to improve for the weeks to come.
Week Ten- Starting on week 10 I did my audio Research, the way I researched my audio was by looking at previous horror games that I did research on and then I looked and listened to a few sound templates linked to my research, the reasoning behind this is my game is a puzzle game with a few Horror elements added into it.
After that I got referred to a tool called Beepbox from a teacher, This tool was extremely useful, ended up using it to make a small toon so that my game didn’t completely sound dead and silent.
At the end of this week once again I feel like I’ve definitely messed up with my time management skills I’ve spreaded out my work too much I could have definitely done my audio and my character research also my audio design work in the same week.
Week Eleven- In the 11th week I made my asset list taking notes from my Potential Asset Locations list then I planned it out so that my asset list had core Assets semi-important and then accessory assets, I also talked about what art style that I will be using from my game and I chose was simplistic 2D Art, I did this as I feel like It fit the theme on my game and I don’t really like the idea of pixel art for the game theme that I’m going for.
Once again I feel like time management has been a really big issue with me because I feel like I could have definitely started working on my sketches and placeholders.
Week Twelve- The 12th week was used to start making my Sketches/place holders, from last week I know which assets that I’m going to start with as I sorted them all out into different categories last week being core Assets semi-important and then accessory assets, and this really helped me when designing and making each individual asset.
This week I felt like I definitely put a lot of time and effort into my assets and don’t feel like I wasted too much time on it but I do want to continue doing a few but I’m going to try and have a completely done and maybe start coding next week as well as but these are all just placeholders I’m a come back if I completely finished my code in a very short time but I don’t really see this being possible as my time management skills haven’t been the best.
Week Thirteen- On the 13th week, I continue making the assets I only finished my core assets last week, this week I spent my time going and making this semi-important asset like the windows and the wall corners, In Walls, rockets and drills. I did this to make my game feel not so bland and I felt like without these additional assets it would not look good, I also spent my time this week designing my UI this was pretty straightforward as I was going for a pretty simple with simplistic UI Style. The reasoning behind this as I didn’t want to fill up too much of the screen as I wanted the player to be able to see as much of the puzzle as they can.
Feel like I did well last week but once again I failed with my time management skills I just spent way too much time on making me my semi-important asset think I should be focusing on my code and not my UI maybe didn’t need to put as much thoughtfulness when I made my UI.
Week fourteen- Now that I have got all my design work research and my basic artwork (Sketches and UI) out off the way I will be spending the last week few weeks to finalize my game, this was quite easy as I have done it many times before in my other 2D games, Then I made a simple script for the camera to follow the player’s movement, I also added some code to my player script to make it able to pick things up that add to your score I will be using this later on as a base for my player to able to interact with other things and pick up / fix stuff on the space ship like keys and engines.
Week fifteen- I have continued to code this week I started With adding to my player’s script making it so when you pick up a certain amount of keys it will open certain doors (destroys the doors) I also used a very similar code to work when you run up to a broken engine and it destroys the thing that stops you from using the controls (Main control and Escape pod controls). finally added to my player script in when you pick up a certain amount of points you get a win scene this is done by you running up to a fixed (Main control and Escape pod controls). I had a problem with this part of the code as I originally tried to use an overlay in the game scene and this just caused me too many problems so I swapped it to different “Win scene” the problems were getting the game to stop when you win and the buttons not working.
Week Sixteen- Now that I had got the puzzle part of my game done I moved on to adding in the challenging part, I made two things to start with one being adding life (5) to my player in my player’s script, the second being a trigger that damaged (Enemy and Broken floor) you when the player runs into it, after this I made it so you could lose and made a game over scene, I also made a health pack as it was easy as all I had to do was change the enemy damage from a -1 to a +1 and change the sprite.
Week seventeen- In my final week, I made two scripts One for where the enemy walks on a set path and another where the enemy would chase the player I also have this stopping distance so it would not just shove you into a corner and kill you / stop you from moving I also found out from a friend testing my game that you were getting stuck on the wall so I gave the player a Physics Material 2D. And That is all the time I had before I had to move on to my Final Evaluation I wish I had more time to make different asset / make more, also to make the level feel more real and better.
Final Evaluation-
Research-
The first thing I did in my final major project was research as this would help construct and think up some game ideas and get the bad ideas out this helps me to think of what I could do for my final major project, The start of the final major project I was tasked with making and doing my proposal and a presentation,The first thing when researching was the themes of games I did this to help decide on what theme I would like to use for my game I picked out 3 that I would of like to make, Then went on to what Artstyles I could possibly use I did this by just getting a list of the art styles and then On my 3 theme I choose an art style I could use for that theme, The next week I made some mood boards and mind maps to help me in vision what my 3 game ideas would look like and feel like when playing, I did some market research to help decide if these game ideas would work by looking at similar game ideas.
