Game Development Blog - Postmortem

Final Update

Hello all. Connor Meislahn here, back for one last update, perhaps the most important one of all: the Postmortem. I'll admit upfront - I've been given a prompt to follow for this postmortem, and a lot of the questions seem bizarre to me in the context of game-making. Nevertheless, I'll answer them as best as I can. Now, on with the reflecting!

Where am I now?

 

As far as working on Robotley Crue, where I am now is... to be honest, disappointing. I think one of my professors put it best: "It's a neat concept. I just wish you'd come up with it eight weeks ago." Indeed, the product we ended up with is very impressive in concept, but with such a short amount of time spent working on it, we simply couldn't polish and refine the game or its mechanics to our liking. I am impressed with what we managed to get done in such a shot span of time, but... well, I'd be lying if I said I was proud of it. But I can put that behind me - I'm now going to work on Radiant Ronin (previously Kanji Samurai). I'll admit - it wasn't my first choice of game to work on. But that's where I've ended up, so all I can do is the best I can do.

 

How did I get here?

 

It was a troubled road getting here, I'm not gonna lie. There were many bumps, many team disagreements, and ultimately the scrapping of everything we had worked on for the first eight weeks of the semester. I may not have been a fan of the decisions, and I certainly can't say they were the right decisions looking back, but they were the decisions we made. All I can do now is make sure we don't make the same decisions again. If we can avoid it, anyways. But I have faith that my new team will be able to avoid the mistakes of my old team.

 

What did I do?

 

As I mentioned before, I did what I could with the time we had left. In the beginning, I fought for the ideas that I felt had the most merit. Later on, I did what I could to shape the mechanics for someone else's design. I tried my best to make interesting patterns, engaging gameplay elements, and whatever else I could to make this four week game into a success. And while it may not have succeeded, I certainly did everything I could. And, of course, I did the music. I don't think it's my best work, but it's still something I can be proud of. I learned a couple tricks that I hope to bring over to the new game.

 

What does it mean?

 

...forgive me, professors, but this is the one question I don't think I can answer. Making a poor game doesn't need to mean anything beyond "you made a poor game". It means that the development process was troubled at best. It means that mistakes were made. It means that we'll try to avoid those mistakes in the future. It means that switching projects halfway through the semester probably wasn't the smartest call. But that's all. It means exactly what it says it means - nothing more, and nothing less.

 

I suppose that's it. Thank you all so much for following this journey.

 

Take care.

Game Development Blog - Week 11 [Latter]

Week 11 [Latter]

Progress Update

Here we are, the final update. Our game has approached it's final form, so I'd like to give one last update on where we've ended up after this long and hectic journey.


A Hard Decision


Earlier this week, our team got together and made what had to have been the toughest decision of the design process thus far. We decided that we were not going to attempt to go forwards to next semester - in effect, canceling our game. It wasn't easy for most of us to admit, but when we all sat and looked at the game, it was clear that it just wasn't up to where we wanted it to be. Some members, myself included, also felt that the game simply wasn't fun to work on anymore, and wasn't something we wanted to continue to work on throughout the next semester. So, in the end, we decided to scrap the project. To those of you following this journey, we hope you'll understand.


...I suppose there isn't much point to saying anything else after that, is there? There was certainly work done this week, don't get me wrong. But to mention any of it feels a bit moot at this point. So instead, I'll just sign off as always. Thank you for following this adventure in game design.


Until next time.

Game Development Blog - Week 11

Week 11

Progress Update

Hey, giving a bit of an early update this week. Since we're so close to the end goal now, the pace is picking up a bit, so we've done a lot in the time since I last updated, even though it was only a few days ago! Anyways, onto the updates!

Testing Results

These past few days, we managed to take our game to QA. While I had initially planned on testing the motion controls, these were not functioning correctly by the time testing rolled around, so a last minute adjustment had to be made to the testing plan. We instead tested the new Overseer enemies and tried to get feedback on the visual feedback for the game (classmates had previously noted the game looked somewhat cluttered). Testing showed that, while we had managed to fix the clutter, most players had no clue what the point of the Overseer enemies was. We'll need to make some design adjustments to those enemies if we want to keep them in the game at all.

Enemy Movement

Earlier this week, one of our programmers notified me that they wouldn't be able to get the enemy movement working as we had intended. This troubled me, seeing as making sure the enemies moved correctly was a key part of making sure the player was able to feel the rhythm of the game. Therefor, I spent a fair amount of time these past few days making enemy movement code myself. It took a while, but I managed to get the enemies all moving correctly and on the beat, so by the time we test the game this Thursday, the enemies should be moving correctly.

Moving Forwards

At this point, there's very little left to do before the deadline approaches. All we can do is keep on working, and hope things end up working out for us.

