| Session number 5 | |
| Week Number 1 | |
| Total Estimated Hours Contributed this Week: | |
| What was your overall goal for this week? I plan to make the main character pixel art for this session |
| Date | Task Description | Time Spent | Was this a Best Practice? |
| 3/20 | Building the character art for the in game sections | 1 hr | |
| 3/21 | Making the character movement | 1 hr | |
| 3/23 | Making the character interaction system | 1 hr | |
| 3/24 | Building the dialogue System | 1 hr | |
Character Artist (Things That Move)
By May 10, as Character Artist, I will have evidence of making expressive and efficient animations for the characters by following The Animation of Phoenix Wright by New Frame Plus for Session 5.
Aryo Jati Darmawan Founder of Voracious Games, (Development studio behind Potionomics) with a predominant focus on the artistic direction and game design.
Game Rant Interview
ShackNews Interview
Nothing should stay the same for long
Focus on appealing character design
Exaggerate the aspects to lighten the mood and tone down the animation for a darker tone.
Include depth along with the expressiveness for good animation
Choose where to use animations
The session starts on march 19th, and ends on may 10th
$7700 upfront and $15 dollars per game contributor per month past the first 3 developers.
This is the game that I worked on, and there is credits in the game to say what I did.
I was a problem solver by fixing issues that had come up from having multiple people with multiple styles of programming. For example we had an issue where the game couldn’t tell when to remove potions from the players inventory, I learned through troubleshooting that the problem was due to the inconsistent use of namespaces. The solution that I found was to create a separate script that had the ability to transfer functions and variables up the namespace chain so that they were accessible to the all scripts.
I worked with Connor to troubleshoot a script that was intended to play a random walking sound effect.
I used the Unity Documentation to find ways to make my programs work.
In this session I learned to be able to work better with others on scripts.
The most important reaction was that the game looked unfun because the gameplay loop was simplistic and didn’t give much feedback. other reactions were that the city looked bad, the UI was very bare-bones, and there was little feedback to if an action did anything.
In my opinion we did the best we could with a bad idea. The game idea was written down on paper and it seemed fun then but in practice it was far to slow and the decisions were not interesting. Another issue was that we were aiming far out of our weight class in terms of complexity and so while we got the game done it was incredibly difficult to make the systems work.
Grammarly
Connor the sound guy
Character Artist/Things That Move
By March 1, as Character Artist, I will have evidence of adding non combat interaction methods for the player by following a tutorial by Alexander Zotov for Session 4.
David Helsby
David Helsby was on the animation team for Destiny 2, and has worked on many other projects past then.
what makes a Bungie game feel like a Bungie game
Design Pillars of First Person Animation
Making First Person Content That “Feels Good”
by the end of February 6th I will have completed all animations for this session and I will start implementing them into the game
By February 20th I will finish the implementation of the animations and they will work in the game.
By March 1st I will have ensured that there are little to no bugs that are noticeable to the user. I would define noticeable bugs as something that is unintentionally on screen, or something that prevents the player from completing the task that they are trying to complete.
due March 1st
$7700 upfront and $15 dollars per game contributor per month.
We used Trello to manage the tasks that we needed to get done.
In this session I made the interaction system and added an example interaction of grabbing a healing item. During this session I also made the level, helped working on the technical side of the particle effects, tuned the fog to fit the scene feel that we wanted, and I lit the scene to emphasize the healing item.
While making the healing system I ran into the issue of the healing effect looping for far longer than it should have been, the healing effect doubled for one usage of the heal, and the debug log was showing that the heal was triggering multiple times. I solved this by learning more about different update methods and restriction methods. I solved the issue by making the healing effect turn off through an if statement that blocked all healing input for a unspecified duration. This solved the problem by preventing the method from triggering multiple times.
Multiple times throughout this session I needed to reference my other teammates scripts to learn how they did certain things and implement those methods into my own code. I learned how to understand the different styles of programming that each team member had.
