Imagined Worlds

Storyboard/Play-board-

What went well was that it helped me think about what i want my game to do and how i want it to perform. The game-play would differ as the game-play gets more difficult, the camera will remain still so that the player can apply his or her focus on the game. Using this method allowed me to express more about the vision of our game and how we would want to enhance the game even further by the video of Inside. Furthermore, what i would like to do for our game is to add the obvious thing which is diegetic sounds, which to put in simple terms is sounds such as phew phew for the lasers that the player may have to dodge, eventually the level will progressively get harder. Our non-diegetic sounds may be the music as an example.

29/09/20

LO- To develop ideas based on research,

To create choices for art direction

To produce a play-board for game-play elements

These are my sketches based on the research that i have done, i researched about different types of aircraft we could possibly add into the game as a sprite.

My Spaceship Work for micro game.

12/10/20

Production Management: Agile and Scrum

PM 2 Plan the provision of requirements for a specific production

PM 3 Be able to co-ordinate a production process

Agile represents value and principals, agile helps in production management as it can guide a product through multiple iterations and processes. An agile product management can be a flexible approach when working.

Agile can help develop products as the agile methodology is an repetitive approach to product development which is performed in an environment by self-organizing teams, the use of this method can construct high quality software in a lucrative and timely manner to meet the criteria of possible changes.

Agile assists us to work as a highly productive team due to the fact that it helps everyone keep focused on one task at a time. This allows the team to complete large scope projects. From agile, you can minimalize the time management from using this useful method. Agile can also prevent the team from being overwhelmed and disorganized with a handful of tasks.

Its important to keep up to date and update your project management documentation as things can change throughout the course of your work.

5/10/20

ISIW 3 Know how diegetic and non diegetic sounds are used to enhance the aura of an imagined world.

Diegetic- Sound that is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present from an action in the film. Examples of this would be the voices of different characters, objects that make sounds.

Non-Diegetic– Sound which is not visible on the screen, for example, the sound effects added as dramatic effect, music etc…

In our game we will use space electronic music, that will be made by the team, in addition we will use phew phew sounds for the lasers, and the crash crash sounds when the lasers impact the spaceship.

6/10/20

ISIW 2 Be able to use traditional techniques and digital processes to produce 2D art with accompanying sound for an imagined world concept.

I played the music “Are Friends Electric” and I used the images to depict what I heard behind the music above.

3/11/20

Imagine worlds- Scrap-man Simulator–

The pitch for the game is basically, a car driving and the aim of the game is to deliver parts and equipment to the shipyards before you run out of fuel, or if failing to do so, you will fail the task.

Basically, the plan for our team is to separate them into skills such as Artists and Programmers. I have been placed on the art team with Josh and Ollie, and Morgan and Christian are going to the programming team. The theme behind the game is going to be a pixel based metal and glass game. The prime objective of the game is to make it on to time in order to win the game and bring the parts in which are in the crate in the back of the pickup truck that you will have to drive. The style of the game is going to based on a pixel game genre.

On my side of things, I have done some 2D pixel art for the game, which is a pickup truck which I have uniquely come up with for this game, these are just some design ideas I have come up with to plan out the possibility of the real pickup truck which will appear in the actual game itself. On the bottom, is a design that I have made for the game of my pickup truck which I have done on a software called Gimp which is a similar software for Photoshop alternative.

I went for a green car themed pickup truck with the vibrant shades that I really like about this car, I made similar blends of tones to make it contrast with the variety of tones that I have utilized to make the car lively. I have made this a single asset given the wheels which are not attached to the car as they will be used as separate formats. For the windows, I made it quite murky, making the windows, gray, giving it that dark texture.

Design 1-

The image below shows the finished product featuring the wheels, light on the top and also the crate the pickup truck needs to bring to the end of the finish line.

Design 2–

This is my second design of my pickup car, with the windows shaded in, to make it look effective rather than utilizing the pencil tool to shade it in with black, I used an alternative which was reducing the opacity of the paint brush. The lights in the front in the front shows a light texture I have applied to the yellow pixels to illuminate its brightness. In addition, I have also applied rust to the car, which, with the colors I had selected were brown or dark brown to express the rustiness of the car based on the amount of rust that I had applied on the car, the car is set in the olden days and in order to fulfill the criteria of making this car look vintage, I utilized the idea of using rust on the cars to maker it look old, vintage, classical in order to make it look effective to what style of car I am making. Moreover, I improved my car by making the wheels looks more realistic by adding a darker color on the car to match the cars look and style. In addition, I also created a crate for the back of the pickup truck, as this is considered as the cargo for for when the pickup truck will race against time to make it to the finish line.

My Wheels

My crate/s

12/11/20

Timing

In the games industry, Milestones are considered as a noteworthy step that is taken towards the pre production of the game. Milestones are approached by lots of industries and is considered the standard approach to when jumping on significant steps and closer to finishing the game. Moreover, it clarifies to the team in the development process by visualizing what task the studio needs to work on next.

On the other side, however, The term Deliverables are the highest level milestones that the studios would have to achieve in order to maintain the success of the project. It, also, gives the non developers the idea of where the project is. Deliverables also have a due date to where the development team will target and ensure to finish before this target, consequently, this can mean a lot of crunching for developers and so these types of deliverables are kept as practical as possible.

Research Ideas–

Below displays my concept art drawing of the docks with the cranes as the center of the image and on the left displays a cargo ship, the shadows on the bottom indicate the shadows that come from the top which are the cranes overshadowing the ground beneath, this will clearly capture the eye of the audience looking at this image. Also, in this image, i have also used 1 point perspective in this concept for the bottom middle for the roads and expand them.

