Proposals

I'm currently finishing up my final proposal ready for sending. I've just finished the concept artwork for my game, these invovlve a mini boss, boss, pick-up and the death scenes.

Here are the Death Screen. There is the Character, Enemy, Mini Boss and Boss.














Then there is the Mini Boss Run Cycle and Boss Run Cycle


Here is the Health Pick-up.








The Game has had a update in the proposal, like new rules and functions. The plan is to have a duck function, this is allow the player to dodge the enemy's arrows. I'm also planning to have a set area, in which the enemy has to be in before the player can shoot, The game is really easy at the moment, as the player can shoot the enemies before the enemies enter the screen, the game needs to have a challenge and the area will add a challenge to the player's experience of the game.

Alpha creation

I've manages to create the Alpha with this features so far:

Running character
Running Enemies
"Death Sequence"
Health Bar
Score
Jumping Characters


My character is now able to run left and right, when you press space he now fires his 'arrows' and by pressing shift he can jump to avoid the bullets, I think I might have a duck to dodged, it might make it easier. My enemies are also running towards the character in waves also shooting 'arrows'. Once they are hit a few times, they start the 'death sequence' which is just a simple animation of falling backwards before fading out. The health bar and score system is not working as it should, you see, I'm following the Shootorial in the Kongregate website, and I've done what they've said, but my score doesn't work accurately, at first it stayed on 0, but now it comes up with random numbers, starting at 1700000 then it starts adding 50 before going to another random number. The health bar doesn't lose health and the game doesn't end. Right now I can't even start the game as it keeps saying Access of undefined property gameOverMenu and I have no idea what I'm doing!!! AHH!!!! Well, I kinda know, but so far I've looked at my brackets and they all seem to be in place and lined up right.
I've sorted out the game over, but my score and health are still not working so I can't see if my game over menu is working or not. Right, I've hot my player to lose health, but the bar doesn't show the health decreasing, the score system is still not working and coming up with random numbers, the game over menu does work, but it's too big, which is easy to change, but when you click on play again, it makes the player stay in the middle of the screen running and not letting the player do anything!!!! I fixed the health bar by adding the health values (Which I forgot to add (Opps) I've changed the game over menu so it now sits happily in the middle of the screen, but I'm still having problems opening a new game from the game over menu. So far it's working alright for a mock up with a few bugs here and there and hopefully I can have it ready to send as an Alpha before the Xmas holidays in two weeks.

Flash Game Alpha

I'm still testing my alpha games. Like in the last one, I'm currently trying to get a character to run at the moment using the Shooturial. I've also stayed to the shooturial file names, as when ever I changed it to what they was like Run, I couldn't understand the reason why it was not working, so by staying with the shooturials file names to save a lot of heartach.

After an hour of testing and writing I've got my man to run!!!!!!! (Yeah!) Now I have to change a few settings. These settings are for him to say in the bottom courner and can't run up or down.
So far my alpha is now making the player run, the background is scrolling and now my player can shoot.

Now my player is shooting 'arrows' from him. It's not the best qualiy so far, the run cycle is not the best, it's a black and white sketch, the background is alright and the arrows are chunky.
The only problem so far is the player starts at the top left courner of the page.
I've just finished some programming changes, now he starts at the bottum left courner of the page and now he can only go left and right instead of up and down as well, as he didn't need to go up or down. By doing this I changed a few propoties under the Ship function I added a little bit of code : x = 5 and y = 200, this loads the player up at the bottom courner of the page, and allows for instant play.

I'm thinking of creating a shooter game as it's seems to be a lot easier to program.

I've just relieased I haven't created a short enemy death sequence, for this I have created a quick sketch of a man falling back, in Flash I will create him to flash on and off a few times before disappearing.
So far the Explosion (Death sequence) is working, but it's also not. Let me explain, it works when the enemy get's hit, the animation plays, but it skips forwards, then when shooting, the arrows hit the first enemy then they start hitting every two or three, and the arrow range gets shorter and shorter as the more enemies they hit. I've changed the death seqeunce so they disappear at the right place, but the arrows are still busted, they still only hit one every few enemies and the range shortens. I fixed the death sequence but placing their allinement to be the top courner instead of the middle of the image.
I've fixed the arrow problem, I didn't release I had to enter more code after that will delect the array and update the search and destory ^_^ Opps! (Note to self........don't complain about it until you've read the rest of the tutorials!)

