Semester 2 Week 2 Studio Outline

During Week 2, during one of my studio classes, I had been lead to trello as an interesting design tool for working out the game’s timeline, for where and when puzzles, events and story elements happen. By then, I had also worked out a sort of starting level, stemming of the idea that the plot would be secret agents vs terrorists. This level would involve the player entering a secret base, learning how the game works going in, only to have to head out with the same puzzles but with a time limit. I gave this idea to the team during my second studio class, where we had a new member join. As such, we explained our ides for the game, working out that we had two main ideas for the game, Spy vs Terrorists and Corporate Espionage. Both, however, had the same style and gameplay options, as such I was left to sort of come up with the overall story and characters.

We had settled with the idea of at least having the player and their side dressed in suits and the like, but the enemies were allot vaguer of an idea. I was looking at the idea of the enemies being sort of technologically advanced, but less well dressed. My main idea being that of one of the terrorists skins in Counter Strike. We discussed various other ideas for the enemies, however we didn’t get much further than that.

Gameplay wise we were looking at games such as The Legend of Zelda, Perfect Dark, Golden Eye and Metal Gear. This both helped with the themes and controls, such as the third person view from Zelda, the limited combat of Perfect Dark and Golden Eye and the stealth gameplay of Metal Gear. 

Semester 2 Week 1 Studio Outline

Week one I was able to secure my spot in a group we eventually called Exciting Group Title, as they were looking for a designer that could do story, level design and other conceptual tasks while still understanding Unity. As the other members in my group had little idea of what game they should do, I decided to bring up a game idea I had been sitting on for quite a while. 

This game was originally conceived as a 3D Beat-em up with a combat system involving using three different kinds of weapons. However, we quickly realised that we could not build such a combat system, nor use the story I had created for it mostly due to time constraints. As such, we decided to take the world and elements of the story to come up with sort of a proof of concept game. 

We had narrowed it down to an action-adventure game with a puzzle focus rather than a combat focus. We settled with the theme of secret spies and espionage, allowing us to get a clear idea of what the game could be. As such I went and attempted to come up with an overall plot of the game. While doing this, I also looked into some spy gadgets and spy characters to get an idea how the game could look. 

Scott V Goth Contributions part 8

So once everything was completed, all that was left to do was putting all the assets together. Here were the results of the team's labor:

Level 1 worked fine, the only problem being the players scale. The goals I set out to achieve in this level worked as intended. However the art seemed pretty bare for the most part in this level.

Level 2 took allot longer to develop, but is one of the neater looking levels. Platforms as well as the scale of the player had to be changed to accommodate for controls, but overall the level turned out to be one of the best functionally. Artwise everything worked as intended, but it did make clear that the background art didn't really fit the project perfectly.

Level 3 took allot of work to get right, with allot of platforms resized, and even then the level wasnt perfect, however the goals set out by the level were achieved. Art wise it has the same issues as the last level. The camera was the main issue, as the player had to be scaled down, the camera ended up making one of the jumps incredibly difficult, and there was unable to be fixed in time.

Level 3 was a much simpler level, with only modifications to the player and some of the platforms' length being required. It was also the quickest one to set up the art in.

Finally the boss level was hardly changed from its demo version. Platforms were attempted to be added to the battle area, but they caused issues with the A.I. so they were removed. Art wise its rather unfortunate the player cant see it all, because its probably the best looking level of them all in my opinion. Probably the only issue on that front is the lack of an entrance.

And this marks the end of the Scott V Goth project and my contributions too it. All I had to do from here was make sure the game worked and upload it....this took longer than expected because of problems with source tree, but it all turned out well in the end.

Scott V Goth Contributions part 7

After making all the levels my next job was creating the background art for them. Being fairly mediocre at art, this proved difficult, but I was able to complete this task. All of these textures were inspired by the Castlevania series, and i used many techniques for the pixel art from those games. Here is all the images I made for the levels:

These two blocks were used for inside the castle as a tileset. I couldn't seem to get the colours right for the project so this ended up being the best I could do in the timeframe given

 This ended up being the door for the levels, I had originally had it planned as the background but It worked allot better as a door. Unfortunately this prooved to look out of place with the rest of the art.

 These blocks were used as part of the background of the castles in areas the player was not ment to access. They were initially planned to be used as a tileset, but I ended up just using one block per level as it looked nicer and required less effort. They did seem to look like minecraft blocks though...

 This was used as the dirt of level 1. 

 This was used as the texture of the disappearing platforms as well as the gate walls for level 1. This was actually a modified and compressed version of the dirt texture.

 These set of blocks made up the green house towers of the boss floor. This took the most work as i had to make them all work together, but they turned out to be my favorite part of the art side of things.

 This was the moving platform texture.

 This was the platform texture.

 This  here is the spikes, made to look like razor blades by request of Michael. I made these to connect together on the ends, creating a cool effect when used in unity,

Finally, these made up level 1's obstacles. They look like tombstones to give the idea that level 1 is a graveyard outside of the castle..I enjoyed making these, and they turned out to be quite simple both in design and in production. The main problem with most of this art was a lack of both scale in comparison to each other, the characters and the levels as well as the fact that they didn't really fit together art style wise, including clashing with the characters. This was mostly because of my lack of art skills.

Scott V Goth Contributions part 6

Once I finished all the sketches and modified them to work with each other with input from my teammates, mostly small adjustments, I created the levels in unity, initially without the platform mechanics working, however I soon applied them after finishing each of the levels. Here are each of the levels in unity:

Level 2: Getting the moving platforms to work here was not difficult thanks to a particular video walking me through the process of making them. I kept the hidden room with functional walk-through wall incase we did add the collectables, but this ended up simply being an enemy store room.

