#assignment 3

[a5green]

A3 Development Log 2

Today I figured out how to implement a leaderboard into the game!

To do this I added the player's score to an array when they lose all their lives. This array is a global variable to it stays saved when the scene changes.

A new text sprite is made for every element in the array that isn't 0 (which is the default value), and the score for each element in the array is displayed there.

I was aiming to try to get another linked array using structures for the player's name made as well so it would display their name next to the score, and then possibly delete the lower scores for their name and just keep the highest score. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to use structures in this way.

But I'm happy with how it turned out anyway and that we have a working leaderboard!

[cookie2351]

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow - Assignment 3 Update & Development

For the group assignment Katherine's game was chosen to be developed. The game is called "The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" and is a murder mystery game.

The game:

"The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" is a pixel-art style platformer game that brings a good mix of light heartedness and strategy to a murder mystery.

Navigate through the platforms to find the clues to the mystery while utilising your flashlight, newspaper and broom to swat off the ghosts that try to stop you in your tracks.

Be careful though, the more you encounter ghosts, the more spooked you get.

Can you solve the murder before you get too scared?

Group one page assignment submission:

The clues will be located in different rooms in the hotel and the player must avoid the ghosts or scare them away with their torch. Find the clues to solve the mystery and survive.

Assets I created to be implemented into the game:

[kelseys0311]

I decided to choose Henri Matisse, he tends to use a lot of bright and bold colors to create lively and energetic paintings. His work had a lot of bright reds, blues, and greens, arranged in simple yet striking patterns. Matisse’s colors express emotions and movement, making his art feel joyful and alive. His use of color isn’t just about decoration it creates a connection with the viewer, inviting them to feel happiness and warmth. Matisse’s work is a celebration of life, making his art both uplifting and easy to connect with.

[rclose01]

Some more excellent assignment 3 !

[lazylittledragon]

welcome to my crack au where everything was fine and nothing bad ever happened to anyone

[skylerch]

Assignment 3 Postmortem

Now that the whole project is complete, I’ve been reflecting on it, especially how it could be improved.

From the results of the playtest, the playtesters seemed to like the visual style, but I think there’s still room for improvement. The scenes could definitely use some environmental details like fluttering petals animation or more varied platform elements, and also decorative items in the background. These could make the scenes look richer. Improving character animations, such as making enemy movement or interactions like pulling levers could make the world more lively.

Though from the surveys the playtesters are generous and give our mechanics and puzzles generally high score, the complexity of the game was still one major problem. It’s simply too easy to be fun, even I felt that way. It was a bit frustrating to be honest, but then again I had some time to dwell on it and came up with some big plans for it. First, expanding the sizes of the maps may allow for more interconnected puzzles. Then we could work on the platformer aspect of this game, like introducing moving platforms, more varied enemy behaviors, timed switches that require the players to act fast, and things that could hurt the Shadow, such as light, perhaps? Because the playtesters have commented that it felt like they could just use the Shadow throughout to complete some levels. There isn’t enough incentive to switch back to the player. This could also be improved by some dual-character puzzles that would put both characters to work and operate two levers, etc. I also brainstormed some new level mechanics for future development, including gravity-inversion levels and levels that separate the Shadow and the player into two perspectives. I also feel like I should probably integrate the story into these levels, since currently there’s not much story in this game. I also thought of adding collectables, such as hidden mementos that contain fragments of the story, and obtaining all of them could unlock a secret ending. These changes could potentially strengthen the relationship between story and gameplay, improve player engagement and make the game more challenging and fun, though further testing is definitely required.

Aside from these, there are also a few necessary quality-of-life improvements, such as adding sound feedback for character death, making shadow portals two-way, creating a level selection menu and so on.

Overall, this project provided me with many valuable insights with game design and game development. Despite the challenges, building this game with my team has been an incredibly rewarding and inspiring experience. I’d say we collaborated well and it was an enjoyable project. Given the chance, I would like to keep working on it in the future since I personally like it a lot.

To conclude, this has been a fun unit that taught me a lot of things. It gave me some really helpful hands-on experience about developing games, working on a project with a team and playtesting. Thank you for reading my blogs!

