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.