aspects of play
Brief can be found HERE.
Proposal
The brief for this proposal wanted us to look at the different ways games have been analyze, research a large amount of games over a selection of platforms and then produce our own prototype based on our findings. We also had to define which platform our game would be suited best at and for what reason, again depending on the outcome of our research
A more indepth proposal aswell as all my research and results can be found in the design document which i submitted but is too large to host here.
Research
The only real research i had to do for this brief was what was initially asked for, we had to research six different games on various platforms (console, flash based web games and board games) we played them and decided key features what made a game "fun" and by referencing the work of Caillois and Csikszentmihalayi. I looked at a few other game examples which i havent included in my final document as these was just to decide what other elements i thought i could incorporte into my demo based on what seemed to be popular features of mainstream games but while also trying to achieve something original which was a requirement of the brief.
Planning(and putting in to practice.)
The planning for this brief was quite extensive, after the research which was completed first i also had to research a variety of other games and find aspects of games which i believe made them fun. Once i believed i had done enough research i had to start thinking of an idea for my prototype. I wrote down a variety of ideas until i decided on what i wanted to go with and then began sketching out rough mocks up for this.
I did various mock ups for the main background of the game as well as for each individual mini game until i could figure out which games would actually be fun and playable aswell as something i would be able to produce using actionscript. With having my rough mock ups drawn on paper i created a host of images for my intro which would play through like a storyboard, a small section of text with a corresponding image to accompany it, this in itself took multiple weeks due to how much artwork was needed.
With the intro completed i moved onto creating the main background for the game as well as selectable images which would take the user to the corresponding game, again i used photoshop and a tablet to create the same sort of theme used in the intro which i wanted to run throughout entirely, i didnt want perfectly straight lines for some of my objects which is why i believed the tablet and drawing freehand was the best option.
I made all the graphics for a particular game and then imported them all into flash and worked on the code to make the game actually work, after doing this for all three games that are in the demo i tidied up all the loose ends, fixed any bugs either i or other people i asked for feedback found and then proceeded to find a selection of music and sound effects to fit in with the theme. I used a selection of websites hosting free audio loops and sound files and went through hundreds until i found ones i believed would best suit.
The Work
The actual playable game can be found HERE (opens in a new window due to 800x600)
Review/Evaluation
In the end I’m really pleased how my game has turned out, I decided to call it Automaton Shutdown and i believe this game is best suited as a web based flash game due to being casual natured but not large enough for the console market. I think the name suits the game and theme quite well and I have tech/industrial type music and sound effects throughout which I think really compliments the style. There is also some quite advanced code in the game in my opinion which I initially thought would be too complicated but it makes it run a lot better than anything I’ve previously done.
I think my intro is fairly good, it turned out bigger than expected because I wanted to get the story across even though I realize majority of players will just skip this I wanted to include it anyway. I did add a skip button at the start so players can just skip the whole thing if they really wish or if they have played through before and don’t need to read it. I also put next buttons throughout the intro to advance to the next page as well as a skip button which makes the text appear pretty much instantly for faster readers so I think I catered to all players with these options.
it took me quite a long time to create the main background image but I think the style works and fits my original idea, I also made the highlightable games easy to distinguish by making them glow bright yellow when hovered over, this was to make them stand out as well as make visually appealing for younger players. In the end I only managed to incorporate three out of my six mini game ideas but in doing so I feel I was able to polish them better than if I had attempted all six. My reasoning for not attempting all six is because after trying some ideas out and looking at other variations of them around the internet I realized two of them really wasn’t going to be viable as mini games and wouldn’t be that fun at all as well as being much too advanced code for my level so I would have had to learn a lot to make subpar games in my opinion.
My only real issue about my game is I never decided if I should reward the player with xp in various attributes (Memory, Accuracy etc) for completing the game which would then advance the robot this was my initial idea but was never implemented because I wasn’t sure if there was another way to do it but unfortunately I ran out of time.
NAvigation
Semester One
Semester Two
Semester One
Semester Two