I used unity’s documentation to build programs and optimize the scripts.
In this session I learned how to read the code of other people, understand what the code does, and how to implement the functions in the code to my scripts.
Hunter, a DigiPen student and advisory member, said that while the game has fun gameplay and looks like it can function, there is not a win or lose state in the game and as such this game cannot be called complete. Other notes that Hunter gave was that the UI was not fleshed out, and the enemy was not giving any sign that they were taking damage.
The final version of the game was a step up visually and mechanically from the previous version. the in game music sounded fantastic, the healing system is useful, and particle effects are significantly better. The
I used Grammarly for spell check.
My editor was the producer Spencer
| Formal Elements | |
| The Basics | The player uses their weapons against an enemy while dodging attacks to achieve victory. |
| Name of the game | Dark Souls |
| The platform | Consoles and PC |
| Time played (should be at least 30 minutes) | 300 hours |
| If you could work on this game (change it), what would you change and why? | I would improve the animations to allow for the attacks to feel weightier |
| Players | NOTES |
| How many players are supported? | 8 |
| Does it need to be an exact number? | this is not an exact number |
| How does this affect play? | Players can enter the worlds of others to make their game harder or easier. |
| Some types of player frameworks: Single Player – like Solitare. Head-to-head – 1 vs. 1, Chess. PvE – Player vs. Environment, or multiple players vs. the game. Common in MMOs like World of Warcraft. One against Many – Single-player vs. multiple (obvy). Free-for-all – Every man for himself (1 vs. 1 vs. 1 vs. 1..). Most common for multiplayer games, from Monopoly to Modern Warfare. Individuals Against the System – Like Blackjack, where the Dealer is playing against multiple players, but those players have no effect on each other. Team Competition – Multiple vs. multiple, i.e. sports. Predator-prey – Players form a circle and everyone’s goal is to attack the player on their left and defend themselves from the player on their right. Five-pointed Star – Eliminate both players who are not on either side of you. | this game is PvPvE (player versus player vs environment) |
| Objectives/Goals | NOTES |
| What are the players trying to do? | The players are trying to go further into an area until they die, or reach the end where there is normally a boss fight. |
| Some common objectives include: Capture/Destroy – Eliminate all your opponents pieces (Chess). Territorial Acquisition – Control as much territory as you can, not necessarily harming other players (RISK). Collection – Collect a certain number of objects throughout the game (Pokemon). Solve – Solve a puzzle or crime (Clue). Chase/race/escape – Anything where you are running towards or away from something (playground game Tag). Spatial Alignment – Anything involving the positioning of elements (Tetris or Tic-Tac-Toe or that game at Cracker Barrel). Build – Advance your characters or build your resources to a certain point (The Sims). Negation of another goal – The game ends if you perform an act that is forbidden by the rules (Jenga or Twister). | The common objective is to reach the next checkpoint, dodge the attacks, learn enemies, or learn the environment. |
| Rules/Mechanics | The player can use their weapons, this can include swinging a physical weapon or casting spells, dodge, use items, and interact with developer specified objects or characters. |
| There are three categories of (what the book Rules of Play calls) operational rules: Setup – the things you do at the beginning of a game. Progression of Play – what happens during the game. Resolution – How an outcome is determined based on the game state. | In the beginning of a level the player’s goal is to learn what the enemies of the area is, then they learn the enemies, then try to get through the area until the reach the boss or the next area., if they die then they lose all of their money, and get reset to the last checkpoint that they rested at. If they beat the boss they will get a large chunk of money, and are allowed to move past the boss’s arena. |
| Controls | NOTES |
| What controls are used? | Mouse 1 is for attacking, the space bar is for dodging, wasd is for movement, e is for interact, r is to use items, and mouse 2 is for using the offhand weapon, and ESC is for opening the menu. |
| Was there a clear introductory tutorial? | there is a clear tutorial level. The player is not able to beat the level until they understand the basics of combat, navigation, and interaction. |
| Were they easy to understand or did you find yourself spamming the controller? | The controls are easy to understand, I suspect that this is due to the lack of input possibilities for interacting with the world. |
| Resources & Resource Management | NOTES |