[wheeledspy55]

Week 13:

Entropic Collapse: Assignment 3 - Postmortem

[surengdevelop]

Assignment 3 Playtest

During this week, the game was tested by 6 players for feedback. When testing there were several of features that has not been implemented yet such as the upgrade function and music. These were not informed to the playtesters before hand for better result.

Some of the key feed back received was

Lack of good music

Lack of upgrade

Not enough information

smooth gameplay

smooth control

easy to learn

This information helps with further iterations of the game and allows us to understand current strength and future improvement.

[isaachaworthgamesdesign]

Week 14b- Designing the Bosses- Belphegor

Finally we reached in development the last boss of the MVP to build- Belphegor. Given they are the last opponent in the game, we need ot make sure they bring on the pain.

Idea vs Design

During my designing of Bel, something rather strange happened- During the spriting process I hit a brick wall rather early. Not the most dastardly of stops but it was the problem that I couldn't get Bel's design to work with my spriting style. This lead to what Fullerton would describe as an "idea vs design". converting something free like an idea into something as detailed and planned out as a design. In the end, I needed to improvise and ended up changing Bel into a woman as it fitted how my spriting was ending up

What was in my head vs what I ended up with (art on left from Forgotten Realms Wiki https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Bel#Gallery)

Phase 1

The first phase he sits upon his throne behind a forcefield while countless turrets and minions attack.

Bel was hands-down the most complicated enemy I had to sprite up for the game, totalling to 42 images for her animations, plus an additional 27 images for her throne, turrets, barrier, attack projectiles, and terrain. This meant I had to make 69 sprites for this phase alone.

The following were the attacks I designed for Bel:

Kiss of Fire

Belphegor sends out a kiss that manifests into a blazing heart that explodes into a barrage of projectiles that home into the player.

The original plan for this attack was that Bel would hurl a firball at the player that would do the same thing but given the change in Bel's design, I decided to have a little fun and change the attack into a blazing explosive heart she smooches towards you.

Lava Raise

Bel raises her hand, causing three pillars of flame to erupt from the ground beneath the player in fixed intervals

This move was animated for but not implemented in the final version as Sage could not get it to work. Luckily enough she has enough in her kit that even without this move she still functions nicely as a boss.

Sword Swing

Bel swings her sword after a brief windup

Bel, much like other complex enemies, has a threat level, at the highest value of this threat level, Bel lets loose a great swing from her sword- resulting in a slash that covers a large portion of the screen.

Turrets

Hugging the right wall are four turrets that let out bullets towards the player. Destroying all four of these turrets disables Bel's force field and makes her vulnerable to attacks.

Retaliation

This attack occurs upon recovering from her stunned state which happens when enough turrets are destroyed. In this attack, she performed the slash attack again and respawns all slain turrets.

Phase 2?

Unfortunately for development, me and the team realized that there wouldn't be enough time to implement Bel in with both phases. Given they won't make it into the game, here's one animation I had for it

[jordan-glover--game-design]

Week 13:

Assignment 3 Post Mortem:

This assignment was started by picking one game individually that we had created throughout the semester for each group member (4) then breaking it down into just one game where we will then start to enhance the game to a standard where the player should be able to complete the game and enjoy the visuals and overall design of this game. We decided to use my asteroids game which was a simple survival asteroids game while also protecting a planet, which we collectively decided to change into a game with multiple levels and also include an upgrade system. We split the work in 3 ways, we had myself and one other member working on the game itself, one on the documentation and our last member was working on the visual aspects drawing our assets. During the development of the game a group member worked on improving the game collaborating with me on what to improve and what would be good to add then we relayed that to the group and decided if that would be good to add. Then we also decided that the visuals we had were pretty bad so one of our 4 group members started designing a different UI for the game which unfortunately was not implemented before we had to playtest the game for our 5 reviews of the game. Which leads to the playtesting, which we received a lot of feedback from which consisted of only a small amount of actual game bugs but was mostly based on the difficulty of the game and the UI itself. 

If I had a chance to redesign my game I would first add more levels to spread the difficulty curve across as I believe this would be the best solution for the difficulty problem that we had during the playtesting phase of the game. Next I would have implemented the updated UI before the playtesting happened to see if our assets would have been good in the eyes of the play testers. Following this redesign I would then implement more upgrades that can be bought as well as a lock on some upgrades for example you would have to get past level 5 before you can buy the ability.

