2D Game Project: State Flowchart
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So another week is soon at its end and the game is coming along nicely. I sent it to a couple of friends to try it out and we also had a game testing session with the other groups from our class. Not only did we get a lot of feedback for our game we also had the opportunity to test the other projects. I personally is very impressed with the lot of them. Its really insane that we all have come this far in just a few short weeks when most of us never made a game before. I could also see that the project I’m working on is not far behind the other, quite to contrary actually. But it was an even batch of things. Looking forward to see the completed games. Now on to my stuff. I have made a flowchart for the different states needed for the game. I have also made placeholder images for these states so that the programmers can make it work more like a real game.
The flowchart shows the different states of the game like the start screen, options menu, the actual game play state and pause menu and so on. It also had colored lines with arrows that shows what option in the menus leads to what state. Also if one looks at the line to the high score and options states from the start menu one can see that there are to arrow that point in both directions. This is to indicate that it is not a one way street. Because it would be really worthless to be able to get to the options menu and then not be able to go back and actually playing the game. It is the game we are here for, right? The thought process behind the different states are not so hard. We asked ourselves, what do we need? Well the “game state” where the game is taking place is good to have. Hard to have a game without it. This will not be covered in this post. The start menu was conceived as a homage to old school arcade games. Since this is suppose to be a space shooter it needs to have a start screen where the player can check options (I will get back to this) and highscore since this needs to be in the game. I wanted to have a “insert coin” just to have that true retro feel but eventually decided against it since there are no actual need for coins. Please note that all of the following pictures are placeholder images. But the final design will probably look quite similar.
Every game needs an options menu, that is kind of standard. But what would be in the options menu? There are no options to change the graphics and no subtitles. It was decided that the player would have the ability to turn off sound and sound FX. Also the player would be able to change the control scheme if needed. I know from personal experience that when creators use layouts that make less sense the lack of customizability can be frustrating. The pause state is very good to have since the player might need to take a pause from the game for some unexplicable reason. To make the game experience easier a couple of options were placed here. The ability to go back to the start menu of course. If the player want to quit the game or start from the beginning this has to be available. Reload checkpoint. Maybe the player realises that it is impossible to continue, maybe the energy for the rockets is too low or maybe some kind of glitch makes the game impossible to complete, this is a good option to have so that the player does not have to start from the beginning. To minimize frustation for the player. Also of course the ability to go to the options menu if something needs to be changed.
These are the most importatn states for the player. This game also features a intro and outro cinematic which are two different states. A reload last checkpoint state that has no placeholder really since it is invisible to the player. The end highscore that shows the point earned during the course of the game and last but not least the game over state. And the credits so that people know who made the game. We were told to have a very negative game over screen and this is what I came up with. Im actually quite fond of it. Aliens attacking and killing in a zero gravity environment. Ofcourse there will be blood floating around.
I am looking forward to developing these states further so that the esthetics match the rest of the game. Over and out for now  |
