Stage 1: The Escalator Pitch
Production Schedule;
| Week No. | Dates | Details – Milestones | Production Schedule |
| 1 | 13-17 March | PROJECT 2 START | Get into our groups and find out what game ideas we want to do. |
| 2 | 20-24 March | Select our individual roles in our team. | |
| 3 | 27-31 March | Start work in our own time completing assignments. | |
| 3-7 Apr | Easter Break | Continue assigned work over half term. | |
| 10-14 Apr | Easter Break | Group meet up for 2 days as a progression check and completion. | |
| 4 | 17-24 April | Easter Monday | Day off. |
| 5 | 24-28 April | Research over. Coding begins. | |
| 6 | 1-5 May | 1 May Bank Holiday | Meetup to complete coding for the play testing. |
| 7 | 8-12 May | Final check of our game/ bug fixing. | |
| 8 | 15-19 May | Play testingFinal thoughts | Feedback forms and questions. If needed, bug fixes prior to submission. |
| 22-26 May | SUBMISSIONSTAGE 1 ‘THE ESCULATOR PITCH’STAGE 2 ‘SPECIALIST DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL’
STAGE 3 ‘PLAY TEST’ |
Requirements:
This is going to be a prototype for our E3 game. Hopefully, soon we will be able to make it 3D.
The game my team and I are making is going to be a classic game with a similar feel to ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Dodging Asteroids’. We are developing a game similar to space invaders as it’s a famous classic that is nostalgic for different age groups as people grew up playing these games. Games like this are addictive which is another reason we want to create a similar game prototype, but in our own way with our own mechanics, features and art style. We are hoping to make it as good as Space Invaders, maybe even better. It’s an old time favourite so were sure the majority of enthusiasts will enjoy playing a new modern take on the old Space Invaders game. We are hoping it will remind them how much fun they had, which is our goal. Below are some game examples we are trying to follow to get ideas for our game prototype.
Space Invaders: (Taken from google images) — 22/3/17
Dodging Asteroids: (Taken from google images) — 22/3/17
We are making this game because as a team we feel confident that we understand the old Space Invader style games as we played them growing up. This gives us an insight to what made the games great and we will use that knowledge whilst implementing our own ideas which will give our game a modern feel. However we want to keep it authentic so we will use the same old mechanics as the original space invader game i.e. shooting, moving left and right and a score system. The game perspective will remain 2D and the camera will remain locked on the screen just like the original Space Invaders. We will be designing our concept art on the Paint software after researching good unique spaceship templates which we can adjust and make our own. Our game will be created on GameMaker software and we will implement sound created on Logic Pro and implement it into Gamemaker towards the end of our production schedule. We are hoping to continue our prototype on GameMaker next year, we are not too sure if we want to move to Unity as we have a lot of experience with GameMaker but we may change our minds later on. Our prototype game will be made to play on a PC at first then we will release the full version on Android later on.
Our team name is “Project Peanut”.
There are four people in total in our team which includes;
- Harry Philbrook
- Samuel Zanatta (Leader)
- Charlie Worboys
- Owen Gilbert (Me)
Our team roles are as followed;
- Harry, Lead marketing.
- Sam, Concept art and graphics design.
- Charlie, Coding assistant and market research.
- Owen, Lead coder and demographics.