[kantokutot]

Assignment 3 Postmortem

During the development of Zombo-Alpha: Deathrun—a game combining vehicular combat and zombie survival—I gained invaluable experience in teamwork and game design. As emphasized by Fullerton (2018) in Game Design Workshop, we adopted a playcentric approach, continuously refining the game through iterative testing and player feedback. This process deepened my understanding of player-driven development and its critical role in creating engaging experiences.

Over several weeks of collaboration, our team established an efficient workflow. Programmers focused on optimizing vehicle physics and combat mechanics, artists crafted detailed zombie designs and atmospheric environments, and designers fine-tuned progression systems and difficulty scaling. This structured division of labor highlighted how each team member's expertise contributes to a successful project. Notably, our weekly playtesting sessions revealed crucial design insights, such as the unnatural feel of vehicle controls and unclear upgrade mechanics.

This project not only strengthened my technical skills but also demonstrated how theory translates into practice. Fullerton’s principles—rapid prototyping and player-centric design—were validated throughout our development cycle. I look forward to further refining this game and hope to collaborate with this talented team again in the future.

Reference: Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. ProQuest Ebook. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/reader.action?docID=5477698

[a5green]

A3 Development Log 1

We have delegated tasks to each team member for Dragon Champions! We've sorted each task in priority levels from high priority to low.

There are 4 tasks for me to do!

These tasks are:

UI indicating end of power cooldown: High

Fix blast radius (hitboxes): Medium

Make cooldown of blast for water dragon reduces and test for balance: Medium

Storing scores to display on leaderboard: Low

So far I have completed the first task which has the highest priority!

To do this I made a temporary sprite that is a flame. This is the UI for the power cooldown. When the player uses their power, the flame disappears, and as the power regenerates, the flame gets bigger and bigger until it is the normal size again which shows when the player can use their power again.

The cooldown UI regeneration is different for each dragon so I adjusted the rate at which the flame UI grows for each dragon.

[cookie2351]

Assignment 3 Playtesting and Early Post Mortem

"The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow" gameplay testing:

We went into this game project with a large scope. The aim of the game was to solve the mystery by finding clues throughout the game while fighting off ghosts and navigating the puzzles of the hotel rooms. The players aim was to collect all the clues to reveal and then fight off the cause of the mystery. Or if they failed along the way and got too scared, they would run away.

As can be seen in the gameplay footage, the game incorporates a scare meter in the top left that fills up when ghost come into contact with the player. The player also has a torch battery that if it runs out leaves the player very vunerable to the ghosts, so they have to be careful with usage. There are light switches in the rooms that once turned on scares the ghosts away and allows the player to save their precious torch battery.

As the scope of our game was so big, there were some cuts made that we aimed to implement.

At this stage though the game is in a playable state!

To be added are the art assets as furniture decorations and objects. Also, the wooden and stone tile sprites to fit more with a hotel aesthetic.

With such a short time to create a viable project and such a large scope we are happy with our ability to produce a working game, although far from its original aim. We had grand ideas for the level design and decorations and player obstacles but just didn't get to the stage of development to implement them.

[bernie3356]

Assignment 3 - Progress

Our team has redefined the original idea and implemented our project as seen in our part A submission.

Short summary update:

X statement: Shadowy Friend is a 2D puzzle platformer about swapping places with your best friend, Shadow, to get through obstacles in a lost world.

In this game, you play as a silent wanderer in a forgotten space. Leave a Shadow where you stand, switch between the two player characters and swap locations with the Shadow to solve spatial puzzles, avoid dangers, and see where your journey leads.

This game’s target demographics are for players who enjoy platformer games with simple controls and puzzle lovers who like smart mechanics.

Slightly adjusted one page and one sheet:

Therefore, our group (Group 17) has structured our MVP and task allocations for each group member. We outlined a game development/playtesting timeline to ensure our team aims to meet set deadlines.

[rclose01]

more great photo work for A3!

[igb120-weekly-update]

Week 13 Assignment 3 Postmortem & Submission

Overall, for the creation of 'Dark Ascent' I would have like to have seen more collaboration as a group, regardless, If I were to work on the game more or did not have an expected deadline for the games submission, I would have liked to add more story elements, such as a cutscene that shows the player their goal at the start of the game, however I am happy with the current state of 'Dark Ascent' as it is my first fleshed out game on a new game engine.