Week 7.1 – 11th March. 2021
Rapid Ideation Session Two
Patricio and I decided to work together for the rapid ideation event, due to having similar interests for what we wanted to create, with an overall goal in mind to make a game. That being said, we had one of his old handmade animated asset’s, as a starting point for the game already.
Theme
We agreed on working with the theme – environment, looking more closely at how much pollution is around, especially in the ocean, and getting a better understanding of what it is doing to our planet overall.
Concept
(the game play of our artefact is based upon the adventures of a sea creature fighting human contamination)
Our initial aim is to show a way of recycling, and clearing waste, after it had been dumped into the ocean.
However, this may sound quite straight forward, but we have reservations about the sea creature and if it will display this with just swimming around, searching for food, only finding rubbish instead.
Background ideas
Above – looking more into the Style of illustration – shape within shape, whether the creature may have a globe over his head, or is just a normal fish…? The orange fish below, is what we went with…but we was thinking about an alien to begin with.
Blends for the rocks, or sand hills under the sea, something that may show texture.
Example below.
This is the texture we liked the look of above, and by using one of my old cloud designs, I had made for one of my children’s books, this helped with the atmosphere of the game, to create a dark, unhappy life under the sea.
Week 7.2 – 12th March. 2021
We set up a Trello board straight away to keep track of our development.
Trello – This is the most useful product ever for organisation!
As I mentioned in my last post, when learning about retrospective,
I choose my Start item as;
- Writing a weekly plan to help structure the work **
As for writing a weekly plan to organise the week ahead this has been working to, mostly because of Trello, one of the most useful things ever designed.
A board to write down all the things you need to do, what’s been done, and what your working on, whilst sharing with your team mates, choosing a perfect photo as a background, which helps to ground your focus to. Fantastic!!
Questions to address…
How do we clearly convey, with a sea creature searching for food, that we are looking to find ways of recycling to help the environment?
We wanted to look at the correct approach, and kept worrying about the sea creature which we had now chosen to be a Piranha, and how it would be able to show this through swimming in the ocean. I had an idea, of it changing different colours when it ate certain things.
We wanted to show how ill the Piranha was getting, from all the rubbish in the ocean.
Ideation start process for the Piranha – the change of different colours, on the approach, whilst eating, and afterwards
(Figure 6: Land/Norton 2021 Original Fish by Patricio/Colour Designs By Debbie)
Conclusion
From the above coloured fish versions…the Orange is the natural colour from Patricio’s original design, but I was determined to show the fish with a different colour, bright blend, as I was thinking along the lines of slime, and when things react to certain products in the sea.
I had an preconception that the fish may be glowing from when it approaches some kind of trash in the sea, and from that, its stomach is turning inside, and the way of showing that to the gamer without the fish being sick, would be through colour to show how its feeling.
From this small part of the process, we decided the bright slime green, in Patricio’s words…
Sick green, which I would be applying to all the fish that would;
- a) approaching the trash – swimming
- b) whilst eating – eating
- c) spinning after eating – turning
Problem
When applying colour to the fish, first time around the process took ages, and Patricio did recommend we don’t use a blend, but I felt the sick green really worked, and was so invested at showing him this could be done quickly, and could still look just as effective as the first one I did.
Solution
With this in mind I began rechecking out ways on Photoshop, to get this look quickly and apply to all the fish versions, we had discussed.
First attempt – taking the fish, adding a layer, drawing over the top(tracking the fish), then selecting and colouring. this is what took forever.
Second attempt – Taking the fish, adding the layer, selecting the fish from the first layer, using quick selection tool, and then colouring.
Third and final attempt the best and quickest:
Taking the fish, creating a new layer, selecting fish from new layer, go back to new layer and fill shape selected with paint bucket, which then would allow you to fill on top with a blend.
I personal thought if we didn’t change the fish colour, the whole meaning behind the fish game would be pointless. From my perspective, if I was playing the game, all I would see would be the fish eating rubbish, and thats it!
