A tile map is a group of tiles, small images that act like a puzzle pieces which can be put together to create a larger image eg. the level you are playing on. This is good because it will take less time to build the level as instead of having to load each texture individually from files, you only need to load one file with the tiles within. This means the game will run faster and be more efficient.
I used pickel to create my own tile map, then proceeded to design a level using them:
In this session I discussed industry trends.
Franchised Intellectual Property (FIP)
Licensed use of property belonging to the franchiser and/or creator. Game mash ups. Big franchises would include Battlefield, Call of Duty, Mario, The legend of Zelda etc. These have all been successful, but there are unsuccessful franchises like no man’s sky. Many franchises meet others as well, for example, super smash bros.
Original IP (Intellectual Property)
Refers to ideas and creations. Laws like copyright can protect your intellectual property. If you breached these laws, you would be taken to court.
Sequels
There is a lot of pressure on a games company when making a sequel due to demand and expectations of fans.
Discounted Sales
Discounted Sales are when any number of games are reduced for a limited time. Recently, there is a discount phenomenon, the biggest of which would be Black Friday, where you can find all kinds of gaming products from consoles and TVs to games themselves.
Comparison to Film Industry
Industry worth more than Hollywood, but games and films constantly have adaptations of each other. There are currently multiple films coming out in the recent future that are game adaptations like Assassins Creed and Slenderman.
In this session I continued to look at Weapons, Health and Lives, which I have discussed in a previous blog post.
In these sessions I began to develop my own game idea by testing different things in game maker on a platform game I had created.
In this session I continued to look at visual styles, and finished off the mood boards which can be found in this post
Sprite sheets are used to give a frame by frame representation of an animation. These are usually tied together by computers which when displaying one after the other create an illusion of movement. Sprite sheets can be very long, and one is needed for each animation an object or character will do. Below are some examples I have made of how sprite sheets create an animation.
Idle Animation:
Sprite sheet:
Walking Animation:
Sprite sheet:
For this blog I was assigned to get as many responses as possible to my Survey (see previous post) and write up a summary. Personally, I didn’t see a conventional summary as very appealing, so I decided to interpret this differently, and convey my results through a more visually appealing demographic:
The information collected from this survey was very useful, as it helps me to develop my game towards the target market. I now know that people are fine to play games multiple times a day, so would need to include some hook factor. My game should be free with the possible chance of micro-transactions, or a 1 time ad-free payment, if at all. I am happy that it would fit into the categories “Action”, “Adventure”, and “Strategy”. I also need to make sure the game is enjoyable, has a good story and well made levels. Customization may also be a handy thing to implement, and objectives and rewards would be a must to keep the player hooked.
Today I covered weapons health, and lives.
Weapons:
Weapons could be fired using two different methods: Fire in the direction the object is facing, or a weapon that fires in the direction where you have clicked/tapped.
For both options, a few rules have to be set:
Health (for the enemy):
Enemies will need to have a variable set at the start of the level as their health. A collision then needs to be added for when the bullet collides with the enemy. When a bullet collides, it should take some health off of the enemy, and if the enemies health hits 0, the instance should be destroyed. This means multiple bullets will be required to kill/destroy the enemy.
Health and Lives (The player):
For the player, the health and lives should be set at the beginning of the game. To do this, you create an invisible object and add it to the first screen which function is to set the variables for health and life. This should then remain throughout the rest of the game. Every time the players health hits 0, a life would be taken off.
Different visual styles are achieved through 3 main elements:
For my game, I am interested in 3 preferred styles:
Realistic:
Retro/8bit:
Stylised:
I would probably use either an 8bit/retro or stylised theme for my game as I think it would look very effective.
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images to create the illusion of movement.
There are 4 methods or animation: