Big Game Project, Part 7.

So, we’ve come to an end with the project, and what a ride it was. I learnt so much about sound design and level design that I’m having a hard time processing it. We were given some amazing feedback during the conference as well, and I believe a re-work of the game is in the idea-stages.

During the three days, a number of adjustments were made to the sounds inside the game, patches, if you will. Ranging from adding new sounds to handling the levels of sound intensity for different characters and the music itself.

Initially we had the problem that nobody could hear the boss talking at all, and Kei was far too loud. The music also was less intense than it should have been. I elevated the boss and music levels and diminished the intensity of Kei’s voicelines. This made a big impact on how the game was perceived.

Most of the feedback about the sounds and level was that there was far too much repetition within the voicelines in the game, characters saying the same thing over and over again. In regards to level, it was good, but confusing, people could navigate where they needed to go, but not in any clear fashion. I write about this extensively in my project report PM.

So the 7 weeks are up! Thanks for a great time and have a great summer!

Big Game Project, Week 5.

This is a late post. Again. My spontaneous bout of stomach illness last week has apparently compromised my immune system because I am now combating a sinus infection/flu hybrid. It is unpleasant.

The week went by abnormally fast, either to my joy or dismay have yet to prove itself.

Sounds are coming along great, as well as music too. I’ve taken liberal help from Alex(ander?) in the staff to help create the music, considering my lackluster composing skills. The rest of the project is coming along nicely too, most of the level is done, and though we have little testing time left I am confident that it will prove to be… sufficient but also… impactful!

Creating these sounds are time-consuming (due to my inexperience), but also fun. There’s a lot of fiddling to do, and again, I’m no expert at sound engineering at all but I believe that they are good enough if not for permanent use then for at least the demo level we will have ready for GGC. Most of the sounds are very digital, but the voice-lines have little to no effects on them. We shall see how it all plays out together.

Speaking of which, GGC is rushing towards us with ludicrous speed. I have no idea what I will manage to have finished at the end of the development period, and then have to do my essay as well… It will be… stressful. There seems to be less information going out about the essay this year around as well. An odd development.

My life has interfered quite heavily with this project. I am lucky to have been given an area that is less time consuming than the other aspects of this project, giving me the time to sort these things out. Peace out.

 

 

Big Game Project, Week 4.

Things are progressing nicely. The things we learned during the alpha that applied to me was 2 things.

1: We have not yet implemented any sounds in the game

and

2: It’s hard to find our way through the level.

Mostly though, the work has progressed nicely this week. We got most of the voicelines through processing so they will sound great at the start of today (monday, I’m writing this late.) I’ve also talked with Alexander and he will begin the creation of the music themes with me on Monday as well.

Most of the week was the creation of a few specific sounds though. I fiddled with a walk cycle but decided to wait until the character controller was implemented.

I tried creating some more weapon swing effects for the game as well.

All in all, successful week! Now to change some stuff around for the beta!

Big Game Project, Week 3.

This week has been unproductive on my side.

Monday started with continuous production of sounds for the first enemy in the game, spinning attacks, menacing bleeps and a hover effect for its movement.

Tuesday proceeded with recording of some of Kei’s phrases. The school staff has been most helpful in this regard.

Before wednesday could come, however, I was struck down with some sort of virus or bug…. I’m not sure, and I was bedridden wednesday-friday.

Big Game Project, Week 2.

Week 2 has been coming along nicely!

We’ve decided to use Elias Software as a base, and thanks to the schools connections we were able to save time for our demo production by using one of the pre-existing themes for the game to showcase what we want the game be like. The theme is called Smoggy Sundown, and is a very blippy / retro-gaming sounding theme.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on trying to bring more sounds to our characters in the Level. Kei herself has not been given a voice yet, but enemy number 1 and two both have a few lines and sounds that give them SOMETHING at least, for the alpha (28’th of April.)

It’s tough work. Most of the first week was looking through tutorials and video posts on how to use the programs built-in plugins and so on. I understand now how the programs work, but I still am not a composer. Music does not come easily to me. But the sounds are manageable..! I feel like I’m making steady progress in that department.

As far as the layout goes, I’ve made a first draft, and then a revisioned second draft. The main layout is still pretty much the same, however I have gone over it and thought about use of props and sounds in order to inspire the proper feeling for each of the areas of the map. Start->Middle->End.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned.

Big Game Project, week 1.

This week has been quite a rollercoaster as far stress goes. Last week, I pitched a 2 day game idea for a third year project, hoping to inspire someone to take me on in their group, but that didn’t happen.

It wasn’t until this Sunday that I contacted Nayomi and asked to be part of her group, to which she responded that she’d need to talk to her group on Monday in order to see what was needed.

Monday comes along and I’m holding my breath, if this does not work out my options have all but run out in terms of finding a group for this course. But it does work out, and there you have it. I’ve been introduced to the group as the sound-designer for the game.

The game is known for now as Kei. Kei is a girl from Gametown, a town she left in her earlier years. Now she’s returned and the citizens are telling her that she’s no longer welcome.

The game is about the unsavory treatment of women as gamers, in a nutshell. And I’m to tackle a role I have no experience in, which should be a blast.

Due to this, my week has pretty much consisted of finding, downloading and getting to know various programs and sources of sound-samples. I’m sick and tired of listening to car-crashes, and I’ve got a whole 8 weeks ahead of me filled with it. But the group functions very well and I know most of the people there, so it’s already going great.

Apart from sound I am also responsible for thinking about level layout. A task which I will be sharing with another group member.