Until next time!

Game Development Blog - Week 10

Week 10

Progress Update

This is it! As of right now, we're moving into the last week of development for us. It's been a long and incredibly bumpy road, but with the end in sight, we're ready to give it our all and push our game to success!

The Motion Shift

This past week, we finally committed to switching the way we handle motion controls. We will now be utilizing the nintendo Wii controller instead of the Kinect. Design-wise, this doesn't change a whole lot, but it does mean that we don't have to worry about things like distance from the sensor, number of people, and other such hindrances the Kinect had. At the moment, our programmers are frantically working to make sure the Wii controls are properly functioning, and with luck we'll have it implemented by the time the showcase rolls around.

Design Work

Last week, I spent a lot of time revamping some of our earlier designs. Chief among these were the enemy designs, which I changed up to hopefully make more unique enemy types. Feedback from testing has shown me a few ways in which the enemies could be tweaked for a better experience, but overall, these will be the designs that stay until the very end. Additionally, the weapons were revamped, turning one of the weapons into a true shotgun, instead of the merely visually different burst weapon it once was.

Moving Forwards

We only have one more week to finish up our game before we present! As of right now, our main focus is on preparing for next semester, while squeezing as much as we can into this final vertical slice prototype. We hope to be able to challenge the vertical slice stage this week, in our last class before presentations.

Until next time!

Game Development Blog - Week 9

Week 9

Progress Update

The last week was rough on our team. Testing showed that the controls we were using were finicky at best, and broken at worst. Additionally, solving these issues turned out to become a major roadblock for us. All we can hope for right now is that we'll manage to get past it, and move on.

The Controls

We brought our game to testing, and the results were... well, not very positive. Many players found the guitar felt nice to use, but the Kinect was ineffective in every possible way. We had previously attributed this to issues with the physical space, but we have come to realize the issue may lie with the Kinect itself. Right now, our team is looking into utilizing some other method, such as a Wii controller.

The Controllers

If that wasn't enough, our guitar controllers broke this past week. This in and of itself has become a massive problem for our team, as we've been unable to find replacements as of yet. Right now, our workaround is that the player can use the Kinect along with a normal game controller, though this makes testing very difficult as the player is forced to miss out on a huge part of the core experience. We will hopefully have replacement controllers in very soon.

Moving Forwards

This week, a big focus is going to be placed on updating the design. Based on in-class feedback, we're planning on adding and changing a few of our game's mechanics, so we hope to have those in very quickly.

Until next time!

Game Development Blog - Week 8

Week 8

Progress Update

Things have been progressing at a fairly steady rate. The whole team has banded together in order to get everything we need done in as these last few weeks close in on us, so with any luck we'll finally be able to arrive at our completed vertical slice by the time we're done!


Ah, but that's getting ahead of myself. We still have a lot of work to do before we get there, so let's focus on right now!


Another Step Forwards


After a long and grueling week of work, we made it out of Deep Dive, and into Proof of Concept! This is great, because that means we now have the ability to petition our game to move to next semester! If we can get all the way to Vertical Slice, then we won't need to petition, but at least now we've hit the most important milestone - being able to present is a huge step for us!


Music and Design


On my end of things, I've spent the last week making a lot of documents. VDDs, Mechanics lists, QA Feedback write-ups, the whole lot of it. In addition, a large portion of last week was spent getting a song into the game. It's still WIP at the moment, so I'll have to spend a lot of time this week polishing and refining it, but it's certainly there, which is more than we had last week! We're going for a very heavy metal style, to which an acquaintance of mine has been more than happy to provide the most brutal examples of the genre for analysis. I hope to have a fully fledged metal song by the end of the week!

Moving Forwards

This week, it's all about proof of concept. We'll need to do a lot of testing, and make sure the game continues to move towards completion. I'm confident that we can get our game through to the end - it's just a matter of hard work and perseverance.

Until Next Time!

Game Development Blog - Week 7

Week 7

Progress Update

We've revamped the game, again. Although we only have 4 weeks left in the semester, the team feels confident that we can pull something together in the limited timeframe.

The New New Design

Our newly revamped game consists of one player using the Guitar Hero controller in conjunction with the Microsoft Kinect for a new and unique gaming experience. The game plays as an on rails shooter, with the player using the guitar as their weapon. The player can aim by moving the guitar around, and then fire by strumming. But it's not as simple as that - the enemies on screen will be one of four different colors - green, red, yellow, or blue. Each color of enemy can only be killed with ammo of their color. So how do you change ammo? By pressing one of the buttons on the guitar hero controller. You have limited ammo, though, so you'll have to use the orange button to reload if you run out. Finally, you have a few grenades that you can use by pushing the whammy bar. Grenades kill all enemies on screen, but cannot be refilled. The game plays out in stages, and each stage ends when the player gets to the end of the level.