 Level 3: Here I introduced disappearing platforms. This wasn't so easy. I looked up many tutorials and code suggestions, but none of them seemed to work. I eventually asked Josh to fix up the code, with himself having trouble, but eventually the problems was fixed and the platforms worked, and quite well.

 Level 4: This one had various issues when tested, but until then the level was easy to build and quick doing so. The various rooms looked perfect and was quite easy to set up. I just really liked making this level.

A common problem with all of these levels however, is that I used no scale on them just like the tutorial level and unlike the boss level. This would prove problematic as we had to adjust the player character to the level because adjusting the level would take too long, and this lead to gameplay feeling slightly different between levels.

Scott V Goth Contributions part 5

After inputting the first level i continued to work on levels. For the rest of the levels I would draw all of them on paper, get some ideas and confirmation from the rest of the group before inputting them into unity. Here are the sketches:

Level 2 sketch: Here I wanted to introduce multiple paths, and idea given by Michael, as well as moving platforms. A treasure room was added, as we had an idea for collectables, however this idea never made it to the final project.

Level 3 sketch:Here we came up with the idea for disappearing platforms. We also further pushed the multiple paths idea and had a large bed of spikes to push the disappearing platform idea. A further push for enemies was put for this level.

 A sketch of the building plan that would be used as a guide for level entrances and exits created by Michael:

 Level 4: By now the base ideas were settled and I made this level to focus on the enemies more than anything, with less platforming difficulty. Multiple rooms were used in this level each giving a sense of symmetry to the level. We had switched around the level designs for the left rooms here, and this idea transferred to the final version.

Most of these designs were changed as I put them into unity, mostly through the realisation of certain platform sizes and other scale related aspects, but these idea proved helpful for the final design.

Scott V Goth Contributions part 4

After getting the demo down we decided to focus on multiple levels rather than just a boss fight. As such I chose to do level design. I looked into good level design and focused of mario and shovel knight's first levels for the first level, the idea that it would teach all the basics of controls before pushing the game further. I drew down a design and instantly went into making the level in unity using base 3D blocks. This was the result:

The focus of this level was to get the player to learn the basics of jumping. Enemies would also be added to introduce them as threats. The first 3 obstacles make the player jump, but pose no threat. The 4th obstacle was to make the player jump and avoid the pit of spikes, teaching them to avoid spikes without actually falling to them. the next pit planned to have one of the first enemies in front of it to teach the player to not only avoid the spikes but avoid the enemy by placing the idea of spikes and enemies = death. If the player had learned the attacks by then, it can be eliminated, but otherwise the rest of the level will have more enemies for the player to eventually learn to attack. The first platform is then placed above a pit to teach the player that platforms are safe. They have to jump to avoid the pit so they will step on the platform. the next few platforms are placed to reinforce this. The problem with me making the stage is that I did not think to scale this stage like I did for the boss stage, and this would proved a common problem with the other stages and eventually effect gameplay, and this was never fully fixed.

Scott V Goth Contributions part 3

Finally it was down to creating the level. After some small discussion about the boss I decided the level should not have platforms, but simply a limited space for the player and boss to run around in. At first the size of the level was hard to determine, so I had some versions scrapped (I never screenshotted them so they could not be shown here) but eventually the main character art was created, as well as some attack animations, meaning I could use those as a guide for creating the level. The idea for the level is that it would have a large space for the player and boss to fight in with two towers on the end to limit combat space. One of these towers would act as a training room for the player to get used to the controls before entering the battle area. The result of my work was this:

Initially the idea was to have a door open up by the player opening it after learning the controls, however this seemed too difficult for our programmer and so this was not implemented in the test version, which was honestly disappointing. My last task before the test version was complete was putting on the finishing touches. Our programmer had "finished" his work, so I fiddled around with the values to make the gameplay feel as could as I could get it to be. I had also added some extra background to the towers by using some art I had lying about for RPG maker, but it did not turn out great. Unfortunately I was in a rush at that point so I had left it at that. The final result looked as such:

And as such the test project was ready for action!

Scott V Goth Contributions Part 2

After completing the GDD and presenting it, our group decided to start by creating a boss level rather than a full platform level. I was initially sent to simply gather ideas for the level and create the base of the game for further development, however after two of our group members had announced they were leaving, I became much more involved in the project as a whole. My task then included creating the level itself, including a background, so that our programmer can put the art and level together. As such, I started with the background, which is the focus of this post. The idea for the boss fight is that it would be on a rooftop, as such I wanted a background of a cloudy sky, as if the battle was taking place in the clouds. I made this to start off with:

This was clearly not good enough, however it did provide a good base for what I was looking for. Using the smudge tool, I was able to change this into a much better image by removing the guide lines and giving a more cloudy effect to the image. The result can be seen here:

This was allot better, but I felt it didn't really match the pixel art style I was going for. A simple Pixelise filter changed this into what can be seen below:

This was a subtle change though and did not seem to change much. As such I showed these to my remaining team members and asked for their opinions. It was decided then that we would use the second version, seeing as it was the most cloud like, but it was too uniform to be worth using. As such, i went back and applied more of the smudge tool, this time removing the entirety of the guide lines to give the clouds different sizes rather than simple layers. This was the result:

This was well received and as such we used it in the test version of the game.