12/11/12 - Research and Pre-production

So, since our last session our group has begun expanding on the idea of Mad Lads in their respective areas. Tim and I are the animators/modellers for the team so we have been conducting some preliminary research into those areas and the styles we could use to fit with the ideas we have.

Animation Research

Influences

-          Plants vs. Zombies (The Zombies)

-          Alien Hominid (The enemy gangstas)

-          Castle Crashers

-          Battleblock Theater

-          Dad ‘n Me

-          Dr. Bosconovitch (Tekken Tag Tournament 2)

Key Concepts

-          Comical Style

-          Emphasis/focus on the limbs

For the running animation of the inmates, we were thinking of a very loose comical/characteristic style, similar to the running style of that of the zombies in Plants vs. Zombies. The animation styled used will be simple 2D skeletal system; the emphasis of the animation will be on the motion of the limbs instead of the facial animation. As the animators we want one of the main focuses to be comedy style of the running and the silly stupid animations.

In the notes above you can see we were considering what games had a style that we thought was well-suited to Mad Lads. Given that the group had decided we would be using 2D characters we looked at more cartoony styles such as that in 'Plants vs Zombies'. Having decided what the style would be we then began to think about what specific animation events would be needed for the game.

Animation Events

-          Idle

-          Idle to Running

o   Rigged differently to different build types

-          Running

o   Styles

§   

o   Jump over Obstacles

o   Crashing into Obstacle

o   Falling over Obstacle

§  Small, Medium and Big (Obstacles)

-          Vomit

o   Subtle

o   Projectile

-          Attacking

o   Throwing Projectiles

o   Dropping bombs/candy etc.

-          Hit/Impact Animation

o   From front

§  Bomb

§  Projectile

§  Slip Up

§  Stumble

o   From Behind

§  Projectile

-          Eating

-          Drinking

-          Relay Switch

We planned out as many different events that we could think of, adding to the list each week as we thought of more or new ideas were presented by the team, for example the idea of racers being able to attack eachother was not originally in our list. Once we were satisfied with this list we moved on to the next order of business, something we felt would be very useful: Reference videos.

Reference Video Needed

-          Running

o   Small, Medium, Big

-          Hit Animation

o   Behind

o   Front

-          Vomit

o   Different Variations

-          Attacking and Dropping

-          Idle

-          Obstacles

o   Jumping

o   Crashing

o   Falling

-          Relay Switch

You can see above the list of reference videos is smaller than that of the animations we felt were needed, this is because we condensed some of the actions like the hit animations into single actions as it would be unnecessary for us to have a reference for each instance, one would be enough. Also of note is that at this point we decided we would be creating 3 character rigs for 3 different body types; Small, Medium and Large. With this list we then took a camera and began recording these reference videos, some of which i have uploaded below, please ignore any giggling on our parts, whilst still a serious process, trying to act like a cartoon character was pretty funny.
 

Small Character Obstacle Crash and Jump animation

Front Projectile Hit animation

Small Idle, Idle-to-Running and Running animations

From this point we began what would be the longest part of our pre-production: looking into the software we could use to actually create our animations. We focussed mainly on software that was implemented into Unity itself such as uMotion 2D and SmoothMoves Animation but sadly these particular examples while completely suited to our needs, would have required us actually purchasing the software which was out of the question.

12/11/12 - Mad Lads!

So before i add anything else to this blog, i should probably write a bit about the game that was selected by the panel last week so you have an idea of what we should have created by the end of the module.

Simply put, Mad Lads is a race management simulator. The original idea was to have it set in an insane asylum where the bored employees would race them around the grounds giving them drugs and alcohol for an a competitive edge. As was mentioned in the last post however, we had to drop this theme as it was a bit too much for the [adult swim] brand. So as it stands now, Mad Lads is set in various prisons where the wardens have created teams to race in a worldwide tournament, and in this iteration the drugs and alcohol have been replaced by sugar packed drinks and candy.

The game will see you managing your team as they partake in relay races around the world. With racer trading, interactivity to help your characters through the race and the ability to customise your characters through cosmetic DLC, we all feel this game has the potentially to be really fun.

As an example to work from we were given the name of a similar game called 'International Racing Squirrels', a management sim that sees cats creating teams of squirrels to pit against eachother.

I think everyone took this game as a good example of how not to make a management sim. There was just so much going on that it felt incredibly overwhelming and the races themselves were quite tedious. 

