Week 1
Monday
Today we started our Final Major Project for UAL Games Development. We have been assigned our groups and have been told about the requirements of the project, we are tasked with developing a 2d game based on the themes of Dystopia. I am nervous to start but also excited to see what me manage to achieve in the coming weeks. To start the week we have all just been getting used to working with each other and talking about what we could do for our game. We have also created a team Trello and a group research document where we will look into how to create the themes of Dystopia.
Tuesday
Today is the second day of the project and we have been asked to fill in a document for our project proposal I have also been given my roll as a level and feature designer. I imagine that for the rest of this week we will be gathering ideas and brainstorming the concept behind our game so that we can fill in the project proposal. By the end of the day I aim to have filled in a few sections for the project proposal such as my rational. I feel like our group will take a few days to get used to each other but we have already started communication outside of college by creating a teams page and a discord server.
Wednesday
This day was the third day of the project and it went pretty well. We have decided on a concept for our game based around a robot cat trapped in an overtaken city where a malicious A.I has destroyed humanity. I am happy with this concept but it still needs some polishing. I am also a bit hung up on what to add to the sections of the project proposal so I spoke to my group and lecturers to get a better understanding of what to add into each section. Overall I thing today went well and after asking about the project proposal I got a lot of work done for it.
Thursday
At the start of this day I had finished three sections of the project proposal but I still have sections 4 and 5 to complete. I was confused about these sections since they ask for Harvard referencing but I had only gathered a few links by this point. I have also researched online Dystopian quizzes and the video game BioShock for our group research document. I was able to gather all of the links I had used so far and added them all onto my project proposal ready for submission. I feel confident so far and am happy with how our project concept is turning out.
Friday
I started the end of the first week off by checking over my project proposal and making sure I had included everything. I think this first piece of work went well and I am happy with what we have decided on as a team. I started to work on a level design document today where I plan on researching and designing levels for our game I started this by gathering a list of games to look into. Some of these games are “Katana Zero”, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles” and “Black the Fall”.
Week 2
Monday
This is the start of the second week of our final project. This Monday was a bank holiday and I only did a little bit of research at home. I started to look into Katana Zero for a little bit but did not do too much research for it.
I feel good about the research I did today but I also feel like I could of gotten more done which is a little bit annoying.
Tuesday
On the second day of this week I continued my research into level design finishing my research into Katana Zero by looking into the gameplay and features of the levels that we could potentially add into our game. The plan for our team is to begin the development of the game today but I was not doing any coding so I solely focused on level design for the next days. Our group was still getting used to working together by this point which is quite awkward and unconventional for a group project.
At the end of this day I was a little disappointed with myself. I could of gotten more research done but I felt a distracted throughout the day and kept drifting away from my work. I hoped to challenge this by working harder tomorrow.
Wednesday
This was the third day of the second week and I planned to continue my research document. Since I started it I ended up scrapping a few of the games off of the list since it would of been a waste of time to look at so many games with the all of the other work we have to do as a group. On this day I finished up my research of Katana Zero and moved onto the next game I chose which was Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China.
Once again I am very proud of the work I did today as I think the last two days of work could have been done in only one.
Thursday
This Thursday I continued my research into level design by looking into Assassin’s Creed Chronicles. The day before I started this research but didn’t get too much done into it.
I am happy with what I have done today since I finished the research of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles. I think this game benefited how I looked into the actual playable area of levels and made my designs more interesting.
Friday
This was the final day of the second week and things are starting to pick up more. I feel like our group was more vastly more comfortable with working together than the start of the project. On this day I didn’t really get much work done. I spent the day brainstorming what features we could have in our game with our team. We decided on adding puzzles to our game as a feature to add depth to the levels so I looked for a game with puzzles to research to finish my level design document and I decided on Among Us.
Week 3
Monday
This was the start of the third week and I continued from where I left off last week looking at puzzles. I started this by looking at the multiplayer deduction puzzle game Among Us. On this first day of research I looked into what makes Among Us enjoyable to play and how the levels are balanced for two different sides of gameplay.
I wish I got more done on this day since I didn’t manage to get onto the puzzle elements of Among Us but I am still happy with the information I gathered this day on how balance is implemented in levels.
Tuesday
On the second day of the third week I finished researching the puzzle elements in Among Us. After this I continued my level design by starting to sketch out stages for our game.
I am happy that I gathered this information as it was really beneficial later on when I needed to design simple puzzles.
These are the first two stages I drew which I am happy with as I think they aren’t overly complicated and the spacing of both pick ups and puzzles in the stages are balanced. I did get caught up on how big we wanted the stages to be so before the end of the day I spoke with our group about this.
Wednesday
This was the third day of the third week. On this day I finished drawing the stages of our game and submitted them onto Trello for everyone else to see.
I am very happy with how these levels turned out as I think they will be enjoyable and slightly challenging for the players.
Thursday
On this Thursday I looked into designing puzzles and also started to get some basic sounds for our game including a large metal door opening sound and a glass smashing sound. To get the designs for the puzzles I thought about the research I had done into Among Us previously and decided to base my ideas around this.
These are the puzzles I designed on this day. I am proud of the concept behind them and I can envision them working well with the themes and aesthetics of our game. I also think that these puzzles would not be too hard for the player and should add to the gameplay experience rather than taking away from it or making the player too frustrated.