You wouldn’t get to view, his colour, showing how sick he feels when just approaching trash, let alone eating it. For me the colour of this fish was vital for helping younger ones to understand, how poorly our sea creatures are getting from all the pollution that is constantly being dumped in our oceans.
Week 7.3 – 15th March. 2021
The underwater scene
Here is how the game art is looking so far, together with our newly named fish ‘Tincan’ and the trash in the ocean. When thinking up names, when Patricio was at work, I was relating the kind of fish with the teeth, the eyes, the moment, and his surroundings. Tincan seemed a perfect choice. The game now had a title, main character with two colours, base colour and sick colour, a back ground, and some trash items.
Below is my layered background, created in Adobe Illustrator.
I incorporated Tincan as the bright sick green, to get an idea if he would clash with the scenery. Patricio had recommended that we check first, some colour ideas against the backing, as the original character is orange, so I experimented with the bright green as that colour was one that I thought was crucial to show his sickness, on approach to food, after and whilst eating.
From this, we could see the sick green worked, but we did need one more colour version created, which yet I hadn’t done. Base colour mixed with sick green, this was how it looked.
(Figure 8: Land/Norton 2021 Original fish by Patricio/ Colour Designs By Debbie)
Further research required
I realised from our process so far, that we were stepping the right direction with our game concept, however we are not really aware of any facts a such. I started to take a much more in-depth look at Ocean pollution, and Ocean sea creatures.
Ocean Research
When speaking to our peers, about the aim of our project, and the kind of outcome we were focusing on, one of them recommended this; MarineBio Conservation. After watching and making very in-depth notes about the state our Ocean is in, and crying throughout. I have come up with some very interesting theories, of how we could implicate this terrible situation into out game.
Below is the video link to “A Plastic Ocean”.
How to make more people aware?
From the documentary, I have been thinking about numerous ways in which our game could benefit the younger generation, and generally make more people aware of all the different kinds of plastics that first start effecting everything from a tiny shrimp, collecting plankton, not realising that its actually ingesting micro plastics.
Which is the start of the food chain in the ocean, leading to all the other fish, swallowing smaller fish and so on, which allows the toxins of the plastics, to circulate into the blood stream, there by all the marine life, has a shorter lifespan. Then it increases to get worse, through the seabirds, feeding its young, to people eating the fish, especially in parts of; Sri Lanka, and Manilla in the Philippines.
How to incorporate the research into our game?
- Shrimp could be the main source of food – that Tincan is always looking for?
- We could make Tincan – score points for every Shrimp he finds.
- A real life fact could pop up – to make the younger generation more aware of recycling.
These were a few ideas, that I preposed to Patricio, while t he was working on the mechanic of making Tincan move from on side of the ocean, to the other. But making sure he focused on Tincan direction, that he would almost go between the some rocks and trash items.
Game Feel
I wanted to look more into the Game Feel, this youtube channel was recommended, and it certainly does help you get a better perspective of the importance of creating the right feel for your game, and helps you to understand how small objects, actions, gestures etc, can make a big difference to the gamer, and the players experience.
He looks at the notion of;
‘If you were to strip out all the elements in the game altogether, and are literally left with just the character moving, does it still feel fun..?’
Do you still want to engage with the character?
In Mario 64, the feeling of the game would still be engaging, because of all the new moves he can do, you would still have fun just with the character alone.
So if we tested this theory out …would our character be fun?
First Demo of our Game – Tincan – Out in the Ocean
This is a demo that shows the movement so far, what the fish looks like in his surroundings, you can move with left and right arrows for use with an Apple Imac keyboard, and A (to go left) and D (to go right) for Windows.
http://www.patricioland.com/Unity/Tincanweb_V1/index.html
Analysis of Demo
From the demo you can clearly see how the fish, goes straight in between the rocks and trash items, you also can view the added effects of the bubble, rising from the bean can for example, and the plastic bottle floating on top of the surface, a bubble of air, that has created a slight wave in the sea, and the constant motion of Tincan when not in use facing the front with his mouth opening and closing to breath.