| What kinds of resources do players control? | The player controls their weapon, when they attack, their stats, their stamina, their health by use of the game’s health potion, their over all weight and as such their dodge speed, and the spells and items they have equipped. |
| How are they maintained during play? | The player makes sure that they have enough stats to use the weapon that they want, in combat they must control their stamina to allow them to dodge attacks that come their way, through the game they will remove or add equipment to maintain as much defense while rolling at a speed that is comfortable to them, they also have to find time to use the game’s healing potions, and they have to obtain enough money to level up when they reach the next checkpoint. |
| What is their role? | The stamina is a way to punish the player for being greedy with combat, the weapons are to make the game feel different and allow for build variety, the armor is to allow for more build variety (if the player wants to be able to back-flip, or if they want to withstand a blast from an orbital laser), the stats are to stop the player from having access to the strongest equipment without investment into the stats required by the equipment. |
| A resource is everything under the control of a single player. Could be the money in Monopoly or health in WoW. Other examples are: Territory in RISK The number of questions remaining in 20 Questions Objects picked up during videogames (guns, health packs, etc.) Time (game time, real-time, or both) Known information (like suspects in Clue) | The player is in control of their health, their stamina, their spell uses. |
| Game State | NOTES |
| How much information in the game state is visible to the player? | The player is allowed to know the locations of anything based on sound or visuals, they are shown what happens when they die, and they are explicitly reset. |
| A snapshot of the game at a single point is the game state. The resources you have, the un-owned properties in Monopoly, your opponent’s Archery skill all count towards the game state. Some example information structures are: Total Information – Nothing is hidden, like Chess. Info per player – Your hand of cards is only visible to you. One player has privileged info – Like a Dungeon Master. The game hides info from all players – Like Clue, where no one knows the victory condition. Fog of War – In video games, where certain sections of the map are concealed if you do not have a unit in sight range of that area. You also cannot see other players’ screens, so each player is unaware of the other’s information. | the game hides significant info from the players in the sense of mechanics that are never explained to players explicitly or are hinted at and not stated, such as poise, and stamina usage. There is also a fog of war like system where the player is not told something and the must find the object before they can know what it is used for. |
| Sequencing | NOTES |
| In what order do players take their actions? | the game is realtime, and so most actions take place when the player feels safe to attack. |
| How does play flow from one action to another? | the player will often switch from taking combative actions to taking more defensive options as their health bar decreases and their resources run out. |
| Some structures include: Turn-based – Standard board game technique. Turn-based with simultaneous play – where everyone takes their turn at the same time (like writing something down or putting a card down in War). Real-time – Actions happen as fast as players can make them. Action-based video games. Turn-based and time limits – You have this long to take your turn. | real time |
| Player Interaction | The player can only interact with the world in a combat, exploration and lever pulling context. |
| Some examples: Direct Conflict – I attack you. Negotiation – If you support me here, I’ll help you there. Trading – I’ll give you this for that. Information Sharing – If you go there, I’m warning you, a trap will go off. | there are bits of direct conflict, negotiation, and trading. If the player has another player enter their world then they have to come to a common understanding of what will happen. A player can convince the other to not attack them by giving them gifts, or show them a secret in the level. |
| Theme & Narrative | NOTES |
| Does it have an actual story structure? | it has a story structure |
| Is it based on a historical event (or similar)? | it is not based on history, but there are some references to real world events. |
| Does the theme or narrative help you know how to play? | the games theme does not teach you how to play, but the themes do help the player through the game by providing inspiration to keep going. |
