Final Evaluation

Final Evaluation

Research 

Creating a survey for things about my game helped me see what players liked and disliked in some games. This gave me a good idea of what players would like to see in my game and what would make my game successful. My level evaluations were particularly useful for me as it allowed me to look at some games that are in a similar genre to mine. I looked at three games levels and how they performed. Which was useful for me to see what was successful. Doing some art style research was also helpful to me as this is where I looked at some different types of pixel art styles.  As I had already decided on the idea to do a pixel art style in my first presentation. It was good to sort out what style of pixel art to do before I just start doing assets.

One thing that didn’t go as well as I thought it would be was actually coming up with concepts for my game and character. I really wanted my concepts to be the best they possibly can be because this is what my entire game would be based on. I wanted it to be quite unique and interesting for players to enjoy. But with some extra time, I think I came up with some really good concepts like the entire game being set inside of a monster.

I think my research was really successful at helping me throughout my project. As I went back to refer to my research multiple times to help me. It also helped me to make sure that I had a good plan before just starting my game. This was important as I don’t think my project would have been nearly as good without my research. But at some points, I feel that I may have spent too much time on things like mindmaps and mood boards. I feel like I was a little optimistic in my research because I had lots of ideas I wanted to implement but I don’t think I had enough time to put it all in. So overall I’m really happy with my research section.

Design

Creating some level designs helped me at lots of points throughout my project because having a basic layout of levels I could refer back to was very useful. I found this helpful for when I had to create my level and put the enemies into them. I’m really happy with my asset designs and how they turned out in my game. I wanted a simple UI design for my game as I thought that players would get too easily confused with more complex UI. I also don’t think a complex UI fits the theme of my game so it wouldn’t make sense to have one.  I then created some game flow charts and a beat chart for use in my game later. This was especially useful for when I had to create my menus and it helped with pacing my game correctly. This is key as I don’t want my game to be too short so this is a good way for me to see how long I expect it to be.

The only thing I would have liked to improve would be the sound design of my game. I left the sound design to the last minute which meant that I didn’t have enough time to add in some sound effects. But I did manage to quickly make some quite unique music for each of my levels and my menus. I am still really happy with some of the 8-bit style music I made for my game in beep box. If I did have some more time I would have definitely added in some sound effects.

I would like to have added in some more enemies to make each of my levels more unique like I planned. But I did only manage to get in two of my unique enemies in my game which is quite unfortunate. I would have also liked to add in sound effects into my game but for time reasons I had to cut these things for my game.

Time-Management

I feel that being too optimistic at the start of the project really wasn’t good for my project overall. I wanted to get lots of different less important ideas into my game instead of focussing on making more important mechanics the best they can be. This meant that I had to cut things that were the least important to my game at that moment such as cut scenes, extra enemies and more abilities for the player. I cut these things as I thought they would have the least impact on the gameplay of the game but would take the most amount of time for me to complete.

Overall I think my biggest problems came from my time-management as I think I prioritised some elements of my game that weren’t as important as others. Like I spent a lot of time making animations and perfecting them when I could have just prioritised other parts of my main mechanics.  But I did still get most of the stuff that I wanted to get in the game so my time management wasn’t too bad. If I were to do this project again I would have planned my time out better at the start of the project. I would have also used Trello to set deadlines for myself more. As I did this a couple of times but I feel if I would have done this more it would have helped me to stay on time especially towards the end of my project.

Art

Creating my character was really important to my game as this is what the player will use throughout the game. But I took some extra time on this and made a character that I’m really happy with. So I was really happy with my character designs as I thought it fit really well with the backstory I came up with in my research. I then moved on to creating my ground assets its important to have a good looking ground and platform assets as that’s what a lot of players think is important about a game is its art. It is also important that all of my ground assets fit together as if they don’t it can look quite glitchy and buggy. I did have to make sure that all of my assets were correctly coloured as things like my platforms didn’t stand out against the background. My enemies were the next big thing I wanted to look good in the game as it is one of the main parts of my game. I wanted lots of unique enemies that would still keep with the theme of my game.

