Posts Tagged Summer GameDev
Summer GameDev: Day 7 / 8 – Crunch, Night and Day
Posted by Adriaan in Uncategorized on July 16, 2009
When I started this post it was late, but I couldn’t finish the post because my eyes wouldn’t let me! Tuesday was rough, we started early and worked quite hard from the start. Again, Sherida couldn’t come because of her illness. A lot had to be done in one day and we agreed that this would mean working at night too…
Queen Mosquito
Because so many things happened the last two days and I can not remember exactly what and in which order all these things happened, but happily they did. The programmers slept 2 hours last night and spend the rest of the night coding implementing, while the artist worked hard to make all the art for the background.
Playtesting
The spawn pools were successfully added to the game, giving us the possibility to start the level design. We also got a menu which was made and animated, sounds were added along with Background Music, an awesome cursor was added that added a lot to the feedback to the player whether he was pushing or pulling the flock, the code was cleaned up so that it would run smoother, at least designed 4 levels were added, a lot background art was added, the game was playtested for the last time and a presentation was made.
In-game style
After the presentations our game was played and we all agreed that we had to playtest even more, but that happens when you make a game in a week; you have to make choises on what you are going to implement and do within tha week, when the time is up, time’s up!
Ronimo playing our game
The day ended with a very inspiring and cool tour through W!games. As a team we promised each other to remake the game to a version that could be played without a WiiMote, a web-version.
Starting Screen Style
It has been an awesome week in which we all learned a lot – not just about skills but also about teamwork… About the fact that creativity DOES come outside in the sun and not behind TL-lights. And working hard, as a team, working for each other, that’s what is most valuable!
To try the game with one player (not how it is supposed to be though) you can go here. Use the mouse to aim, press A to confirm or PUSH your mosquito’s and S to PULL them.
Summer GameDev: Day 6 – Four Flockers
Posted by Adriaan in Uncategorized on July 13, 2009
Monday morning started with another walk through Utrecht. Decisions had to be made; where is our game going? What do we want to make? What would work best? 2 players? 4 players? Or back to a single player? Any more resources? And how can we do all this without lowering the drop below 30 fps? The warm weather combined with a soft breeze did us nothing else than good.
We decided to go for a multiplayer (2 vs 2, 1 vs 1 or 4 player deathmatch) manage-the-flock game in which there would be multiple ‘respawn pools’ that could be controlled in order to constantly receive reinforcement mosquitos. About 2 hours later, the programmers finished a battle-mechanic prototype in which rules of conflict were added between two groups of mosquitos. We playtested it…
… and came to the conclusion that further playtesting should conclude whether it is fun for 1 player to have 2 WiiMotes. In the battle-mechanic prototype the 2nd WiiMote did not add much and was, most of the times, only used when a player wanted to divide his group or pull back a lost group of mosquitos.
So, we created a to-do list and got to work… And we are still working! We already finished a bunch of artwork, animations, the cursor, some sounds including dieing flies and planting queen mosquitos and ofcourse there are loads and loads of code taht are coming through. Tomorrow is the last day and we’ll have to work hard… But it sure is going to be an awesome game!!
Summer GameDev: Day 3 – Flocking Awesome!
Posted by Adriaan in Uncategorized on July 10, 2009
After we decided to name our team GRASP, named after the first characters of our names, we started this day with a flocking awesome prototype of a flocking group of bees. With the mouse, we were able to push or pull the flock or part of it, we could try different types of flocks and we could see how external influences would work, e.g. wind. The next step would be to find the right variables that made the flock and how the player would have influence on these.
So, Paul and Guido started with building the next prototype in which not only all the WiiMotes would work (4 of them worked in an earlier prototype!) but also in which you can change the variables in real time, while we are playing and testing it. The plan is that we are going to tweak and change the flock and think of fun concepts after that, elements that could make this game challenging and complete. We already have a lot of ideas of how we could use the core mechanic, but we are still open for everything
Meanwhile, the artist are creating moodboards and going through heaps of styles which they could implement in our game.
