Level Design Part 14 - Building Progress

Created the draft version of areas 3 through 5 of the level, including working platforms and an elevator that manipulates the camera and weaves down a wall track. The spawners and doors in section 3 are yet to be done as I want to get the level to a more complete stage before locking down areas so I can see how long it takes and tailor the doors to the pace of the level.

Zoom out of entire new section.

Section 4 back and forth section. This area is fully populated with Pistol soldiers and chompers for now but most will be replaced with turrets and melee soldiers when they are ready.

Section 4 part 2. The control room is very simple and small but I'm using it to break up the level by making it look out into a vast set of mountains.

Section 5. Everything about the elevator works just need to populate with turrets and enemy spawns once the rest of the level is at a rough stage. This is where the player will find the first guaranteed weapon pick up, which is the submachine gun.

Chomper Bot

Originally I wanted to use the 4 legged chomper bot for the Point walking enemies, however they are way to big and intimidating for being the first enemy introduced. With that in mind I created their little counterparts. They are fully finished in game now including a bunch of sounds and animations. At the moment they add a lot of character to a very plain environment and have an identifiable hum to notify the player of whats ahead. 

This variant is very weak when the player has a vantage point making it a great introductory enemy, however when spawned in a tight space I can see them being a lot of trouble. 

Level Design Part 13 - Concord Labs Plan, Boss Beat Chart and Minor Tank Changes

In terms of level design, I'm finding Lily's levels a bit more difficult to work out. The main reason behind this is that it isn't a linear pathway and if I created it that way it would be boring. It works for the tank because of the larger scale and the camera setting the pace for the game. 

Since the last version of the project I have created a new camera style for Lily's levels. They now use a camera that does a few new things, first it stops the camera moving backwards (Player can still move back to a point) this was to stop the player being able to retreat and kill things from out of their range. Also it drives the player forwards by progressing with them as long as they go the right direction. Second, it now is free from the character so I can add extra functions into it, the main 2 I plan to use for now is stopping the camera until X number of enemies are dead and giving the player a larger view for boss battles. 

Back to the level design, I tried thinking of the story that I want the level to go through first and blocked out the key stages the level requires. In this instance its the entrance, elevator tower and the boss room. 

As a sidenote, I'm debating adding checkpoints for when the player gets to a boss battle (at least for easy mode and normal mode with a reward penalty) as in feedback players said that having to get back to the boss every time could get tedious due to the difficulty of a boss.

This is the current plan which I've blocked out into stages:

1. The first corridor forces the player to use the jumping and introduces the first enemy to them that is harmless unless you they get in its path. 

2. Use the jumping refresh in this section in a more complicated way. The 1st bit will have no enemies, just the death hole, so it isn't too difficult. Since the player will most likely understand that pits mean death I will put a secret in the second one that will have a tiny platform that's visible when playing. Down there will be either scrap or a basic weapon pick up.

3. The doors here will be destructible and a spawner in front of the door will spawn a number of enemies to fight while breaking down each door. After the first door there will be a few turrets to contend with. Since the camera cannot retreat now this section should get quite intense if the player gets surrounded.

4. This one is really short. Basically it will introduce shooting buttons and give a little scrap pickup as a reward for getting this far. 

5. At this point the player will be stuck on a wide elevator that shifts as it goes down the levels of the base, the shaft will have turrets/traps along the walls and the occasional enemy dropping onto the platform to fight the player.

6. This is a more advanced version of 3 but before the second set of spawner doors there is a hatch the player can (hopefully by accident during combat) destroy leading to a secret path through shafts with location moving enemies and jumping holes to evade them. Using this section bypasses the locked doors entirely. 

7. Still a bit unsure here, I'm thinking of having it as a platforming section with lots of moving sections to dodge and a few enemies littered across the platforms. When I get to this bit I will test it until it's fun and challenging.

8. Boss battle Beat Chart:

Boss Name: Experiment 3001

Description: Lily's grandmother inside a orb shaped machine. Moves along walls using tracks and interacts with the arena.

Required Animations:

• Wake up (Intro)
• Idle
• Fire Flamethrower
• Critical Damage
• Move rocket launchers into view for firing
• Death

Movement Patterns: 

• Static Z location
• Follows player along X upto a point

Attack Descriptions:

• Fires basic bullets in quick patterns, ignoring player location.
• Fires Red Bullets at player location.
• Emits fire from underneath if player is on lower platforms.
• Homing rockets from above (Sometimes replaced by a shootable bomb)

Defeated by: Has a set amount of health the player must go through. Shooting a bomb does 5% critical damage.

Damage Description: 

• Attacking in general will do moderate damage but it can be defeated quicker hitting weak spots.
• Hitting the bomb above is the key way of killing this boss. Causes a critical failure that makes it take a lot of damage..

Particle Effects:

• Flamethrower
• Bullet Fire
• Missile Smoke
• Death explosions
• Metal pings

Projectiles:

• Red Bullet
• Homing rockets
• Standard Bullets
• Flamethrower

HUD Elements: Target laser lines.

