Tag: Prototyping

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GDD740 - Module 3

Creating Games With Appeal

Week 3.1 – 1st October. 2021

This week, we have to focus on clarifying everything that will be included in our GDD (Game Design Document), and have it completed by the end of the week to help us move forward, to go towards the development of our individual Business Plans.

Iain Lobb’s video lists everything we must consider adding into our GDD, and in general to think about more carefully, to help us promote and market our games. The list below was only the starting point…

  • 1) Finding Unique hooks – Surprising/Desirable
  • 2) Creating a player fantasy
  • 3) Anchoring to familiar mechanics
  • 4) Knowing your Audience
  • 5) Attracting customers through ‘Art Direction’
  • 6) Keeping players engaged – Engagement mechanics
  • 7) Designing multiplayer games
  • 8) Developing Prototypes
  • 9) Marketing – Look at what other titles have sold well.
  • 10)Pre – animate GIF’s – post on Twitter to see the response to the art style…?
  • 11) Mascot in games must be a cute/ attractive character
  • 12) Think about your core gameplay loop – Prototype
  • 13) User Experience – Think about the user interface, control system, and gameplay loops.

After going through the list – my main thoughts was to focus on creating an emotional story opening with a polished animation, and added narration at the beginning of the game.

Secondly, I would like to focus on getting a couple prototypes, posted on Twitter, as this is the indie game dev world. Ever since I have joined only in September, I have found such amazing, imaginative solo indie game devs, and more.

Games that have sold well…

I have researched more into the titles below, as they each have got elements in, of what I too, would like to add into my game. (More details in week 4: M740 to show how well they have sold.)

  • 1) Lyn, The Girl Drawn on Puzzles / 2D Hand Drawn / Steam
  • 2) Lost in Random / 2.5 D Emotional Story Telling / PS4/ PS5
  • 3) Ori / 2D Mild Fantasy /Plat-former/ Switch
  • 4) Hollow Knight. / 2D Epic Action Adventure / Steam
  • 5) Unbound Worlds Apart / 2D Puzzle Plat-former / Steam

The five most common experiences…

In Steve Swinks book Game Feel, and the chapter on Experiences of Game Feel, he reveals that, although there are many different feelings you get when playing a game, the 5 most common ones are as follows;

  • 1)The aesthetic sensation of control
  • 2) The pleasure learning, practicing and mastering a skill
  • 3) Extension of senses
  • 4) Extension of identity
  • 5) Interaction with a unique physical reality with the game

Swink continues to elaborate more on how we as players, the audience reciprocates individually in many different ways, to certain actions at particular times throughout a game.

“What we call game feel is the sum of all these experiences blended together, coming to the surface at different times.”

(Swink 2009)

.

Personal Game Feel…

In relation to my list of games – from each category that I feel is relevant or has something similar to my game concept, that I have created. The below games are indeed ones that I have all different ‘game feels‘ too.

  • 1) Lyn, The Girl Drawn on Puzzles / 2D Hand Drawn / Steam Relaxing / little emotional from the back ground music
  • 2) Lost in Random / 2.5 D Emotional Story Telling / PS4/ PS5 Interaction with a unique physical reality with the game
  • 3) Ori / 2D Mild Fantasy /Plat-former/ Switch Pleasure learning, practicing and mastering a skill
  • 4) Hollow Knight. / 2D Epic Action Adventure / Steam On edge/ excited
  • 5) Unbound Worlds Apart / 2D Puzzle Plat-former / Switch /Steam In a Fantasy world full of adventure / music exciting

Week 3.2 – 6th October. 2021

Prototyping

  • (Figure 1 : Norton 2021 2D Tree Illustration)
  • (Figure 2 : Norton 2021 2D to 3D)
  • (Figure 3 : Norton 2021 converted to 3D)

First Render

The below shows my first prototype for my game. This is the very first time also, that I have rendered an illustration and manipulated it. from 2D to 3D in blender.