Friday
On the last day of the third week I decided on two more puzzle designs to use in our game even though not all of them will be in the final product since having options is always nice. I drew these in my sketchbook and then took a picture which I uploaded to our team Trello.
I like these puzzles but I think they are not as good as the ones I designed the day before. I would have liked to think of better designs but we were running out of time for designing by this point I needed to start developing some of these.
Week 4
Monday
At the start of the forth week I decided to digitalise some of my puzzles using the online software Draw.io. I picked three of the original four puzzles to be finalised in draw.io because I thought that the selected puzzles fit better into the game as a side feature that would not take too long to create.
I like how clear they came out when I digitalised them, you can definitely see what they are meant to be and it also enabled me to show how I would like them to look in the game.
Tuesday
On this day I started to code the first puzzle of our game this being what I like to call the “Maze Puzzle”. In this puzzle the goal is to reach the centre without touching the sides of the puzzle. On this day I managed to code the movement of the player which is a large portion of this puzzle. I used gamemaker to do this.
I am proud of what I achieved on this day since it is a good start to getting the puzzle features of our game implemented in the final version. It may not have been much code that I got done but it is still a good start considering I was not meant to be a coder for this project and I haven’t done much coding since project 1.
Wednesday
On Wednesday I managed to finish the code for the Maze puzzle. Frist I had to code collisions with the walls of the puzzle so that the player would restart when they touch them and then I had to use the object for the wall to create a template for how I wanted the first variation of this puzzle to look (there will be four variations in the first stage).
These parts of code restart the level when the player collides with a wall and sends the player to the game when the yellow diamond in the puzzle is touched. This along with the work from the day before completes the code for this puzzle.
I am very satisfied with how this turned out. The game feels great to play as it is not too hard but the spacing makes it a good introduction puzzle for our game.
Thursday
This was the second to last day of the fourth week of the project. The project has gone very quickly up to this point and has been a lot of fun, our group is also now a lot more comfortable with working together and were all getting our parts of the project done just how we imagined.
On this day I sent the code for the puzzle over to Amber to implement into the final version of the game and I also used Draw.io to draw the other three variations of the puzzle that will be in the first stage.
These are the designs I came up with. I really love these designs as they worked perfectly when I tested them with the playable puzzle. They all step up in difficulty but not to the point where the player finds them impossible which I think is important for the balance and playability of our game.
Friday
This day was the ending of the fourth week. After this week we had one more week to finish development of our game so I really wanted to think about what I could add to the second puzzle of our game. The second puzzle is the “asteroid” game where the player must shoot a number of “asteroids” out of the air. I thought about how I could add extra development to this puzzle as the second stage progressed so I came up with some ideas. Firstly, as the player progresses in the level and completes the first version of this puzzle the second version will increase the amount of “asteroids” the player has to shoot. Secondly, the third version will add a “friendly asteroid” that the player cannot shoot or they will lose points. And the final version will have a timed “asteroid” that switches every few seconds so the player only has a limited window to shoot it or it will cause the player to lose 5 points or gain 5 points of timed right.
After I came up with these ideas I started to gather more sounds for the game including ambience with fire crackling and a walking sound for the player.
I think this day was very productive and a good ending to the week even if I didn’t get to code the second puzzle yet because after this day I knew what I wanted to do for the next week.
Week 5
Monday
This is the start to the final week of development to the game and at the start of the day I felt anxious but also determine to a good bit of work done. On this day I managed to get most of the code for the “asteroid puzzle” done.
I am proud of these pieces of code as they are quite technical. These sections will randomly spawn instances of the “asteroids” into the game room in any location of the room every couple of seconds.
I think this day was productive and I felt good about how much work I got done and how the rest of the week will play out.
Tuesday
On this day I wanted to finalise the code for the second puzzle by adding display for a score out of 10 and also by making it so when the player destroys an asteroid that score goes up. Since this is the last week before half term and our written work has to be finished by the end of this week I also spent time doing that on this day.
I am content with how much work I have gotten done in this day. I managed to finish coding the start of the second puzzle but I thought I will have to scrap some of the extra development due to time constraints which was quite upsetting.
Wednesday
On this day I spent most of the day adding my FMP work onto my wordpress website. After I had done this I gathered the rest of the sounds that I needed to get for our game. The sounds I gathered consist of a coin sound effect, game over sound, robot sounds, robot death sounds and buy sounds for the shop.
Up until this point I was happy with how the FMP has gone so far but I was also quite stressed because I still had a large amount of written work to complete.
Thursday
On this day I spent my time finishing written work ready to add it to my wordpress for submission. I was not a code for this project so I was not doing anymore work for the game by this point. I have been adding all of the code and concept work that I have done over the past weeks into my design document.
Friday
This is the end of the fifth week of the project and I aimed to finish all of my written work by the end of the college day. I still have to finish my design document ready for the half term which is next week.
I think that I should have given my self more time to do all the writing for this project since I mostly left it all to the last week instead of a little each day or each week, this would have been a better idea and would have given me more time to work with my team and insure that the game was going well.
Week 6
This week was all just finalising my FMP work and uploading it to my wordpress.
Seb Crowhurst Game Development 