So from this we decided to include a certain amount of interactivity to the races themselves and, where this game has no 'race view', we would have a side on camera that followed racers around the track with a scrolling background.

05/11/12 - Pitch week, no more Dubstep Dragons, and Position assignments for our chosen game concept

Today was the day we (or more specifically, our project managers) pitched our ideas to a panel of game industry people, as we would a panel of potential clients, for feedback after which they would select the one they wanted us to pursue. It was a very interesting and in some respects humbling experience to hear these experts critiquing games I had helped design. Their insight was quite inspiring and showed us all how well they knew their professions. 

To present each idea our manager would go up and show a powerpoint presentation, showing the rip-o-matic and talking through the game concept, after which the panel would respond with their thoughts.

For both Dubstep Dragons and White Van Man, the main critique was that our games didn't fit the '[adult swim]' brand, which i agree with, though more so with white van man. They reasoned that an american audience would for the most part be completely unfamiliar with the stereotype of a 'White Van man', which is true as the game had all the classic references to pubs, bad workmanship and drink-driving. Which brings me to another issue the panel had: Censorship.

Both Straitjacket Racers and White Van Man had utterly unsubtle references to drug-taking and alcoholism that would see our games shot down in an instant were we to present them to [adult swim] for real.

As for Dubstep Dragons, the concept myself, Dean, Tim and Wayne had been working on over the last fortnight, and which i had become rather fond of, was sadly not chosen. The panel said they really loved the concept, though as mentioned previously it apparently was unfitting of our clients request. On top of this they felt they couldn't get a good idea of how the game would look,  they also thought the top-down perspective wouldn't be great on a mobile as the screen would be too small to distinguish individual characters, and finally they said that if we were going for speeds similar to the WipeOut games then top down perspective would be really really unsuitable.

In the end, the game that came out on top was StraitJacket Racers! The panel loved the look of the game, they thought it fit the [adult swim] brand and thought it was great that the game was a 'racing managerial' game than a simple racer. The only conditions that they had were that the references to drugs and alcohol be taken out or exchanged, and that we change the name to something other than Straitjacket Racers.

And so, 'Mad Lads' became the focus of our game design project! We thanked the panel for their input then went to our respective groups.

Our first order of business after the game had been selected was to pick our roles for the project. As with when we were being put into group, i was a little unsure and ended up putting myself down as an 'Animation/Modeller' as we were required to put at least two skills down. This led to my being paired up with Tim Nguyen as my Co-Animator. Together, the two of us would be doing all the animation for the game; quite a daunting task for me especially as i felt i had no skills to really draw from besides my past experience using the free 3D Modelling program Blender several years back.

22/10/12 (and reading week) - Ideas, Dubstep Dragons research, rip-o-matic and GDD

During our next session everyone presented their ideas for a game idea that they thought would fit with the theme identified by our client. Many good ideas were thrown about but were eventually narrowed down to just 3 that would then be pitched to a panel as a real game designer must do to obtain funding or a contract for the creation of said game.

These three idea's were (in the words of their creators):

Straitjacket Racers (Kris Kosunen):
"Race management sim, think f1 manager. Staff at a mental institution make high risk patients participate in races around the courtyard. You play as staff members, each have a stable of racers and can boost them with certain meds or threats etc."

White Van Man (Rachel Woods):
"Open world driving game. Drive around city and meet other white van men at traffic lights and challenge them to races to earn money. avoid the police, keep an eye on your hunger, petrol, nicotine, and ego levels, do dodgy odd jobs. Goal is to win as many races, make as much money as possible, and stroke your ego for ultimate street cred."

Dubstep Dragons (Tim Nguyen):
"- Bird's eye view
- Geometry War styled combat effect
- Crazy art style- Dubstep soundtrack with oriental influence"

The team then split into three groups to work on a Rip-o-Matic, which is a compilation of various sounds, images and videos that give a general idea of what your game will be like and what it will be about (a mock up trailer designed to get your idea across and get potential investors interested.) As well as a basic game design document for their groups idea.

