Masive Progress Update!
Suffice to say I'm feeling rather chuffed with myself. After looking at how far my tutor group had come with their projects, I decided to sit down and get on with mine, with a little help from a flash developer friend who pointed me in the right direction, gave me some general flash advice and helped out with my syntax issues. But Enough of that go and play the bugger!
http://serve.discoliam.com/prototype/prototype4/
Ive made loads off updates since the last one, so I thought I'd run though a quick list of whats new:
- Now uses mouse movement rather than webcam (for development purposes only)
- Fog objects appear one at a time
- They appear out of the factory
- They change size as they come out
- They have random movement
- Percentage counter now counts them properly
- Colour changes between 1 and 10 on the percentage counter (in the final version this will be between 1 - 100)
- Animals have some shadows on them
- that backwards cow now comes in from the right side
Code wise there has been a lot of tidying up, with me moving all my code into functions and calling them in the appropriate places etc. This makes it a lot easier to navigate and find things, though I'm still working on tidying bits up.
I think I've reached my target of getting all my Must Haves for the project complete. I'm going to start working on adding new features after my tutorial on Friday, and I really need to get on writing the report for it as well. Its only 4000 words, but its still work that needs to be done!
Tutorial Catch Up
This was a rather unproductive tutorial for me this week as due to various incidents including a trip to Bournemouth, a busy weekend, virgins poor Internet service and a rabbit chewing though power cables, I didn't get much (read: any) work done on my project. However, seeing the progress of others work has given me an almighty kick of the backside, and I'm now panicking somewhat. There are a few notes from my discussion with Ben that I want to share though.
Looking over Rich's answers, it was clear that I needed to put a bit more effort into making the game fun. Ben pointed out that this could me find the bit of tension for the game. The point where the player who thinks there in control, realises they aren't in control. This is show on my graph here. At the beginning of the game its easy to keep the fog off the screen, but as the rate that fog objects appear on screen increases, the user starts to loose control. This is where the tension in the game comes from, and hopefully, ultimately, makes it fun.
It was also discussed that we should start aiming to close the loops of our development, and get a complete version of the our projects working. I think this means for me getting the jog objects looking good, and getting the fog floating on by itself, increasing as the game goes on, and getting the object counter working properly, knowing when objects are on and off the screen.
Response from Aardman Digital
I’ve been lucky enough to get some questions answered by Richard Davey the senior developer at Aardman Digital. Aardman have made some amazing games over the past couple of years. I decided I would briefly go though some of the interesting bits I got from Rich’s answers, and ponder how they will reflect on my project, be it now, or more on my evaluation and recommendations for continued work.
I asked Rich about the user input for games aimed at younger players, as mine uses’s a webcam as opposed to the usual keyboard and mouse. Rich noted that all games produced so far relied on keyboard and mouse input mostly because “it’s really hard to make a fun game using a microphone or webcam”. He also noted that at the intended age range, they focus on elements that will entertain the player (animation, sound effects) and making sure instructions are clear and easy to read.
This is an interesting one for me. The aim is clearly trying to make the game fun to play. I think I can achieve that, by using similar motions and ideas as the Eye Toy did for the Playstation, and the Wii has done in a similar age range to myself. Clearly there is a lot of emphases on the design factor and player rewards, which I don’t have time to include in my project, can write about extensively and research in my report.
I asked about libraries for developing games to speed up production. He mentioned there are a few AS3 libraries aimed at games, but they didn’t suit the type of games they make. They do use 3rd party libraries that perform specific tasks like TweenMax, the Adobe Corelibs and Box2D.
This is great news for me as it is exactly how I am developing my game, even down to using the TweenMax library. Excellent. Imight even loook into Box2d to improve my fog actions. Hmmm.
When I asked about a methodology for building their games, Rich noted that though there games have the same key features (tracking, highscores, site integration, mute buttons, etc), but each game is so different the main body is custom code, though they do rely on a standard framework to speed things up a little.
This doesn’t effect my game development, as I ‘ve been writing it all from scratch, though it is interesting to learn and will feature in my report.
Finally, I asked about the project cycle of game development. Without going into to much detail the rough cycle was:
- Brainstorming – idea/concepts
- If there is time we build a prototype, to check the concept works.
- Designers/Developers work in tandem until game reaches beta level.
- Internal testing until the game reaches alpha. During this period changes of often introduced.
- Bug testing forms part of the playtest stage.
This is pretty much (by chance more than anything) the development process I have followed with my game, though mostly because I am one man so have been working on design and development at the same time. Ofcorse my game wont even reach a beta stage, but that’s where il be heading by the time this project ends.
I must say a massive thank you to Rich for taking some time to answer my questions. He's been a real star.
MoSCoW Requirments
As I said in my last blog post I was going to try and work out some Requirements, and brake them down into MoSCoW or Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Would Have. Heres a first go at breaking them down, and no doubt I will refine them as time goes on.
Must Have
- Motion Tracking With Webcam
- User/Fog Collision detection and reaction
- Timer
- Percentage Counter
- Basic Visual Design
Should Have
- Start/Finish Pages
- Decent Looking Visual Design
- CO2 increase based on real Stats
Could Have
- Accurate Reactions on fog object collision (force you hit object informs how fast it travels away)
- Factory/Animal Animations
Would Have
I think for this project I'm only going to aim to get the Must Haves done. If only got 6 or so weeks left I I've not even started writing the report for it. This leaves me with two tasks left to complete. Getting the fog objects to float on randomly and the percentage counter working accurately.