The format is an MP4, so I have chose to display it, from how it looks when posted on Twitter. (next time I will aim for a GIF).

Game Design Document…

Once again this is yet…another first for me. I didn’t realise how much you need to consider when making a game, I knew the obvious things; like what moves the character will do, what art style you are going with, the kind of music to set the atmosphere, the story behind the game, and to have a points/ health system, but there is so many other elements to consider.

Below is the full Game Design Document. I have tried to consider everything very carefully.

(Figure 4 : Norton 2021 GDD p.1)
(Figure 5 : Norton 2021 GDD p.2)

References

Lobb, I. 2015. Creating Games with Appeal. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/924/pages/week-3-lecture-creating-games-with-appeal?module_item_id=57447 [Accessed 2/10/21]

SWINK, Steve. 2009. Game Feel ; Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Bucci, M. 2020. Turn a 2D painting into 3D environment – Powerful BLENDER Techniques Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff0aobJRSNc [Accessed 15/10/21]

Full List of Figures

Figure 1 : Norton 2021 2D Tree Illustration (created in Adobe PhotoShop)

Figure 2 : Norton 2021 2D to 3D (created in Blender)

Figure 3 : Norton 2021 converted to 3D (created in Blender)

Figure 4 : Norton 2021 GDD p.1 (created in Adobe PhotoShop)

Figure 5 : Norton 2021 GDD p.2 (created in Adobe PhotoShop)

Categories
GDD710 - Module 1

Rapid Ideation – Session 1

Week 4.1 – 17th February. 2021

Part 1 : Setting the Theme

The Dixit card picked at random – From here we are to interpret however we want, and experiment with the artefact in anyway we please. 

Part 2 : Choosing a Headline

We are asked to pick a headline from a news website, newspaper, or magazine of choice.

(Figure 1: The Dixit card 2021 The Theme)

Ideation process – Brainstorm

I have began with a rather detailed brainstorm, I chose to base around 4 areas of the artefact, but then realised there is another 2 areas, they were staring me in the face the whole time. Very obvious, they were the wings, and a tail.

After the initial brainstorm was put into action, I felt excited and a little overwhelmed with how many opposites arose, and would need to be narrowed down. To get a crisp conclusion, I would now approach the second art board, using a different technique.

Please see Brainstorm below.

(Figure 2: Norton 2021 Dixit Brainstorm)

Simple Method

I wanted to reduce the words, but not just from my own choice. I used the simple technique, as explained below.

I closed my eyes, to keep the process quick – counted to 11, moved my finger over each section clockwise, then stopped. After doing this 6x, and counting to numerous numbers, changing the position to anticlockwise, then in different shapes…these are what arose from the simple technique.

  1. Tired
  2. Soft and Glowing
  3. Bright
  4. Fluffy
  5. Cord
  6. Uncomfortable in clothes

Please see Ideation Part 2 below.

(Figure 3: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 2)

Please see Ideation part 3 below.  

(Figure 4: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 3)

Evaluating Development

The 3rd art board – Shows me evaluating the 6 results, which I could have left at this point, but I decided to brainstorm the main areas one more time. This has led me to the final art board, revealing a general feel for my final interpretation of the essential points taken from the artefact, which will be combined with my headline. 

(Figure 5: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 4)

Result below

Having done my brainstorms, focusing on the key elements of the artefact, being; 

  1. Character expression
  2. Position
  3. Wings
  4. Tail
  5. Prop
  6. Colour of character

For me this is enough detail to remediate the original artefact and develop, alongside my headline. 

Week 4.2 – 17th February. 2021

Part 2 : The Headline;

I did what was required, not thought too deeply about the meaning of the headline. Just wanted to do a general search on animation magazines, and this is the headline I chose.

Animation Magazine: “Snail of a Tale: Tim Hill Gives Us the Scoop on ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run”

The word’s ‘snail, tale, scoop and sponge’, is what immediately captured my attention at first glance, and the more I delved deeper into the story that was behind the headline, I realised I could relate it to a new game creation, whether a new background, character, creative narrative script, sound, or audio atmosphere, the possibilities were endless.