Moving Forwards

At this point, all of our work is going to be focused on bringing this game to life in the incredibly limited timeframe we have. It may seem impossible, but the team is confident that they can pull it off.

Until next time.

Game Development Blog - Week 6

[Apologies for missing another week, things got a bit hectic]

Week 6

Progress Update

Over these past two weeks, we've been hard at work refining our game idea. We finally have it in something close to its final (mechanical) form, so hopefully we can continue to shape it into something awesome!


Overhaul

As of two weeks ago, our game was still mostly taking the form of a beat-em-up. However, after several team disagreements and some divine intervention from a professor, we've since taken the game and brought it to a state where it more closely resembles a traditional rhythm game. Allow me to show a quick mockup:

(Forgive me my art, there's a reason I'm not the artist)

Now the game functions much more like guitar hero - enemy attacks come at you from the top of the screen, and you defend against them by hitting them when they cross the lowermost section. You can, in turn, send your own attacks back at your opponent by pressing the triggers to the beat of the song. If you hit on beat, you'll do more damage. Finally, there will be times (as pictured above) where you will face off against multiple foes - you can switch between them by pressing the left and right bumpers. Keep in mind, you can only defend against the enemy you are currently facing off against!

With this core concept in mind, we as a group feel that this is a game we'll all be very excited about. And clearly, so did everyone else - we challenged the next stage of development with this concept, and successfully moved into Deep Dive at the end of last week!

My Work

I've been hard at work these past two weeks myself. Not only did I work on overhauling the game
, but I've had plenty of other duties to get around to, including:

* Getting all the visual design documents together
* Testing the games at QA (spoilers: they loved it)
* Composing a song for use in the final game

The song in particular was a challenge - I normally love music, but this sort of Dance Club style is way outside my comfort zone. I like to think I did a pretty good job, but of course, that will be for the players to decide.

Moving Forwards

Now that we finally have our game concept finalized, we have to work on getting the game to a more presentable state. We have some bugs to work out (mainly in regards to the timing of the enemy attacks), but from there it's just research and testing. We plan on challenging the next stage of design this week. With any luck, we won't run into any further delays, as our group is beginning to lag behind. But right now, I feel confident.

Until next time!

Game Development Blog - Week 4

Week 4

Progress Update

This week was a hectic one. While we had planned on challenging the next stage of development last week, certain circumstances forced us to wait one more week. Fortunately, we have gotten past those circumstances, and should be ready to challenge for real this week.

Team Disagreements

The start of this week was not a very good one. As the team met up to discuss how we would go about working on our reverse stealth game, one of our team members spoke up in disapproval of our ideas. And not just one of our ideas, but all of them. They claimed we should scrap every game we had been working on in favor of a new idea. We didn't do that, of course - but it still highlighted a big issue, in that our team was not as agreed on our ideas as we had thought. To that effect, our team met and hammered through any preexisting issues. It was a long and difficult meeting. Opinions were heard. Ideas were crushed. But by the end of it, we had brought all of our ideas back to the point where we were excited about them all.

Changing the Game

One of the end results of our meeting was that we changed which game we wanted to go forwards with. Now we have decided to work on DJ Clone (working title) - a 3D beat-em-up game with rhythm game mechanics mixed in. I admit, I was reluctant to stop working on our reverse stealth game - that game was my baby, after all - but I can see now that this is the better game for our team. It has something for everyone of us to get into, be it AI, Music, or Particle Effects.

A Race to the Finish

Of course, with a change in direction comes a huge increase in workload. On the design side of things, I spent a lot of this week getting new VDDs in order, as well as putting together a lot of producer-based documents (our team has no producer, so that role has unfortunately fallen onto me). I spent a while looking into some new design ideas for our prototypes as well, though at the moment that hasn't manifested itself in any sort of document.

Moving Forwards

As I mentioned, we are for certain going to challenge the next stage of development this week. So all that can be said is that going forwards, we have to hope that we'll make it through, and once that hurdle has been overcome, the floodgates will finally open and we get really start getting deep into development.

Until next time!

Game Development Blog - Week 3

Week 3

Progress Update

For this week, we continued work on our prototypes. We're hoping to challenge the next stage of development tomorrow, but it's been a struggle getting here. I'm not sure how things will go, but with luck all should go fine.

A Decision Reached

At the beginning of class last week, our team sat down and started arguing over which idea we thought we wanted to focus on for the next stage of development. The debate was lengthy and grueling. I wanted to do my game. Dustin wanted to do his game. Ryan wanted to do his. Tom stayed neutral. But finally, after talking of particle effects and AI, I convinced the programmers to switch their favor to my idea - the Reverse Stealth game.

