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Assessment 3 postmortem

Overall our finished game does have room for improvement however we do believe that we have iterated the game thoroughly and come up with a final game that it fun and intense. When reflecting back on the design process I was in charge of the combo meter design. After finishing the design I realised that there was room for improvement as I heard about "natural mapping" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p265) from the book which is the "visualize the information" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p265) such as health bars and combo meters. The visualisation is meant to make the information that the user needs to take a lot easier. This is where I then designed the combo meter to get redder as the player's combo gets higher. I saw how in the book there is an example of Quake's health bar which has a face that gets injured the lower it is and applied the same concept to my design by having certain combo ranges that changes the colour of the combo number.

Looking back at the developed prototype I would have changed the prototyping process by "prototyping aesthetics" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p244) which is mentioned in the readings. The main method of prototyping aesthetics that I would have used is concept art which "consists of paintings or sketches of characters and environments, exploring potential looks, palettes, and styles for the visual aesthetics" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p244). With this I would have been able to make concept art that fits into the aesthetic theme of our game being dark, hyperviolent and dystopian. I would have also been able to develop a colour pallet that would match the dark theme of the game being red, black and orange to represent darkness and explosions which are the main visuals during gameplay.

A way that I would've changed the design of the prototype would be to have developed a better premise for the game which "which gives context to the formal elements" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p45). This would have given players a better sense of what to do and implied a bit more about how some of the mechanics surrounding the game works. Following the book I would have though of a premise that would give context as to why the player should spin into and destroy other cars. This can be supported by the statement in the book where "The base-level effect of the premise is to make it easier for players to contextualize their choices" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p45). This mean I simply need to provide a premise where the player is given context as to why they need to spin into cars.

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Assessment 3 iteration

After starting to playtest our game we have made many changes according to feedback. We have now added explanations to different enemy types so that the player is no longer confused when they encounter new enemies and know how to defeat them. This was because many of the players were confused on how to defeat new enemy traffic when they encountered them. Another change we made to the game was we visually made the shielded car a bit clearer. We changed the sprite to have very obvious spikes on the side of them as player's would frequently comment that they didn't see the shield on the sides of the car. With this not only does the shielded side of the car become more obvious but they were also more visually appealing and grabbed the players attention because of the spikey sprite looking threatening.

We have also needed to tweak some values in our game such as the overheat meter as it didn't increase fast enough for play testers to die to and play testers would just ignore it as they didn't understand it. Now that the meter increases faster players pay attention to it and this also introduces challenge to the game because now players need to manage their overheat bar. Playtester's also commented that they wanted an explanation for the overheat meter instead of just having an implication of how it works so our main task now is to create an explanation on how the overheat system works

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Outerwilds and fun

Outerwilds is a sort of puzzle space exploration game where the player is repeating the same 22 minutes over and over until they uncover the big "mystery" of the game. The main focus of this discussion is why is this game fun? The main description of fun in exploration can be described as "The act of discovering something is magical. But creating that sense of trepidation when turning a new corner, anticipation when you think you might have found something, fear of getting lost, and exhilaration of discovery is a difficult task" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p353).

I think Outerwilds matches this concept of fun in exploration perfectly as it has many moments where the player discovers new things about their world which sparks emotion. An example of the player experiencing trepidation while exploring is on a specific planet the player is forced into a black hole as the floor under them collapses. Obviously the player feels dread for the duration of the fall to their demise only to find that the black hole teleports them to a different location in space. The discovery part of this is that the player now knows that the black hole teleports them to an area that they might need to explore later instead of thinking that it kills them. These sort of player experiences that are scattered across the Outerwilds makes the game fun for a player by giving the player exploration opportunities that provide them valuable information.