Next to work with an alternative method for the headline.

New Method Storyboarding:

 After researching, I have decided to use the storyboard technique, due to it being a visual way of developing ideation skills, and one that you can easily amend.

At the moment, I feel like I am working backwards to go forwards. I would usually explore an image, by laying it out on paper, or digitally on Adobe Illustrator, and simply draw what comes into my mind. 

Instead I have brainstormed the artefact, and the outcome is a lot more clarified, then it would have been with me sketching numerous times.

Prototyping Tool

I have downloaded one tool that was noted for prototyping, called Toon boom, software for storyboarding and animation production. 

After watching the youtube videos, on Toon Boom’s Storyboard Pro, and Harmony 20. I found when making notes on how to use, yet another new tool that Storyboard Pro, seemed a little less in depth.

I could be wrong, however this is my next starting point.

Week 4.3 – 17th February. 2021

Storyboard Pro – First experience:

My aim was to create a character, and a new background for the start of a game or animation.I had a brief specification to start me off for my character development, following on from the start of the rapid ideation session.

I found the brushes on here easy to use. It is a straight forward process to adjust the size and shape, which is good for when you are working to a set time.

Brushes; what I used to create the look below; 

  1. Textured Wash – size 250 2) Pipe Cleaner – size 130 3) Pastle 2 – Size’s between 120-170

Character below : Ickle

(Figure 6: Norton 2021 Ickle)

Problem

However, after I had realised my character was on a solid white back ground…I thought I could easily change it in Storyboard Pro, like I do in Photoshop, select the eraser and take out the white, to create a translucent background.
Though this was not possible, which set me back a little, I then realised I would have to export it as a PSD or PNG, which I could then amend in Photoshop.

Solution

After having a brief discussion with Patricio, he recommended some of the other tools I could use to create animation. Luckily one of them was Photoshop.

I started following a step guide – on how to create a frame animation, in photoshop itself.
I worked with one background, as a normal layer. I only created 3 frames on top of my other layers to see how the character moved.

Below is all the frames I used to put together a Photoshop frame animation.

(Figure 7: Norton 2021 Ickle character poses)

Problem

I was pleased with this outcome, although it wasn’t that smooth, and after watching the 2d animation tutorial on LinkedIn, with Dermot, I wanted to look at adding a couple tweens, as he showed how they could help when transitioning one movement to the next.
Though when I added 5 tweens, to my frame animation… It didn’t look much different, even if I changed the opacity, position, or size. 

Conclusion

In my opinion, this was not working unless you wanted a very basic, almost ‘flip book’ style animation. This being my first proper animation experience, was quite quick to achieve, but I wanted it to be better.

After further research, I changed the option to video layers, because I have looked into Olaf Storm, who uses Photoshop, to create his animations using Video layers.

References

ZAHED, Ramin. 2020. Animation Magazine. Snail of a Tale: Tim Hill Gives Us the Scoop on ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run’ [online] Available at: https://www.animationmagazine.net/features/snail-of-a-tale-tim-hill-gives-us-the-scoop-on-the-spongebob-movie-sponge-on-the-run/ [accessed 17/02/21]

Toon Boom Learn Portal. 2021 Storyboard Pro 20. Available at: https://store.toonboom.com/downloads/try/647 [accesed 17/02/21]

Full List of Figures

Figure 1: Dixit 2021 The Theme

Figure 2: Norton 2021 Dixit Brainstorm Adobe Photoshop

Figure 3: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 2 Adobe Photoshop

Figure 4: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 3 Adobe Photoshop

Figure 5: Norton 2021 Ideation Part 4 Adobe Photoshop

Figure 6: Norton 2021 Ickle created in Storyboard Pro

Figure 7: Norton 2021 Ickle character poses created in Photoshop