One thing that I had a couple of problems with was the animations for my character and enemies in my game. I had problems with this because I wanted to create a basic walking animation for each of my enemies and my player. I found that I couldn’t make the walking look natural. I also had a problem with lining up all my animations as when I put the animation in unity It would move side to side slightly. These were quite easy fixes but still took up some time.

I’m really happy with my assets and how they turned out in my game. As I said in my research I felt that the design of my characters and the style of my game is important to a game’s success. Even though I had a couple of problems with my art I still think it was a relatively easy section of my game.

Code

My player code was the main code of the game that I used for lots of different things to do with my player. This is where I handled most of the things that the player would damage or get damaged by. This was a really simple and easy way to to do this as it was only a couple of lines of code instead of lots of lines of codes in multiple codes. The coding my boss was very easy as all I did was modify some of my other codes from my enemies and I changed the values to get exactly what I wanted.  This was a very basic solution but I would have liked to have my boss to have a little more depth but I only started my boss code at the end of my project. So I was a little rushed when it came to coding my boss. My other big code was my health code which for my player I had hearts that would update. I have done this before in a previous project so I knew exactly what I needed to do. So I was able to sort this code out quite easily.

One particular code that I had lots of problems with would be my knockback code for when the player got damaged. I found out very quickly that this was quite a difficult code to do but I still wanted to do it as I thought it would make my game look a lot better. But unfortunately when I tried to put it in it would fling my player up into the air randomly. So instead of spending lots of time on trying to get this to work, I made it so that the player would flash red and I just completely removed knockback.

Overall I think my codding in my game went really well even though I had quite a few problems I am really happy with the codes I have and how they work. I don’t think they were the most efficient codes I could have made as I just wanted to get my mechanics in the game. But if I did do another project with more time I definitely would have made them run a little more efficiently.

Project Summary

One of the big things I have learned from this project would be creating a better plan of what I should get done each week at the start of the project. This helped me keep up with my project a lot better and help me with my time management. I feel this was the biggest problem I had during my project. Also being too optimistic at the start of my project didn’t help with my time management as some of my main ideas didn’t get as much functionality put into the game as I would have liked. I did also learn a lot of practical skills like being able to properly animate characters and make them look good. In the past, I hadn’t really done many 2d animations so this was a first for me. I found that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be the only challenge was making it look normal with the character I had created. But after I figured out a way to do it for one I just did it the same way as the others.

Overall I’m really happy with the state of my game and website as I got almost everything I wanted into them on time. My game works really well and just how I wanted it to work but I would always like to add more to it. I’m especially happy with the setting of my game and how my art really works with it. I’m also happy with a lot of the design work I have done as I feel it helped me at lots of different points throughout my project. So, for example, it was really useful for me to look back at some of the level designs I made to help me build up my levels. So overall I would say this project was quite successful although I had a lot of problems during my project I managed to overcome them.

https://youtu.be/1uUeeoULaO4

Game Creation

Introduction 

In this post, I will show off the development of my game by explaining what I did at each stage of my game. This is a great way to show the development of my game.

Outline 

Heart Burn is about a boy who fell into a monster and the only way to escape is to destroy its heart from the inside. He does this using his cone as a weapon and some of his abilities.

Player 

I like the character having some mystery about him like he has no idea how he got there.  I wanted him to look rough by having holes in his clothes as I think this really adds to his character and backstory. The character has basic movement to move left and right using “A” and “D”, they can use “E” to stun the enemy and finally can press “space” to jump and can press it again in mid-air to jump again.

Gameplay 

The main aim of the game is for the player to collect keys from each level to unlock the big heart boss at the end to escape. The player does this by defeating all the enemies in the way of the key then collects the key and finishes the level. The player can play the game however they want they could rush through the level and collect the key or they could kill every enemy in the level.

