Rachel Taylor - Games Development
Unit 10 Project Brief
This is the project brief for unit 10, I think this particular brief is good because it involves working as a team which I do quite well and I also like the theme of what Home means to me because if will give the end product a view of what a number of students think home means to them and it also makes the game more personal. The timescale will be fairly tight as I also have to work on other units but I intend to do production work in college to help my group and website updates in my own time.
Initial ideas Mind Map
Following the Brief, I have created this mind map of ''What Home means to me'' as you can see I have put down a number of ideas under the categories 'positive' and 'negative' and then I have gone onto come up with possible game ideas shown below ready to put forward as suggestions to my group in the pitch I will be presenting. To do this I chose one or two words from my mind map and wrote down how they could be incorpertated into a game I have related most of my ideas of home as a physical place as when I hear the word 'Home' I immediately picture a house or building and as the game created from the brief is most likely going to be a physical place it would make the ideas more relevant.
House Arrest
This is an idea for a game which I will put forward to my group during the pitch. The idea is I took an idea from my mind map, in this case I chose to look at the negative side of what home means to me and I took the idea of Intruders / Burglars who are keeping you (the main character) under 'house arrest' by trapping you in the cellar. The object of the game is to escape each room however if the intruder catches you, you lose a life. Every time you escape a room you move up a level and there is a map to show you where you are and the where intruder is and also a bar to show the player their health. the concept art to the left shows my idea for a cellar and a few notes to explain my idea. I decided to call my idea ''house arrest'' because it is Ironic for a Burglar to keep you under ''arrest'' even if it is metaphorical and also because when I was younger I had to spent a lot of time indoors so it still links to the theme of what home means to me. As you can also see from the diagram I have started to think about other features such as Audio and sound effects such as the Mouse Squeaking or creaking floorboards to make it seem like the abandoned part of the house.
Game Research with the theme
While researching, I found this article written by a student who had been inspired to create a game by how they felt during their foster care. They used simple words such as 'Anger' , 'Rebellion' and 'nightmares' to describe his foster care experience which then eventually inspired them to creating a game based around the idea of foster care as Gaming was one thing he loved to do at school. This is relevant to me because it was a game inspired by his foster care which to them was home even if it was a negative view at first and they talk about how a game could help you cope if you aren't willing to talk to someone such as a social worker or foster parents. The article also talks about coping with life changes (in this case fostering) which I could consider suggesting to my team as a route to be inspired by as I have never experienced being fostered.
The Hypodermic Needle theory
Audience Research
The Hypodermic Media theory is the idea that Audiences get deliberate messages from the mass media without questioning the Validity of the information given. It is flawed in the sense that the Audience thinks for itself and is not a passive thing, in other words it filters information and makes decisions based on other factors besides the mass media.
An example of this could be how people are influenced by the media and other peoples opinions on Social Media to react a certain way to large communities that affect everyone such as Politics or certain people involved in politics, some people automatically don't agree or like what is happening because they have received the message that its a negative thing and protest against it due to the fact they've been given the impression that it will affect their future negatively. This theory was developed just after the first world war so the idea of propaganda influenced the opinions and actions of others especially as it was also used in films such as the boy in the striped pyjamas to signify the film being used a weapon for earlier audiences as well as being used for real to reveal the opinions of the war and who was ''bad'' and who was on your side and this then influenced the interpretation of the communities.
A second Example is in Videogames where the content persuades you to perform an action without thinking, for example killing another character or fighting because you know that they are an enemy or you have been told to do so by another player or because it has been shown in the advertisement for the game or social media that its the way the game is supposed to be and that's what you need to do.
The two step theory
The two step theory is where a viewer of a source of media e.g. youtube watches some content and takes interest, making them want to get involved withat media, in this case games. For example a youtuber may play a game that isn't very popular and then puts in online for people to watch, when the viewers watch it they are essentially getting an advertisement and review of the game without them realising in most cases. This will tell the viewers whether it is a game worth playing and if it is they will probably start playing the game, this benefits both the youtber and the game making company as the game will make money from downloads and people buying the game and the youtuber may gain subscribers, viewers and more relevance online making more people watch more of their videos.
Pitch Reflection
The pitch for my idea for Game jam wasn't too bad but it was supposed to be at least 5 minutes long and I deffinitly feel like it was too brief especially as there were a lot of questions it made me think it should have been a bit longer, Im also not a big speaker and I don't do much public speaking however I think it went alright infront of people that I am familiar with. I think I should've had prototypes to get my idea across more clearly, however I did get some positive feedback in that it was a good initial idea for a game. In terms of the brief I think it would be possible to create this game in the time frame with improvements and ideas from other team members or even take elements from it and incorperate them into another one of my team members game ideas, it could be a fairly effective puzzle / mystery solving game.