Research:
Beat Chart;
| Visual Style | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Waves | Wave 1 | Wave 2 | Wave 3 | Wave 4 | Wave 5 |
| Characters | Spaceship | Spaceship with different colours | Spaceship with different colours | Spaceship with different colours | Spaceship with different colours |
| NPC’S (Enemies) | Asteroids | Asteroids | Asteroids | Asteroids | Asteroids |
| Perspective | 2D, Side-scrolling space game with camera following playable spaceship | 2D, Side-scrolling space game with camera following playable spaceship | 2D, Side-scrolling space game with camera following playable spaceship | 2D, Side-scrolling space game with camera following playable spaceship | 2D, Side-scrolling space game with camera following playable spaceship |
| Full Motion Video | To be announced | ||||
| Gameplay | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Interaction | Single Player (At this stage) | Single Player (At this stage) | Single Player (At this stage) | Single Player (At this stage) | Single Player (At this stage) |
| Game Settings | Bright space background colours | Bright space background colours | Bright space background colours | Bright space background colours | Dark space colour background |
| Goals | To collect the pickups in game, and eliminate the enemies | To collect the pickups in game, and eliminate the enemies | To collect the pickups in game, and eliminate the enemies | To collect the pickups in game, and eliminate the enemies | To collect the pickups in game, and eliminate the enemies |
| Challenges | Learn the controls of the spaceship in the tutorial | Collect all the collectables | Collect all the collectables | Collect all the collectables | Collect all the collectables |
| Player Actions
|
Can move the playable spaceship left, right, up and down. When you press the space bar you can shoot lasers. | Can move the playable spaceship left, right, up and down. When you press the space bar you can shoot lasers. | Can move the playable spaceship left, right, up and down. When you press the space bar you can shoot lasers. | Can move the playable spaceship left, right, up and down. When you press the space bar you can shoot lasers. | Can move the playable spaceship left, right, up and down. When you press the space bar you can shoot lasers. |
| Rules
|
Destroy all the enemy ships, collect all the collectables and customise your ship. | Destroy all the enemy ships, collect all the collectables and customise your ship. | Destroy all the enemy ships, collect all the collectables and customise your ship. | Destroy all the enemy ships, collect all the collectables and customise your ship. | Destroy all the enemy ships, collect all the collectables and customise your ship. |
| Game Mechanics
|
Collectables, Health bar and ammo for special weapons. | Collectables, Health bar and ammo for special weapons. | Collectables, Health bar and ammo for special weapons. | Collectables, Health bar and ammo for special weapons. | Collectables, Health bar and ammo for special weapons. |
| Game Structure
|
Fight through all the different waves of enemies, The backgrounds will change for some different waves. | Fight through all the different waves of enemies, The backgrounds will change for some different waves | Fight through all the different waves of enemies, The backgrounds will change for some different waves | Fight through all the different waves of enemies, The backgrounds will change for some different waves | Fight through all the different waves of enemies, The backgrounds will change for some different waves |
| Difficulty | Easy | Easy/Medium | Medium | Medium/Hard | Hard |
Primary and Secondary research;
Primary research:
is done by us. We have done this by testing the game ourselves. We have also been sending out surveys to get more information from people on the game and then adapt our game to the current market trends for it to reach its maximum potential on the market. This has allowed us to be able to get hands on accurate research on our game.
Secondary research:
is going to be done in the form of alpha and beta testers. We will send the game out for a certain amount of time and attempt to get feedback from players. The feedback will be from their own experience of the game. This will get players to play the game and get a sense for what the game is really like. This means that we will have direct contact with our audience and we will be able to see if anyone has encountered a bug or glitch. This will also then allow us to fix ay problems that may come up that may not have presented not known beforehand. All of this is of significant help in the journey of the game’s viable development as it can really make or break the game at this stage. The alpha and beta testing will propel the game forward to be the best it can possibly be.
In my research, I have found that the mobile games usage and the money they make has skyrocketed (especially for China) and the market trends reflect this. You can see from the graph above that in 2020 gaming revenue will be over $1 trillion just in China for mobile games. Strategically, therefore, it would be a perfect time to enter the mobile games industry, just before the next spurt in growth and return.
The graphs above illustrate what the mobile market earned in 2015 and 2016. As you can see, in 2016 the mobile gaming industry experienced an increase in sales by $6.5 billion from smartphones alone. In 2016 tablets also increased by 1%. However, TV/console, tablet, casual web games and PC/MMO have all gone down by 1% in 2016. PC/MMO is a surprise to us as it didn’t at least stay the same is the PC market as all the triple A games and all of the console games get released onto there.