This day went really quick and we did not book much progress, tomorrow will be better, I hope!
Some images of today and yesterday I haven’t posted yet:
Summer GameDev: Day 2
Posted by Adriaan in Uncategorized on July 9, 2009
The fact that 3 out of 5 people did not sleep well last night and woke up too late to get on time might make you think that we had a rough morning. Well, we had that rough morning. We left day one with a lot of open doors and no decisions and it was clearly on everyones mind that we were kind of stuck when we ended. After a few attempts to come up with a concept that would have fun and meaningful core mechanics we decided to go outside and smell the fresh air. And that helped; within 5 minutes we had a great core mechanic and some good ideas of how we could use those mechanics to create a fun game.
When we got back inside, we immediately collected tons of marbles and some items that could represent possible enemies and started prototyping how it would work. Here’s a video of us trying to think of strategies and ways to create interesting enemies.
So, where is the game and concept really about? Shaping a flock, basically. We were inspired by an article about swarm theory and flocking, some images I’ll post next time.
The idea is that the player controls two WiiMotes and is able to push or pull a group of flocking mosquito’s by pointing one of the WiiMotes at or near the mosquito’s and pressing the push or pull button. By pushing and pulling the group you can create shapes that are effective against certain enemies, help you through obstacles or help you avoid danger. We are still in the proces of coming up with good idea’s to make perfect use of this mechanic, that already seems awesome!
We started with creating a digital prototype today and have the next playtest session planned for tomorrow. We are using Flash (AS3) along with WiiFlash Server that makes the connection possible between the WiiMote and Flash, but it’s a rather unstable connection – something that I already found out a while ago when I worked on an interactive installation at Konijn2000. Also, we are using this awesome tool called Dropbox as a subversion repository, and it’s much and much easier than that Tortoise SVN I had to use on previous projects!
In a second thought, it’s funny that before we started to make this concept tangible we all seemed to be on the same line about our ideas and thoughts. I think that is what makes this phase so hard and may disappoint so many of us; not being able to implement or merge your own ideas with the ideas of your fellow designers without completely ruining the feel and look they had in mind. And to comprimise is one of the hardest things to do. Can’t situations like this be avoided?
Tomorrow is going to be an awesome day because we get to play the concept! Looking forward to it!
To be continued!
EDIT: Some more last minute photo’s from notes we took:
Summer GameDev: Day 1
Posted by Adriaan in Uncategorized on July 8, 2009
Today started the DGG Summer GameDev organised by the Dutch Game Garden, in which 3 teams of approximately 5 students from multiple disciplines will make a game. Being part of the 2nd team, I will make a daily journal containing our development and process. My team consists of Sherida Halatoe (GDD @ HKU), Rik van Duijn (DVTG @ HKU), Paul Brinkkemper (UU), Guido Soetens (UU) and myself. We do not have a team name yet, but that will come soon, I promise!
Start of the Summer GameDev
One of the National Geographic Magazines
Today started with an opening talk of JP van Seventer, followed by a presentation by Jasper Koning, designer at Ronimo, about the process of making their first WiiWare title Swords & Soldiers. When the teams were announced, every team sat together to talk about the formal elements of the team, who would be team leader (Paul), lead artist (Sherida), lead code (Guido), lead design (Adriaan) and blogger (Adriaan). After that, the assignment was announced: search the National Geographic magazines provided for systems or organisms that could be a good base for your game. We got 2,5 hours to find three concepts and presented these to the other groups.
The three topics that inspired our group were about fighting flies and swarm intelligence, natural elements such as light, water, temperature, wind, etc. and the use of lightning, which could be used in a game as a light or as a path. We will make a decision tomorrow which of these topics will be the base of the game we are going to prototype and built the coming days. Who knows what this will result in!
Last but not least, we got a very long but interesting presentation from Floris Kooij from Guerrilla Games about concept creation in their design team. The two methods he gave us were very useful!
To be continued…
My name is Adriaan de Jongh and I am a student at the Utrecht School of the Arts where I study Game Design. I like to sail, to kite surf and to play drums.
I worked on games including:
