Game Design Blog #1

This weeks sprint planning for me included the enemy spawn mechanic change and the flare pick-up mechanics. The change of the spawn of the enemies was bound to happen as my older static and preplaced spawn system was criticized by the project manager and the lead programmer to being too predictable, thus making me change the old spawner this week into a random spawner which makes the game less predictable. As one of the most important aesthetic goals of the […]

Game Design Blog #2

For two weeks I have worked on the full implementation of the pick-up powerup called the flare. A powerup in any videogame is there to make the player feel powerful while also trying to ease them out from a serious situation. The reason our group chose this kind of a powerup is caused by the similarities it has with the flashlight mechanic which essentially is a light that when held upon a blurry sprite, reveals what the actual sprite holds […]

Paradox

Я                    и            онИ
I                and      thEy
островА             и          морЯ
    Island      and       sEAs
нОчи                и           дни
          dAys        and       nIghts
тЕни                и          сны
                Air           and        grOUnds
вОздух                       землИ
                          fIre         and        wAters
огОнь              и         вОды
                                     […]

Где я?

Где лица, улицы, звуки, места.
А вокруг лишь ничто и везде лишь вода.
Со всех сторон окружен безымянный мой остров внутри никогда.
Но здесь многие были и сейчас, и всегда.
Где безконечные ночи и вечные дни.
Где не видно людей, но видны их огни.
И где слуги законов учат нас видеть сны.
…наяву
 

Enemy spawners and Prefabs

Today’s post will be about the way we handle spawning enemies in Aetherial and how this system can be used to tweak and balance the game.
The camera is static in the scene and the parallax effect of the background gives the illusion of movement. By having the scene be static it becomes easier to control and design the movement of the enemies and player, since we don’t have to account for any camera movement.
Then we have a game object called […]

Flip a paper prototype to digital in 5 days

To initiate works on the student shoot-em-up game project, and to open a group discussion about development, I prepared a paper prototype to specify movement mechanics and dynamics. Then I asked the team to flip the paper prototype to a digital prototype, using Unity2D and C#. The purpose of the paper prototype was to clarify the basic movement mechanics of the character in 2D Euclid space, whereas the digital prototype was requested to test the current abilities of the team […]

Alpha Presentation

This week our Sprint Planning Meeting was hosted by our Second-Year Project Manager, our Scrum Master. The primary task this week was the Alpha Presentation, the Scrum Master delegated the task of writing and hosting this presentation to me, which we did not object to. I personally felt that it was fair to let me handle this task, since it can for the most part feel like Project Managers aren’t contributing enough with the general project.
I decided to host a […]

Dreams

… are where I belong
Where things i can’t see and the Places I know
I have hidden Myself in the back of a mind
Where the world isn’t disturbed by the presence of Me
Of a mind that is bigger and better than We
Where the streets are all empty and the Shadows are free

Game Design Week 7 – The Making of a Large Monster

I’ve been working on several things during these past weeks, but not all of them are so interesting to read about. So, one of the most fun task I’ve undertaken was to create and draw the large enemy fish that is chasing the player for the duration of the game play. For two sprints I – among other things – made a concept illustration, changed and refined that design, and tuned the colours.
In the planning stage, I made some quick […]

Game Design Week 4 – The Making of a Large Monster

I’ve been working on several things during these past weeks, but not all of them are so interesting to read about. So, one of the most fun task I’ve undertaken was to create and draw the large enemy fish that is chasing the player for the duration of the game play. For two sprints I – among other things – made a concept illustration, changed and refined that design, and tuned the colours.
In the planning stage, I made some quick […]

Enemy Movement Design

In this post I would like to talk about the movement design of our bird enemy.
The bird enemy is the first and the weakest that a player counters. It flies in a covey and moves slow compared to the other enemies. It shoots projectiles when afar, and does an electric attack when closeby. The enemy has different spawn points at the right side of the screen, flying towards the player avatar on the left. It uses all the game field […]

The importance of playtesting

Testing game play in the Unity editor

Recently I realized how important it is to play test your game. I always thought of play testing as a thing a developer has to do every once in a while, but did not take play testing and all of its facets too serious. However, a play testing session that we had at university on Monday proved me wrong.
I didn’t expect  a lot from the play testing. We prepared a […]