Generally, people play video games from the two age ranges of under 18 carrying through to the under 35 years olds. This is the main target for my game. Also, it could work with the older age groups if they were wanting to have some nostalgia of playing games that they played growing up as children. This is good information to have as we will be able to put emphasis towards the younger age groups from 7 to 25 whilst also having some targeting towards the older audience for nostalgic purposes.
We researched the original Space Invaders game a lot because we wanted to create a modern version of this game. Space Invaders is a Japanese shooting video game that was released in 1978 by Taito. Space Invaders became an immediate hit in the year it was released, it kept growing and growing in popularity and throughout its life time it has produced more than 500 million dollars in income.
From researching Space Invaders and gathering all these facts and learning facts, this has encourage us to make a high quality, very popular and great entertaining game just like the classic Space Invaders. We will set our goals high and hopefully make our game good quality using up to date software giving great graphic and visual styles and a make a retro futuristic sound.
Titan Attack is extremely similar game to Space Invaders. The movement mechanics in Titan Attack are left and right with enemies moving down and across the screen, the more you progress through the game, the more different enemies appear with decorative attack patterns. Both Space Invaders and Titan Attack have left and right movement features, we will use these movements in our game. Titan Attack contains five unique worlds and 100 levels of action. This is slightly different to Space Invaders which only has levels not worlds. Titan Attack was released on 3rd February 2012 by Puppy Games. It’s a recent game that is very similar to Space Invaders with great reviews.
Below are screenshots of some reviews and comments of Titan Attack from Google Play and Steam. These are some platforms that the game can be played on and the platforms we are hoping to release our prototype on.
Steam comments:
The first screenshot below shows you the overall feedback with how many positive and negative reviews. As you can see there are 757 positive reviews and only 75 negative, this is a good to see what our game competitors are getting for reviews and it implies that original games can be remade and be as equally popular or even more popular. The other two screenshots below show reviews.
Google Play;
Below are the reviews and some comments on what people think of Titan Attack on android devices, as you can see it has 4.4 stars rating with many positive comments. Android is going to be our main platform we will be releasing our game on to. It’s good to know that Titan Attack is very popular on android as it is very similar to Space Invaders, so this supports our game platform option.
Pac-Man is a classic retro game that was first released in May 1980, with many high quality remakes throughout the years. Companies remake and improve old classic games using better graphics, sounds, and picture quality etc. as people want to play these games on their mobiles, tablets, PC which supports android apps. The majority of old famous games have had many HD (High definition) remakes.
Target Audience Survey:
This is the survey Charlie put together for our game. This has helped all of us decide on changes we have made to the game based on the target response to the survey. Gathering information from a wide audience has helped us to be able to get more of a broad understanding of how the game and the ideas are viewed to different ages and people from different places so there is a bigger variation.
The results and changes undertaken from the survey are described in the Marketing Statement and Results section below.
Survey link;
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WTGG8TZ
As the picture of the survey is smaller, I have included a copy of the questions below; ;
* 1. How old are you?
12 and younger
13-18
19-24
25-30
31 and older
* 2. What gender are you?
Male
Female
Prefer not to say
* 3. Which platform do you prefer?
Apple (IOS)
Android
* 4. How often do you play mobile games?
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
* 5. What are your thoughts on a side scrolling space game?
text answer requested.
* 6. Do you play computer games with your friends?
Yes
No
Sometimes
* 7. Would you prefer the game to be solo or multiplayer?
Solo
Multiplayer
Both
* 8. What would you like to see in a side scrolling space game?
text answer requested
* 9. What do you use the most?
Youtube
* 10. How important is sound?
| Not very Important | Not Important | Important | Extremely Important |
| Not very Important | Not Important | Important | Extremely Important |
Done
Results:
1, My first question was “How old are you?” This question helped me find out what the most popular age was that answered my survey. As you can see on the chart below only one person the age of 12 and younger answered the survey (5%), 50% (10 people out of 20) were in the 13-18 age groups. 30% of people (6 people) I asked were 19-24 years old, no one aged 25-30 years answered the survey and lastly, 15% (3 people) aged 31 and older answered.