(Mobius. (2018). BRITTLE HOLLOW - VISUAL EFFECTS (VFX). [Blackhole]. Image can be accessed at https://www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/news/brittle-hollow-visual effects-vfx)

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Assignment 3 Playtesting

We performed our first playtest with a user and got quite a large amount of feedback that we can consider. Firstly our play tester mentioned that the game was too easy and they felt bored playing it. With this I reflected back on "exercising difficult skills" written in the book to make the more challenging and mastering skills is needed to play. But to do this we needed to "Presenting your players with the opportunity to learn difficult skills" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p350) which lead to us making the enemies a bit more difficult which in turn would make it harder to master the skill of avoiding and destroying them. With these changes the players will be able to learn how to counter enemy types and develop a method to destroy special enemies that move fast which leads to a fun experience for the player.

Another thing that we wanted to improve upon was the satisfaction of destroying vehicles as the play tester mentioned that they were just satisfied with the feeling of destroying cars. This relates heavily to the fun factor of the game as "Giving players the opportunities to both build and destroy provides different types of fun, both of which can make your game successful." (T. Fullerton, 2018, p354) and with this we have lead to the explosion effect being much bigger when destroying objects making the player feel more satisfied with the destruction they are causing.

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Assignment 3 Development progress post

Now that we have put together a team and gotten familiar with each other we have gotten to work developing the assessment 3 part A report. As per the week 10 lecture slides we have delegated a playtesting role to each member of our team. These roles being 2 note takers, one for in game events and user behaviour while the other takes notes on user comments. We also have a playtest session manager role who is in charge of managing the playtest session and briefing the play tester. In addition to playtest planning we have also taken inspiration from the playtesting stages diagram shown below.

(T. Fullerton, 2018, p281)

We have now also started developing a playtesting timeline to plan out our iterative development cycle of our prototype to fulfil the MVP description in our report. We have all shared our ideas and brainstormed for different mechanics and elements to add to the game as well as talked about the play and difficulty. After taking a look as a team at how we can make our game more engaging through challenge. After a while we concluded that we wanted to make our game more challenging by adding a new "element of flow" that would disrupt the player's "Concentration of the task at hand" (T. Fullerton, 2018, p100) as a way to add challenge to the game. This is where we then introduced the combo and overheat meter. When the player moved the overheat meter would fill so the player had to conserve their movements and in addition to that the combo meter would increase as long as you kept moving and hitting cars which in turn would reward the player with more points. Now the player had to focus on managing their overheat meter whilst maintaining their combo which creates more elements that the player needs to concentrate on adding better flow to our game through difficulty.

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Assessment 3 Group formation post

I have made a group for assessment 3 consisting of 3 other members all from my tutorial. We all showed each other our most developed games and then had a sort of vote to find out whose game we will be extending. We came to the conclusion that its best that we go with one of the group member's racing game. The game actually had been designed to not have any racing but rather it was a sort of arcade style destructive derby game where the player can spin their car around on the road to hit other cars scoring points. We all had a good look at it and decided that it was a good game to continue forward with. We also shared our expertise, degrees, majors and other details so that we got familiar with each other and our backgrounds. After this we started getting to work and setting up a medium to communicate through which was discord so that we could communicate to each other effectively. After this we also set up a google doc page for our collaboration on the assessment playtest report. Lastly we also set up a GitHub repository so that we could all work on development and iterate the game prototype. With my team I'm confident that we can create a fun and very enjoyable game and go through the process to get there with ease.

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Lets Race! (Racing game) Post Mortem

Looking at the week 6 lecture slides I learnt about "competition for resources" and how players can compete for resources. I also learnt how sometimes a players greed can starve a team of resources hence leading to competition of said resources. When considering this mechanic I though of a gameplay scenario where 2 players were competing against each other to gather resource which led me to make the health system in this game where players have to collect health on the road and this in turn denies the opposition from getting lives

I would change how I developed the prototype by storing a new set of numbers in the array based on the different numbers already installed in the array to allow for more lanes in the game to be used allowing for more player movement. I would also be able to possibly make 2 different roads, 1 for each player to drive on with the same gameplay aspects which can introduce a new game mode

If there was something that I could change I would like to change a few aspects such as have more lanes to the road and also make better sprites for the cars

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Assessment 2 Final

For assessment 2 I am happy with the final designs for the one sheet and one page. For the one sheet I initially didn't have enough white space which led me to then compact the text and cut down on image sizes to make room. I believe that I covered all the bases of the criteria that I can for the one sheet as I made sure to indicate all of the game elements that within the screenshots of the game and have an explanation of their purpose. I also explained the objective of the game and the main mechanic and how its meant to be used. I also included a control scheme and a description of the platforms and genre that this game belongs to.