Game Creation

This is the basic prototype that I first based my game the rest of my game on. I used temporary assets and just started to get my main mechanics in the game first. I just wanted to make sure that I could actually do the main mechanics of my game. I made most of the mechanics to do with my player first like movement and weaponry. So I then could move on to making some basic enemies like flying and patrolling one. Finally, I added some platforms as it’s the last part of my game.

I then made a heart system for my game which the enemies can damage the player and the number of hearts reduce. This was quite easy for me as I had done this system in a previous project so I knew exactly how to create this. So overall I’m really happy with my heart system as I think it will work really well later on in my game.

Now that I have my main mechanics done I could move on to creating and animating assets. This process was very time consuming as I really wanted my assets to look good. But in the end, I’m really happy with the results as I think they look really good in the game.  I did have a couple of problems with the colouring as some things didn’t stand out and looked the same. So I had to change up some of the colours to make them brighter.

Now I finished my prototype and assets I then can use it to base my game off of. I started by replacing most of the main assets in my game. This was a simple process as all I had to do was put the Photoshop files into unity. But I did have to get everything to the correct scale as when I put them in they were tiny. But I managed to get the correct scale and then just made them prefabs so didn’t have to do it again.

I then fully created my first level with working traps like an acid pit and spikes. I also added in the rest of my assets and made a couple of new ones for my assets. The acid pit was really easy to code as I made it so the player would just die when they touch the acid. The spikes were similar but the player would only take one damage when it hits the spike. I also changed the colour of my platforms to make them a bit brighter as before I feel they didn’t stand out as much. Lastly, I made it so that the player had to get a key to unlock the end of the level.

I then started working on an ability where the payer could walk into a certain range of an enemy and can press E to freeze the enemy. It did take me a little while to get this mechanic set up because I had to keep going between two different scripts so I got confused. I managed to overcome this problem by deleting and redoing this system a simpler way. The animation was easy to set up but it was still a quite a time-consuming process. I think this is quite a unique selling point to my game as I think it works really well in my game. But in the end, I’m really happy with this mechanic even though it took me a long time to do.

I then moved on to creating my second level and fixing some bugs I found with my game. Actually creating my second level was quite easy as I already had all the prefabs I needed to create my level all I had to do was follow my research. I did also adjust some of the player’s stats like jump height and speed. As I found some bugs with my platforms as the player would be dragged up by the platform and it looked really weird. At this point, I also decided to create a wall jumping mechanic. This wasn’t hard to add in as all I had to do was make it so that the player gets extra jumps when they touch a wall. So then the player can continually jump on walls. This wasn’t the best solution to this but it did save me a lot of time and it didn’t look too bad.

I then made my third level which is the last main level of my game. Like my other levels, I found this quite easy to make but this was probably one of the time-consuming levels to make. As it has a lot more turns and corners which take some more time to line up and get right. I then moved on to creating turrets that are specifically unique to this level. I liked the idea of making some enemies that are only seen at certain levels.

I then created a level selector so that the player could choose between which levels to play or replay. This didn’t take as long as I expected it too and I’m really happy with the results. I was running a bit behind so I didn’t have time to add shading to it. So if I had some more time I would go back and add some more shading to this and some of my assets.

The final level I made was the boss level which would be the end of my game.  For this level, I wanted a simple beginning and a big area for the player to fight the boss. Creating the level for the boss was as easy as my other levels but actually coding my boss was quite difficult. I wanted the two sides of my boss to be separate from the main part of him. So that the player could destroy the side parts of the boss if they wanted to stop the boss from continuously spawning enemies during the fight.  I think it adds a bit of extra challenge to the fight and allows the player to approach the fight in different ways.