| Does it have emotional impacts? | if you nearly beat a boss and fail then it can feel quite bad, and if a quest line is failed or reaches a bad conclusion the player will either never see that NPC for the rest of the playthrough, or they will be forced to kill an NPC that they may have had a connection to. Learning about the stories behind the bosses, items, or NPCs can also provoke emotions, but that is not necessarily something that a player will learn about in the game. |
| Also, look for en media res (does it start in the middle of the game)? | it starts at the beginning of the players story, but at the end of many other character’s story. |
| The Elements in Motion | NOTES |
| How do the different elements interact? | The difficult elements force the player to be careful about how they move and engage with everything. |
| What is the gameplay like? | the gameplay is slow and methodical, but also requires some reflexes to dodge the faster attacks.. |
| Is it effective? | The gameplay is effective. |
| Are there any points where the design choices break down? | There is a boss that ignores the dodge mechanic, and the boss doesn’t reset every death so it can be killed without using skill. |
| Design Critique | NOTES |
| Why did the designer make these particular choices? | to improve the vibes of the game, and improve the themes that run throughout the game |
| Why this set of resources? | the resources are to make the player feel more like the other human sized characters in the world by giving them similar means as the other NPCs, and another intention is to make the player feel incredibly weak against the larger bosses, as they |
| What if they made different decisions? | |
| Does the design break down at any point? | |
| Graphics & Sound | NOTES |
| Does the game art pair well with the mechanics? | The game looks gritty with bits of beauty, so i think that this pairs well with how the game is difficult, but winning feels incredibly good |
| Did you find any bugs or glitches? | while at a medium weight the player can roll through fall damage. |
| What about sound? | The sound is used to build the ambience of an area with music only used in specific areas or in boss fights. |
| Can you spot any technical shortcuts? | the further into the game you get the messier the game is. |
| Various Stages of the Game | NOTES |
| To wrap up, some things to keep in mind (as if there aren’t enough already) as you play: | |
| What challenges do you face, and how do you overcome them? | |
| Is the game fair? | |
| Is it replayable? Are there multiple paths to victory or optional rules that can change the experience? | |
| What is the intended audience? | |
| What is the core, the one thing you do over and over, and is it fun? |
This analysis form was adapted from https://notlaura.com/a-template-for-analyzing-game-design/
Graphics Programming/ Things that are seen
By Jan. 13, as CharBy Jan. 13, as Graphics Programmer, I will have evidence of making the RenderPipeline following a tutorial by “CatLikeCoding” for session 3.
Have intention behind decisions
Notes:
Basic Generation of a Render Pipeline
Making point and spotlight shadows
due on, January 13th.
$7700 upfront and $15 dollars per game contributor.
I programmed the shader that is applied to the player model.
Connor made the music and sound effects.
Spencer made the enemy AI.
Jason made the game menus and UI.
Amanda made enemy animations.
Jaycie made the environment.
I was a problem solver because while I was making the graphics system there was a major issue with the rendering code was that caused the game to not display information. I solved this by adapting my shader code to work with the basic game without the broken code.
I helped the team with the issues that came up. I used my knowledge of the Unity engine to help the people on my team to achieve what they wanted to do.
The tutorial that I used in this session was made in an earlier time, so I had to learn how to update the systems in the shader to modern uses.
The skills that I refined here such as problem solving and communications will be helpful in the future where I will have less support from more experienced people and I will need to be able to work with a team and support a team.
Nellie really liked the sliders and the accessibility options. Jessica liked the menu music. They both complimented the player model and gun.
The work that was put into the project was very well done and I am quite proud of what there is, but due to time constraints the level is not interesting to explore and fight in because of a lack of enemies. Another issue is that the shaders that I wrote were not very complex and they did not improve the product in any notable way. Finally the player did not feel satisfying to play, and there are still many bugs with the player movement. In the next session I hope that we (the team) can work to make the game even better.
I used Grammarly as a spelling check for this session.
Connor
Character Artist / Things That Move in the World
By October 14th, as part of team 6 as Character Artist I will have evidence of adding to the GDD art sections in Dundoc by following Le Duc’s Tutorial for session1.
