Today I learnt about AI and how to implement it into the game.
For AI to be successful, it needs AT LEAST the following:
There are 3 types of AI Movement:
I opted to try the basic movement, which allowed the enemy to move from side to side along a platform, and when it collides with an “invisible wall” either side, it bounces off and goes in the opposite direction.
Today I explored more market trends that can appear within the game industry.
Products and Services
Products and services are extra things companies provide to their customers like PlayStation Store, Xbox Marketplace, Nintendo eShop etc.
Objectives and Plans
What they company plan on achieving in the next few years, for example, announcing a new game projected for release, or even games they are developing but have not yet announced.
Customers
The customers are the people that the products are sold to.
Competitors
Who the companies will be going up against when it comes to selling their games. For example, Battlefield and Call of Duty, or Fifa and PES.
In todays sessions we discussed how different roles could be fulfilled and other game mechanics that could be changed/implemented.
A nice feature we may now include in the game is that when the character hits a wall, he could change direction, giving a twist to an endless runner.
Today I learnt about platforms and distribution. As a game designer, there are a number of things I need to know before building a game:
After discussing these points and the pros and cons regarding them, I looked at the ESA Facts 2016 to see how they could influence my idea based on the information that was collected. After looking at the document, a number of things surprised me:
The first was how dramatically the percentage of male to female gamers had changed in a year. The percentage last year in the US had 49% Female to 51% Male. This year in US there were 41% Female gamers to 59% Male gamers. This is a very surprising and quite dramatic change for a year’s difference.
“The most frequent FEMALE GAME PLAYER is on average 44 years old and the average MALE GAME PLAYER is 35 years old”
This could have many causes. Inequality in the workplace is a viable cause based off what age the same level of expendable income will become available based on salary. Another may be prioritisation. Female game players may prioritise makeup over games for example, or the need for female sanitary items like tampons (these are taxed so can have an impact on where the money would be spent first). The same would be applied for cigarrettes, but that affects both males and females.
Most frequent purchases: 40% Female 60% Male
Parents buying games has a massive impact on this as it can skew the results if they are buying it for a child as a present.
“51% of the most frequent gamers play a multiplayer mode at least weekly”
This surprised me because of the percentage. I expected it to be closer to 60/70% given the fact that multiplayer is growing as a a primary feature in games.
The most surprising thing about these two top selling charts is the sheer number of Sims content that is in the “Top 20 Selling COMPUTER Games of 2015”
The most interesting thing I found out was how physical copies of games are usually cheaper than digital ones due to things like return fees.
Today I learned about script treatments, there format and use. A script treatment is a small document (2-5 pages) similar to a short story. It should include a start, middle and end as well as using some key scenes breifly. It needs to be oncise but shouldn’t sacrifice any good pieces of information.
Source: PowerPoint Presentation
A script treatment is formatted similarly to any other script, including transitoions, location, time of day, actions and speech. They are used as condensed scripts, sort of how a film teaser trailer would be used, to register interest and get financiers intrigued enough to pay you to write the full script. This also helps the writer sort out problems and evaluate the solidity of the idea.
For my game I will need to write a script treatment with a story idea, before implementing it into my game.
Employment status
Types of working pattern
Benefits relating to contracted employment status
Copyright
This manages the use of a creator’s work. This prevents someone from claiming the creator’s work as their own. If this does happen this is called copyright infringement.
Copyright Infringement
This is when someone claims the creator’s work as their own. If the creator realises, they can take their case to court.
Ethical
Ethical aspects need to be accounted in everything, for example, when The Church of England is considering legal action against entertainment firm Sony for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a violent PlayStation video game. Ethical things should be taken very seriously, and you should be very cautious regarding these matters.
Trademarks
“The representation of any number, symbol, letter, figure, mark or word used by a company to distinguish their goods from others”
Compliance
Certain laws and regulations are in place that you have to comply with to avoid damages or loses to a company. For example, fines or court hearings.
Today’s lesson covered the basics of Platformers and Aerial View games.
Aerial Games:
Aerial games can be easier to make compared to platformer games, so before covering them, we learnt about new things which can be implemented and controlled in game maker.
Frame Rate
As previously known, frame rate is a set of images played fast enough to create the illusion of movement. At between 25-30fps the video is no longer choppy to the human naked eye. GameMaker can adjust the frame rate of individual sprites and for each room/level.
Variables
Variables are pieces of code (predefined or user defined) that remember certain values – text or numbers – so they can be used/edited easily multiple times. The most common uses for variables are speed, direction, x or y, and can be defined both locally (certain parts of the game) or globally (across the whole game). However, as the variables use up RAM space, too many global variables can slow the game down.
Platformer movement needs:
For the platformer, some objects/variables needed to be relative. A good rule of thumb for determining which should be relative is if it is a force/element or not, for example:
After coming to the conclusion of what the main concept of the game would be, we have begun to test different paths we could go down in functionality and design, before settling for whatever the majority of the group thought was best.
The first couple topics we had to discuss were what the game would appear as visually and what style the game would play out as. After much deliberation we came to the conclusion that our game would adopt minimal, but colourful visuals, and it would be played in the form of levels instead of becoming an infinite runner.
By the end of today’s sessions we have begun work on basic level design and have tried animating and moving the main protagonist.
Today I was introduced to GameMaker. I was given a brief overview of how the program looks, as well as how it is used. My first task was to identify 4 main parts of GameMaker:
After doing this, I identified where these were located within the program:
Sourced from the PowerPoint
The tool bar contains useful buttons like New Document, Open, Save, New Sprite, New Room, New Background and Run – which runs the game as a preview.
We then looked at the general principle of creating a game using GameMaker. When making a game, you would usually follow these steps:
Axis:
Source: PowerPoint presentation
Unlike most things the y axis in GameMaker is the opposite to what it would usually be. Up is “-” and Down is “+”. The above image shows how to control an object, both movement and rotation.
Above: Organisational structure for Natural Motion
This is a tall hierarchy as there are more than 3 layers. This is usually found in larger companies and is has different departments. Each department will have a team leader which are all overseen by the CEO (top of the hierarchy).
Other examples include a flat hierarchy and a matrix hierarchy. A flat hierarchy is for smaller companies. There can be 1 team leader overseeing everything as there are only a small amount of members which could enable better communication.
A matrix structure includes teams from different functions and are often used for different projects. This changes how decision making takes place, and could also improve how motivated the employees are. The only disadvantage is that there are multiple managers.
