Project Report 2014-03-13

This week’s been a tough one, despite the deceptively short work list. Not only did I have to make a somewhat coherent Power Point presentation detailing a much smaller period of the project than the one before, but I have also had the Design Document to edit based on our teacher’s feedback. There were lots of smaller things to revise, such as articulating certain points more clearly and thoroughly and moving sections around to fit the titles’ organisation, but there was also an emphasis on including more pictures and general visual representations of the game to compliment the text. I tried to get hold of as much artwork or anything visually presentable as I could when working on the initial version but there was barely anything available apart from a handful of sketches that I placed in a vain hope that it would be enough.

(Sketches done by our Lead Artist, William Mayer)

It wasn’t.

And I knew it wasn’t. In hindsight I should perhaps have tried to do some pictures of my own rather than waiting on the artist who was knee deep in doing animations for the game at the time, but I was too delved into the text and making sure the information was relayed correctly and consistently throughout the document to do anything else. What came out in the end was something difficult to fathom, and I can see why. The first iteration of the Design Document was basically paragraphs after paragraphs of text with a few titles shoved in between at times to give your eyes some miniscule sense of structure to hold on to. When the teacher requested it to be updated, I knew this was the essence of his critique: To convey as much information using as little words as possible. So I sat down restructuring it for the better part of the week. Looking over the chapters I constantly asked myself how to convey that particular section of information instantly without having to use a single written word.

One example was when describing the different factors that influences the player’s health. The paragraph describing this just wouldn’t cut it no matter how well-written it is. I had to get to the simplest core that you could see clearly without having to look through countless lines of text and sentences to find key words.

The player’s health is affected by standard enemy attacks, a Caterpillar’s (special enemy type) ability and by the constantly pressing timer wearing down your healthbar. With just a couple of boxes and string I conveyed what text requires a paragraph to fully explain. It not only trims the document down, but it also makes the reader more inclined to look through the entire document with the information more coherently presented and with less confusion involved. In short, it enables you to take in the meaning of the text with only a fraction of the effort that comes with trying to piece it together in a thick paragraph.

Another important factor would be how to portray the aesthetic feel of the game in the document itself. Again, this comes down to the severe lack of artwork that was available when I did the first version of it. Now on the other hand, when our art department has had time to put in a lot of new work, I have been able to infuse the document with the intended feeling of the game that we’re making. For instance at first I only included a bare bones representation of how the game’s menus and screens were interconnected such as displayed below…

…To being able to show how it will look like in the finished product!

(Menu cleanup made by Oscar Mohlin, Producer and assistant artist)

This helps tremendously with not only helping the reader get a more clear perspective on what we’re trying to achieve but also be able to, at least in some extent, be able to become immersed in the experience without having played it.

Björn Erik Berndtsson. Graphics and Game Design.