2, The results below show you that 80% male and only 20% Female answered my group’s survey, we asked our friends and family to answer it so it wasn’t just aimed for males to answer it.
3, The chart below shows you what platform people preferred when answering our survey, as you can see android is the most popular platform by a mile. 80% of the responses preferred android which was 16 people out of 20. Only 20% (4/20 people) prefer IOS. These were good results because it has officially finalised that people prefer android so we will release our game on android first.
4, The results below show you how often people play mobile games. As you can see 11 people (55%) play mobile games daily and 8 people (40%) play weekly and only 1 person plays monthly. This is good results as it shows people are keen and play mobile games often and only one person doesn’t play that much.
5, This screenshot below was a question where you write your thoughts on a side scrolling space game. This is a good question to get qualitative data as it shows you what the responders of the survey actually think on the game idea. As you can see below, there’s a lot of positive responses about our game idea and it seems the majority of everyone who filled in the survey is looking forward to it.
6, The results below are very close in comparison to other results. As you can see most people don’t play with their friends, 40% don’t play with their friends, 35% do play with their friends and only 25% sometimes play with their friends.
7, As you can see from the results, the majority would prefer our game to be a solo game with 12 out of 20 people who would prefer solo. The second highest result was our game being solo and multiplayer with 6 out of 20 people who would prefer both. And lastly multiplayer, multiplayer was the least popular choice with only 2 people preferring our game to have multiplayer.
8, This screenshot below was a question where you write your thoughts on what would you like to see in a side scrolling space game. This is a good question to get qualitative data as it gives us ideas on what the responders of the survey actually would like to see in our game. As you can see below, we got a lot of great ideas that the responders would like to see with ideas we could implement in our game and what we have planned already.
9, The results below show you what social media is most popular, this was a great question to ask as it as it can help us know which social media site is most popular to use and advertise our game. As you can see YouTube is the most popular with 11 out of 20 responders that use it. Second popular is Facebook with 8 people (40%) who use it the most. Surprisingly twitter is the least popular social media used with only one person who uses it.
10, The last question I asked was “How important is sound?” We wanted to find this out so we can determine how much effort to put into making an appropriate sound for the game. As you can see 12 people responded that sound is important, 6 people say it’s extremely important and only 2 people think isn’t that important. The majority of the responders believe that sound is very important in a game so we will work hard on creating great music for our game.
Overall these results from our survey have helped us with good feedback and gave us good ideas on what we need to add/need in our game. We will use all these ideas from our results to improve our game and to develop it to make the best it can be.
PEGI Rating:
The rating we are going giving our game is the PEGI 7. Having read through the PEGI rating forms as a group, we decided to rate it as such based on the small element of violence in our game. We believe this is the only factor pushing it to an age rating of 7. The violence rating relates to the destruction of asteroids.
Platform and Distribution:
The game prototype our group is creating will be initially launched to android device and hopefully launched to other devices later, such as IOS and even PC. We decided to create our game and launch it on android (play store) first as it will be easier to release and more people play on android as we found out from our survey results above. When we have completed and launched our game, we are hoping to add future DLC; like customization.
Escalator:
Overview
Hook:
We have made our game addictive and enjoyable and we will add the ability to customise and upgrade the player’s spaceship. This customisation will hopefully consist of different skins for players ships, with the ability to upgrade capability to inflict more damage, have more health and more features. Other ways to get our players hooked into our game is that we will add in loot boxes. Loot boxes will give players a random prize, for example; if a player gets a loot box it can randomly generate a power up or a skin customisation for their ship. We are also hoping to have achievements which would make our game more addictive and get people to keep coming back to the game to complete it all.
USP/Unique Selling Point:
The way we will be making our game different from other space shoot’em ups is through the game graphics, sound and gameplay. For the graphics, we will try to make the game look and feel retro as possible using pixel art however it will feel like a brand new game with the new gameplay mechanics we are adding in. This is also the same with the sound and music for the game as we will add in old and new sounds for the game. The juxtaposition of new and old features will be a real pull. For the gameplay, we want the game to be fast paced and easy to put down and come back to. This means that people can play the game even if they have a busy schedule, for example waiting for a bus or on the train just five minutes here or there. Our main USP which will bring players in will be the wide variety of customizations which we are hoping to add in the future with power ups also.