Sound Effects:

• Granny Muttering
• Laser effects
• Missile explosions
• Charging sounds
• Mechanical 

Arena: The arena is mostly usable by the player with about 20% taken up by the boss. In the player area there will be sets of platforms at both sides and underneath the boss. These platforms are constantly moving and at times will change direction or tilt 90 degrees to force the player to move around. The boss stays central in the arena and moves left or right along the wall following the player. This boss will fire various things but the main focus of this fight is to not fall to death.

Rewards: Unlocks access to the next level, gives the player the ability to customise their equipment  and awards a lot of scrap.

Current Progress towards Demo Build.

Finally for this update, I have increased the fire rate (in turn reduced damage), camera speed and added camera shake in the tank gameplay a small amount as a quality of life improvement. I found that it felt a bit slow after playing with the speed of Lily's mode.

Lily's Model Part 2

Since it turns out the deadline isn't the 16 of December I have some time to get some more pretty renders for characters and assets. Recently I've seen some nice artwork displayed online using animated gifs to make the image move so I decided to try that for the artwork.

Since its a compressed gif it has a few artifacts but its definitly more interesting than a still image, it's just a bit less detailed.

Lily Mackenzie - Atlas' Annoyance by pasco295 on Sketchfab

Level design Part 12 - Concord Labs Beat Chart

Now that I am onto level design it's time to do another Beat chart!

Level: 1-3

Name: Concord Labs

Story: Lily MacKenzie and crew have fought their way through Concord city and have found the entrance to Atlas base of operations in the desert. They destroy the door by ramming the tank into it, which also puts the tank out of commission for the rest of the level. Now that Lily is in the lab, her grandfather tasks her with looking for the customization module and to defeat a certain person.

Progression: 

• Player taught basic movement and combat through the use of logic and previous experience with tank.
• Player is introduced to a different style of enemy that will not just leave when it passes the camera.

Est.Play time: 6-10 mins runtime + 2-4 min boss battle (Depends on player skill)

Colour map: Silvers and blacks (Metals) Greens (General Atlus Trim colour) Reds (Highlighted Areas such as dangerous sections)

Enemies: 

• Basic Soldiers (Pistol equipped) 
• Basic Soldier 2 (Melee or grenades) 
• Wall turrets (Either player tracking or static depending on situation) 
• Destroyable Spawners 
• Pathing robots (either walk towards player or walk back and forth etc)
• Platform based boss

Mechanics: 

• Getting the player used to the differences in controlling lily compared to the tank.
• Use of jumping to avoid obstacles
• Use everything taught over the level in the bosses mechanics
• Introduce a weapon drop (Submachine gun)
• Possible escape section where the player races the clock to get out of the base before it explodes.

Hazards:

• Avoidable lines of fire 
• Avoid pits
• Traps

Powerups:

• Submachine gun
• Hidden rocket launcher (reward for exploration or experimenting)

Abilities: No abilities yet (will be unlocked with customisation)

Bonus material: Concept Art unlocked?

This is an orthographic screenshot of the current level that I am going to use to plan the whole thing out. 

Level Design Part 11 - Enemies and planning

Over the last few days I have been doing the major framework for the soldier based enemies. Since this asset needed proper AI I had to learn some of the ideas surrounding the behavior tree and how it works. At times it was a bit of a headache so I did a section of the AI a day and worked on other things to get away from it. 

The end product of the work is pretty good and the enemies can do a decent amount, however they may be a bit to good at times when there is a lot going onscreen so I'm planning on using them sparsely with simpler enemies like turrets and melee attacks being more common (At least for the early levels). 

At first I had the enemies withstand a fair amount of damage from weapons but I referred back to the games that inspire this game and standard enemies die really fast in them. I think this is to keep the pace of the combat fast and exciting. In the end I reduced their health and increased weapon damage so that they die easily, however I have reduced the ammo given for a weapon to compensate for the power they now have. For example originally the sniper took 3 rounds to kill an enemy, now it does it in one shot and it feels so much more satisfying and powerful for the small amount of ammo it has.

Finally when they die instead of doing a canned animation I thought it would be more fun to do something similar to the exploding planes from the tank level as players have liked that happening. When they die they rag doll in the impact direction and from playing it myself I have laughed at some of the moments where one dies from a sniper shot and slams into the ground because of the impact. 

Video of the AI and Level

Onto a bit of level and game play design. To keep consistency between both game modes the players bullets can hit enemy bullets like the tank can. Also red bullets (Not in game yet) cannot be shot down, again like with the tank. 

Since the player will have already done 2 tank levels by the point of this one I won't be including any tutorial notifications as the controls are basically the same aside from the ability to crouch. This first level  will be used to get the player families with playing as lily and have sections that are based off using one of her movement or shooting capability.

This small area forces the player to use jump mechanics to move forwards and then introduces a single enemy that cannot spot the player unless they are on top of the big box. This gives the player ample time to notice the enemy and work out what to do. As the level goes on the mechanics will be used in unison since the player should be used to the mechanics. The next step for the level design is to work out the whole area before I start building in engine, otherwise I could spend hours wasting time on useless areas or something not suitable for the level. It will also help work out what other enemy types are required for this level.

