evaluation of final game

[video and picures of game will be added soon]

My final game was a complete recreation of the original idea as i found my first idea wouldve taken too long to make in time so i decided to make a smaller game but not sacrafice any ammount  of blueprint so i decided to make a puzzle game where the objective is to mix the three primary colours in a way that created a spesific secondary one for example when the game starts you are given the colour purple then you would have to walk into the red and then bluetrigger boxes then walk to the gate and it will tell you that youve got it right or wrong and give you a new colour, at this point it goes on forever and there is no punishment for getting it wrong, if i had more time i wouldve introduced a system where it keeps track of how many tries youve had and how many youve gotten right or wrong and after a timer has ticked down give you a percentage score, this would have given the player an incentive to do well and they would also have a highscore so they could compare with their friends and see who is better.

Compared to my original idea this game is completely different, the target audience is very different now as the first one was quite a mature shooter for teenagers, whereas the second is a colour based puzzle game so would be an educational game for kids. The first game idea had a multiplayer element, whereas the secont one is mostly a singleplayer experience however it couldve had an online scoreboard but it wouldve still been less of an online experience as the first idea.

overall im very pleased with how the game ended up. I used new blueprint ideas that ive never used before and learned a lot about them and i feel like I implimented the blueprint very well for something ive never used before as i condenced the ammount of things i needed to use making the size of the game a lot smaller that in could've been.

game engines

What is a Game Engine?

Game engines are used to create games, they are essentially used to streamline the process the making of games by having certain parts of the code saved automatically for example the gravity is saved within the physics engine so it’s easier to access because gravity is used in allot of games so it is useful to not have to rewrite the code over and over this also takes the time down that it takes to make a game, this is useful because of how much content is expected in a modern game, it also makes it allot easier to port games onto other platforms like Xbox and PC.

Components of Game Engines

-          Main game programme
      This is how the actual game logic is implemented through code or other means depending on the game engine, for example Game Maker has a drag and drop system and unreal uses Blueprint however in both you can still use code to some degree

-          Rendering engine
      A rendering engine generates 3D graphics for the game so the graphics don’t have to be rendered by the CPU directly and is instead rendered on one or multiple rendering applications

Graphic Rendering

Graphic rendering is the process of applying textures or 2D or 3D models it is done by the information in the scene file which holds the geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information then a rendering software takes the information and applies it to the model.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is when an entity in a game tries to mimic thought however all the possible actions the entity can perform have been entered into the game by the game developer for example the game developer will say when the entity sees the player character it will start following the player but to the player it looks like the entity has free will.

Examples of game engines

There are two main types of game engine, open source like the unreal engine or closed like the rage engine.

Unreal engine

Unreal is an example of an open source game engine allowing anyone to use it to make games it has had 5 versions: unreal 1, unreal 2, unreal 3, unreal development kit (UDK) and unreal 4. UDK was made as an open source version of unreal 3 because that was only accessible to people with licences so they made UDK as a free version, unreal 4 is accessible to everyone as well. The way it makes money is by taking 5% of the profits made by any game made with the engine, this is the first time the game engine was essentially free to use and publish on.

R.A.G.E

The rage engine stands for “rockstar advanced game engine” and is an example of a closed game engine, it belongs to rockstar so only people who work for them can use the engine, and it includes all the basic things found in rockstar games for example if the developers wanted to make a car act like something from GTA V they can just import it in via the game engine.

Game Maker

Game maker is an open source game engine which is good for first time game developers as it uses a feature called “drag and drop” so the basics of a game can be done by dragging certain bits of code in so the developer doesn’t need to add much code or none if the game is very basic also it cannot make 3D games so isn’t used by AAA companies however some notable games have been made on game maker for example: spelunky, undertale and downwell.

Cry engine

Cry engine was developed by crytek and has been used in all of crytek’s titles, it is also open to publishers under crytek’s licence, it can be free or paid for to get more features, for example amazon paid $50-$70 million in order to develop the engine itself into something called Amazon Lumberyard.

write up for sound implementation for a game

I was tasked with creating sounds for a game i started with writing a plan:

Sound 1: footstep sound

Record someone walking quite heavily.

Edit as to cut out only two of the footstep sounds and keep them on a loop.

When implementing into the game make the sound play at all of the times the walking button is pressed.

Sound 2: gunshot sound

Record someone slamming their hand on a table.