I was in a group with Dean Stone, Tim and Wayne. And we were working on Dubstep Dragons. Below you can see the notes we made on the game:

Dubstep Dragon  –WORKING TITLE –

Wayne – Art Director
Dean – Audio, Monetisation, Proof of Concept
Matt – Gameplay, Mechanics
Tim – Rip-o-matic, audio

For Mobiles Devices

Gameplay Influences

-          Geometry Wars

-          Super Laser Racer

-          Dubstep

-          Wipeout (Imagine viewing it in Bird’s eye view)

Visual Influence

-          Tron

-          Audiosurf

-          Geometry Wars

-          Dubstep

Game Synopsis

Playing as a magical Oriental Dubstep Dragon,

Dragon has speakers in its wings for propulsion/attacks

Different dubstep dragons based on different cultural dubstep influences as players/opponents?

Different skins & upgrades available both for in game currency and real world money

Dragons can transform to a more cybernetic/cyborg creature

Audio will affect the track, such as widening and narrowing the track.

As is mentioned in the notes above, my task for the week was to come up with gameplay ideas for the game. From these we as a group would select one to go into our design document, below you can see the ideas i came up with:

"Idea 1:

Could take "racing" slightly less literally than intended...

- Make game score based to determine position against AI opponents

Would use REAL SONGS

Playerrs would need to round up 'enemies' by evading them (think pacifism mode in Geometry Wars)

A display bar would show players when "drops" are coming, the player would have to be in proximity with as many 'enemies' as possible to score maximum points when the 'drop' hits! WOB

After this the player must rely on smaller beats and WOB's to destroy enemies

(not sure the above idea could really fit with our brief unless we made it into a racetrack with AI opponents or something)

Idea 2:

Traditional racing style (POWER UPS!!!):

Dubstep-based ATTACK power-ups:

- "Drop" - MEGA DUBSTEP SHOCKWAVE

- "Rapid-Fire" - Could offer different rates of 'rapod-fire'. think 'wobwobwobwob' but very fast

- "DUBSTEP LASER" - WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOB

BOOST power-up that increases player speed (and backing track bpm?)

INVULNERABILITY power-up that would either a) briefly make the player immune from opponents attacks OR b) provide protection from 'x' number of attacks, think shells in mario kart

Notes: i cant decide whether the player should have a health metter or simply suffer a knockback from any attacks that hit. Thoughts?

Idea 3:

Another possibility would be to combine these two ideas, however it might overcomplicate the game.

Also thought of making these ideas into separate game modes but would require extra (unnecessary) work.

Apologies for any unnecessary double letters in here, this keyboard suxx!"

Granted there are only a couple of them but i thought they were both sound and i still quite like my first idea though we did eventually go with the second. Below you can see a link to the finished rip-o-matic as well as some logo mock-us that Wayne created.

Dubstep Dragons - Rip-O-Matic 

 

Tim was the one behind our awesome rip-o-matic, i think it conveys our ideas for the game very well, though i feel it could have benefited from a reference to the geometry wars art-style of the game.

The logos Wayne created were once again top-notch, we found it really hard to decide which one we all liked the best but eventually opted for the black and white logo you see above though, in hindsight the middle logo would have been more fitting, i feel.

Finally, you can see our finished GDD by using the links below, for some reason we have two versions, one which includes my work but not deans, and another that shows deans work but not mine, so i have linked them both and labelled them appropriately:

GDD with no Monetisation section

GDD with none of my own work, see bottom page for Monetisation

And with everything done, all that was left was to wait til the next monday so we could pitch our ideas to our clients. 

15/10/12 - Remode Visit and a Huge Setback

Today we were finally introduced to the brief for the module by the person who would also be our 'client', Ella Romanos from Remode Games.

After introducing us to the basic concept behind the module and giving us a very useful powerpoint presentation on the processes employed by Remode when developing for a client, she then moved on to outline the game that she as our client wanted us to make as outlined in the brief.

She requested we make a Single Player Racing Game for Online (Internet-based) or Mobile Platform. Adding that this game must use the [adult swim] brand and finally that this game must be Free-to-Play and include in-app purchases for monetisation.

After a few questions to clarify what this request entailed and how far we could stretch each of the terms in said request, we huddled together to discuss the elephant in the room; none of the game idea's we had come up with over the last two weeks fit the brief at all.

So, with this sudden setback, right at the end of this session, we were once again given the task of thinking about some game ideas. This time however we had to come up with idea's that fit the brief.

On the lighter side of things, our group, after a long and arduous voting thread on Facebook had come to an agreement on the name for our 'studio', with credit for said name going to Rachel Woods:

The logo you see above was created by Wayne Ramsay, and i have to say i think it looks really good.