Developers Diary. Meeting 1. Orangutan.

First meeting.

We met up to start the prject by discussing our different ideas and settling on one.

First things first however, we decided to fill in the other roles:

I was given the role of Producer.

Erik decided to be Lead Coder.

Filip decided that Lead Art was for him.

Marcus chose Game Designer.

Alex 1 chose QA and Lead Sound was given to Alex 2.

We discussed at length our different game ideas and finally settled on Marcus’s, which I’ll explain briefly:

You are an Orangutan in a jungle, and zookeepers have been sent out to find and take you back to the zoo they’re working at. You must use your different weapons to to defeat them and repel them from the jungle.

After this we distributed certain tasks for the group to manage until wednesday, which is when we will meet again.

Depressing State.

Today I was invited to a group dedicated to discussing the design of games, and games in general, as well as the overall state of gaming, the game industry and most things included in this. First and foremost, however, it’s an ongoing discussion.

Unfortunately (and there’s not escaping it) the first 2 or 3 posts in the group are all very depressing and bitter, warning us as designers not to get into the industry.

What? Well, obviously this is not a great way to start off as a designer, but at the same time it’s true. The state of the games-industry is absolutely horrific. There’s almost no one making any money to keep players interested. Developers are laid off left, right and center and it’s incredibly disappointing all-in-all.

So how do we keep the quality of a game exceptional, generate income and keep attracting new users? After all, players are ready to spend money on games, we see this in AAA-titles and subscription-based games. However these are all equally as progressively disappointing in most cases. The AAA-titles are only A these days in the sense of money spent developing. Not to say that they aren’t enjoyable, but that simply isn’t enough anymore. As designers struggle to practice their craft, their livelyhood, and create something extraordinary, thousands of mediocre and sub-par games are pouring out of the industry, creating a heavy cloud that the rays of sunlight that are the good games can’t pierce through.

“Create a good game and we will play it” doesn’t work if you can’t find the game. As my tutor said: If you’re in the mood for brownies, you look it up on google and you find recipes to make them. But if you’re looking for a Type X game, googling it doesn’t help much if it doesn’t exist. All brownies are good.

With all the negativity around this, I don’t think this is “the end” of anything. At the end of the day, all things change, and once you hit rock-bottom you can only go up. You just need to build yourself a ladder.

Week 5.

Week five was a somewhat slow week. With Adam not present and our communications-course on hold, we were given a challenge to create a finished concept-document based on randomly generated story and characters for our introductory game design course.

We made a team of 6 people, and set to work over the course of 2 days to do the assignment. I kept a developer diary on what everyone was doing, our more skilled graphical artists made art for our different characters and we all made an effort to actually deliver something that was appealing to a niched market.

We designed a point-and-click adventure-game in which you play a young ex-skin-therapist vampire-girl, who longs for company, but due to her terrible skin-condition during the day (vampires can’t stand sunlight), there’s only one person who will be with her, and that’s a blind vampire-hunter that aspires to greatness. He doesn’t know she’s a vampire. They get  a tip about a haunted mansion somewhere in Italy. The game takes the player to a few locations around Italy before finally showing them the mansion, and its many explorable rooms and puzzles. The mansion is haunted by a demonic baby which the vampire-girl wants to make skin-creme off of.

That’s the plot, and we were all very pleased with the effort.

This week was also the first game-jam, which I did not participate in due to illness, but from what I hear it was incredibly educational and a great deal of fun, hopefully the ones that could go were able to take something away from it that will be useful later on.

Week 3.

As week three comes to an end, so does another week full of exciting new ways to construct and design games.

At the first days of the week, we were given a lecture on pitch, documentation, and design documents, and the importance of these. By documenting the things we design, by keeping track of what we’re doing, it gets harder to get lost. There seems to be a heavy focus on getting us all used to writing academically, something I’m not sufficiently experienced in as of yet, but they tell us that by the end of the year, we’ll look back at our first essays and other documentations and wonder why we thought it was ever hard. I’m grateful for every challenge they’ve provided us with so far. There’s nothing I haven’t done whole-heartedly, except perhaps find time for reading our course-material. But I’m trying.

This Thursday we were given the honor of having a lecture and workshop with Ernest Adams, a game designer / author / guest professor. His way of presenting the “why’s” of his way of game design was amusing and inspiring, with a heavy tone of “What will the player do in your game?”. And it’s given me some food for thought. I am looking forward to seeing some examples of design documents, so that I can begin practicing writing my own ones, and I hope that my Moleskine arrives soon, so that I can start taking down notes of the ideas that I get, and there are many of them.

The workshop consisted of this:

We were split into teams of five and given a dream. Our goal was to take on the roles of a games studio and design a game that made this dream come alive. Our dream was “I want to ride across USA on a motorcycle with very little money.” So our first question was “What do we want our player to feel? How do we make them feel it? How do we make the player actually play those feelings?”

We discussed at length and came up with an open world exploration game, with a heavy focus on the scenic beauty of the United States, and the feeling that cruising the roads there gives you. I was given the role of Level Designer, but considering that we were designing an open world, I was given the task of designing the different jobs that the player were required to do to make some money for gas for his motorcycle. I wanted them to be menial jobs, since the idea was to travel with little money. Such as shoveling snow, or picking apples, or as such.

In the end our team came together and we did something we were all proud of. It was extremely satisfying to see everybody pulling their weight, and come up with something that I think was without a doubt un-buildable, but as a design was very accurate to our goals.