Game Concept

The concept for our game follows a robot cat called Sunny. The world has been taken over and destroyed by intelligent A.I which went rouge after a malfunction with the chips in their brain causes them to follow every command of an evil megacorporation. Sunny will have to hide from the A.I in a survival style side scroller world where the goal is to find the Brain (main core) that controls the A.I. The genre of our game will be action adventure with elements of survival. The game will be set in a futuristic city that has become run down and dilapidated after the maleficent A.I destroyed the population. The game will take place within one large level where the player will have the opportunity to upgrade Sunny through completing puzzles to defeat A.I. An example of an upgrade could be giving Sunny armour to better survive in the hostile city. The game will also feature hideouts for Sunny to escape the A.I in as the player will need to avoid conflict for a portion of the game. We have done primary research as a group by looking at games, movies and art for to see what a dystopia world could look like as well as looking secondary research such as online quizzes and mood boards. It would also be a good idea to create a feedback for to see what our peers think about the concept of our game and what we could do to make it more interesting for players. The games code will be done on Gamemaker Studio 2 and the art on pixel art software such as ASEPRITE.

Team Members

For this project I was in a team with 3 other people, those being, Daniel Dewfall, Joshua Murray and Amber Jones. I think we all worked well as a team during this project although personally I was a bit slow to get going on work. We were all assigned different rolls through which I will talk about.

Daniel Dewfall: Concept artist

Joshua Murray: Concept artist/coder/level designer

Amber Jones: Coder

Sebastian Crowhurst: Level designer/ coder

Target Platform

The target platform for A.I Rising is PC due to the ease of access.

Firstly, the controls we decided on are based on a computer keyboard with WASD to move and the mouse to shoot and interact with the in-game world. These controls could also work on consoles but at the moment we have only decided on PC since we know that the controls work how they should on that device in particular. Also, mapping the controls onto a console’s controller would be a lot of hassle which we would not have time for at the moment so it could come in a later version of the game.

Secondly, since the game has been developed and tested on PC we know that we can get the desired quality without any hang ups. Since our game features lots of assets and rooms due to the features like puzzles and the shop we are unsure that it would run as well on a console. The game was developed on gamemaker which allows you to see the frames that you achieve when launching the game, the frames on this occasion where easily over 1000+ which shows how the game runs well currently on the device we have decided on.

Game Overview

Our game follows a robotic cat in a city that has been overrun by evil A.I. The player must explore their way through the city to find the Core a giant brain behind the malicious A.I who have wiped out mankind and destroy it to free the world from the A.I. The game is an action-adventure with elements of puzzle with an age rating of 12+.

Objectives

The main objective of our game is to find the core at the end of the city and destroy it but the player must complete a number of tasks before this.

Firstly, the player must find the connector arm around the level to be able to equip a weapon to Sunny’s back. Once the player has this arm they can go to the shop in the game and buy a weapon which will allow them to fight against the A.I in our game. In order for the player to be able to afford a weapon they must collect coins which will be hidden around the levels. The first weapon costs 700 which is equivalent to 7 coins. The coins that the player needs will be hidden behind doors and inside buildings located in the game world.

Secondly, the player will have to complete puzzles. Puzzles will be the key to progressing into the levels as some areas will be hidden behind behind large metal doors that can only be opened by completing a simple puzzle. The further the player gets into the stages of the game the harder the puzzles will become. This feature will used a lot and will be key to getting coins and the connector arm for weapons.

Game-loop Flowchart

This is the game-loop for A.I Rising. This flowchart includes the steps the player will go through in the game.

Moodboards

I made this mood board at the start of the project to capture the themes of dystopia mixed with the concept of our game. It features images of a dystopian city which I used for inspiration for level design and world building.

This is the second mood board I made for this project. This mood board features elements of our game which I have designed an example is the cross section of a skyscraper on the left side, I used this image in my level design to create more accurate buildings which designs look like they would belong in a city. I also used images like the maze to show the concept of my puzzles.

Mindmap

Sound

The table below shows all of the sounds that I have gathered for our game so far. I would have liked to have created some sounds myself but I did not have time to do so this project.

Number	Description	Filename	Length	Source
001	Coin sound effect for when the player picks up a coin in our game.	coin_sound.mp3	1 second	Youtube
002	Ambient background sound for the soundscape of our game.	fireambience.mp3	1 hour (this will be shortened)	Youtube
003	This sound is for background.	glass_smash	5 seconds	BBC sounds
004	This sound will play when the player completes a puzzle to open a door.	Heavydoor.mp3	3 seconds	Youtube
005	This glitchy sound will play when the player is defeated losing the game.	losegame.mp3	2 seconds	Youtube
006	This is a large file containing lots of different robot sounds which can be sampled for different situations.	randomrobotsounds.mp3	41 seconds	Youtube
007	This zapping sound plays when a robot is defeated.	robotdeathsound.mp3	1 second	Youtube
008	This sound is an electronic beep which plays when the player purchases an item from the shop.	shopbuy.mp3	1 second	Youtube
009	This sound will play when the player moves. It is the sound of a small robot walking.	Robotwalking.mp3	40 seconds (will be cropped)	Youtube

Level Design

This is the layout I drew in my sketchbook. The first section at the top of the page was designed by Joshua which I used to create two extra levels following his original section. I used the idea of a dystopian city to create levels based from tower buildings which would have multiple floors which the player has to travers through. I also took the idea of towers to add platforming elements where the player has a risk of falling which I hoped would add more difficulty to the levels.

Features

The main feature that I was in charge of are the puzzles in A.I Rising I created two puzzles in code which will be used in our game.

Firstly, the maze puzzle. This puzzle is designed to get progressively more challenging as the player does more of them. I designed 4 different versions of it which are step up in difficulty so that I can add variation for the players. The puzzles are there to add a futuristic feeling to the game since the player uses them almost like hacks to open doors in the game. I think they do a good job at adding immersion to the dystopian world as hacking a door feels like you are rebelling against the malicious A.I. This puzzle is similar to the household game Operation where the player cannot touch the sides of the puzzle. I wanted to create something that would be fun but not take away from the experience of the full game which I think this puzzle does a good job at.

At the start of making this puzzle I drew out the design in my sketchbook and then converted it into a digital drawing. This is only the first stage of the puzzle.

I designed three more stages for this particular puzzle as there will be four versions in total covering the first stage of the game. Below are the other versions which I designed. They are meant to get progressively harder. The final puzzle features buttons which need to be touched for the player to access the end of the puzzle.

Below is the second puzzle I designed, it is based around the catch the clown game and the among us asteroid puzzle. I wanted to add extra depth to this puzzle as the levels go on since you will have to do it more than once. The idea I came up with would be to add different types of asteroid type objects that punish you for shooting them by deducting your points, this would be the second stage. The final stage to this puzzle would add a timed asteroid which you can only shoot at a certain point. If this is done right then the player will be awarded 5 points but if it is shot at the wrong time they will be deducted 5 points.

Code for the Puzzles

This code is for the first puzzle in our game.

This code allows the player to move triangle around the puzzle. It is simple code and should not interfere with the actual movement of the player outside of the puzzle.

These are the last two sections of code for the first puzzle. This code restarts the puzzle when the player collides with the walls and also takes the player back into the game after the puzzle is completed.

This code is for the second puzzle I made.

Both of these blocks of code randomly spawn “asteroids” into the game room when it is running. The “asteroids” will spawn in any location consistently for the duration of the puzzle.

This code sets the score for the player.

This code adds one to the score every time the player shoots an “asteroid”.

This is the final part of code which draws the player’s score out of ten in the centre of the screen so that they can see how close they are to winning.