Client Related Practice

Client Orientated Brief for Games Design

Brief can be found HERE.

Blog for our game can be found HERE.

Proposal

This brief required us to fulfil a client orientated brief as a group. We had to design a working prototype of a game based around an underwater theme. This could be anything from the planets sea levels rising to a fantasy set world, aslong as the underwater criteria was met and it contained a multiplayer aspect or at least something showing the possbility of multiplayer if the game was the full version.

Research

There was some extensive research for this project, we had to research a range of genres to see what type of game would suit this brief from real time strategys to roleplaying games. As well as all the game research we did we also went to The Deep and took many photos and gathered video footage for inspiration since its the main attraction in the area related to this brief.

Planning(and putting in to practice.)

There was huge amounts of planning in a brief this size. Initially we had to come up with at least three different prototype ideas and eventually decide on one of them and focus development on it. The idea was decided and then more research took place, we researched more games that were much more related to our proposed idea such as Pokemon and Spore, we decided what were the best features in these games and if we could take these and possibly improve them in anyway for our own game so it wasnt just a copy.

The game decided was called Microbe, the idea was that it would be set in a fishbowl on a microscopic level, the game itself would play like any other sort of rpg with towns full of people and camps dotted around the world, the idea would be you would choose one of the selectable characters and play through a story fighting enemies throughout, leveling up and acquiring more skills.

We had our game idea and we had a good idea of what features to include so after that we split up the group into sections which let people focus on areas they felt more comfortable with and jobs were delegated accordingly. Basecamp was set up so each member had specific tasks to complete by specific dates and meetings was announced on there before hand so we always knew what to do. Skydrive was also used where the team could upload concept art or the images we took from The Deep so they were always easily accessible.

At this point i cant really go into detail what the other members did but in regards to my work, i was working with Roger on the characters for our game. The playable demo would have four selectable characters each with five different evolved states so me and Roger each completed two of these creatures and all their states. At this point we branched off slightly, Roger focused on the NPC's throughout the world which would fit in with the script Calum had wrote out where as i started creating the random enemies that would pop up in the world and any that fit specific quests Calum had wrote in.

After making around 40 enemies each taking anything up to three hours each. I stopped making them as me and Roger had to create the entire intro for the prototype following Calums scripts and storyboards. This took slightly longer than we expected as Roger, whom was creating the artwork had to make the style look similar to Liam's work who was in charge of the enviroments, I also made the images in the city for the Tavern, Shop and Coliseum (which is where the multiplayer aspect would take place)

The Work

The full document can be downloaded HERE.

A selection of my creatures can be seen HERE, as well as the buildings i did for the main city (shop, tavern etc)

The final prototype(and Intro) can be played HERE.

Review/Evaluation

I enjoyed working in a fairly large group as it had enabled people to focus specifically on parts of the game they felt most comfortable with and although i like the look of the game im quite dissappointed with a lot that happened and some of the decisions.


I was working with Roger on character designs As i didnt feel comfortable doing the actual coding for a game of this scale and other people in the group were better suited at this (Chris) so our choice of roles did seem to work out well. As i mentioned i was working on enemies for the game and i was fine with this, however towards the end of the project almost 75% of the world we had initially planned for was removed so we could focus on the first area better. Although i understand why this was done it was quite annoying as both I and Roger had created creatures specifically for all four zones and this made over half our work pretty much useless as they had no place in the game. Aswell as this, if we knew from the start we only had one area to work in we could have spent a lot more time on this area.

The intro im pleased with, it turned out how Calums planned with his storyboard and i think we made it suit the game well, an advantage of working on this was that we were able to incorporate our creatures into the intro that never made it into the final game so it didnt feel like we wasted too much of our time in the end, im glad we were able to work on the intro.

The playable part of the game works better than expected in my opinion, despite so many things being removed at the end and i feel i definetly did my fair share of the work for this brief and i believe if some others put in more hours we could have had an even better demo.

The use of Basecamp and Skydrive were most useful and i believe if we have to do another group project, these will be used again as they had so many helpful purposes. I did enjoy working in a group game as some people like working on areas other dont and in a group of this size everyone was able to concentrate on what they really wanted to whereas you are stuck doing everything in a single project.

NAvigation

Year Three

Semester One/Two