The original Space Invaders game was released in 1978 which was nearly 40 years ago. So we are hoping our game will attract people of all ages, some wanting to play an updated version of an old classic, some encouraging their children to play games they played when they were younger and some newcomers who like space shooting games which are simple to play but incredibly addictive and entertaining. We think our main audience will be the over 40’s due to the age of the original game. However for our game prototype we are targeting ages 7+ as our target audience because it is a suitable age to play our game given its content. Children younger than seven may struggle with the mechanics and features. The game prototype we are creating will be similar to Space Invaders but with our unique features, this will bring in a lot of children and adults who have played the original game to try out our version. Many who have played the classic would like to try an up to date version or similar one. This can bring in some players who have played the classic to try our game. Those who haven’t played the classic may have heard about it and want to try our modern game.
Thought Cloud:
The thought cloud above illustrates our group ideas of what we would like the game to contain.
Mood Boards:
Above are some pictures we collected together to create a mood boards, we got favourite, popular and known space games that are in the same genre as the one we are planning to create. Each of these images we have used will have some relevance towards our game such as, some concept ideas and features we could use but with our twist.
Concept Art:
The first drawing Sam did for our game was to draw the player’s spaceship. He struggled to find a style which worked with the game however he decided to make the ship similar to how the pelicans look in the Halo games. He decided to name the ship The Falcon.
The second thing Sam drew were the 3 asteroids. These we fairly easy to draw for him as he already knew what he wanted them to look like. The colours of the asteroids within the game will be red.
The third drawing was of the game logo. The name of the game is Cosmic Conflict. As this name is an alliteration Sam wanted to do something with the beginning letter of each of the words in the name, so he had both words share the same letter which was a large ‘C’. Sam also went for a futuristic font to fit the theme of the game.
The last drawing that Sam did for the concept art was the enemy ships. After a couple of different designs, he decided on 3 ships. The first one is named The Beetle and was designed to look similar to a scarab beetle. The second was The Swallow and was designed to look like one, and finally, The Mantis which was again designed to look like a mantis. Below are some other bits and pieces Sam concepted:
Stage 2: SPECIALIST Development journal
14/03/17 – Today I created a team, including Henry, Tom, Harry and Danny
21/03/17 – Due to a conflict of interest in ideas with the team, I decided to form a team with Sam and Charlie. Harry joined later on for the same reasons so we knew everyone would be in the same headspace idea-wise. This helped with bouncing the ideas around between each other for the FMP
22/03/17 – To kick things off, the team sat down and started to discuss game ideas, quite quickly settling on the idea of a space invaders-esque shooter. As everyone was in agreement, we moved onto discussing job roles for the group. We ended up getting defining roles, me specifically getting the role of lead coder, as I am quite experienced and will make sure that the code is at the best it can be.
18/04/17 – 20/04/17 – This week I began by taking a few textures from Sam to see the effect in the game and to give me an idea on where the game was going in regards to sticking to schedule. These weren’t of course the final textures but mock-ups to give everyone a feel for the game art. After adding these textures to the game mock-up I began to see where we needed to be in regards to the end goal. These images also helped to get scaling of the characters and features to the right size. Making these too crowded would not be a good idea and would in turn have a negative effect on the feel of the game. Following this, Charlie and I looked through documentation for Marketing and Part 1 of the FMP and then commented suggestions and tweaks for Harry to add to the document. From my brief experience at ARM as a technical writer, and Charlie’s proof reading skill, I feel we helped to get the documentation to the best it could be and continued to keep on schedule. Tweaking the 1st part was key and set the bar for the rest of the FMP.
Towards the end of the week, I began to start on the coding with the help of Charlie, who also completed the beat chart for the team. It was a very productive week and we are currently ahead of schedule.