Now that I had got my final major project proposal out of the way and I know what game idea I was going with I decided to further my research on other similar games also did some research on space ships as I know I would need is later on for when I make / Design my map for my game, after this I took a break from research Until my 8th week When I decided to take my research steady I did some research on alien as This would help me design and make my enemies after that the next week moved on to space characters to help me decide on what the player could look like and then I moved on to audio research on the 10th week and that was about it for researching I did come back and do some basic bits here and there but nothing major.
Overall I wish I did not spread out my research as much as I did as I think it took to much time in the small period of time I had to make my game so next time when doing a game project with a limited time know not to spend and spread my work out as much as I did.
Design-
To start off with I think my design got off to a very rough start the first month it seems pretty good with my initial game ideas after that I made basic rules after the presentation on the game they thought was the best but this is where it falls off and then the next week, I talked to a few Friends and teachers to get their opinions on it and then it turned out that my idea was a bit weak in certain spots and I had to go back and changed quite a bit and I merge some of my ideas with my friends and teachers ideas. After this, I felt like it put me on the right foot and I just needed to continue with the momentum that I gain from the support of my friends and teachers.
It was a long week but I thought about all my mechanics and reworking my game and got a lot of my game design mechanics out of the way. After that, I came back and did a few mechanics here and there and then moved on to making a draught of my level idea since I finally finished all my mechanic ideas.
I started with making a block out for the level I wrote a letter in each room to represent what that room would be when further on down the line of designing my map and I then gave the blocks natural shape to actually represent the spaceship and that it is a mining ship with two big drills on the end. I also kept the letters in each room so I know which one was which, I made a pretty detailed version of what I would imagine it look like. Then finally I colored coordinated it and then I talked about what they all mean and labeled what the dots are and mean. I also decided it would be a good idea after doing my final mock-up of the map to talk about potential asset locations talking about what could maybe go where.
This came in very handy when I came to actually making my real asset list as they gave me the idea of what assets are actually important and what I need to prioritise over other assets. So that’s what I did I moved onto my assets list next talking about the core Assets the semi-important assets and then the accessories pretty much assets that I don’t actually need it or just make the game and experienced a bit more immersive
when I finished making my asset list I jumped right into actually designing and making my assets I started with my player as it felt like that was the most important.
But I felt like I didn’t put much heart and soul into creating my player I just ended up finding a very simple way to make a character as a placeholder which ended up just being a space helmet.
I moved on through to the next important thing which was the enemy and I really felt like I put too much effort into this one I started with just doing some basic drawings of different atomy being wings claws and Hooves and skin types, I think the reasoning behind this is because I put a lot of effort into researching my Enemy and the design behind Aliens. I thought to myself it would be a good idea to try and start the actual unique art style so you do this I decided to actually draw on paper to see how that would work and only use pencil. After all my spending a full day on designing my enemy my teacher and friends urge me to continue and get on my other work because I was putting too much time and effort into one thing so that is what I did I did a quick sketch like my player and I ended up with a very simple and pretty neat looking character as a good place holder, I did end up scrapping the paper idea out there as it would have just taken too much time to do it for every individual asset.
Next I made a simple engine as a placeholder nothing too fancy just a very simplistic engine and I made a control panel and I actually really like the dark theme that I had going so I decided to make my other asset the same dark theme as my control panel and with this, I made my wall look very similar to the control panel and floor too.
After doing that for I then moved onto the broken floor for that was a pretty key component of the game and then did a small animation sprite for it of it just flashing.
I also made a small health pack I made this white and red so it really sticks out from the rest of the game and it is very eye-catching.
Next, I moved on to my spreadsheet for my health this is a bit different to the other one’s pretty much meaning I just need to lay out a bit different and not make it 64 by 64. Although the hearts were 64 by 64 individually. I did this by drawing 1 at 64 by 64 and then getting that and then copying and pasting it in a few lines getting one less each time.
That is all my core Assets out of the way I did make a few more here and there but that’s about it nothing too fancy, I am pretty upset that I didn’t get enough time though to go back and actually finalize and actually make my things not just sprite holders not just there as something I can use as a starting off point.
I also additionally made a simple song to not make my game feel so empty and give it at least a little bit of sound I used a sweet tool called beatbox that was proposed to me to use by a teacher. My plan was also to come back and make some sounds on my character running and maybe some alien noises but I just didn’t have enough time to fit all this in with me going quite hard in on the coding and actually get in the game working.
overall I think I could have done a lot better job on my design work I feel like I spent too much of my time on researching and I could have definitely come back and do a lot more work and adding in other assets making my assets better going in and adding other sounds to my game.