Just working on the score system for the game. I'm still following the shooturials to create the score. I've only got the health bar and game over screen left to create.

Testing

Right now, I'm trying to get my run cycle animation to use the code from the shooturial on Kongregate. So far, I can't get it to work as I wanted it to, so I'm going to keep trying to figure it out, or I can wait until Wednesday and ask for help.

Proposal replies

Thank you Gareth for your reply and the positive comments. Now, I have to create an in-depth proposal for my chosen game.
From the reply email about my level I need to:

• Plan out my level
• Develop characters ideas and sprite sheets (Which I've done, that was my character sheet, I just need to colour all the characters in) and enemies
• Backgrounds
• Finalise the game mechenics and rules, maybe create an alpha or prototype
• More concept artword (That's wierd for me, I always do more than I need to! (I can do more, I don't mind!)

Before I can start with creating the final proposal and game alpha, I will need to confirm which game I will create. So far I can either create a shooter, easier to create and easy to find a tutorial on as I've already worked through the shootorial on Kongregate website, or I can create my avoider game with a helpful tutorial from Gareth on http://www.cartoonsmart.com/classic_gaming.html (Trust me, the game it shows is hard, and fast, like Mario (Which I could never finish (the original one anyway)

After talking with Steve, I know have to decied which game to go with. Personally, I want to do my platformer, and well, I'm looking at tutorials, and working through them to create a mini platformer game as an Alpha.

Game proposals concept art

As promised, here are the concept artwork for my game proposals.

The first images are off my hero and enemy run cycle for the Crossbow shooter followed by a rough background look.

These images are sheets of Save the Princess.

Proposals

Today I've been working on my proposals. I've been writing the proposals last week and this week I've been working on my concept for the work. So far there are some digital work and some traditional work. The traditional work I will have to scan onto my computer to work on, the traditional work is for my second game, Save the Princess. It is a side scroller avoider game, where the player has to guide the princess to safety avoiding bats, fireballs and spikes without falling down the holes. The game idea is kind of like Action Trunip, but it has enemies to attack and block as well as having to duck and jump. The designs I created today are:

• Characters - this is just a sketch of the hero and the princess running, I used a run cycle sheet and drew around one of the runners twice and drew around them to create the look of the hero and princess.
• Level Layout - this is a sketch of roughly how I want the level to look like, but not official. It has different raise in floor, some hills up and down to give the game a sense of direction. The level also has some indication of holes for the player to avoid, but there will be more in the final level design.
• Enemies - a bat and fireballs are the enemies. Bats are the enemy that will appear infornt of the player, as they are hiding in the cave, and the fire ball are the rear enemies being fired from the dragon chasing the player for stealing his princess. The dragon so far is not going to be shown, but so far that's not for sure, I might have a shadow of the dragon to show the player he;s still being followed.
• Avoider objects - spikes and hole. Spikes you duck, holes you jump, very simple gameplay and very simple design, I'm hoping they will be random in the game, making the game different each time.

Unfortunately this images are not available now, but I'm hoping to upload all the concept images before the end of the week (12th) as many of them are not yet complete, but with small adjustments.

The second work (Digital) are concepts of my shooter (Yes, I am designing one) It's a crossbow shooter (Keeping to the medieval theme) It's set in Fenrir (My HCI project and animation) and you play a soldier of Malta. You have to take out the armies of Knavesmire by shooting them with your crossbow, without getting hit by theirs. The work today was a digital run cycle, with a colour references. I've also done a background shot, but that's very basic but gives the idea of the look.

I promise to upload my artwork by the end of the week to help visualize the ideas.