For the one sheet I made sure to give a simple and clear image of the game that would catch an audiences attention whilst very shallowly showing what the game would be like. I developed a good razor that well describes the gameplay and objective of the game. I also developed a good theme introduction so that the audience understand the sort of theme and genre that this game will correlate to. I had a lot of help from reading page 182 of Tracy Fullerton's game design book. I also had fun with my artistic side making the backgrounds to the one sheet, not to be confused with the game screen shots background.

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Lets race! development post

While creating "Lets race!" I achieved developing a 2 player PVP game with PVE aspects where the players must survive on a road whilst not losing all their health

I learnt how to display variables such as lives in a visually appealing way. In this case it was in the form of the heart bar that displays each players life.

An inspiration for me to add the lives mechanic that would determine which player would win was derived from the space invaders game which is shown in Tracy Fullerton's book on page 81. The life system is a great management of resource elements in a game which can determine sometimes how riskily a player will play. This in turn can also affect the decisions that they make to take more or less risks because the player knows that they have another life and will not end their game.

(Image from Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition, T. Fullerton, 2018, p.81)

When thinking about extending on the racing game made in the tutorials I had remembered the topic of "mixing PVP and PVE" in the week 6 lecture slides which lead me to think of a way where the players aren't directly fighting each other but rather work against PVE aspects to win against the other. This resulting in coming up with idea of a game where the players had to out last the other player against PVE enemies like traffic.

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Lets Race! elevator pitch

● Title of Game

Lets Race!

● Racer Elevator pitch (one paragraph, shorter is better)

Lets Race! is a multiplayer game where 2 players must play a game of highway survival, dodging cars and collecting lives so that they can last longer. Each player is given 3 lives and must dodge cars otherwise they will lose a life or their 3 maximum lives. The audience for this game would be players looking for a multiplayer game where the competition is the other player creating a competitive aspect. ● Game Controls Diagram (how it’s played)

● 3 Unique Selling Points

Multiplayer

Challenging

Fun for the family

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SpaceXplore (Asteroids) Post Mortem

When trying to think of ideas to add uniqueness to my game I utilised conceptualization to come up with ideas that came from inspiration to add to my game. When it came to specifically brain storming for ideas I used the best practice of brainstorming in the Game Design Workshop which stated "when you sit down to brainstorm, articulate the challenge for the session" (T, Fullterton, 2018, p.172). I applied this to my brainstorming session as the challenge for mine was to think of game mechanics that could feasibly be introduced to add uniqueness and depth to my game. This is when I then came up with the idea that instead of having a fixed camera on the player, the camera should move with the player around an open world which the player can explore whilst dodging and shooting asteroids. I then also came up with the idea to introduce space warps to planets which can vary in difficulty and reward the player.

When developing the prototype I had wished I considered the "4 Lazzaro's keys to fun in player experience" from the week 5 lecture slides. If I had considered the keys to player experience I could have had a clearer vision for what type of player experience that I was aiming for. If I had considered this I would have been able to design the game towards one of the experiences and could have easily brain stored ideas as I would have a bit more of a target in mind for what to build.

Looking back at the prototype I would have changed it by adding in long term macro-choices which would encourage thought to go into decisions and make decisions feel unique for the player as well as meaningful. I would have achieved this by making the powerups a decision typed advancement where the player is given the option of different powerups at once and they can only choose one. This also follows the well-designed decision criteria mentioned in the week 5 class slides being a decision that has an up and downside. The upside being that you chose the best power up in your opinion but the downside being that the other power up will never be seen again and might have been useful in a different scenario.