I then could add in some much-needed menus like a pause menu, game over, win screen and the main menu. I have done this before in a previous project so I knew exactly how to do this so I set them up quite quickly. I did however not put in the ability cooldown in my GUI as I found that this would be quite difficult to do and my character only has one ability. So it seemed pointless spending lots of time on creating this for one ability. I also added a name to my game. I decided to call my game Heart Burn as I wanted a name sort of based on the heart which is the main end part of the game.

I also got some feedback on my game at some points during my game. I found this feedback to be very helpful as it gave an outside perspective on certain elements of my game. Getting feedback really helped me when I needed to balance my game as I could see what players found too hard and instantly make the change.

Then finally I added in some music. I watched a tutorial on how to do it and I found that it was very simple to do. I used some of the websites I found in my research to find and create some music. I created my own songs using a website called beep box. This allowed me to create some 8bit style songs on my own. I really enjoyed creating my own songs with this tool it was really simple and easy to use. This also allowed me to make songs that will be unique to each level. I, unfortunately, started to run out of time when putting sound effects into the game. If I were to do this project again I would definitely add in some sound effects.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I’m really happy with my game as I think it looks and plays really well. But if I did have some more time I would have liked to polish my game a bit more and improve some parts of my game. I did have a couple of issues that slowed down my progress at some points but I managed to overcome these issues. What usually slowed me down was coding particular elements of my game as there wasn’t

Creative CV

Sound Design

 Introduction

In this post, I will show off some sounds that I could use in my game. Using my research will help me to look at the types of sound effects that will work with my game. I think the most difficult part of this will be finding specific sound effects that fit with the theme of the inside of a monster.

Sound design

https://effects.wondershare.com

I found a website with loads of copyright free sound effects that I can use for my game. There was plenty of choices for sound effects that I could use but I need to make sure all of them would work together without any being overly different.

https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary

I then looked found the YouTube audio library which has loads of copyright free songs and music that I could use. This gives me plenty of options when choosing some music for my game.

https://www.beepbox.co/

This is a site where I could make my own music and sound effects for my game is a sort of like an 8-bit style. Not only would this work well with the theme of my game from what I have tested it’s quite simple to use.

Evaluation 

Overall I’ve got lots of sounds and music for my game that I can use. I’ve got plenty of options for different sounds that I could use and that will definitely help me down the line. But in the end, I left my music design to the last minute so I ended up just creating some 8-bit music in beep box. Even though I left my sound design to the last minute I’m still really happy with the music I made in beep box.

UI

Introduction

In this post, I will come up with some designs for my UI and GUI that I can use for my game. Having these designs will help me to create a good UI and GUI which is important for most games.

UI design 

I then wanted to create some of the UI and GUI concepts for my game. This can be quite difficult as I have to make sure they fit in with the theme of my game and are actually practical. I made sure to do a verity of different designs so I have plenty of options later on. This is a very important part of my game as its what the player would be stuck with for the rest of the game. So it is very important that’s its a simple and easy to understand design.

Using the best ideas I came up with in my drawing I have created a final version of how I would want it in my game. I decided to choose more simplistic designs as I don’t think I really need to have a complicated UI. I also want to have my abilities in little squares with icons that show what they are and their cooldown.

Like my GUI I wanted It to be simple and easy for players to use. I decided not to include a settings menu for now as I want to actually get a working game before I start to work on extra things like that. But I do want my main menu to be appealing to players so I would need a good background image and title for it.

Evaluation

Overall I think this post went well as now I have some designs that I can follow when I’m creating my UI and GUI. I did have some problems with making my designs in Photoshop as I wasn’t sure how I wanted my abilities laid out.

Game Flow Charts

Introduction 

In this post, I will create some flow charts for my game that I can use to show different elements of my game. I will also create a beat chart to show how long it will take the player to beat each part of my game.