First Team Meeting
Unit 10 - Initial ideas and Research
This mood board was created by the team member whose idea we are following. He made this to show where his initial inspiration came from and also to give the rest of the team an idea on what route he wants it to take in terms of Layout, colour schemes and texturing. Below is a mind map that he created to show how different parts of Game play and other features we will need to consider that link back to the theme. As you can see we are going down a puzzle style game route with an abstract art style and simplistic design.
Art Style Inspiration
This image shows an example of an abstract drawing which is where our team member got his art style inspiration from because it shows the confusion and makes the viewer wonder what is going on and it would make a very good style for a puzzle game and also the fact that its going to be operated on gravity so the player will be navigating the level from all different angles.
Technical / Mechanical Research
Here, another one of our team members has carried out some technical / mechanical research in order for us to be able to add features into our game such as the characters having to put a box on a trigger in order to keep a door open so they can get through. When we begin to create our game will we refer back to this research and search up tutorial for the software we are using in order to pick up skills and learn how to create and blueprint certain features to make the puzzles more effective. we've also thought about having objects that move around with us as the game is going to be based on Gravity so we will need to consider the Physics we will need to make the objects move.
Game Prototype
This clip shows a prototype and Demo that our team member created to show what sort of direction he wanted the production to go. As you can see, it is a simplistic puzzle game where the player needs to use gravity to complete the level. It has a simple colour scheme to avoid confusion of what is in the level and small mechanics to make it more difficult such as the moving spikes. This is the sort of route we are taking with our group project although the difference is that our levels will be more like rooms in a house with puzzles that are similar to ones shown in the Demo.
Team Meeting - Week 2
Level Design
As a group, we decided to design at least one level each so that we would have a variety of levels that we can eventually link together to create one game. In order to relate it back to the theme , we decided to focus on rooms you would find in a house, so I chose to do an office because some people have offices at home but also I can experiment more with different themes as most offices don't have a set layout but do have similar furniture such as a desk, chairs and a filing cabinet, so I can experiment in making different furniture. Above you will see my drawing to show you where I was thinking of going with my idea as well as some ideas for props I may need to model to go with it and I have shown where my idea came from using office photos and images from an office that another team member made in a previous project who gave me permission to take inspiration from it.
Audio Research
During our last team meeting, we were all given allocated tasks to complete before the start of our game production. It was decided that I would be responsible for completing some Audio Research to help us get an idea of how to implement sounds and narration should we decide to include it into our game and what effects it may have on the player.
Team Meeting - week 3
Active Spectatorship
This is the theory that someone interacts with some form of media such as like watching a film or playing a game and then when they are done or even during their session they will post something on social media on what they think about it this can be good or bad. While most people won't directly say they are recomending you to either to play or not to play something instead they will say what they think of it in general opinion like an update on facebook. People will then see this and then will think whether to buy the game or not and start to base their opinion on this. Equally they could say something on the line of 'this game sucks' and then the viewer won't get the game and the game creator may become aware of this problem and change things.
Psychographics
Psychographics is the study of consumers based on qualitative data using their activities, interests and opinions most marketers in particular use this theory when creating and advertising their content. It goes further than classifying people using demographic data such a age, race or sex. The main categories that are used to classify people are Resigned, Struggler, Mainstreamer, Aspirer, Succeeder, Explorer and reformer. I feel that this way of categorising people can be quite intimidating or personal but it is fair as people can fit into more than one category and personally, I feel that I fit into the Explorer category. An example of how marketers make their content appropriate for certain categories is within games. For example, the adventure game Tomb Raider would be more appropriate for those in the explorer category who are more interested in challenges and experience rather than someone in the Aspirer category who is more into fashion and Self-image.
Level Production
This week I have started to model my level that I will be inputting into the teams game. As you can see I have kept a minimal colour scheme over some basic models that keeps the level simple but advanced at the same time. I have mainly used cubes, circles and cones to create the level and in the images above you will see I added some lights to make it take a similar structure to the original prototype made by one of our team members. At the moment, it's pretty basic but each week I will be adding extra elements such as gravity, office furniture and a doorway to the next level.
