First Update of the Game Introductory Course
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This last week has been focused mostly on groundwork and preparation for a recently begun project, by the name of Planet Suburbia. This was an assignment based on another project completed last year by another team, where-in they created a Space Shooter concept document to emphasize how they had learned to use MDA and general game design over the span of the course. We are now to use this to create a full design document, going into details on the game and the rules and mechanics that it should hold, as well as crafting a full game from said notes to show what we have and will learn as part of our respective art and programming courses. The first part of the project involved creating a one page design document, to show both to ourselves and observers what we intend to create in the game proper. Our team was given the opportunity to revise the design as we saw fit, as long as we provided the appropriate justifications, and so I will provide a few examples here: Player Movement Initially the game avatar was to be in a set position in the middle of the planet object, only moving in rotations to see different parts of the planet they were set on. Their objective was to defend against incoming enemies that spawned across 4 different sectors, which unlocked as more enemies were destroyed. While keeping a set position meant a better overview of the surrounding areas, it came with a few problems of its own. A set position means there is no movement, meaning less of a connection with the Space Shooter genre most of our development group are familiar with, leading more to associations with games like Missile Command or turret defense games (emphasized by having turrets as something a player can purchase already existing in the design we were handed). Less screen space would also be available if entire sectors of the planet were shown from the middle point outwards, leaving less area to work with when placing enemies or other non-planetary objects. Hence we decided to have the avatar be a moving vehicle that traversed the edges of the planet, rendering only a portion of the upper surface as the ground traveled upon by the player. This (at the very least in the design stage) left us with enough space to still implement another feature of the game, the placement of buildings and turrets to allow for upgrades and automatic defenses. Economy represented visually Buying and placing those turrets cost market value, which represents the health of the player as well. This was only a numerical value in the concept document, but we decided to add a small change to emphasize alterations by either losing or gaining this value, in the form of a moving graph. One of the game’s themes is a satirical view of economic prosperity, as the aliens are coming not so much to conquer but to move in, which lowers market value. To give a better visual representation of the player’s current status, a colored bar copying the look of that of a stockbroker’s graph for market gains would be added. This week our first encounter with the Scrum way of creating games will have been taught to us, and the next blog post should reflect that.  |
