Unit 5,6,7 - 2D game prototype

25/11/16

Today we was using construct and we was initially exploring the program and see what things do. The main things we looked at was the layout, objects, properties and layers. First of all i opened to use the platform template to get the basics, so there was 6 objects to start off with. There are background tiles, jump thru tile, moving solid tiles as well as just solid tiles that don't move and there was some text that said what to use and was set to default as “Arrow keys or WASD to move". First of all I changed all of the default colours and to something that I thought might look nice. This was so that it would look really different to a certain extent and have a degree of uniqueness. Here is the difference between the two.

I changed the amount of platforms that you can go through so there isn’t as many because they are not really required. Also i added invisible walls and a finish line so if people were to play they would know that they finished.

28/11/16

Today we looked at sound with David and we were asked to look at things that have to do with sound and he gave a sheet to do it asks what things are in bold and I have to right the definition.

This is what I wrote for each section

Audio: The reproduction of sound.

Volume: How loud or quiet the sound is.

Bit Rate: Number of bit transmitted.

Frequency: The rate of the wave per second.

Bit: Binary meaning 0,1 used as digital bytes.

Analogue: Using a signal variable physical as a smooth wave.

Digital: Signal or data that is shown virtually in a series of 0 and 1's.

Sound: The vibrations that travel through air.

Byte: The memory or size of something. 

Bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, terabytes, petabytes.

This will relate to the games that we going to making because I will need to know things about the audio so I can add it to the game in the right file. For example a MP4. File won’t work with it but a WAV. File would work. And depends on the bit rate if it is right or it will not work well with it.

Also on this day I was set the task to make a walk cycle a run cycle and a forward cycle and from this task I have completed 2 parts of it I have done the both the walking cycles.

First I did the side walking cycle because that was the first one that I was meant to do and I felt it is the simplest one to start off with. When I started this I thought it would be quite difficult because when I saw examples some of them looked quite complicated or really good and I thought to myself "I don't think I can do that". I got a picture from one of my old pieces of work I'd done in the past which was to show a transformation. Referring to this, I got the idea of what my character should look like. I thought I would try to make an animated version of him walking. That is where the art style and idea came from. I gave him red eyes and made them glow for this drawing.

The old piece of work from which I was inspired from.

After this I decided to improve my new animation by colouring it in and also adding eyes. When I added colour I decided to make the outline dark so I can colour it in with a dark grey colour. Also I added two red slits which was meant to represent his eyes this I had a little bit of trouble because I had to move them to make them look right, this is good because it adds slight more detail as it makes it look as if it is moving at a slight angle. My opinion is that it is a lot better because it looks nice whereas just having an outline for the stick man it is so basic also it doesn't looks as nice whereas when it is filled in it looks a lot nicer.

Here is the improved version/final project

After the side walking cycle I started the front walking cycle

This I tried to keep the same as the walking cycle but because I made it quite small it is pixelated. This task of doing a front walking man was quite hard because you have to keep flicking throw to see if it is looking right from the last frame. So when I was doing this I struggled a little on the last bit because I wasn't too sure how it should have looked although I did use a reference.

                                                                        30/11/16

Today in Marshal's lesson I got my laser cut done of my characters done from our horror project done and he said use any colours that you want to describe the character I did mine in shades of red, orange and yellow. I did the painting according to where she was most heated in the in the scene. Also i painted on a ying-yang as a heart I did this but smudged to show that she is not stable, the reason why she isn't stable because of what was happening and 

                                                                       02/12/16

In this lesson Vinny told us that we are going to be following a free tutorial on a website/application called Udemy. I decided to get the phone version so it will be easier to watch and do work at the same time therefore it was my convenient and faster. The tutorial consisted of a few videos that we had to follow step by step so downloading all the assets and important them the way he showed us how to because if we did it different it could have led to an error. The main purpose of the course was to show how to do some basic coding, teach about global variables and behaviours. These are all basic things to learn in construct 2. The first thing we imported into the game was a tile-map, the purpose for this is so we can make a background and obstacles. After that on the tutorial videos we had to change add a character that we could use which was the king, and there was following animations. This taught us how to import pictures as sprites how to crop how to add different animations and animation frames. Before we did any of this we had to change the grid size this was so that everything would be able to fit on. I learnt how to connect them together ID_LEFT, ID_RIGHT ECT... and this was the name that was for that command and then we changed the controls so that we can use the classic WASD. When this was done of the course this was about a quarter of the tutorial done.

The mechanics that I have learnt from the udemy course some of these things I found out myself by playing around with the construct 2 while following the course to see if there are alternative ways to do stuff. To change keys was a something that I learnt how to do through the coding also to make the character move you have to add a specific behaviour, I was playing around with them I looked at the 8-direction and then the one that you're meant to look at platform. 

                                                                            

                                                                      06/12/16

  Marshal gave me a tick list, I read it through to see what I have done and what I have left to do out of all the art work. He said that we have to finish of the work that we had started like the mannequin drawing that we started but not everyone finished it. And to make sure that there are 3 drawing of the mannequin in different positions.