25/04/17 – Today I made sure that the enemies spawn randomly at the top of the screen at a decent rate. This was an essentially mechanic in the game so getting this right was a key piece to complete the test game in time for the expo.
26/04/17 – Today Charlie and I began to add the basic functionality to the game. This included adding a playable character with the player’s shooting mechanics (left and right to move, as well as a direct vertical shot), as well as a barrier for the enemies to stop at when they get a certain length down the screen. This will be developed into the point at which the enemies will shoot back at you from at a later date.
27/04/17 -Today I began to add skins to the functioning game. This included a skinned enemy, player, bullets, as well as a health/ammunition/score bar located at the top left of the screen. This was not functioning properly yet but helped to see texture proportions and also allowed for the loading animation to be completed.
As shown in the above picture, backgrounds were also included. However, when they were originally added I stumbled across a few looping issues when it was scrolling. This can be seen on the left image below. Fortunately this was an easy fix done by flipping the image and adding it to the bottom, extending the length of the image. This was lucky as it kept me on schedule and did not become a massive issue.
02/05/17 – To kick start today we had a meeting as a group to discuss the action plan for the remaining 2 weeks before the expo. This meeting had us reach the conclusion that the current main focus would be coding the game. This would involve Charlie and I adding more functionality like the health system, loot system and a main menu.
By the end of the day the game now had a random enemy spawner implemented, which randomly generated the where along the top of the screen the enemies would come down from. As well as this I also implemented code to make the enemy randomly shoot. As today was not problematic we were successfully able to stay on schedule. Below is the code that shows how the enemy randomly spans and shoots:
It makes the enemies spawn at different times using the alarm event. The alarm event completes whatever is put in it whenever it is triggered. This is specified in the creation code, and any other lines of code are commented in green.
The screenshot below shows the code that makes our small enemies shoot. This also uses an alarm event to randomise how they shoot.
03/05/17 –
Today I bugfixed a few things in my game and got hold of the lootbox animation from Sam. Before getting this, Charlie and I gave him pointers on the colour schemes used on the lootbox as it was hard to line up with the game theme. Here is the final animation, left being closed and right open:
It took a while to find the right colours but we are overall happy with the result. The group is happy with this as a whole and we are all on track to complete the game ready for the expo.
04/05/17 – Today Charlie and I added and textured the start menu and the contents within it. The only thing missing is the loot box button, which will be implemented at a later stage when the loot box/shop screen has been made, as only then will the button be needed for navigation. However, when playing around with and testing a screen shake feature for when the enemies are destroyed, the enemies would “die” straight away, only after one hit from the player’s bullet. It was fortunate that the feature was not scheduled for today so it could be looked at in the next week. We are currently on schedule to get the game completed in time for the expo.
09/05/17 – I noticed how there was yet to be an easy way to navigate between screens, so decided to add a feature that when the “Escape” button was pressed, the screen would switch to the menu. Here is the code for the escape button:
This was, in my opinion, a feature that was needed, and has not set us behind schedule. Charlie and I also implemented a working health bar for the player. The small enemies will now decrease your health by one and the big ones by two.
The health bar loads like this:
10/05/17 – Although we still have some work to do before next week, such as more features and designs, we’re currently ahead of our production schedule, leading up to the expo. In today’s lesson, Charlie and I continued to code the game in preparation for the expo in a weeks time. I experienced no problems when coding the enemies health today. With Charlie’s help, we fixed the enemies health so that they have the correct amount of health to be killed by the player with 2 hits for small enemies and 4 hits for large enemies. I then read through the survey questions to check that they were suitable and appropriate to be analysed. These will be used in stage 3 of my project.
11/05/17 – Today I began to look in more detail at the outcome of an enemy being “killed”. Acknowledging the PEGI rating, I asked Sam to design a friendly explosion animation:
Player Explosion:
Enemy Explosion:
While this was being designed, I looked at implementing a “screen shake”, this would make the screen shake when the enemy was killed. After this I implemented the explosion animations and added SFX for shooting, explosions as well as background music.