Team Meeting - Week 4
Demographics
Here I have conducted some research into the statistics about the devices people use to play games across the Uk, these are also known as demographics. This will actually benefit our team fairly well as due to the content of the game being gravity based it is very likely to be a pc game which is one of the most popular devices for game playing alongside consoles. In the image to the right is has another graph showing the approximate number of hours that gamers play for in different countries. As you can see, people living in the UK spend the most amount of time gaming per week
Custom Gravity Blueprint
The image above shows the Blueprint we are using for the gravity element of our game as a team. This is how we will be controlling how the gravity in the game works when doing test runs. It is taking me a little while to get to grips with how it works but I am beginning to pick up ways of becoming in control of the gravity within game play this will also be explained to the player in a 'how to play' guide as it's quite difficult to navigate at first. .
Title Font
These are some fonts that we came up with as a group for our project title. As you can see due to the fact the game involves gravity we has used fonts that look space related to emphasise the importance of gravity within the game. My favourite font or logo was the fourth one down on the right, because the ring around the ''G'' makes it look like Saturn which makes it relate back to space followed by simple lettering. However, it also looks very similar to another existing logo so its possible that we wont use that one. If this is the case my second favourite font is the one in the top left because it looks like it has some pixels missing which shows its for a game but it also shows the name for our project in a clear but complex way.
Team Meeting - Week 5
Level testing (prototype)
This Clip shows a play through of the level I have created so far to give you a visual representation of it. As you can see it is very basic and simple at the moment but you get an idea of how the gravity element works (the blueprint for this is shown above) This week I am going to start modelling office furniture as my level is going to be based around an office which I chose when the team discussed how we would each choose a theme for our levels to keep it linking to the main theme of the project. Once, I have included the objects I will be able to think about how to make the level more difficult to navigate by adding features such as including enemies or more ''out of bounds'' areas.
Props Production
As my level that I will be contributing to the team project is based off of an office, I have started to produce some 3D models of office furniture to include in the level. One of our team members suggested I make the products an actual part of my level instead of having random props. For example, they suggested that I make it so the player completes part of the level inside one of the filing cabinet drawers. On trial, this worked really well as it made it different to the rest of the level and it meant I was able to save space on the level itself so I could include other features.
Flickering Light/flashing screen - blueprint
Here I have conducted some research and found a tutorial for
making a flickering light in unreal. I followed this video to create
a blueprint (shown above) so that in my level I will be able to make the monitor screen for the office look like it's flashing. The video shows the tutorial I found and followed to create the blueprint. Eventually I will add a point light to the level and add the blueprint to it so during a play through it looks like you have a light flashing and then I will place it in front of the screen and it will look like the computer is flashing.
Teleporter - Transition between levels
The Asset shown in the image above is what you will find at the beginning and the end of each level. This will act as a teleporter to transport the player between levels, the players goal in each level will be to reach this asset and move onto the next level. I have also included the blueprint which shows how we have connected it between the levels for the player to be able to re spawn in the next level. To do this we had to connect up two nodes and rename the level node to the name of the level we wanted the player to teleport to. The asset also rotates while the player is in game so that its clearly visible and the player can see where they need to aim for.
Base Level / Main Menu Production
These images show the main/base level that we created for our group project. The purpose of this level is to allow the player to select their difficulty, choose a level to play and other options such as ''how to play'' the player will be able to access this using the teleporters in each level. As you can see it is fairly simple but it still keeps a similar theme and colour scheme as the rest of out levels as you still have to use gravity to move around the level you will also see some of the features of each level in the base level such as the cogs or the boxes. This is so that we can ensure that we keep it linking to the rest of our game but also ensuring it stays simple as during the production we didn't want to spend a lot of time producing this.
A.I. Enemies
As a group we decided to add in some enemies to our levels that could cause the player to re spawn if touched or caught to make it more difficult for the player to have to navigate their way around the level with the gravity features as well. The images above show human and a dog enemy that one of our group members modelled and animated to walk round the level and transferred them to the rest of the group so we were able to code them into a set area so that when the player entered that space they then become vulnerable to being caught. At first, we struggled to get the enemies to move around in the space they were coded to, but after some experimenting with the blueprints, we discovered that the enemy doesn't start moving until the player comes into its view. Within its area the human enemy walks along a set path on a loop so the player can time when they can go past and register where the enemy is to avoid being caught, however, to make it harder we made it so that the dog has free run of its set area so when the player enters they cannot judge where the dog is going to go so they cannot time it right to avoid the dog and it will chase if it sees you. Alternatively, if the player is out of the view of the enemy (e.g. your behind it and it cant see you) and gets too close and touches the enemy they will re spawn.