7th week of Big Game (Week 21)

GGC is getting close! After some more testing I felt I needed to do an overhaul of my map. I needed to point out paths more clearly and have landmarks so players know where to go. This has been the biggest problem for a long time and it's really hard to fix with the limited amount of time we have left. In hindsight I should have made the map a lot more flat so the skybox you be visible all the time, and have landmark objects that are very high. But it is as it is. So I am trying to do the best with the situation and remake my map a bit.

Firstly I have made all paths more clear, and the aliens have put up signs on the roads they traverse (a very nice coincident with players not finding the way). I did this by directing all paths forward, or at least not sideways or back. Before, some paths led to the extreme left or right. So players would get lost and start going towards the beginning of the map instead of the end. I use arrow signs a lot and large blocking objects to guide the player onwards.

Also I have added grass on my map! We got feedback that we didn't have much foreground detail so the grass helps with that alot. I also use the grass to creat paths, or rather, I don't use grass to create paths. (the paths have no grass, thats how you see they are paths)

I add paths that are harder to see, and you can still go pretty much wherever you want, but I'm trying to make the map so you actively have to schoose if you want to go off path, rathar than just being lost. Also reward players that go off path, so player might explore on their own.

Next week the map will probably be completely finished, lets hope people can find their way to the end on the beta!

6th Week of Big Game (Week 20)

This week I have been working on the map (surprise!). We have added physics on objects, so you can destroy/move/push objects by going through them. This works great because we can decorate maps a bit more, and have physics on objects. For example I have added physics on cave carts and some fences so you can rush through them. I will add them on all small objects that are decoration. So you keep the flow even if you run into some small objects lying around.

I also worked a bit on the GUI. Because some of us felt that it differed too much from our grahpical style. The old GUI felt like something from an iPhone or something similar. I did some tests with more hard edges and simpler shapes/colors. So it would fit the graphical style of the game. I'm not sure we have decided yet on how exactly the buttons should look, but I did some concepts.

The top one is the old button, the second one is more like our style, but too crowded for a button. They need to have a more clean background. The third button is the one closest to what we want. Something stylized and not so "manufactured".

I also worked on the score popup screen. I made the main graphic like rust from the characters texture. So it would fit the graphic style. But it felt a bit empty when it poped up, so I added some splattered circles behind for the extra effect. I chose circles because it would increase the contrast between the background and the main graphic. I chose dark colors because the text is white. In the beggining it was very few color variations and it was a bit dull. So I increased the strenght of colors and added some texture, to get more details in. I also changed the circle colors to complete black, so they wouldn't take too much attention away from the main graphic.

Soon GGC is here. Work Work! See you next time.

5th Week of Big Game (Week 19)

This week we had Alpha test, so I placed out boosts and sparks, so people could play the map and get score. I also kept working on the map. I changed the ramp in the cave, because the erlier version had many funky hit box issues. Also it didn't look good, people would crash into the ramp, so now I changed it to a quarter pipe along the wall.

I have also kept adding things on the map, I added a ramp and some pipes to fill out the area. Its the area between big pipes and caves, so I'll keep the area pretty simple to slow down the pace a bit before the big cave. It feels a bit empty right now so I'll try to think of more stuff to add to make it a bit more interesting. I'll try to make the area a bit more interesting graphical wise, so people who are playing have the low pace of gameplay combined with a bit more interesting graphics.

When we tested this map I notice that players don't ever go to the left in the beginning, so I need to make those paths a lot more clear, it is possible to go to the left. Perhaps I need to remove the larg hill to the left and add some others clearly visible paths.

Beta testing in two weeks! Work work work.

4th Week of Big Game (Week 18)

This week we worked hard to get ready for the testing session we had this friday. I decorated my map so it would look pretty for the testers. I had to be careful where I placed decorations, so people wouldn't ride into them. I also placed lights, this was a challange, because you need to lead the way with lights, but I also wanted to lit up cool stuff in the world, that ofcourse led to some problems, because players follows lights like moths to a flame. Some problems with the lightmap increased the light of some lights. Players would run into walls because (like the genius I am) I had placed superstrong lights in front of them. 

In some places of the map I had also placed some hills so you couldn't clearly see your next objective, so some people felt a bit lost. So I need to go through my map thoroughly and check so players always see an available path.

Some pics on the decorated map:

3rd Week of Big Game (Week 16)

This week has been a lot of deciding and testing. The maps we had from the beginning did not work out because the areas was to cramped with objects. So you could not steer the character properly. So we went through a load of testing last week. What would be fun to play on, what challanges on the levels should we have etc.

The first thing I did was to try and space out the maps, so you could acually steer in high speeds. Also we changed the maps to a smaller format, so we could each work on a map and finishit it faster. This time we use a model that is more like "here is the theme of the map, now try out some fun stuff and build from that". So perhaps we build some craters and test that, if it is fun, we expand and maybe do some hills that leds from the craters etc. Keeping in mind that we let the player choose different paths.

Here you can see the beginning of the map I'm woring on. The red lines represent viable paths through the map, it's a sandbox though, so in theory you can go pretty much exactly where you want. But since we place boosts these are the general paths viable on the first part of the map. You start to the right and you can clearly see what "cool" paths are presented to you. This map has a lot of open areas in the beginning because it's one of the first maps, so we let the player cruise around a bit more here and experiment with the controls. 

As you can see on this map objects are also very spaced. You have time to see and decid were you are going and in general the map is pretty open. 

First Week of Big Game (Week 14)

Big game project has begun! I am the producer and level designer of our team Freshly Squeezed. We are making an adventure game, you are a robot and you pick up boosts to gain momentum forward. You use this momentum to traverse big open tracks.

We want to create a feeling of flow. We think games like Mirrors Edge and Sonic have good movement gameplay, but your speed is always stopped because of enemies that feel out of place (Mirrors Edge) or enemies you don't have time to see (Sonic). We want to change that.

For more information on the game: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29qyva6DiC8Z21LdmlQMHlHcG8/edit?usp=sharing

In this first week me and Jonatan have designed levels and part of levels. We are trying to design the maps so you never break flow. We are trying to do this by never letting the player die or get stuck by removing the negative feedback, instead if you fail, you simply don't get the huge amounts of good feedback. We will have restart points where, with the press of a button, you can respawn. So if you fail to do that awesome thing on that huge ramp, the players themselfs will restart and try again to get that awesome highscore or continue on and hope they succeed with the next challange.

The biggest challange with this is to always give players many different paths, paths that are easy with minimal reward and paths that are harder but with greater high score and exploring rewards and create paths on all the places where we think the player might fall down or fail. So they never die, instead get pushed forward but with a lesser overall score. We always have to anticipate where the player might end up, and create a path that leads away from where they might end up, this will requier huge amounts of testing, to see how the players play.

I first sat down and sketched a ton of pictures of what challanges/themes could be fun, I did this for hand so I can't post pictures of it unfortunatly. I needed something to get me started, so eventually me and Jonathan decided on the best sketches and began putting together example levels in 3DS Max.

Here you can see some very early 3D sketches of 2 of the challanges on the first level. I sketched in 3DS Max after the paper sketches to get a theme for the challanges and a very basic general idea of how they would look i 3D space, hights etc. Also making sure they were the right size for our main character. Right now I'm testing the levels in Unity with the character so I know if they are fun. If they are not, we redo them.

I really haven't had that much time to do levels, I've had to do some producer work, which isn't that interesting to talk about.