Category Archives: Game Production

Game Production

Session 3 SFMG Game Production

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maze

CC Image “maze” by xervian

Summary

We had to make a game in 2 weeks and 2 days– not the usual 3. We overcame the challenge and made a fun game.

21st Century Skills Demonstrated

Ways of Thinking

    • Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
      • Our group was able to come up with a game scenario that fit the requirements. When the WASD script broke when we were compiling all the codes on Sam’s Project, I problem-solved by looking up what components were in Rigidbody 2D.

Ways of Working

    • Communication
      • Our group spent 5 minutes at the beginning of the class period, communicating what we did last class session and what we’ll be doing that day.

Tools for Working

    • Media Literacy
      • I used Piskelapp.com and Draw.io to make sprites and flowchart, respectively.

Ways of Living in the World

    • Leadership & Responsibility
      • We tried a new program, Scrum, designed to help teams work more efficiently. I took on the role of Scrum Master, who works towards increasing the team’s productivity using burndown charts.

Sam Fantasy Maze Generator

Screen Shot 2020-01-15 at 11.57.40 AM

(It should be a video, but we couldn’t get that in time. I’ll replace it when Sam sends the video link.)

Reactions to the Final Version

“Less fuzzy, out of focus slide photo” – Brian Favorite

“Add some animation, but pretty good overall” – Kenny

Evaluation of the Final Version

The game is about finding the center of the procedurally generated maze. The mechanics were simple, just your usual WASD. The game is expected, you don’t find anything in the middle of the maze. Instead, it regenerates the scene when the Player Character collides with the Hollow Box. The game is concrete as it mimics what a person would experience in a real maze, complete with dead ends and annoying moments. Player Character’s physics is also designed to resemble the walking speed of a real human. The game is credible as mazes are something you see in real life (although infrequent), such as garden mazes for entertainment and artistic purposes. The game is not emotional. In the same way, the game lacks a proper story as to why the Main Character is traveling into the maze. All the lack of SUCCESs criteria will be evaluated and implemented in later iterations.

What I Learned and Problems I Solved

I learned how to make a sprite(Player Character) be controllable using WASD by the player using vector and Input.GetAxis. This code, as well as other codes we made, will be saved on our Github and Trello so our team can easily use it for future iterations. I also familiarized myself with other art and Player Character-related Unity functions such as Rigidbody 2D and Colliders. I also expanded my leadership skills with the Scrum framework, which we’ll continue to use throughout the year.

Game Production

Session 2 Charles Fantasy Dating Simulator (CFDS) Game Production

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We're All Just Pieces in a Puzzle

CC Image “We’re All Just Pieces in a Puzzle” by mikecogh

Summary

Three beginners made a second game, Charles Fantasy Dating Simulator. We were much more effective compared to our first one, but something happened.

21st Century Skills Demonstrated

Ways of Thinking

    • Creativity
      • I mostly came up with the rough idea, after my friend showed me a Tinder meme of a guy asking the girl he matched with to send the word “Bread” if she was a real person, not a chatbot. I wanted to add aliens to the game instead of the fantasy humanoids we decided on, but Charles heavily disagreed on that part of the idea.

Ways of Working

    • Collaboration & Communication
      • Our group was very effective at working together. we were the first group to pitch our MVP contents. We also used Trello.com to communicate references we had whether it was for coding, art, or character backstory.

Tools for Working

    • Information & Media Literacy
      • I knew where to look up information, such as official and well-recognized websites like Unity.com, StackExchange.com, and Audacityteam.org. One notable example of media literacy I experienced through Session 2 was Audacity’s file recognition add-ons. On Google search, there were unofficial sites that had malware under the guise of the Audacity files I recognized and didn’t install.

Ways of Living in the World

    • Life & Career
      • I adapted to my teammate’s idea of changing the aliens into fantasy even though I disagreed with it.

Charles Fantasy Dating Simulator

Team1 CFDS

The district tech team wiped two of the three computers we were working on. We didn’t save our data, so the Unity project itself was lost. This screenshot is of the Minimal Viable Product build we had in the Newton school drive.