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Titan Fall 2 mechanic disscussion

An interesting mechanic that I like from a game is titan fall 2’s time travel mechanic where the player retains their position whilst travelling through time. This basically in short means that the player can transition between levels whilst staying in the same position, of course this means that the levels need to somewhat be structured the same as otherwise it would just be the player teleporting between 2 levels not keeping their position. Titan fall 2 does this by introducing a tool allowing the player to go through time instantaneously going back and forward through the same area but in different times. This mechanic adds to the moment-to-moment gameplay on top of moving and shooting enemies which adds new chances for players to experiment and explore. Another interesting aspect of this mechanic is how rules are applied upon it as well. One of the main rules for this mechanic is that the player cannot just repeatedly change levels in a short amount of time. The reason why this rule exists is to stop players from constantly changing levels to avoid damage. The entertainment that comes out of this mechanic is from changing level to traverse the environment and get past obstacles by changing levels. This can also give the game a tactical immersion aspect as the player is presented with a mind challenging platforming puzzle where they need to switch levels whilst using the games parkour movement system. This encourages the player to focus hard and to be more immersed and “in the zone” when playing these levels using this mechanic.

(Wikipedia. (2024). Effect and Cause. [TitanFall2 time travel mechanic]. Image can be accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_and_Cause)

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SpaceXplore (Asteroids) Development Post

When further developing my asteroids game in Gdevelop I wanted to be able to achieve successfully using multiple different scenes, used as new levels for the player to explore and survive in. I also wanted to achieve a life system that would be able to go up and down in value depending on what happens in the game.

Throughout developing this game, I learnt how to set the center of sprites which can help me very much for animation and cursor based movement. I also learnt extensively about coordinates and positions when designing a game through having to make asteroids spawn at different distances from the player depending on difficulty and ensuring that they do not spawn on top of the player.

Whilst developing my asteroids game I took into consideration what kinds of rules would be applied and how the player would learn them. My first introduced rule in the game is that once the player’s lives reaches 0 the game must end. At first I was sure that the rule didn't need to be explained and that it was an implied rule but after remembering that "In digital games" rules "can be explained in the manual or they can be implicit in the program itself." (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.76) I realised that the a naïve user may not be able to pick up on the life system especially since the UI element for displaying a number. Hence why I then made a small description in the top left of my game explaining the life system as the book states that this is one of the ways to introduce a rule to a player. When looking back at the lectures about decision systems and how "A well-designed decision will have both an upside & a downside" (QUT IGB120 Lecture slides, 2024, Slide 28) it inspired me to create the new level that the player has the decision to go to which results in a planet with more asteroids spawning being the upside and downside. This is because more asteroids enable for more points to be obtained but also there is more risk of being hit by an asteroid and losing a life.

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SpaceXplore Asteroids elevator pitch

● Title of Game

SpaceXplore

● Elevator pitch (one paragraph, shorter is better) SpaceXplore is an asteroids style game with a difference which lets players explore a map and gain items whilst keeping within the asteroids game mechanics and rules. The player takes the role of a space ship which needs to explore space and travel to collect items and powerups which it needs to survive later levels. The camera will stay centered on the player whilst they move around which will allow for a much bigger map that the player can explore.

● Game Controls Diagram (how it’s played)

● 3 Unique Selling Points

Space themed

Open world

Classic game with a modern difference

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SwitchR Platformer Postmortem

When thinking about what my platformer game should be I was quite inspired by the "Types of Players" sections of Fullerton's book which describes the sorts of gamers that are the main audience for certain game designs. "The explorer" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.104) stood out to me as the type of player that I want playing my game so I designed the game with an escape and exploration objective in mind hence the exit door and needing to move to different locations to reach the door. Seeing as I was designing the game for "the explorer" type player I then made the initial level larger with more obstacles off camera for the player to reach.