17/05/17 – In preperation for the expo tonight at 5-9pm, Charlie and I implemented sound effects for when the big enemies, little enemies and the player shoots as well as when the game is over. We also added in the loot button that would direct you to the shop/loot crates:
When the loot boxes are tapped, the animation is triggered and a red laser shoots up until a character skin appears. To select the skin all that is needed is for it to be clicked, and it will appear next time you play the game. The images below show the loot boxes both opened and closed.
Due to the time limit and the production schedule, the lootbox does not yet randomly generate skins, but it was not a vital part of the schedule, it was only to showcase customisation. I think we have followed our production schedule as a group really well, and barely any problems occured over the course of the project.
18/05/17 – Today, I worked with Charlie to analyse the audience feedback from the expo survey and started the result charts and analysis. We will continue and aim to get this done tomorrow. During today’s tasks, we experienced no problems and we are ready to hand in our assignment for next week’s deadline as we have completed our production schedule. I also reorganised my final major project by organising my work layout efficiently and checking through all my blogs. Furthermore, to finish my project I explored my strengths, weakness and what I have learnt from this project.
Stage 3: Play Test
Audience feedback:
Q1: Do you like the visual style?
100% of people surveyed liked the visual style. This tells us that it is appropriate for our themes and all age groups. Furthermore, it suggests that it is of good quality.
Q2: What can be improved for the visual style?
The most frequent response from this questions was “nothing”, this also proves that the visual style is appropriate for our game and that it is of high quality.
However, two suggestions made were “more colours” and “better accuracy”.
Q3: Do you like the sound?
19 out of the 20 people from the survey said that they did like the sound. This 95% approval means that the sound is enjoyable without being too over the top or annoying. This also means we have the right sound levels for the game.
Q4: What can be improved about the sound?
Although the majority replied “nothing” for this section, most of the actual suggestions asked for “different shooting SFX” and “variety”. This suggests that the different space ships and forcefields sound have different sounds. This would make the game even more addictive and advanced my sound skills further.
Q5: Were the sound effects suitable?
95%of respondents said that the sound effects were suitable for the game. This means that stage 1 has helped us greatly in terms of making sure we have the right theme, and that all sounds match this.
Q6: Was the gameplay smooth?
85% of those surveys said yes and the other 15% said “sometimes”, although this shows there are minor improvements to be made, overall the gameplay is smooth enough for people to enjoy the game and shows that gameplay was optimised.
Q7: What was your favourite mechanic?
From our results, the most popular game mechanic was shooting, followed closely by animations and sound. This shows that the game functions very nice when taking into consideration the level of answers for each of the 3 responses.
A players’ main focus will usually be how they need to complete an objective – in this situation, shooting. As shooting is the most common answer, this checks out. Sound and animation are an added plus to help with immersion in the game, so it makes sense for them to be the next two most common responses.
Q8: What mechanic feature would you like to see?
The most wanted mechanic was more functionality. This would include: better movement (up and down), powerups, extra levels and different coloured enemies. This would make sense as customisation would be a good feature to keep the player hooked. As this wasn’t the final product, we had already planned this feature for the future, but it is reassuring to know that we are thinking in the right direction.
Q9: Were the animations suitable?
100% of the respondents said that the animations were suitable, and that they liked them. This is a very nice thing to take away knowing that 100% of people are currently in agreement with it.
Q10: What can be improved about the game overall?
The most common answer for this question was “Nothing”. Even though this is the case, I am still actively looking to see what tweaks are being suggested. One of the main things that stuck out to me was “Different/Extra movement”. Knowing the direction we are aiming to send this game into, it is again reassuring to see the tweaks being suggested are already things that have been planned to be added in the future.
Overall I am very pleased with the results collected as they show constructive criticism as well as confirm that my group and I are thinking in the right direction in regards to future implementations to the game.
Looking over the results, a few things were pointed out to us to improve on in the future, a main aspect being the movement. I had already planned to implement the “path” feature on GameMaker in the future to make the enemies movement more natural and less predictable. This is a very complicated thing to achieve so for the time frame I was unable to use this. Randomizing the points at which the enemies would come down from was as close to the feel of the game as possible within the time frame.