Code-
My coding had a rough start as I started making my game before sitting down and talking about it with someone else and my game idea this meant that I started making codes for Something That I would not actually need after this I took a step back and decided to focus on designing and researching to make sure that I can make a good game in the time frame I had this also backfired on me as It left me with only 4 weeks to make my game and all the code for it But I did not let this deter me I just jumped right in to it, In the first week of my coding I started with making my player Movement script I found this quite easy and straightforward as I have done this many times before now and I know how it works and how to code it, Then I moved on to making a script for the camera to follow player this is also easy as I once again I have done this many times before now and I know how it works and how to code it, Then I moved on to making a script for the camera to follow the player this is also easy as I once again I have done this many times before now and I know how it works and how to code it, And the same also applies to my next script which was Player Pickups meaning I made so that the player could run over certain things and get points/scores for it this would be used later on for eg. if he got a score 10 he would win, The next week of coding I started with I way for the player to open doors but this end up beeing just sipmply When the player picks up a certain amount of keys it will destroy certain doors this is a done by taging the doors and useing the socre system I made last week, Then I made when you run up to a broken Engine it fixs, but actually, it just adding numbers to a different score and when that score reaches a certain amount it will also destroy some doors and the Invisible blocker of the main controls / Escape pod controls and then I made when you touch the main controls or Escape pod controls it adds to another score that means when you touch it you win and it send you to a win scene, Then on to the 3rd week, I added in some challenge elements meaning I made so that the player could take damage this means that I had to make health for him and some kind of trigger to damage the health I also made a pick up health pack that heals you for 1 and then disappears,On the final week, I add in a bit challenge by making an enemy scripture where the script where the enemy chases the player and then a simple script where the enemy walks on a set path back and forth, and that is all the code that I got done and I was happy as that is all the code that I had planned to make for this simple game that I was making but if I did have the time I think I would have added in other challenging elements but I am a bit sad that I didn’t get to do my original idea and it is true that I would have not had enough time to make it.
Time Management-
With my time management I think I started Of well I used Trello quite a bit to guide me with what I wanted to do each week This worked well for the first 4 weeks of researching and Design Game Ideas and Basic Rules making But on the 5th week I fell ill and this prevented me from keeping a constant flow of work and on the 6th Week I talk to my friends and my Design teacher and he helped me and told me the idea I had would take to much time and we rework so that is what I spent my time doing, this helped me get back on track up until the 14th week where I now had a massive challenge of making my game in less than A month But this did not deter me I just got on with it and managed to get all the coding I wanted to get done. So I’m happy that I asked my friend and my design teacher for help because if I went with my original plans I would have never got it finished in time. Next time I will be more conscious of my ideas and how much time they will take to do, I also think that I should not have spread out my research as much as I did, as it was helpful but it constricted my time on making my game and I almost didn’t get it finished it is nice to take your time researching and design the best game but I think I have learned to what extent to go to when Researching and designing a game when you have a time limit and not to cram in as much coding as I did in a small time as this made it a bit untidy also sometimes made it hard to find a part of the code I needed to work on so overall after this project I think my time management skills will improve quite drastically and be a lot better for the next time I ever do a project with a time constriction on it.
Project Summary-
As my project as a whole, I think that it has been a challenge and I feel like I could have definitely done better in certain places, I think it all comes down to just not managing my time well enough.
As I just felt like I was constantly choking under the pressure and having to pump out work I tried to take it steady and just do consistent work but that just didn’t work well for me with the time constrict.
A few things that I would like to improve on was making more assets filling out my game a bit more making not feel as bland as it doses adding another mechanics that are considered but just didn’t have the time for.
I would of like to design more levels and actually, think about for the Mechanics that I could have added for the game as the levels would have slowly progressed and gotten harder.
Good note Will be taking away from this is I should probably condense down my research into it a shorter period of time.
But now what do I think I did well I think I really honed in on making my game as I really wanted to get it finished and have all the mechanics in that I wanted to get into the game. The game has a few rough edges is a bit bland but overall it got the puzzle aspects of the game that I wanted. And I think I’m also going to take away from this is that I need to stick to my strengths and the strength is designing and making the game. And not so worried about the audio aspects of the game and maybe the artwork. As I felt like that definitely wasn’t my focus on this project as definitely did try to do a lot of artwork and audio and I did a lot of research behind them tow things.
So the main problem was time management and just trying to juggle too many things so I just need to focus on certain aspects of the game and make sure that my time is going to the right places.
Game Design 