Achilles Development Pipeline

Achilles
Game Development Pipeline
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Ideation
The idea for Achille’s came across through firstly by thinking of my favourite type of indie game;
which is platform. It came around by me thinking what have I enjoyed playing over the years before
AAA games came out and it was Nintendo games that I played on my game boy, such as Mario and
Donkey Kong. I liked the idea of a game that you couldn’t judge too quickly, there’s always a change
something could pop out and take you off your track.
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The Achille’s idea was through my own interests. I used to have a game based around mythology
called ‘Age Of Mythology’ back in the day and my favourite type of people to play as were the
Greeks. The game was full of hero’s, soldiers, mythological creatures and gods so when playing it you
got an understanding of who was who and you actually learnt some mythological tales.
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Pre Production
In Greek tales there was a hero named ‘Achilles’ who known as immortal as his mother Thetis; the
story says that he was slain during the trojan war by Paris, a trojan price by getting shot with an
arrow in his heel. I would be telling the story of Achilles before he went to the trojan war, when he
was a young man and first started to realise his potential as a warrior.
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Platform games have reason; something to aim and try for from the characters perspective. Mario
had Princess Peach, Super Meat Boy had Bandage Girl and Achilles will has Athena. Athena was the
Greek goddess of wisdom and courage and is a well known figure as the city ‘Athens’ was named
after her. I thought it would be good to bring another part of history into the game but not truly to
the book as she was a goddess but plays a princess in Achilles.
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I wanted a common enemy that I could use throughout the game so I decided to
use the most one of the most commonly known mythological creatures, the
Minotaur. Minotaurs are a half man, half bull creature according to Greek legend. If
I had multiple of those based around the map it would make it harder to get from A
to B without having a difficulty rating.
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The story would be simple, it wouldn’t be told, it would be played out and it would be up for the
player to make up their mind on what they think its about. The story is that Achilles has been told to
climb Mount Olympus to find Athena which it located within the mountain; on the way there will be
Minotaurs to dodge. Climb the Mountain, dodge the Minotaurs, reach the princess.

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Production
During the production side there was no delegating roles as I was working by myself. Programming
wasn’t easy and I had never done it before so it was a trade I needed to learn whilst doing all the
other roles which is why I worked at home a lot. Programming on Gamesalad was picked up
eventually though with the help of internet articles and walkthroughs. Firstly I created the mechanics
of the game with simple blocks to see if worked, I started to make adjustments to the maps and then
the visuals until I went onto things such as animation and music.
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The 8 bit artwork was made by myself, I had never done 8 bit artwork before so I
decided to make life easier and make the pixels bigger than highly detailed pixelated
artwork. The character design came about by originally drawing these characters
on photoshop during the pre production stage used as assets for the paper
prototype; I took these assets and used them as templates for my new 8 bit images.
I wanted simplicity throughout the game, nothing to “in your face” so I ended up
only having 4 assets in total, the 3 characters and 1 grey rock.
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Music is the only sound I have throughout the game, this is to do with time management. All the
other duties were prioritised so creating my own music and sound effects became a problem. I found
a man on YouTube named ‘Derek Fliechter’ who composed his own myth styled music, I tested it out
on the game and it fit well. In the comment’s section I asked him if I could use it and he said yes as
long as he got credit which I did.
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Level design took a turn halfway through when I decided a bigger and wider map would be more
likeable to players as you could get more out of the game. The original plan was to go straight up like
the original ‘Donkey Kong’ game did but I wanted bigger obstacles, enemies and more importantly
more play time for the player as there is only one level. Throughout the background has stayed black
due to the fact that nothing else fit it, I started to like the default background as it brought back that
retro aesthetic that is on many old platform games.
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There wasn’t any directing during the game as I was my own boss practically, I could change things
and make decisions without having to concern anyone which was a nice touch to the project. I
decided the game was too easy just before the beta test, I put in a mechanic which meant the
Minotaur could kill you but you couldn’t kill it; this was paired with a no life system so the player did
end up starting they would have to start from the beginning.
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Interface consisted of 3 slides of information; the first being the home screen and controls, the second
being basic instructions and the last is to say that you’ve won the game.

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Post Production
I mostly did the bug testing myself but I got 10+ people to play the finished game and they didn’t
come across any bugs. I recurring problem I had and which still creeps up sometimes is that Achilles
gets stuck when walking straight, he carries on walking on the spot. Another bug is when the game
was uploaded onto Gamesalad, the walking animation only works when you move right but not left;
offline in Gamesalad it works perfectly but online it wont work.

Achilles Development Pipeline

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Achilles Development Pipeline