Final image is a pretty shot of the opening area with some meshes I made while having a break from coding, it's nothing fancy at the moment but it's more interesting than boxes.

Level Design Part 10 - Lily Intergration

Over the last 2 days I've gotten Lily to a point where she is almost completely finished (Only needs in base integration now which isn't that important at the moment). For the animations each of her guns needed its own set due to the hand poses so she has came to 54 animations in total and has 6 animation blueprints. 

I decided on splitting each guns animations into a different blueprint because the communication between one set of animation was complicated enough and swapping to a different one was quicker and works just as well as one extremely complicated animation blueprint.

For the weapons I looked to metal slug for why its guns are fun to use. From what I saw and played with there are 3 main aspects that make its gunplay fun. First is the rate of fire, shooting huge amounts of bullets looks more exciting and makes the gun feel very powerful. Secondly, it has great sound for the firing of weapons that give a great sense of impact. Finally they don't have reloading so that there isn't any downtime where the player stops being able to shoot, for example it's more fun to shoot 300 bullets in one stream than reload every 30 bullets.

Animation/gameplay video

Lily's Character Blueprint

Soldiers 3D model

After a few days break I got back to getting the characters done. Now that the basic soldier is done I can move onto animating and getting everything in engine properly over the next week. Really happy with how the soldier came out, I think he wouldn't be out of place as a proper character. Once I have Lily and the soldiers rigged I might do some pretty renders in poses for promotional artwork.

Guns 3D models

Guns are all modeled now so there is only the concord soldier left to do model wise before I can get to the animation and programming stages. The level assets will be done in the last week because they are just pretty things, whereas making the guns and character properly now saves time later since I wont have to use dummy models then go back and do everything again with the real assets.

Bullets and Player Base Changes

Finished the bullet types now and added an extra one for the basic bullets. Also after adding Lily to the game as a scale reference I realized how huge some of the assets in the player base were (Chairs, doorframes etc). After scaling it all down to the right size it has opened up the area even more and gives the tank a bigger presence in the scene.

Lily's Model - Body base and main outfit

Lily's model is all done now for the base and the main costume. She came out at around 39k, but thats not really a problem since she will be quite big on the screen and the model will be useful for close ups too.

Full outfit,

Base model

                                                                           Close up.

Wireframe

Enemy Concept - Finished

Finished off the main enemy concept now. Really happy with how it's turned out, to me it looks like a blend of storm troopers and solid snake from metal gear solid. Also because of the clean look of the outfit they continue to contrast the stuff Lily uses (The tank compared to the Adjudicator for example). Having these running around different 80's hairstyles will add a great amount of character and humor to them.

Enemy Concept - Sketching decisions

For the enemy humans I want a quintessential 80's look. I looked at some iconic series from the 80's for inspiration, I found that the armour in films such as robocop, star wars and alien have a lot of greebles in clusers on their designs. These random looking details are commonly used on large objects such as space ships to make them look more complex and visually interesting. In character design greebles, when used in small doses, can also help add interest to the design. 

Personally I love the style of armour that exaggerates the shoulders, also because of characters like Darth Vader (Star Wars) or Freeza (Dragon Ball Z) it has become a recognizable symbol of an evil character.

With these 2 key design ideas in mind I went to create a sketch of a set of armour for the basic enemy. Originally they were going to have helmets that masks their eyes (Like metal slug or the soldier from team fortress 2) but it's a very common trope. Instead of that idea I'll be having the enemy's use popular hairstyles from the 80's, like the mullet. I decided this mainly because it will add more character to the enemies and it grounds them more into the style.

Weapon and Bullet Concepts

Done the set of basic weapons now. The colour scheme on these is for the enemy versions, which use greens as their ascent colour (All the planes, buildings and boss in the tank level have this element in their colour scheme as well). When the player obtains a weapon the accent colour will be changed to Lilys instead. Silhouette wise these weapons are all very different, so they should be easy to identify when they are found in a level.

In the beginning the player will only have the pistol available until they find another weapon once. After the player has found a weapon for the first time it can be added to Lily's starting equipment, but she can only choose one (Plus the pistol) to start with. All weapons will have ammo counts aside from the pistol, this will relate to how powerful they are.  When playing, Lily can hold as many weapon types as are available, I think this is more fun than being forced to a limit of 2 weapons.

I decided that instead of different costumes changing stats I would move the main stat change to the gun. The reason for this is I don't players to be forced to use X costume because it gives different stats even though they would prefer to use another one. For now bullets are the only customization that will change Lily's stats, but I might add some accessory ones that change other elements of her play.

Lily's Main Outfit

Originally, I was going to just leave the outfits at a sketch but I got carried away doing Lily's main outfit. I've still got plenty of time for the concept section though(roughly 20 hours left). At the moment I'm really happy with this being her default set, I think the outfit give's some nice suggestions about her possible backstory.