Prototyping Problems

With the decision made, we returned to working on the prototypes. However, a new set of flaws showed up, many in number and few in solutions.

1. The Stealth Prototype was updated with the assistance of the programmers. However, the transition removed some features and altered others. This is a minor setback, of course - merely requiring some minor code tweaks - but a setback nonetheless.

2. The new focus on the Stealth prototype meant that the other two ideas had their prototypes virtually untouched. This left them in a state that was very poor for testing, although they were technically "testing ready."

3. Dustin brought up that, in testing and coding the prototypes, he found the reverse stealth game to be the most tedious to code, as well as the least fun. Personally, I  believe that the engagement will become more apparent as the systems are refined and tweaked, but it is an early red flag, so to speak.

These issues will need to be kept in mind as we prepare to challenge the next stage of development.

Moving Forwards

If all goes well tomorrow, then we will officially begin working on the reverse stealth game. I'll need to work a bit more closely with the programmers (and our artist) to ensure that all goes smoothly, but hopefully we'll be prepared and ready for what the rest of the development cycle holds for us!

Until next week!

Game Development Blog - Week 2

Hey there!

So... let me clear up a few things right off the bat. First of all, what is this? Well, if you don’t know already, I am a college student. Specifically, I’m studying Game Design. I’m in my final year right now, and in one of our classes, the students are all getting together to help make games. This blog is a part of that - for this game, I’m supposed to make blog posts every week or so about what we’ve done with our games in that past week. Neat, huh?

Second: where’s Week 1?

...there isn’t one. I forgot to make a blog post last week.

...

On with the blog post!

~~~~~

WEEK 2

Overview
Since there was no Week 1 update, I’ll take this space to give a quick overview of what you missed in that first week.

Our class, prior to the semester starting, was split up into teams of four. My team, for references sake, consists of the following:

Tom [Artist]
Ryan [Programmer]
Dustin [Programmer]
Connor [Designer] [Me!]

Once we got through that first class session, we were tasked with coming up with a number of game concepts that we could turn into games going forwards. A lot of ideas were discussed among the group - a parody game where you work the register a mini mart, a game where one person gives directions to a driver who is unfamiliar with the area... even a game where you play as a bird and shit on everything.

But eventually, three ideas rose to the top: A 2D RPG Platformer game where you can fuse elements together as attacks, a Reverse Stealth Game where you try to attract attention, and a 3D Beat-Em-Up based around musical concepts. I’ll explain these ideas in more detail at a later point.

Now we get into this past week, and the progress we made since the pure concept phase of development!

Progress Update
This week, our goal is to begin prototyping our games - we need three prototypes to move on to the next stage of development, so it seemed only fitting that we make one prototype for each of our game ideas.

Designer’s Prototype
At this point in the game development process, there is very little design work for me to do - the bulk of that comes once the idea has been solidified and full-scale development begins - so I spent this past week working on my Prototype for the Reverse Stealth game.

I should mention one thing: the three ideas we have were all created by a different team member. I came up with the Stealth game, Dustin came up with the 2D platformer, and Ryan came up with the Music Beat-em-Up.

I bring this up because, naturally, when it came time to decide how to make prototypes, the programmers immediately jumped at the idea of making prototypes for their own game ideas, leaving mine a bit in the dust. Nevertheless, I powered through and (after some coding assistance from a friend) I managed to pull together a digital prototype with all of my game’s core mechanics in place.

To explain my idea in a bit more depth: in a typical stealth game, you want to try and avoid being detected at all costs. In this game, you do the opposite. You goal is to run around attracting the attention of as many guards as possible. Why, you might ask? Well, a second character (which could be either a computer or a second player) is trying to do the normal stealth thing, getting through undetected. You have to distract the guards so that he can go through unseen by anyone.

Anyways, my prototype: currently, the prototype has all the primary functions - player movement, “stealth guy” AI movement, and two guards that see the player when you step within their line of sight, chase the player while in their line of sight, return to their post when you leave their sight, and capture the stealth guy if he enters their line of sight. It’s all very simple and crude at the moment, but functionally, it’s all there.

Moving Forwards
Our team was hoping we could get all of our prototypes to a playable and testable state by either the end of this week, or the end of next week. While it looks like this week will be too close to shoot for, next week should be an easily attainable goal. We will need to organize testing sessions for our prototypes, and once our games have been tested, we’ll need to decide once and for all which idea we want to move forwards with. We’ve discussed this briefly already, but the debate raged on exactly as you might expect. I argued for my game, Ryan for his, and Dustin for his (Tom stayed neutral, as to not hurt anyone’s feelings). We will need to obtain feedback from our fellow classmates and professors before we can reach a final decision.

That is all I have to say for this week. Until next time, take care, all!