19/11/20

Coding Conventions

Variables start with a lower case and are camel cased meaning capitalized, all private variables have_ at the front. Functions, have a capital and are camel cased, in addition they also have comments above them. Properties, are the public variables. Classes are camel cased, and lastly, a or b are fine as long as it is consistent.

AO WII 5. Know the principles of Agile and Scrum as project management techniques..

Agile- is a repetitive approach to project management and also software development that supports teams to deliver the value to their clients in a quicker way, an agile team would work in groups of small numbers to create that efficiency and with less time consuming energy put in one big task, agile teams therefore develop better and quicker methods in order to finish the task as quick as possible and also adding the value on the product.

Scrum– The scrum technique is the main framework in which Agile can be utilized in, the project can be broken down into simplified tasks, therefore, you can then allocate the time in which the team will get this done, this type of time period is called a sprint, which basically revolves around, Planning, Implementing, Reviewing, and reflecting on the tasks that you are doing. Finally, given this is all completed, you will have one completed product.

Having Agile in the game development area is a great thing to have, especially when working on a big project, in which you can divide the team into more productive ways, doing this at the same time will add value on the product that you are making as a whole foe example on the artistry aspect, you could have the junior artists working together and the senior artists working together.

1/12/20

Metal/Glass Shards

Today in have been working on making the shards which the pickup truck will collect in order to upgrade the car after the game. I have been improving the glass shard a bit just to make it look effective enough for the detail to appear for the game.

Next what I made was a metal shard, used the same copy of the glass shard, however I modified the changes a bit on for the metal shard, for example the major change that I did was the grey, dusky color the metal shard has, I also added extra pointy parts onto the metal shard as well.

Trello work so far

3/12/20

Beta Testing

During beta testing, at this stage, the game is in asset lock meaning you cannot add anything else to the assets. Beta testing is the final stage involving many people to play the game and iron out any bugs and ensure the game is balanced as possible. Beta testing can take various amounts of time depending on the size of the game and the possible bugs that can be encountered in the game which the players may face. Beta testing is done at the end of development, to test if the game is smooth or if it is missing something. It starts from conception ideas to production, to development to then eventually beta testing, testing the entire game or aspects of it, and at the end will come post production.

To ensure that Beta testing is successful, take notes and observe, the players reactions, the buttons they press etc.. this is pivotal as it makes you see their reactions whether this is good feedback or bad feedback, player reactions will give you more than written feedback, given that they may be your future target audience, who are likely to purchase the game after release.

Asking questions about what they didn’t like about the game is important, given that they wont hesitate to tell you the negatives of the game, this as a result will give you improvement areas to work on, and most importantly not distracting the player is recommended, given that their focus is on the game and nothing else, concentration is key when they are looking for the positives and negatives of the game, giving you a better chance to sport what’s good and not good.

4/12/20

Digital image with Sound

ISIW 2 Be able to use traditional techniques and digital processes to produce 2D art with accompanying sound for an imagined world concept.

This below is the pier I am using for my digital concept art.

Digital Image followed with Sound effects in the background

More concept work of Digital work

17/12/20

Post Mortem for Imagined Worlds Game

What went right?

What went well in the project was the fact that we planned out what the game was going to be straight away, the game was going to be a replication of Hill Climb Racing, however we changed aspects of it by changing the idea of this game based on the docks and the representation of Sunderland, aim of the game was pretty much collect as much glass and metal from the ground while travelling to the destination which would be the finishing point of the game. The idea of the game is to race against time and reach the finishing point in time for the cargo to be delivered on time onto the ship. The items you collected on the way can be used as upgrading materials for the car, maybe to upgrade the car, the wheels, turbo boosts etc…

The strategy of the creation of the game was to split the team into doing individual tasks, such as the programming team, the art team, I was on the art team, producing assets for the game such as the main sprite which would be the car itself, we were going for a pickup style car that would be suitable for this type of game, given that pickup trucks and the docks would have a suitable contrast in the game. We were going for a pixel based game, which in my opinion would be easier to do that a normal 2D generic game that you see like Hill Climb Racing. I also created the cargo for the pickup truck that would go into the back of the car, it would stick on the car. In addition I also created shards of metal and glass which would be the objects on the ground that the car would collect as I said before. I think what I struggled on for this game was the use of pixels I had to use for the car and for the assets, which made me a bit frustrated with the game but I was able to create everything well before the deadline.

What went wrong

What went wrong was the fact that this team was very dysfunctional in my opinion, they did not produce as much as I expected, especially the programming team, which was an absolute shambles in my opinion given that they did not do a lot, except Christian who was on the team did a lot of code for the game, however it was very buggy in his opinion. Also, for the documentation, (the GDD specifically) was completed finally, which was Ollies job to fulfill for the game. Josh was also on the art team with me, he was doing the background and also produced work of the Angel of the North as a landmark for the game.

The summary on how I felt about this project, overall, was not very impressive in my opinion, given that we did not even complete the game and took us weeks and weeks to produce simple things like programming scripts etc.. and also the GDD which took almost forever to do. I felt the game was going to turn out good if the team focused more on this project that other things which I think the focus was lost and the concentration just fell. From this experience, however, for me it was great given that this project allowed me to boast my skills in 2D art, something I would like to do in the future of the Games, Animation, VFX industries. As a whole I am very happy of the work that I produced for the game however it was a shame that I was not able to have this put on the game that was meant to be created before the deadline.