Later in Vinnys lesson we was carrying on from what we did yesterday with the Udemy tutorial on making a retro style RPG. I forgot one of the videos so when I was trying to use the tile-map it would fit properly so I had to watch that video and I changed the grid size and made sure that they would be able to fit the tile-map properly.

                                                                      14/12/16

On this day we were put into groups (Me, Crisitna. Melanie) to start a new project the project was to make a game of our choosing. As a group were thinking of ideas and we came up with the idea of doing a RPG (role play game) and we thought of having a boy in a fantasy world where there are small monsters and poachers are after them and wants to hunt because they are a threat to humans. At the start we had the group idea that you will get a choice to join the poacher and hunt the monsters or you can decide to save them and train them to fight. 

Here is the link

                                                                       RPG IDEA

15/12/16

On this day we was thinking on more ideas on our game and what we should do because even though we had chosen to do a RPG we still wasn't confident. Vinny wrote down some more options that everyone had we all thought as a group and everyone in the group saw that Vinny had wrote down visual novel and everyone in the group thought that it will be a good game to make on construct "It cant be that hard". After this we were starting to do discuss what we could do, I came up with the idea that it be a dating game and that you have 5 days, the rest was developed by the group. The final idea that we had for this game is that the user will have 5 days to find a date, the setting is in a Japanese high school. And the plan of the game-play is gonna be that the user has 3 choices within the day to go to 3 locations, after that they would go home and then the next day would start and ect until the last day when the prom is and after that is the end of the game.

16/12/11

Today I was working on the GDD the game design document there is a lot that had to be written up this includes an introduction, character bios, rough plot, gameplay description, artistic style breakdown, a breakdown of system components asset breakdown, a suggested game flow diagram and a suggested project timeline.

here are all the files for the Game design document, Production timetable, Game prototypes.

Production TimeTable                Game Design Document                     Game Prototype Proposal

Introduction: The way the game will be introduced, so how it will open

Character Bios: This is where the characters are described so what they may do or say. This also gives you a vague picture of the character.

Rough Plot: This is an idea that is not in deep detail of what will happen so it will be quite vague.

Gameplay Description: This is what we will want to happen when someone is playing the game and how the game will play. This explains the options that we want to implement into the game.

Artistic Style breakdown: This area of the GDD explains what type of art style will be used this is for not just the characters but for that backgrounds.

Cristina did the concept art for the characters that we did for our game game and here are some of the pictures that she drew.




20/12/16

On this day Cristina made all of the rest of the concept drawings because there are other charaters that we are going to add such as; the teacher, and the family for your character so when you decide to go home you will see your mother, sister/brother. On this day we also chose names for our characters. We decided on Japanese names because it's meant to be  set in Japan. Also we made them all have the same uniform but it was different for both genders, Cristina did concept art for that as well. This is the same for the art style, because it is a game that is set in Japan they are gonna have that anime cartoon like look. We also thought that we would try make it original by giving the characters obvious traits and personalities. Another thing that will make them obvious to know what there personalities are like are is their body language and the things that they may say.




04/01/17

At this time since the characters for our game had not been done I decided to help with the background drawing and decided to do the hallway since I know I'm not good at art and there only two options left were to do the library and the class. When I did this I used what I learnt I had learnt in Marshal's lesson, I used  one point perspective. This helped because if I didn't use this it would have looked very bad and at least this way it looked like a hallway and it didn't look to bad you could tell what it was meant to be. Although I'm not good at shading and I asked Cristina to help me or show me how to shade it and because we were low on time she shaded it for me.

Melanie carried on doing one of the backgrounds that she was doing which I think was the the front gate of the school. Cristina wasn't in on this day but she drew all most of the characters on Photoshop and she did different 

05/01/17

On this day there isn't too much for me to do because Cristina is still doing the characters which I don't want to start doing the game until they are done, only because I don't want to have to use substitutes for the reason that it will be a hasel to switch all of them after and it would be very confusing. So I decided to do some research on how to make a visual novel with construct and to find any content or information was hard because there were engines already for visual novels. There was only one video that I saw but it wasn't much help it just showed the visual novel demo that they had made and the person who made it never showed the finished product so with little information to research about made it hard. The reason why this made it hard was because that meant almost every problem that I encountered would have to be solved by myself and I wouldn't be able to go to the internet for help with most problems.

QatariGameDev. (5 Dec 2011). [HTML5] Visual Novel Made With Construct 2. Available: https://www.youtube.co;'m/watch?v=GuQUT00Tsjo. Last accessed 5 Jan 2017.

09/01/17

Finally the rest of the characters are done so I can get started on the game. The first thing that I got started on was the start menu. 

01/02/17

Evaluation 

As a team of 3, Melanie, Cristina and I were tasked to make a game on construct 2 of our choice as team. When we were set in to groups with this task, we all were thinking of ideas that we could possibly do for a game and we wanted to do something that would be a good game and would be simple but popular. When we were discussing this we meant simple to make as well a game with not complicated game mechanics. The first idea that we had in mind was to make a Fantasy RPG.  This is an idea that we thought of and we wanted it to have a really good story. 