Edit in an echo.

When implementing into the game make it sound one when the fire button is pressed.

Sound 3: reloading sound

Record a door latch being opened.

Edit it so it plays slowed down and a lot louder, then mix in with the gunshot sound.

Music: Dark, Gothic and Depressing. Using organ, violin and drum noises, I will record it using garage band and a keyboard with different musical overlays.

then we went out with a recorder pack and a shotgun microphone this was because I wanted to make sure the sounds were of a high enough quality because the game I’m making will be on PC so the quality needs to be of a high enough quality, the sounds I used was someone slamming their hand on a table to make the sound of a gunshot, a door being opened for the sound of a gun reloading and someone stomping to make the sound of footsteps, I used audacity for the editing and the features I used were copy and paste, normalize, sound level editor and change speed. I learned how to implement the sounds into the game as I did not know how to before so there was things I had to learn like how to make the sounds not overlap or how to make the sounds not loop.

In conclusion recording the sounds for my game I had to consider lots of different things for example recording equipment, time management, editing techniques and implementation of sounds into a game. We had to choose the method we would use for recording very carefully for example if we were making a phone game we could use a Dictaphone or even our own phones to record the sound as the quality will be compressed anyway in order to keep the size of the game down due to the limited storage on phones compared to PCs and consoles, however if we were to be making a game for a console we would have to use something like a shotgun mic and a recorder pack in order to make the sound as high quality as possible, console or PC games usually gather more income compared to mobile games so using potentially more money on sound is worthwhile because PC games are usually worth more than phone games. Unfortunately I could not implement any music due to technical difficulties.

video of game play:

space invaders game, 26/01/2016

creating the player sprite:

I started with a 32 by 32 grid and drew an upside down T shape, and coloured it in grey I added some detail in the colours grey, blue, red and green.

using game maker I removed the white background and created a sprite for when the player shoots and all the colours light up.


Update:

i replaced the sprite with one of a man holding a gun because the nature of the game has changed from space invaders to a zombie survival game.

this video highlights how the player works in the game and how the two sprites are implemented

Enemies:

the enemies in the game are zombies that walk towards the player until they are shot or they get to the other end of the screen this video shows off the shooting mechanics, the walking animation as well as the death animation

How the player reacts to other objects

This event causes the player to bounce off walls, this stops the player from flying through the walls, the same applies to the other wall object.

This event changes the player’s sprite when they hit the object, the same applies to all the pickups and they all change the sprite in relation to what sprite the pickup is.

This event makes the player gain 1 point every time they collide, it would also have some actions like “if player is x sprite and enemy is y sprite destroy instance” but I did not have enough time to implement the enemy changing sprite part.

This event controls the player, every time the left mouse button is pressed the player goes toward the co-ordinates that the mouse is on, if the button is released the player goes in the direction of where the mouse was the last time the button was pressed, it travels in this direction until it bounces off a wall, the only way to stop is by pressing the right mouse button.

Successes:

-        The control system was sound and worked fluently

-        It is a good base for a more polished game if I had more time

Failures:

-        When the player gets to where the mouse is it keeps flicking from one side of the mouse to the other, I looked for a fix to this online but I could not find one, if I continue this game on further I will look more but seeing as I was running out time I decided I could look past it

-        The enemies do not change form, I decided that seeing as everyone else already had a working system of this I would focus on showcasing how I could create other systems like the mouse control or the walls that only allow the player through

Kyle’s review:

Ollie’s game was very fluent due to the controls which used the mouse to move your character around the level but this also had an effect on the game as it could be quite jumpy. The colours worked very nicely with each other and I enjoyed that there were safe zones around the collectables which made the game easier added to the fact that you could kill the enemies no matter what shape you were made the game so simple a 2 year old could complete it. On the other hand the control and the game make a nice neat package of fluidity.

A large wall because in the final game the rooms should be bigger

A smaller wall for finer details 

 These sprites are used for enemies, the player and pickups for the player, it comes in 4 different flavours: yellow, green, blue and red all with different shapes inside: triangle, square, circle and cross

The way the player looks before you choose a colour

 The arrow points from one pickup to the other it shows the player what it needs to be in order to defeat the enemy for example, if the enemies are blue circles and the arrows point from the red cross towards the blur circle the player knows that the red cross will beat the blue circle, it is like rock paper scissors in a way