Just thought, an easy alternative costume would be to just remove the jacket. 

Showing some of my process for anyone who's interested.

This is the little list inside the Concept Art widget. The one's that say 'If time' I'm going to leave until everything important for the demo is done.

Project Management and lily's concept begins

For my planning I decided to go with HacknPlan, this is because of its helpful interface which comes with a lot of features that aid management without requiring a lot of editing. For example each of the widgets can have lists inside to free up space and keep the plan looking cleaner.

I've been quite generous with the time given to each aspect, which totals 212 hours over the next 5 weeks, hopefully come of this time isn't required but it comes out around 40 hours a week. That's doable.

I've started on Lily's (Main Characer) design template for her clothing ideas. I'm going to continue with her hair being being pink because of its relation to helpful objects in levels and I think it works well in her small idea image I posted previously. (Posted the previous image again so nobody has to go find it in my posts) The costume she has in the old sketch was based on her imitating an enemy officer so I might add a costume like that as one of the extra designs.

Ignore in the fact she's naked, actually looks worse if I try to hide parts of her body. Since she is the 1st character I'm doing I wanted to get her proportions looking right before I did anything else. As the sketch became more concrete her body shape gains some exaggeration in areas to help with her stylization, then I added shading to save time later on. Now that I have this base for her body, I'm going to go ahead and do a few different ideas for her cloths over the the top of this. 

On a side note, her right hand looks a bit weird at the moment because she is going to be holding a gun over her shoulder but it isn't painted yet.

Capricia Productions Interviews

Since I’m currently working for a small indie company I thought it best to ask some of the directors about their experiences with game development. First off a bit of backstory on the company and who created it. The company is called Capricia Productions and it is based in Israel, it was founded by 3 people Shai Amoyal, Arnold Nesis and Ben Shmuelof in 2013. Shai and Arnold are the 2 I have interviewed for their opinions on what has went on during the project. 

The game they are creating is called The Birdcage and it is an action adventure music video game. The idea behind it is creating a game that works like an interactive music video.

“Think of a really cool music video you saw once, but now imagine that you’re in it, interacting with the environment that changes according to the music” – Steam greenlight page.

I decided to ask them separately so I can see if there are any differences in what they say.

Their Website -  http://www.capriciaproductions.com/

Their Greenlight - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=485411941 

Their Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TheBirdcage

First off, what methods did you use to plan out the fundamentals of the game?

Arnold -  Well, for us it was a bit different then your "average developer" - when we started, we were a group of musicians and had no idea about game design and that world (apart from me being a composer for games). We basically decided that the music is going to be the center, and the story is going to be told through the music - the rest is going to support that. From that point, we basically made a lot of mistakes and learned "on the fly". 

Shai -  I Googled A LOT at the beginning! But mostly I asked around about methods other people used and I drew inspiration and what I thought was necessary from each one until I formulated my own. 

It was interesting to find out that this is their 1^st development inside the games industry. Both of them basically talk about how they looked at what was needed and used that research to work out what they wanted to create. A lot of it looks to be trial and error in the early development. 

What major difficulties or pitfalls have you encountered during the project that you think could be avoided? 

Arnold -  Team mismatch. At first we didn't know what people we want with us and how to manage a team. It took a pretty long time to figure out exactly what people we want to work with and how to work within the team. I think this can only be avoided with experience though - it's very hard to understand at first what the specific team needs and what's more important and less important. I think a very big good thing we did is setting the 20 hours/week thing - it works much better then assignment based projects. 

Shai - Always thrice the schedule! You might think you know what's best and how long things will take you to do but unforeseen circumstances are always there, just waiting around the corner and you can never be prepared for them. We have had so many people walking out mid-development or so many things that we thought we finished with them and then a problem popped up and ruined our plans, so what I did was basically just allow some margin of error to everything and I learned that every game goes through it and to just not stress. Everything has a solution, it's only a matter of finding it. 

This point is also based off trial and error but all if comes down to time and team management. Since my project will be a one-man team I will be avoiding the pitfalls of the team members being mismatched or quitting, I’m quite happy I don’t have to deal with those problems with this project. In previous experience, I’ve been on a team where people don’t show up to work or don’t contribute fairly to a project and it is a very frustrating thing. Adding some extra time to allow for problems to be dealt with is a great idea for keeping on top of things and I will be keeping it in mind as I go each week. 

What gameplay elements would advise to stay away from for a small game? 

Arnold - Massive multiplayer elements. No matter how good the game is, indie small games don't have enough users on-line at first and this can kill a game. I've seen a couple of examples for it this happening. 1v1/2v2 can work ok but don't count on many on-line users.  

Shai - Huge open worlds and big multiplayers are such a big pitfall IMO for small games and developers. It's nearly impossible to make these without a big budget so I'd steer clear from them. Although if you think i'm wrong - hell, prove me wrong! I'd be happy if you do :) 

I agree with what they say on this entirely, large scale worlds and multiplayer are difficult things to do because of the amount of time and knowledge required to create them properly. Thankfully neither of these are part of my games plan.

Did you use any time saving tricks in asset or concept creation? if so what where they? 

Arnold - I think the best one is having a few people on the team that have their specific strength, but also can do other things. This is mostly common in people who are working with UE4 - this creates a situation where if there is a bottle-neck, it can be much easier solved by just temporarily moving people from their main assignment to help another. It speeds up the development process significantly  

Shai - Using outside references for assets and sometimes just not spending time on concepts helped us just go right into modelling or just development. Also, using shared documents helped us a lot with being more efficient.

Their replies to this question were interesting for seeing their different ways of speeding up the design work, Shai is the lead for the Art team and his rely reflect some of the tricks used by myself and other people under his direction. An example of this is, when describing characters Shai will always give me a bunch of references for the general look of a character but will also give me some specific references for things he wants the characters to wear. In contrast to this Arnold is the lead for the programming side, so he gets his group to aid each other to speed up the process by bouncing them between different aspects as a group.

What element of the project do you think takes the longest period of time? Could it be shortened in any way? 

Arnold - I think the thing that takes the most time in general is not a specific element but how the whole thing works together. Game development has a lot of elements to it and everything is connected to everything - at least when it comes to delays, if you can solve the bottlenecks, it can speed the thing dramatically

Shai - The conception. Doing pre-production right is key, and should not be overseen as something "You can do along the way". You can, but it will steal the majority of your time and create a dissonance between the development teams. Do pre-production before the actual work. Assess everything and it will save you time later. 

Their views on this are both about making sure that everything is planned and managed properly. I agree that it can get messy if everything isn’t planned out properly, it is easy to end up working on something irrelevant to your current needs if you don’t plan. 

How have you attempted to engage the gaming community to get support for your game? 

Arnold - Patreon page, greenlight and dev forums are the immediate suspects. Every time I see someone on facebook, twitter, or any other media who seems to be into things like our game I try and message him and tell about it, show some links and hope to get them into the community. It's a hard one-by-one work.  

Shai - We did, for Steam Greenlight, and the responses we got were a lot better than I first expected. 

Finally, they mostly use the standard social media platforms to engage the community, but Arnold's extra work into finding people who could be interested and contacting them personally might be something I look towards doing later into the project.

A lot of what they said adds more proof to the pitfalls of indie development and the problems that can happen if anything from teams to time are not managed properly. It was useful to get a bit of insight into how people who didn’t come from a games industry background approached their 1^st game, initially it was all trial and error but once they worked out a method of planning it all, the project began moving at a steady pace.

Art Style Research - How do you stand out?

Art style and its influences.

How do indie games use art style?

This section is going to look the styles used in indie games and find out the if art style is important for creating a successful indie game. Firstly, the as previously stated, because of the current rise in indie development the marketplace has become over-saturated. This problem can cause games to be overlooked if they don’t stand out to consumers. Arguably, this can make developers more creative because they need to think outside the box of their chosen genre to stand out.

The major way indie games try to stand out from the rest is to have an art style that look impressive or more importantly unique, this makes them easily recognizable and eye catching. [ Thomas Hughes 2015] The reason I say that being unique is more important is because of games like Binding of Isaac or Super Meat Boy have quite basic flash based art (Which can subjectively less impressive to look at) but it is created in way that makes it interesting compared to other games using flash based artwork.

“Its art style is but a (very successful) reflection of its shocking subject matter.” [Sarinananana 2015] This is in reference to Binding of Isaac’s artwork.

In contrast to this, there are games which have very high fidelity in their artwork, creating a very clean and polished look. Because these games have such a high fidelity look to them they attract attention because they don’t look indie and because they have a lot of eye candy to draw consumers in. These games are generally created by developers that have a lot of experience or larger indie studios who have a lot of talent to create a wide range of assets.  Ori and the blind forest (Created by Moon Studios) is a perfect example of this. The studio was founded by a former blizzard character artist in 2010. Their game’s art is very colourful and polished, this helped it stand out during E3 2014 when it was revealed.

On a side note, this game was published by Microsoft and was also first shown during their press conference at E3 2014 in a similar way to no man’s sky. This game however did not suffer the problems, previously mentioned, that no man’s sky did. Firstly, it had a small price tag and was not built on false promises, but this could be because of its more established genre of gameplay (Consumers had a rough idea of what to expect).

Finally, going retro (8,16,32 bit etc) is a very common approach to art style in indie development. There are a number of successful games that use this art style but also a large number that go unnoticed on places like the steam store. I believe this art style is very common because of two reasons. First it is an easy way to approach the creation of an art style that stands out, for example a developer could choose between this or attempting to create a new art style for their game which could be very time consuming. Secondly, it can cause some nostalgic feelings in consumers who played games when these art styles were the only way because of hardware limitations.