While this was being created in Unity, we did have reservations about using this application.
But as the demo shows the development, all the elements we have used in it, and where we currently are, we can now start adding the extra content, and start working to focus on other ares of interest, such as creating more trash items, and working on the mechanics of Tincan eating the trash.
Week 7.4 – 17th March. 2021
Version Control – Why is it needed?
My understanding of version control, is ideally for coding, and for any kind of software development. By having original files safely stored, is one thing, however being able to update them within a click of button, is another. By creating a repository, you are able to upload your files, and make sure they stay up to date, which is just what you need when coding as its quite easy to make typos.
I cannot say I have experience in coding, but when talking to my peers I now have a clearer idea, of what a relief it is to have a repository. Its like a safety net, all the files you need, are backed up.
The only experience I had of creating c sharp script, in Unity was very difficult, and from that small experience, I can’t imagine what it would be like to loose pages of script, let alone an amount of just a single paragraph.
The solution that is used most often is Git.
Version Control – systems
Git is the version control system that allows us to keep many versions of the same project.
There are a few other Git Version Control systems such as; GitKraken, TortoiseGit, and GitHub Desktop.
Below are the Git system details, that I am about to put into practice, this is another new experience for me
Git System details
- Set up a repository – the collection of files of your project that will be tracked by the system. In set-up, it is created online and ready to be populated.
- Clone a repository – copy all the files in the repository to a location in your machine. From now on, changes to the files in your machine will be tracked by the Git client.
- Commit changes to branch – to finalise any change onto your local repository and to give it a summary describing those changes.
- Push and pull changes – once a commit has been made, it is possible to ‘push’ it onto the online repository, making it available to everyone with access to it, which will now be able to ‘pull’ your commit.
- Create and merge branches – creating a branch makes an entirely different and independent copy of the project in the repository that can be worked on. This is useful to experiment on or even just implement a feature that has a risk of breaking the whole project. It is also good practice, in case of teams with multiple members, to never work on the same branch as other team members, in order to minimise conflicts. Once work on a branch is complete, the Git client can be used to merge it with other branches or with the master branch; the software does its best to help you manage conflicts.
- Revert to commit – once the inevitable project-breaking mistake is made, reverting to previous working commits is as easy as a click in your Git client.
There are many Git version control services – GitHub is the most commonly used one.
These platforms, while easily accessible online, can also be used through Git client software.
GitHub – We have been recommended GitHub, because of the features. It guides you about different tools, platforms and pipelines.
Version Control Repository
First experience – Patricio has already set up our repository to share our rapid ideation artefact progress, however I am keen to set one up, to have a better understanding of the process.
I am creating one, for the game art. (I am literally only putting a few thing in there to check it works).
https://github.com/dknindiegamedev/hello-world
please also see the link I followed below:
https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/
References
A Plastic Ocean (2016).Available at: https://marinebio.org/conservation/ocean-dumping/ [accessed 16 March 2021]
Game Juice (2015). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=216_5nu4aVQ [accessed 15 March 2021]
Git Version Control (2021). Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/911/pages/week-7-git-version-control?module_item_id=49187 [accessed 16 March 2021]
SWINK, Steve. 2009. Game Feel ; Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Full List of figures
Figure 1: Patricio Land 2021 Sea Creature eating plastic
Figure 2: Patricio Land 2021 Sea Creature no plastic
Figure 3: Norton 2021 Ideas for rock texture/ Alien globe
Figure 4: Norton 2021 Ideas for colour and texture of sand
Figure 5: Trello Board 2021 Deb and Pat’s Rapid Ideation Development Process
Figure 6: Land/Norton 2021 Original Fish by Patricio/Colour Designs By Debbie
Figure 7: Norton 2021 Design for under the sea
Figure 8: Land/Norton 2021 Original fish by Patricio/ Colour Designs By Debbie
RALPHY GETS ANIMATED..? 