Game flow charts 

I first wanted to show how all of my levels would lead to each other. This was a good idea to help me see how I could show what levels I could do. I wanted to make it simple and easy to understand what the player would have to do. The first starting level of my game will be set in the stomach and will be the introduction to the game. At the end of this, the player will get a key and learn that they need all of the keys to unlock the final boss. The player can then chose any level they want but they will have to get a key from each of them. Then once the player has collected every key they will fight the final boss and beat the game.

I then made a flowchart for where each of my buttons in my UI will go and what they will do.  This will be very helpful for me later on when I need to know exactly where each button leads. Now that I have this It will save me time later on in the project when I’m setting up my UI.

Beat Chart

This is my beat chart which shows how long each section of my game will approximately take to complete. This allows me to see how long the player should take on each section so I can see if I should extend or reduce certain parts of my game. So this will help me to see improve the flow of my game and it makes sure that my game will be interesting for the player throughout.

Evaluation

Overall this post will be very useful to me later on in the project as I can look back on them to help later on. I did struggle with making my beat chart as I had to make sure that it looked good and was easy to understand. But I did manage to make one that I was happy with in the end.

Sound

Introduction

In this post, I’ll look into different songs and sound effect that I could put into my game. Looking into lots of different sound effects will allow me to get the best possible effects for my game.

Sound design

I first started by looking at some sound effects that I could use for things like my enemies, hit effect and death effects. These are key sound effects for my game so its important that they work well and fit with my game. They needed to be subtle as I don’t want a loud sound effect that the player will get annoyed by after playing for some time.

I also wanted to look into just some general sound effects that I could use for various different things in my game. I found this youtube video which gave me lots of ideas for what I could use some of these for. It’s important for me to find some more general sounds as it would make sense if something made sound and others didn’t.

I then worked on finding some good examples of music that I could add to my game. It is important that I get the right music for the game as it is what will be played throughout the game so it needs to be not very repetitive. I also want it to be upbeat to fit with the style of my game.

Evaluation

Overall this post went well as I found some good sound effects that I could add into my game. These sound effects will really improve the overall quality of my game and I think it would be more popular with players with these sound effects added.

Art Style

Introduction

In this post, I’ll look at some different art styles and compare them with each other to see if they will be a good fit for my game. I will also decide on what art style I will do in my project.

Art styles 

I then looked at some different art styles that I could use for my game. I looked at pixel, cartoon and stylised art style for my game. I chose these three as I thought that these would look the best and would be quite simple for me to do. The pixel art style would be one of the easier ones to do but it could be time-consuming to do. The cartoon art style would be the hardest one to do but may look good for my game. Finally, the stylised art style could be quite hard depending on which one I choose to do and it could be quite a time consuming to come up with.

Out of these styles I really like the pixel art style as it can be quite simple for me to do. Compared to the other ones that would take me a lot more time to do it seems to be the best use of my time to do a pixel style. As I’m focusing on the design aspect of this project I don’t want to spend too much of my time on art. Now that I have chosen to do a pixel art style I now need to look at what pixel art style I want to do specifically as there are many different kinds.

The kinds of pixel art styles depending on the size of the pixels and how much detail is in them. From this image, you can see the three different kinds I have chosen. The first style that I’ve chosen is a large pixel size one with slight shading on them. I like this style a lot as I can do this quite easily and it can look good when done correctly. The next style I looked at was one that had more pixels but not as many details as the next one. I also liked this style a lot as I feel like I could pull it off well. It may take a little too long for me to do this but it would look great. The last style I looked at was a high pixel detailed artwork. I found that although the art looked great I definitely wouldn’t be able to this style in time.

This style allows me to add some detail without being too difficult to do. I also think that this style would look good for the game I’m creating. I can use these images to help me when creating some assets and levels for my game. To help me I looked through a book of game art styles to help me find the right pixel art style for my game.

Evaluation

Overall I think my research into different art styles went well as I made a decision on what art style I would like to do. I think looking into this as much as I did definitely will help me as the art style of a game is key to its success. I did struggle with finding some reference images that would properly show what I want. The games art style is very important to most games success as that’s the first thing a player looks at.