In regards to the player movement, this was a hard thing to decide on for the prototype. We settled on a side to side movement using the arrow keys on the keyboard. As the app was eventually targeted to be put on android, this would obviously not be an effective feature seeing as most phones no longer have keys. The team and I came up with a few ideas, one example being on screen buttons for left and right, as well as a button to shoot, but eventually settled on the idea of implementing a virtual joystick (this overlays the screen on the game, a number of middleware supporting this is on the GameMaker store) with a button to shoot. This was to eliminate clutter on the screen for the mobile user. Unfortunately as the demo was on a computer, the most effective movement mechanic to settle on was the left and right keyboard movement, and the space bar to shoot. It is very helpful to see that people acknowledged that the movement needed to be changed, as that was something that we had planned to change.
Final thoughts:
Strengths
My main strength throughout this project without a doubt has to be creating the game. Utilising my coding skills and with help from Charlie, I feel the game has turned out really well. I have also had to make sure the pieces I needed to put in the game were on schedule for when they were needed, so keeping on target was key. These, as well as the organisation needed, were definitely the things that stuck out to me as strengths. I feel I have also performed well when using Logic Pro with Charlie. Even though he had completed the most work for this, I feel I was a big help when finalising the sound track.
Proof of when key planning helps was when one section of code didn’t work due to having a space in between numbers – having a space within 360 on the particle code. This meant that the particles did not do what was intended of them until we located the issue and fixed it. This is proof that tiny errors can stop the game from working, and that being prepared for these things is good as it gives you time to identify the problem and fix it without dropping behind schedule. We had also used planning to our advantage similarly when we went to proof read work for Harry. As this was inevitably going to happen, we left time for it so we could make sure the work was good, and to again avoid going behind schedule. Due to being experienced at this as well I feel I was able to do it without any issues.
Weaknesses
My weakness would definitely be anything related to art. I was able to appropriately choose what colours to use, but anything related to actually drawing the assets wasn’t very good. Overall I didn’t really come across any weakness with the FMP. This was because of how extensively the project was planned, and how we discussed and designated the job roles effectively. This meant that it was very hard to get any issues when conducting this project, as everything was already accounted for before we began; I was the lead coder as I am very confident with using GameMaker and can confidently say I know my way around it. If I needed help with anything I was able to ask Charlie, meaning we would stay on schedule. This however did not mean I had any issues with coding the game, but it helped to get the work done faster and keep on schedule.
What have I learnt?
From this project, I have definitely learnt that in order to stick to schedule both communication and organisation are key. Without nailing this, we would be behind schedule and the game would be in shambles, so I am very proud of both myself and the rest of the team. This was a very essential skill to acquire and I am happy I have managed to put it to good use.
Expo Poster:
Referencing:
- Lofgren, Krista. “2016 Video Game Statistics & Trends | Big Fish Blog”. Big Fish Games. http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2016-video-game-statistics-and-trends/, N.p., 2017. Web. 6 Mar. 2017.
- “PEGI Pan European Game Information – Welcome”. Pegi.info. http://www.pegi.info/en/index/, N.p., 2017. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.
- http://essentialfacts.theesa.com/Essential-Facts-2016.pdf, N.p,2016
- https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/4388/space-images , Soluna Software, 2016. Web. 27 April 2017.
- “History of Space Invaders” http://www.classicgaming.cc/classics/space-invaders/history ,N.p.,2017. Web. 16 June 2017.
- “The Titan Attacks! Wiki” https://www.giantbomb.com/titan-attacks/3030-34488/ ,N.p.,2014. Web. 16 June 2017.
- “Titan Attacks – Puppy Games” http://www.puppygames.net/titan-attacks/ ,N.p, N/A. Web. 16 June 2017.
- http://store.steampowered.com/app/203210/Titan_Attacks/ ,Titan Attacks, 2012. Web. 16 June 2017.
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.puppygames.titanattacks , Shaven Puppy Ltd, 2017. Web. 16 June 2017.