Reactions to the Final Version

“… I look forward to seeing what your sound design and music will add to the mood of the game.” – Sam McCleary

“You did pretty well, you did pretty good.” – Jack Griffo

Evaluation of the Final Version

The game is about a fantasy dating app. The mechanics were simple as the player would click buttons depending on their decision. The game is unexpected as the potential dates for Charles comes with a variety of Soft Fantasy twists to your average dating app, such as a Centaur ranger or a Hag who thinks she’s way above your reach. The game is credible as it’s based on many dating apps that exist in real life. For example, on Tinder, the mechanic is to swipe right to accept, or swipe left to reject. The game is intended to be funny as the game (intended to) feature a degree of ridiculousness. There is no story page in the game we showed during the presentation because it didn’t get in the final version. 

What I Learned and Problems I Solved

I learned how to create music on Garageband and edit sounds on Audacity. I also learned how to use the EQ system, though it wasn’t perfect. We also learned to back up the code due to an unfortunate event. Some problems I solved were being new at music tools, helping the artist with few sprites and helping a group member focus.

 

Game Production

GameTest01 Game Production

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crusader

CC Image “crusader” by mmango3

Summary

With five hours each week, we, a team of three members, made a game in three weeks. We learned how to be a good teammate and communicate with each other, and had a basic introduction to the tools we use in Game Design.

Goal

The goal of my cycle was to make a game that was simple for a beginner like my group while learning about the system we’ll be using for the rest of the year and spending our time efficiently as possible.

I found three scripts from Unity3d. com and compiled it to a new, simpler script that was easier to understand and worked faster. I also made the knight’s sword sprite to help out with the artist. In the post-production week, I implemented the sounds and the art sprites.

21st Century Skills Demonstrated

Ways of Thinking

      • Creativity
      • Innovation
        • Aside from Trello and Dundoc, we also made a group chat so we could utilize our time more efficiently. We used it for 1) refining game ideas that popped up throughout the day,  2) sharing progress with each other, 3) asking for input on decisions we had to make during production when a teammate was absent.
      • Critical Thinking
        • I shared and discussed the idea with my teammates. With the contents we had, we came up with the topic we made into the game after considering our knowledge.
      • Problem-solving
        • I looked up the problems I came across on Google and solved most of them. When I still couldn’t solve the issue, I asked the advanced students and Sam for help.

Ways of Working

      • Communication & Collaboration
        • We shared our progress frequently and asked for feedback and help from each other. Because of our different background experiences so far, we were able to help each other with their roles.

Tools for Working

      • Info & Media Literacy
        • I knew what to look for when I was looking up guides to solve issues that came up. Operating Unity was hard, but I got through it!

Ways of Living in the World

      • Life & Career
        • Because I want to be a medical psychologist, communicating with people and listening to them is a skill I need to master.

GameTest 01

GameTest01 SS

Reactions to the Final Version

Sam – “Clearly qualified what didn’t make into the game and what did.”

LeDuc – “Best presentation from the beginning students.”

Jack- “You guys did a good job getting a game ready.”

Evaluation of the Final Version

        • Simple
          • The game was really simple. The main concept was the knight damaging the dummy, and it was the only mechanic in the game.
        • Unexpected
          • There wasn’t any unexpected value in the game. We had a Crusader-looking knight with a sword and a wooden dummy. It was expected the dummy will get damaged in one way or another- and it did.
        • Concrete
          • While the game did not have any concrete idea that the players could invest time on, we did have a roughly accurate sense of time management during production and most of us did as much as possible with the time and resources we had.
        • Credible
          • It was simple enough to not be based on anything.
        • Emotional
          • If the player is emotional and pathetic, maybe they can feel slight remorse for the poor dummy.
        • Story
          • While there are no words in the game, by the knight destroying the dummy some players can wonder things like why the knight is doing the action? what is the knight training for?

What I Learned and Problems I Solved

I learned the basics of coding and how to solve the errors that come along with it. Some things I learned were how the class names and file names needed to be the same for the script to work.  Another was making a “Background UI” for the game’s background, not just setting a sprite behind enemy and character sprites. I did this by looking it up on Google and asking for help from people only when I was really stuck.