Reply from Gareth about Game breif

On the 20th October I received an email from Gareth regards to the questions I sent him. The replies have helped me very much. Here is the reply written in the email:

• The controls? Are they for a mobile phone game or a computer or website? If it's for a mobile phone, the size of the screen? Or will that be up to me when I'm creating the proposals?

Yep, it's up to you. As long as I can play the game and test it then I don't mind too much. Usually its a phone game or a Flash web game, but it doesn't have to be. Someone created it for the PSP a few years ago. Whatever you choose must be comfirmed in your final proposal along with screen dimensions however.

Whatever you do concentrate on having basic movement through 4 or 8 ways (Up, down, left and right etc), with a maximum of 2 action buttons. Depending on your target platform, you might want to use some gyro features, or simply arrow keys on a PC keyboard. You also might not need any action buttons at all.

• For the game itself, I know your after an arcade shooter, so I was wandering if it will be a side-scroller, top down? Does the game need to be a shooter? Or can it have elements of a shooter? Personally, I'm not a keen shooters, I prefer little games were the player has to dodge objects or jump gaps, like Action Turnip on Kongregate.

Hehe someone else in your group has already mentioned Action Turnip! I'm never going to get that tune out my head now! :) Games like that or Canabalt etc I would let you do. It would be bending the rules a bit, but as long as you stuck to other aspects of the brief then there would be any problem. Side scrolling or top down, I won't mind.

• I know the game has to be suitable for all ages and genders, but I'm wandering about other cultures, as if I was releasing the game international, should I make it suitable for other cultures as well?

I have no problem with the game only appealing to a European or North American audience. Of course in the future however it would potentially limit worldwide sales activity. You might not see this as in issue anyway, as if it was good then a mobile or facebook version of the game has a potentital UK audience of 15 million.

If you want to release a game internationally, then it has to have international appeal. I wouldn't get too worried about that though as something straight-forwards like Action Turnip has it.

• For the replay, should it have a score system? By having the scoring it can become competitive playing and make it able for replay.

A scoring system is one way to meet the 'replayability' requirement of the brief. There are others, but that would certainly be one of them.

• Gameplay. For the gameplay, apart from easy, is there anything else? Like fun? Also, should it have interface? Health bar? And maybe a start screen for the game, something small to introduce the game before going into the game itself.

Start screen? Yes. Fun? Of course! Easy? No, challenging! Interface? Up to you. It's whether your game needs them.

Thanks to these responses, I have a clearer idea of creating my game.

Flash Game Development

Today we have received the brief for our final project for Programming and flash for College.
So far we have been creating little games for flash to understand the program and programming. First we created an Avoider Game. This was a small step by step tutorial showing us how to create an enemy and how to place them in the game, an avatar and how to control it. We learnt how to create the enemies to appear randomly on the screen, the game over screens and start screen, creating buttons and also a score. After we created the Avoider game we learnt how to create a shooter using the Kongregate Shootorial. I managed to get to tutorial 5 before we was given our brief.

The brief was given to us today to create a:
2D Flash Game using Flash
It's an Arcade Shooter
Has to be original with 1 level or an area of the game. Must be about 4 minutes of play
Has a story
Has replay function
Has music and sound effect
Easy controls
Suitable for all ages and gender

The game must be finished by the 4th May 2011. At first it sounds like a long way away, but considering I only have four hours a week in class, it will go quickly and I know I will have to use outside class time. Working with programming so far was easy, but that was using step-by-step tutorials.

I have been thinking about the ideas and have come up with a few ideas, but I'm not sure. I'm mostly going to create a game around my other development, Unit 73 HCI Fenrir:Quest for Peace. But so far, I'm not sure how to create it into a shooter. So far the only idea is maybe a little tournament game. Like a jousting game, where the player has to tap to pick up speed before holding the button to keep the player on his horse. Or maybe a little archery contest like bowman, but not like bowman. But then again, when I heard it was a shooter, I thought of a crossbow shooter. The player runs across the screen and fires a crossbow. Only rough ideas at the moment.