Character Research

Introduction 

In this post, I will do some research into what my player could look like and what abilities/weapons they could use. I will create mood boards and mind maps to help me to present my ideas.

Research 

I first started by looking at some unique character designs so that I could get some ideas for my character. I liked the idea of having a unique character that I could then make an interesting background for. I also don’t want my game to have a serious tone so I could make a more wacky character. Because the designing aspect of my game is a priority so the look of the game isn’t as important to me. But I still want it to look good without spending too much time on it without losing time for my design work.

After the results of my survey that suggested that I have abilities instead of weapons in my game. I now need to look into different abilities that I could use in my game. I’ll look into different games abilities and see if I could use them in my game.

So I created a mindmap to show all of my ideas and this would help me to look at some good ideas to put in my game. I really liked some of the ideas for the abilities I came up with. I think I could definitely add some of these abilities to my game but I don’t want to add too many as it may become a bit confusing. I also liked the ideas for the design of my character. In the game, I want to make a more wakey character that would make my game more interesting and unique. Finally, I needed a good backstory for my character so I came up with some interesting ones. I really liked the idea of the player fighting the monster from within.

In the end, I’ve decided on having my game set inside a monster. I think I could do a lot with this backstory in terms of art and interesting mechanicians. As I said before I do like the idea of a wacky character so I decided to have the character’s backstory be that he was raised by a traffic cone.

Evaluation 

Overall I think this went really well as I got lots of ideas that I could use later on in my game. I did struggle when I had to come up with some of my ideas as I wanted to make sure I had some good ideas. But I did manage to decide on the final backstory for my character/game. Having a good concept and backstory to a game is key because it can be engaging for players to explore and learn about.

Level Research

Introduction

In this post, I’ll look at levels for different games to get some ideas on how I’ll create the levels for my game. After I have some ideas from this I can then make some basic designs for my level to use later on.

Research 

First I decided to create a mood board on different games to help me come up with some more ideas for mechanics that I could put into my game. I made sure to choose some very different games so that I could get as many ideas as possible. I found that out of these games I liked the pixel art style the best as I thought it worked well and would be quite simple for me to do. In some of these games, I found collectibles which would be a great bonus to add to my game at the end.

I wanted to look at lots of different ideas so that I could then look at more in-depth at the best of them. I first looked at where I could have each of my levels set as I have previously decided I wanted my level set inside a monster. I then looked at what I could do with my enemies. For this, I wanted to make some unique enemies for each of my levels. I then wanted to have some good hazards in my game but I just need to have them fit with the background of my game.

I really liked the setting of my level as its quite unique and I feel like I could add a lot more to it. I think this would also allow me to add in some more interesting mechanics. It will also allow me to make a more interesting backstory that would further improve the quality of the game. I wanted to properly look into the background of my game as it is what all of my game is based on.

I then had to decide on what type of level layout I wanted to have for my game. I had to decide If I wanted a complex Metroidvania type layout or a simple Mario like level layout. I decided to go with a simpler level type as It would be easier for people to understand and play. I feel a more complex layout would confuse players too easily and would create a lot more work for me.

The one thing that I need to pay attention to would be the anatomy of the monster as the player will be able to see some of it when in the level select screen. However, I plan to have the player be transported around via the blood in the monster so that explains how the player can be transported to any part of the body. I also want to have each level set inside of a different part of the body with the endpoint being the heart. This means that I need to think about where I want each of my levels to be set. I like the idea of having a level set in some of the major places in the body eg lungs, brain and stomach.

Evaluation

Overall I think this went well although I did struggle to find some reference images as not many people have done this style. I did manage to find some images that I can use to help me later on though. Coming up with ideas for my levels went really well as I had lots of ideas for what I could do for my levels. Creating interesting levels are important because having too simple levels can make the game too boring. But making the game’s levels too complex can leave players confused and make them want to quit playing.