To stand out with a retro art style a developer has to have a similar approach to Binding of Isacc’s method. Enter the gungeon is a very successful game that uses 16-bit graphics but everything in the game shares one thing in common. Everything is bullet based. All the enemies are different types of bullets or guns and the bosses use an aspect of the theme as part of their design (There is a giant snake boss called the Ammoconda and its body, and arena, are made of up of gun turrets and bullet shells). This sort of dedication to the theme gives the game a unique look that is immediately identifiable by players.

The worst thing to do as an indie developer is to have a non-existent art style. Your game will not stick out in the oversaturated market and it will not be memorable to players, so why would they play it? [Dusty 2013]

How did old games do art style effectively?

This section is going to look at how old games stood out from the crowd and how their influences effect today’s games. Metal Slug is a game that a lot of people remember because of its art (and also its difficulty). Back in 1996 when a lot of games developers were moving into using 3D in their games, crash bandicoot for example, the studio behind Metal Slug (SNK) decided to release a new game that used high fidelity 2D art. I believe this is one of the reasons it’s one of the games everyone is aware of, the other being its immense difficulty.

“Filled with outlandish humour and boasting brilliantly animated graphics” [Retro Gamer Team 2015]

Metal slug was a prime example of what was possible with 2D graphics and the game is still aesthetically pleasing today. So, Metal Slugs art had 2 major things going for its art style at the time of its release, the sheer amount of detail and work that went into creating and animating the world and the fact it was released at a time where 2D games were becoming less common compared to the new 3D games. These features helped the game stand out from the crowd and become the memorable game it is today. [Retro Gamer Team 2015] [Neo Rasa 2007] [Kurt Kalata 2007]

The use of 2D as a way of standing out in a mostly 3D market place is still used today. Almost all the triple A titles released in the last few years have been 3D, so using 2D artwork can help show a title’s indie creation. This can lead to developers choosing the 2D in their art style or more commonly retro 2D, because that contrasts the high-fidelity 3D triple A games to an even greater degree.

Conclusion

There are a few key points to take away from this research. The main one, in my opinion, is making sure the chosen art style for your game is unique or interesting in a way that pulls it out of the crowd of indie games with generic looking art. Secondly, if you decide to stick with an overall theme then you have to be dedicated to that look. This pulls from the Enter the gungeon example, that games art works really well because everything uses the bullet theme. Finally, I think that retro graphics should be avoided unless you are either creating a solid theme inside that style or want your game to have a nostalgic look to its assets. The main reason I think that is because of how common that style has become in the indie market, it would be hard to get noticed unless you do something new with it.

References

Dusty,. "Why Do Some Indie Games Fail? - Gameacademy.Com". GameAcademy.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

"Getting To Know Moon Studios". Refined Geekery. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

Hughes, Thomas. "The Importance Of A Unique Art Style". ThomasWrites. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

"Indie Game Development: An Art Of Its Own | The Artifice". The-artifice.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

IV, Jack. "This Is The Golden Age Of Indie Game Art". Observer. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

Navarria, Giuseppe. "The Importance Of An Art-Style". Gamasutra.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

"Ori And The Blind Forest". Oriblindforest.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

sarinananana,. "10 Indie Games With Distinctive Art Styles | Gamersdecide.Com". GamersDecide.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

Silverman, David. "9 Tips For Indie Game Developers I Learned At GDC 2013". Game Development Envato Tuts+. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

Rasa, Neo and Kurt Kalata. "Hardcore Gaming 101: Metal Slug". Hardcoregaming101.net. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

Retro Gamer Team,. "The Making Of Metal Slug | Retro Gamer". Retrogamer.net. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.

UI Implementation P2 - Character level expansion

A quick update showing a new layout for the characters home. Initially I built the meshes in the same layout as the rough version previously posted, however I started to dislike how symmetrical it was and how boring it was as a single corridor. 

After thinking a bit more about what menus I needed inside the place I decided to make the place a bit more open and chaotic. The main new addition is most of the space on the top floor (originally it was just a simple walkway) which makes room for a load of possible objects to give the room more character. Also it gives me 2 possible locations for menus. At the moment I think I will leave this as is until I have the character customization implemented so I don't have to waste time fixing things later on.

In the main camera view the tank has been moved over a lot because I realized it as basically in the middle of the pathway. The camera has also been re positioned for a larger view because of the new second level and the re configuring of other assets.

This space is going to be used for a new set of gameplay customization. The idea came about after some feedback about the possibility of adding a gameplay speed slider that rewards players with bonuses if they play at a higher speed. I'm thinking of doing a few different customization for this so that players can tailor their difficulty more. I will still have an easy, normal and hard difficulty for each level though.

Inside this room is where i'm thinking of putting the character customization. I can see this room as either an armoury/dressing room or as the main characters bedroom. The first idea makes a bit more sense though just in case I decide later on to add multiple characters (I would have to create a bedroom for each one to keep it consistent otherwise).

Project Management Research - What can kill a project?

Project Management.

How do you plan a game effectively?

