Synoptic Post production Presentation

By the end of our project our game turned out a bit different. Where you unlock new players there are no longer checkpoints there, we later realized that this would make the game much to easy and the point of our game was that it was supposed to be challenging. Also where the characters fall to unlock the sliding character there are no longer cubes, they are now spikes and the characters must avoid them as they will die if touched, we did this because we again realized that the game was way to easy and wanted to make it more tricky. By the end we had everything finished, all the audio had been completed and added to the characters/ background. All the characters could move and whenever they hit a spike the level would start from the beginning. The big cube was the only character that could go in water and if any other character went in the water they would die. When all the five characters went to the end the game would finish.

Game Synoptic project evaluation

Friend & Friend

When we first got the project we had a lack of motivation, one of our group members were removed from college which had already given us a slight disadvantage. Once we had all spoken and worked out our skills our motivation had once again dipped. We worked out that none of us knew had to code which got us thinking about how we would finish the project. To start with I began to create concepts for our characters and work out how they would all dynamically work together throughout a level. Once the characters were established I began work on level concepts, the level went through some changes to work out what characters will go where and how to make it a challenging puzzle game.

Once the level was nearly finished we began to work on unity, thankfully Leigh helped us with the code as James and I had no idea how to do it. It was at this point that our motivation increased and we believed that the game could be finished. Putting our game in unity definitely came with some complications, we had many issues with collisions which took a while to fix, late on we then realised that our level was to easy. To increase the difficulty, we added spikes to places that were just platforms. Instead of completing it first time it took more tries to finish it.

The last 2 weeks of the project was the most productive, all our work was finished and it was a matter of putting it all together and adding the code. Before Leigh helped us with the code we used old code we used for last year’s programming exam, this gave us a great idea as to what the game would play like. This also helped us fix issued with the game such as colliders and how the camera should be placed in proportion to the level and the character. It was at this point that we realized that the level was to easy so this is when we made additional changes to the level.

At the start of the project we all discusses our strengths and what each of us could do. I started making concepts for the game level and came up with a few ideas but where scrapped because they didn’t seem doable or were just boring. We also knew that our game was going to have water in it but we didn’t know how to create it so this is what James was set to do. Once we had an idea of what we were going to do I removed my ideas from Photoshop and put them into Maya. Making the level took weeks, I had to keep adding and removing stuff as we worked out as we went on that some parts of the early map were not working.

Once the map was nearly complete James and I gathered all of our sounds for the game, we went around college hitting objects like the lift doors for a deep metal noise and putting our feet through grass to get a swish noise. Once this was collected I used Audition to make the sounds higher or deeper and changed the pitch or the length of the audio track. Originally we used a track from Kevin Macleod called Itty Bitty 8 Bit but the song didn’t fit the level so we used another track from him called Black Vortex.

Once we reached the ending weeks I exported our level into Unity, this came with troubles, the box colliders were not working properly so I had to add new ones which took about a week. While we were waiting for the code from Leigh we used old code that we had to test the colliders, the jumping and the overall feeling of the game.

Once Leigh gave us the code I implemented it into our game, this again came with complications with code conflicting each other.

Once the game was completed we were very happy with the end product, the game turned out a little different from what was first thought, we removed checkpoints and added spikes instead of cubes were in a falling section. The colour for our game was not very interesting but I think that is down to time difficulties, this is something that would definitely change next time.

What went well.

As me and James worked with one another we became closer which improved out wok chemistry. Group decisions became much easier as we got to know each other, and we worked individually to get the game finished. I created the game level and characters and everything physical that is in the unity level, James created the water texture, level concepts and we both made presentations.

 

What could have gone better.

Our group had a real lack of communication, Jamie was new to the class and didn’t know anybody. I think this started it off. Even upon asking him to do tasks they were not done and I had to do them myself, creating and bringing through characters is an example of what needed to be done but wasn’t, it also was a simple task. However, in the end James and I worked it out and had a working game.

Above is a image of our gantt chart it shows all the work that has been done throughout our project.