The prototype that I developed was sufficient but when reflecting back on it I would have changed the control scheme as "one of the key tasks in designing any digital game is developing good, intuitive controls" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.254). Looking back on how the controls were implemented there were certainly better key mappings that I could have done such and play testers gave feedback as such on the controls needing to be a bit more intuitive. From this I took the description of intuitive controls from within the book and fixed my controls for a more intuitive style. This was done by changing the level change key to a singular key and remapping the arrow keys to A and D

Reflecting back on the design of the prototype, I would have changed the amount of details and sprites that were used within the platform scenes. The world building in my platformer wasn't really strong as there was a lack of real theme and detail to the environment levels and this is a problem in my games design as good world building "keeps players interested over long periods of time" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.117). Reflecting on my game after reading this made me realise that I needed to keep player's interests by adding more theme to the game's background and visuals. This could've been easily resolved if I had just added some more detailed assets into the game and also incorporated some common themes to sprites.

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SwitchR (platformer) development post

For this platformer the seed for mechanics was the switching of environments which therefore changes the locations of platforms. I've managed to implement this mechanic into my platformer and add a functioning scoring system. During developing this platformer I learned that global variables and object variables matter deeply and enable for games to be very complex. There are many variables that I used to develop this game such as "score" to keep track of player score and "current world" to determine which world the player should be changing to. A player interaction pattern is the interactions between environments, players and other game related objects during gameplay. Tracy Fullerton, in her book describes many different interaction patterns for games and when thinking of my platformer I chose "single player vs game" as it is when "a game structure in which a single-player competes against a game system" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.59) which matches my concept for this platformer. After reading the section on single-player vs game type structure I had a clear view on what a game designed around this concept should be and designed accordingly to the book. I then ofcourse made made my game a platformer where the player must traverse difficult platforms. This is because the challenge of the game is to jump and move on platforms to the objective, the challenge itself is the game's system which you can make mistakes in. Another key component that I considered during development was objectives. After reading about objectives I decided that the best objective to suit the game would be escape which then lead to a door being in the game which the player can escape from after reaching it. I came up with the idea of a door as an escape objective from Tracy's description of "Rescue or escape" objectives being "to get defined unit or units to safety" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.69) and the door would be the best way to express safety. Reading the book inspired my decision to create an escape objective in the form for a door to evoke a sense of safety for the player. Much of the readings have helped me with designing and making games as I often think when developing about the moment to moment gameplay that the player will experience and whether its suitable.

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SwitchR (Platformer) playtest insights

After having initial play testers interact with the digital prototype of my playformer SwitchR I have gained many insights to what makes the game enjoyable and key mechanics that could be fixed. According to the Gamequest book there are "4 different areas of investigation for digital prototyping" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.241) and of those 4 areas I chose the mechanics area as I believe that its the main interest for my platformer. This was after reading all 4 sections of playtesting and taking the time to see which area from the book would best suit my digital prototype. From getting playtesting feedback I learnt that the control scheme is inconvenient as to change worlds the player must press the PageUP and PageDOWN keys. It turns out that a better way to control world change was if these 2 keys to change to individual worlds were just binded to one key meaning all the player had to do was press a singular key to switch back and forth from worlds easier. This gave me valuable insight into "prototyping for game feel" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.257) to ensure that the player could enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay which was platforming to the door objective whilst switching worlds. After reading the section on prototyping for game feel I incorporated it into designing my game as I combined my knowledge gained from this section with the playtest feedback to make controls better. I am also happy that the playertest's proved that there was no need for an explanation on how to play. The players instantly understood that the system included changing worlds and a coin collection score whilst the content was platforms, player, door and coin. Tracy Fullerton mentions in her book that "Conflict challenges the players, creating tension as they work to resolve problems and varying levels of achievement and frustration" (T.Fullerton, 2018, p.39). When designing the levels for SwitchR I considered this and ensured that the platforming was challenging but not to the point of over frustration following the guidelines the book had set for a good experience. This proved to have payed off as play testers were happy with the challenge and difficulty of platforming.

From this playtest I am sure to iterate my game to make it a better experience for the player