Now that the reasons for indie development have been explored the next stage is to look at how developers plan their projects. This section will look at the problems can be encountered during the process of creating a game and how could they be prevented. It will also explore different ways of creating the plan and the advantages or disadvantages of each. This will then be used to create an effective plan for the next stage of the project, which ideally is to have a working demo of the game that can be used for feedback.

Early planning

‘’most games revolve around a 10-30 second gameplay experience that is repeated endlessly’’ [V4nKw15h 2014]

I don’t really want to use a reddit post for a quote but this really got me thinking about the core loop of gameplay in different games. This quote is effective for games from a lot of eras, everything from pong to dark souls.

Pongs main gameplay loop is definitely on the low end of the scale but it’s very simple loop works well. This is because it’s key element of 2 players attempting to score against each other is driven by a competitive aspect, which uses its small loop to always make one player have to react to the balls direction to block it.

In contrast to this Dark soul’s gameplay loop is a lot more complicated and revolves around a single player defending and attacking with a target. A lot of the fighting in dark souls generally swaps between these two gameplay components using visual ques, like playing a specific animation or sound. The player continually loops between these two elements to create a constant sense of tension whilst they wait for an opening to defeat the enemy. A great example of the looping aspect of this for Dark souls would be how all bosses have a few different attacks that cycle randomly, these attacks will generally have a visual indicator to tell the player they have a choice in how they want to react. Once a player is familiar with these attack patterns they learn how each one loops into the next one, which leads to them knowing when to attack to defeat the boss.

This premise is a key part of creating a good project. If you can get the core loop to be fun, then the game as a great baseline to work with when adding more features and gameplay aspects.  It also reveals some advantages of working out the core features and building an early prototype to test them out. To show this, imagine spending several months working towards creating a game, thinking up every single aspect of it down to the minute details, then starting the creation of the actual game once this is all done. The game’s core gameplay could actually turn out to be really boring or unfun and the whole project has wasted months of time. Furthermore, if they had prototyped early the gameplay could have been reworked into a more fun experience to create a solid foundation for the rest of the project.

In personal experience, during which a few friends and I created a small company of 6 people to try to create a game in a year, this was what I think caused that game to fail. During the first few months all we focused on was planning and concepting a lot of the game, while doing this our programmer was busy making the gameplay work. That is where we encountered the problems, first off only the programmer was testing the game for a large period of time so he got into a state where he couldn’t tell if it was good or not early on. Everyone else on the team didn’t test the game till 3 months in and when it turned out that the game was not fun at that time we decided that it was because of there not being enough content (This mentality continued for the rest of development). What we should have done was go back and redesign the fundamentals of the game and test until we got something that was considered fun.

‘’The challenge of making a game is something like trying to build a house blindfolded’’ [Ryan Benno of Insomniac games 2016]

This is a nice quote for explaining the idea of creating the proof of concept and testing the idea. In building a skyscraper they might run simulations or create scale models to test aspects of the design and highlight any problems. Why should creating a game be any different?

Managing a project

There are a few ways to work out how you want to manage a game project. The most common way of planning a project is with the use of a game design document or design bible for your game. This document will hold all the information on how everything is going to work and the key design aspects of the project. The idea behind it is to make it easy for teams to find any information easily in one place.

The advantages of a game design document are the fact of being able to keep everyone on the same stage of production, it is a great resource for finding information that could be used for marketing and helping to organize a games development by showing how all the aspects of design fit together. Finally, if any problems or design blocks appear, the document will explain how any part of the game should work. All of these benefits look towards keeping a team organized properly and stops people getting lost in the amount of work needed.

It does have some major drawbacks though.

Firstly, it will always be out of date. This is because of the constant progression of a project in any aspect. Any time these aspects are changed the document has to be updates to make everyone aware of the changes, this could potentially waste a lot of time. Also in the early stages, it falls under the problems mentioned in the theoretical project that was being planned for months, it is all based off assumptions and ideas. Furthermore, because of the sheer size of a game design document nobody will bother to read them. Nobody wants to sit through a 50,000 word document about each aspect of the game, it is a big waste of time and most of it will be unnecessary to read if there is prototypes of the project showing what is described in the document.

Finally, it will stifle creativity in how designing a game is approached. These documents are designed to show each detail of the game and don’t allow for interpretation. This can basically kill creativity and motivation when all that designers are allowed to do is follow the steps outlined in the document. Obviously, aspects of them can be changed if a new idea is created but this leads back to the problem of it requiring to be updated again, taking time away from the creative part of the design.

In summary, this looks to be a great way to keep a large team working at the same stage of the game without straying off the path that the producers desire. For a small developer, it could get overwhelming, since it needs constant updating someone on the team is going to have to lose time on other design works to concentrate on updating it (even if nobody bothers to read it). In personal experience the design document was never read by anyone other than the designer because of the small timeframe. Also, after the first month the document stopped getting updated because of these two reasons and because it was taking up a lot of the time the designer was needing for level creation.