The story that we were thinking of having is that there is a hunter that is chasing these monsters that they are trying to kill because they hold a threat to humans. But as a boy you see him chasing one and you would get the choice to help him or be against him. This was the story of the initial idea that we had brainstormed. After the decision that we are going to stick with is a visual novel game. The story will be about you, the character, that will have a school week so 5 days to get a date for a prom. 

We didn't do too much research but we were looking at games online and were wondering, as a group, what style to use for the visual novel. When we were going to do the RPG, we were planning on using retro style pixel art, also known as 8-bit.

 When we were looking online, some of the examples that we looked at were The binding of Isaac for the art. Examples of visual novels that I looked at : Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Duel Academy(Gameboy), Eragon (Gameboy) and IF MY HEART HAD WINGS  (Android). 

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Duel Academy is a game that I played and it's visual novel based, but there still is the interactions of having to do duels and there are mini tests and the last interactive option allows you can choose where you want to go. And once you have certain conversations this triggers certain events. Eragon is a game that I also played on the Gameboy and it is a RPG, Visual novel because if the story and text is a story it is telling and then the interactives that you get is to choose a an option within battle or the answer to someone’s question and finally move around the map. IF MY HEART HAD WINGS is a game on phone (Android OS). Cristina downloaded it and the two of us played it, this game is a visual novel and nothing more; there are no options, just text. And it had a great story but it took very long to get along the story. 

The roles in our group were very obvious to us; I was going to be the main coder, Cristina was going to be the main animator/designer and Melanie is going to be the leader of our group, doing schedules and scripts. Out of the pre-production I started to do the GDD, Cristina started to do concept drawings for avatars and for characters in the game and Melanie did the production schedule.

To start the coding for the game I had to wait for Cristina and Melanie to finish the drawings for the backgrounds and for the characters to get started. I decided that I was going to help out by doing a background and also I made a few buttons and although they were good Cristina made a layout which looked neat therefore we decided only to use the start button. When it came to backgrounds all of the backgrounds except mine had very similar art styles but it wasn't too much of an issue because it was quite pixelated and it was only 1 background. I drew the background on animate using skills that I'd learnt in Marshall's lessons, and this helped a lot because this gave me a sense of where everything should be and how it should be layed out. After this I wasn't sure how to put shading on so I asked Cristina if she could help me do it and she did it since we didn't have too much time left.

 When I started to code our game the first thing that I coded was the start menu and the start button. All that was there was a background and a start button that when it was clicked on it made the game go to next background, since it hadn't been coded in it was just a blank screen. After this we decided that they should be given the user the option on who they want to be so female or male. I also added 2 extra buttons that gave the user to change what gender they want to be in case they wanted to change. When this was done I imported png images that Cristina had made which were chibi characters, and these where the male and female characters that you would be able to choose for your chibi. Last bit for the selection bit was that the user got to choose who they wanted to date. 

 There were bugs that I encountered with in the last two sections. These bugs were to do with the character selection and to be able to click on the gender that the user would have the option to date, also making the chibi that the user choose appear in the right spot because it wouldn't change. For the first problem I had to delete the previous buttons that I had because when the new buttons were clicked  both the buttons activated at the same time. Also for the chibi to make it so that it selects if after I had to get rid of the arrow button and changed the layout so that all the characters could be clicked on, I changed the opacity so that you know when you click on it. So when the person has selected it had gone to the start of the game screen they will see there character, I linked it by making that when the first one is selected for there chibi character it changes the animation frame to the same one that the user chose. 

When I was coding the game I was coding for both female and male parts on who they want to date. As I coded I decided that I was going to debug as much of it as possible while coding so very often I would test the game to see if there are any problems and to see if it was functional, as well as the fact to see if the assets did what they were meant to do.

Some of the problems with construct 2 is that there are only some sound file types that will actually work on it. These files are .WAV and .OGG and .M4A these are the sound files that can be imported into construct. There are multiple ways to solve these problems most of them are pretty simple and straight-forwards. 

Solution 1: When the sound is being made for example from audition a way to do is just to save the sound file as 1 of the following .WAV, .OGG, .M4A and that will allow you to import into construct2.

Solution 2: The second way to solve this problem of not having the right audio file is to go online and have a sound converter that will specifically change your sound file to one of the ones that is needed. This way you will have 2 copies and in 2 different audio files.

A few problems that I had was that when the it was time to import the audio it was saved as a mp3 type and this meant that I couldn't import it into construct 2. So to fix it I went online and found a website allowed me to change it to a specific .WAV file. After this I downloaded it but in its new file and this allowed me to import it into construct 2. The reason why it was in the mp3 file in the first place was because there was a mobile game I used to play and I heard the intro was very good and had that anime sounding and because the game stopped and the company decided to close it, I thought we could use this song.

Visual problems that I had in Construct 2 was quite simple to solve because most of the assets in are game were images. The main problem that I had was that when I was making images appear some would appear at the wrong place for example; when a person was meant to appear they would appear behind the text boxes, this issues that were like this was because they were on the wrong layer. How I fixed it was to right click with the mouse and to click Z-Order and this gave me a list of all separate layers and therefore I could now re-organise them to place them right and to make the person/people in behind the text box.