Kazuko Shibuya
Shibuya did all of the pixel art for the first final fantasy games. She managed to have expressive character animation without having much data to work with.
Game Art Location and Requirements
The project starts on September 26th and ends on October 14th.
N/A
In this session I added sections to the game design document.
In this session I had to take the code from a tutorial and rework it so that it will run in the game that was made by the team. when I followed the tutorial for making a first person gun, it was not transferring the damage onto the enemy asset, so I had to learn how to make the system work without the help of a tutorial.
In this session I had to be able to help my teammates, and ask for help from my teammates. I had an issue where I couldn’t get the AI to work in the game so I asked for help from the producer. The UI developer Jason needed help with having his code communicate with his game object.
In this session I used Stack Overflow for help with programming, Unity forums for help with the game engine, YouTube for help with implementing complex programs, and the official Unity Documentation for help with implementing unity specific code.
The skills and tools learned in this session will be useful for a career in the future because problem solving will always be a useful skill, and my new knowledge of programming will help me in my future attempts to get a career in game development.
Hunter’s reaction to the final version was that we should fix the compile errors, and create a backup of the game before making changes.
We should have used better version control so that we did not get stuck bug fixing issues that would not have come up if we had done proper version control.
Grammarly was used for as a spell check.
Spencer
By May 10th, as a member of team 7, I will make a complete system to allow the player to interact with my game. to do this I will use the tutorial series by Dave / GameDevelopment particularly the movement tutorials from them.
The leader in the field will be John Carmack. John Carmack was the lead programmer for the original Doom, Quake 1, and Quake 2. He also made the first “3d” game.
My Training source for Making character movement was Dave / GameDevelopment‘s Movement tutorials.
For the basics of movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f473C43s8nE
For Jumping and sprinting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCxSjgYTw9c
In This session, I focused on making the basic movement of my game. I added WASD input, a jump key, gravity, and a climbing system.
This session stretched my skillset particularly hard, because not only my first time programming a game using C# instead of block-based programming, but I was also using an operating system for my computer that I was not familiar with. This led to many issues where Unity’s input handler would break in many ways and often would make the controls unusable. I fixed this by separating the movement systems from the camera controls so that they could both run in separate scripts.
I also had to fix an issue where Unity sometimes would loop the previous input if there were more than one other key being pressed and it would not release inputs if other keys were being used at that time. I fixed this by adding a state handler to my movement script that would add extra restrictions such as putting a cap on how many inputs the movement controller would take. This fixed the issue for the majority of the actions, but there are still some lingering bugs with it that I plan to sort out.
I worked alone for the most part, but I used the other people in my team as a resource for figuring out how to fix issues in my code and I would act as a resource if they had any issues with what they were working on.
I developed my ability to program. Before I started session 5 I was not able to understand most programs and how they worked and after this session, I was able to effectively use my new skills to create functions without using a tutorial.
During This session, I learned how to better take what I learned from a tutorial and transpose the lessons learned onto my projects. I also learned how to make a workflow and through the session I improved my workflow.
Grammarly
Melissa
Role: Independent Learning
By March 2nd I intended to learn how to create a simple program using the language GLSL. I know this task is completed due to me having a working program that is running on GLSL. I was setting this goal so that later on I can write improved graphical effects in the game engine’s rendering pipeline for when I start working on the game. The deadline that I had set for myself was on March 2nd which was realistic.
Before I started learning I needed resources so that I could understand what I was making. The sources I used, and will use are all compiled into a document that is linked below.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iGzh33qebnN1MnV8inCpLQkXnE0ZXYD_gL8Xvv7nyak/edit?usp=sharing
I intended to be able to make and control the curves of colors by March 2nd, starting 2 weeks before. The first week was spent downloading all the tools that I needed, and setting them up so that they could work together. After I completed this I spent the rest of the time reading through The Book of Shaders and watching the videos on linear algebra by 3Blue 1Brown. I managed to learn the basics of curves and such before I had initially expected.