Creating a game design document is the only formal way to plan out a project in the games industry and its advantages for keeping a group of people in the same page of a project is clear. On the other hand, there are a few websites used to aid in planning developing a game, trello and Hank’nPlan are great examples of this, they are also known as roadmaps. Trello is widely used to show the development stages of each aspect of a project. Epic (the creators of the unreal engine) use it as a way to plan out new aspect that they want to add to their engine.

[https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap]

This way of planning is a lot more open, compared to a game design document, in the way it formats idea generation because the board can be actively changed on the fly quickly to show new ideas and changes to old ones. For example, on Epic’s trello board they use a set of columns to manage different aspects they want to add to the engine. In each of these columns is widgets that show what they want to do and in turn these are colour coded based on what stage each of them are at. This is another advantage of this method, because it improves how quickly someone can look at how certain aspects are advancing or if someone is having problems creating something in the project.

This more open method does have its own set of problems though, for one if it is not managed properly it can get really hard to work out what is going on. For example, on epic’s trello if they didn’t give everything categories to fall under the whole plan would be one giant mess of widgets to scroll down or if people were not updating when aspects are complete others would get confused about the state of the project.

Keeping a project progressing

Whilst researching the planning of a project I came across some information on other problems that can kill a project that are not based solely on creating a bad project. Passion and motivation are two aspects that can make or break the creation of a project. Everyone can decide to begin creating a project but only those with the passion for their chosen field will ever actually finish it.

‘’If you want to become significantly better at anything, you have to fall in love with the process of doing it’’ [James Clear 2016]

The quote is from someone talking about finding a passion for working out but it is still true for any other form of creativity. He goes on to talk about how even if you’re born with the talent or physique if you don’t ‘’fall in love with the boredom’’ of the day to day routine then you will ultimately fail. [James Clear 2016]

Since passion is a reflection of a person’s drive towards a certain vocation, motivation is the dedication to finish what they started. Motivation is a fickler part of a person’s emotional drive towards creating a project because it can be killed off by certain things happening during the life cycle of a project.

The developer Bam bu talks about ‘’the grind’’ and it being one of the most challenging parts of keeping work rolling forwards.  They identify a few obstacles that can kill motivation and why they avoid these obstacles. Originality is something extremely difficult in this day and age, with all the media out there it is hard to not have influences in creativity. Trying to create something truly original can stop the momentum of a project completely which will result in a reduction in motivation or kill it entirely. Instead of fighting originality, bam bu decide to embrace the idea of cliché and use it to tell their stories and reflect their ideas clearly.

Perfection can be another problem in this regard too. The idea thah anything an artist creates can be improved in some sort of way can slow down the creation of assets. Firstly, they could get into a loop of adding more and more to that one aspect, which kills momentum and could create a lot of frustration with being stuck trying to get it perfect. Bam bu combats this by deciding when they settle with an idea they stick with it. Even if there might be better ideas "if we let new ideas derail our progress we will never finish anything we start" [Bam bu 2012]

This mentality is great for keeping a project moving forward and if later on in the project the idea is not working anymore then it can still be changed, but at least something was finished for testing in the first place.

Conclusion

There is a lot to think about in how to approach the planning of a project. Personally, I think the creation of a game design document is a big waste of time as a one-man team because I would already be aware of everything that’s happening in the project. Even a small team doesn’t need one if they are effective at managing an alternative method. I also found motivation and passion to be about making sure what you create is something you have an interest in. If you hate puzzle games why would you ever make one, it will kill your motivation quickly and the passion isn't there to put you back on the warpath. Another main point I found from this research that kept popping up in everywhere is playtest, playtest, playtest. If the game stops being fun, then something needs to change. You will never be aware of that fact if nobody plays it.

References

Ahearn, Luke. "Budgeting And Scheduling Your Game". Gamasutra.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.

Amini, Tina. "Why It’S So Hard To Make A Video Game - Waypoint". Waypoint. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Clear, James. "How To Fall In Love With The Process To Stay Focused & Motivated". Social. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Freeman, Tzvi. "Creating A Great Design Document". Gamasutra.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Glaiel, Tyler. "Game Development Is F***Ing Difficult, My Thoughts On That Peter Molyneux Interview". Gamasutra.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

"How Passion And Motivation Can Help Your Career | Bookboon Blog". Bookboon.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

"How To Make Games: 6 Steps To Become A Game Developer". gamedevelopertips. N.p., 2016. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.

Marques, Brad. "Bam-Bu". Vertex 2012: 25-29. Print.

Mirabello, Joe. "Going Indie". Vertex 2016: 8-17. Print.

"My Tips On How To Plan A Game, Stay Motivated And Get It Finished. • /R/Gamedev". reddit. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Rogers, Scott. Level Up!. Hoboken: Wiley, 2014. Print.

Rogers, Tyler. "Game Development Is Hard, This Is Why - Peripheral Labs". Peripheral Labs. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Sayenko, Alex. "How (And Why) To Write A Great Game Design Document". Game Development Envato Tuts+. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Schultz, Warren. "9 Steps To Planning A Game Development Project". About.com Money. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Sweatman, James. "Death Of The Game Design Document". Develop-online.net. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.