08/10/12 - More Ideas

This week was simply spent writing up and expanding on the ideas we had been thinking about over the last couple of weeks, i worked with my colleague Tim to do this.

Here you can see our notes for the session, we both had only one idea that we could really flesh out. For me i had the fairly undeveloped concept that mashed together the fighter gameplay of combos and button mashing with the openness of the 2D Sidescrolling platformer genre. As with alot of my ideas this one was pretty vague but still i thought it stood out as an interesting concept, especially as the fighting genre focusses on relatively fixed camera points with no character movement outside of fighting.

Tim's idea sounded very interesting, the idea of being able to play as a man/woman and experience their entire lifespan from birth to death in about 10-20 minutes. Again there seemed to be a bit of narrowing down to be done, not least because there were two different ways for the game to be done, however i particularly liked the idea of a Wario-ware-esque take on this concept wherein you play lots of minigames that correlate with points in your characters lifestyle with tempo and colour palette being used to portray emotion.

Below you can see our notes from this session:

Life and Emotion

o   You play as a man/woman from birth to death

o   Colour palette is affected by the emotions of the character

o   Animation would be semi-realistic

o   Artsy game

o   Condensed down to about 10 minutes

o   Art would be stylised coinciding with the emotions

§  E.g a sad point would be similar to Limbo

-          Life and Emotion (Minigame based)

o   Entire life will be based around minigames

§  E.g picking a job, exams etc.

o   Emotion with effect type of minigame and colour palette and tempo 

o   The minigames will coincided with the timeline

o   Wario ware –esque

-          2D sidescrolling adventure/story-driven game with fighting-game style combat

o   Combo-based attacks

o   Fast Paced, button mashing gameplay with large numbers of enemies

o   Platforming Fighting game

o   Animation: quick, sharp movements

o   Art-style: anything that’s AWESOOMEE

-          Fruit based mmorpg

-          Unicorn rhythm based game with rainbows

-          Game based around an Extra-terrestrial mining community

-          Educational Sci Fi

01/10/12 - Management structures

In this session we were introduced to two different management structures for our groups to consider using. Waterfall and Agile.

Agile

Here you can see a 10 minute break-down video were given to watch during the lesson, this covers an adaptation of the Agile method that adds on daily 'scrum' meetings for quick updates on progress and problems and generally to keep up communication between teams.

Agile seems like a really clever way to make any project a lot less daunting by breaking everything down into smaller components, and by creating a release backlog that project managers are certain can be achieved for an initial release, it saves a lot of wasted effort on features that can't be implemented in time. It also ensures through the sprint stages that every feature is fully tested and useable by the end of the cycle.

Waterfall

Waterfall, unlike Agile, is a very rigid design progress in which changes made in later stages of development are very undesirable, and potentially costly, so everything is planned out in advance. It see's progress as a steady transfer of work down through a series of stages, the diagram below shows some of these stages.

This method, though inflexible, allows everyone to work from pre specified plans, meaning that predictions for when the project will be completed can be made very accurately, provided said project has been thoroughly planned in advance.

In my opinion, i think that Agile would suite our group more, especially as in most cases it is our first major project, so anything that can make the next few months seem less daunting would be a boon. The flexibility that Agile allows would also be useful as we can all assume that mistakes will be made as we adapt to this new way of working.

24/09/12 - Introduction to Module and Development Structures

Today was our first lesson for Professional Team Brief. A module that, as was explained by our lecturer, would see us creating our own games for an as yet unknown client.
Shortly after this introduction we were asked to pick our two best skills which was a tricky one for me as I've never really been clear on what area i wanted to go into. Even so, given my experience from years back when i used Microsoft Paint combined with Windows Movie Maker to create animated cartoon videos, as well as my competence with Photoshop, i put myself forward as an 'Artist/Animator'.

After compiling our skills we were then split into two groups by our lecturer, who attempted to give both teams equal footing by making sure we had all areas covered ie. coding, modelling, texturing, etc. From these groups two 'Project Managers' were asked to put themselves forward, in our case this was Alex Young.

Having been introduced to the module and put into groups we had our very first meeting. Our first task given to us by our project manager was to start thinking of possible game ideas, nice and simple. We all went to work.

And so began our lives as (pretend) game designers!