Evaluation of fmp
- 1. Ross Loynd Evaluation of FMP “Contrast”
- 2. Technical Quality With my portion of the game Contrast, I feel like my game didn’t stray too far from that what we already knew, but because I focused more on simple gameplay I didn’t have as a complete game, though I focused making my game have more of an artistic feel to it with storyline, usage of Photoshop for the creation of the logo, transition screens and isometric art. What we found when we were in production of the game, is that we give ourselves a lot more than we were able to handle, so there’s many elements in our game which we’d missed, such as sound design.
- 3. Technical Quality -2 When it came to layout, I feel as a whole, our game clashed very well and made sense, the character starting in a small castle in their bed to move into a sequence of levels to a boss, to then run into a portal that would take the character from one game into a complete different game style, hence the name “Contrast” as this was our initial idea. With the game varying in play styles, I feel like we were still able to thread the game in a way which made sense with the transition of terrain and style of each area.
- 4. Technical Quality -3 When it came down to the end of the unit and we were starting to record our in-game footage and all our personal contributions with the full play-through of the game, the recording showed well that our games worked, they didn’t have much in terms of bugs and errors, the game ran smoothly and our footage taken of it well justifies the games quality and amount of effort we each put into it.
- 5. Production Skills Initially using Gamemaker I wasn’t so certain on many things, such as how to create a well made sprite, how to code basic things like systems and how to work with the software as a whole. When it came to using Gamemaker I was entirely unsure on the creation of a transition or anything that seemed relatively easy but with tutorials which I’d found online I could make things I would have been incapable of using before, this is why I was able to make screens that would create story and an a prologue to give the player both introduction to the game as well as purpose once they had started the game, to keep them going. I learnt how different kinds of states worked in the game, different physics, this includes introducing gravity into the game, falling speeds and basic worldly physics, considering my previous efforts in game creation entailed me creating a game which required next to no physics, it was different to be able to work with states in-game, which meant I could make the player be running on a different style of physics based on what events occurred, for example being in a small invulnerability period once colliding with the object placed in game.
- 6. Production Skills -2 As I was working with other people we had to come across the hurdle of combining our games together without making too many issues, initially when we’d done this we thought it would be as simple as exporting one persons game, then importing it into another, to our dismay we found out that we had to do a lot more manual work than that as we’d not gone through the trouble in renaming our own object, sprites and backgrounds which caused us a lot of compile errors. Going through this state of trial and error myself, I got around to figuring out how the software worked in and out of the GUI, as we found the solution to our problem by taking the files of each persons game and placing them in the main directory of the games collided, from there it was just a case of checking through our rooms, re-ordering them and working to get them all together in unison. Other than the combination of games I’ve picked up, I figured out how to go through the process of importing things into gamemaker from other programs, such as photoshop, initially when you do this you will have white borders around your sprites which will mess up the production of the game as it’ll look incorrect.
- 7. Production Skills -3 One thing I found myself being rather useful at doing was the creation of sprites, I found I could quickly create characters, terrain and models which I would use in my final piece if not a different increment of the sprite I created. For example I worked on the player giving them a generic look for the player to sympathise more with them, in this case giving the player basic leather armor, brown hair and blue eyes so he isn’t very distinct in relation to other games such as Guild wars, WoW etc with characters in hulking armour with distinct features.
- 8. Product Expectations and Outcome When we started the initial thinking through of this game, we thought that It would be relatively simple as we’re working in pixels, though we did what we could to create a game which was relative to what we’d imagined with new Ideas that had been added on in the end of the planning phase, initially we wanted a game that was showcasing out skills in making games as well as showing that we can create games based around the themes and genres we enjoy playing, which I found we all portrayed pretty well in the final game, we all managed to create a game which was different to others in our party, myself creating a fast paced game which required quick time thinking and hand eye co-ordination to get through, where other people in my team worked on different genres, Ben working on that of a platformer with different obstacles, Elliot working on a stealth based game that required moving out of the line of sight from mobs and Callum working to create a game that required speed and precision, pressing the space bar fast enough for the player to get through to the end of the game.
- 9. Product Expectations and Outcome 2 Though at an overall basis we didn’t manage to make the complete game we planned, when it came down to it there was a lot of errors which came with working as a group, we found ourselves scrambling for time and cancelling out on things that we’d planned, which even had us completing our games when they’d only just begun production, so they were very basic compared to what we could have made given more time and more of an Idea on what we were doing. I personally feel I could have done a lot more with my game, making it more than just a mini-game and giving it different levels, more high intensity and speed as the player progresses rather than the single basic level as filler for the character to continue their expedition, though I feel accomplished in what I did as I find myself lesser known to the coding side of game maker, so I couldn’t make something incredibly intricate with the knowledge I have.
- 10. Production Expectations and Outcome 3 Though we didn’t achieve all we wanted in the project, we did show what we could do in terms of difference in ideas and knowledge, we stuck to the majority of our proposal with our downfall being that our game isn’t what we had anticipated in terms of length and quality despite us achieving our goal. Other goals we found ourselves achieving was the theme, we wanted the game to loosely match that of a Legend of Zelda game, as that was the top of its game when it was created and it’s easy to make something that’s similar looking with game maker, which we did, our character was simple in terms of art but it looked close of that to Link but not looking like it’s been copied.
- 11. Time Management I feel that even when we weren’t making much progress in the completion of the game we managed to make something that we were happy with, within the time that we had to create it, though when it came down to the last hurdle of the creation of the game we had a lot to work on, as many things weren’t working together and the realisation that we were running out of time was getting to us, making us want to finish the game sooner so we could wrap things up. When it came to our schedule there was a lot we had to change as can be seen in the production schedule as initially we had 3 weeks that weren’t allocated to anything as we thought we would have had the time to edit the game, but when it came to producing the game, we found a lot more difficulties that were time consuming, making us take this time to finish up our game.
- 12. Target Audience The target audience that we aimed for was Male and Female teens to young adults based on the in-between of those generations were players of Legend of Zelda games, which is what we wanted the aesthetics of our game to be based around with the change in sidescroller to top-down game. When it came down to our feedback we asked people around teenagers what was good and bad about our game, it was nice to know everyone was pleased in the look of the game and how it was cartoon looking in simplicity without too much detail, but enough for the game to look like an old classic. With our feedback there were bad responses too but they were more small hints and little things to improve the playability of our games, one mentioning the controls weren’t very clear in parts of our game which stumped the playability a bit, making the player guess what it was they’d have to do. They’d also stated the story was a bit mis-matched, though we initially wanted a story of the protagonist saving their sister but when it came to the merging of our games it was difficult to keep the storyline intact.
- 13. Summary Overall I feel like I made worthy contribution into the game as a whole, not with just my own work but making it possible for other peoples games to look good and make sense, giving people ideas in how to make their games work, taking my role as project leader, though some did work than less we still have a game that works and has a playstyle entirely different than that of any other game. We planned more than we could handle when it came to the creation of the game, as we thought we could handle it with us all being there, but we found we were relying on each other far too much in the games production so it was difficult to know who was getting anything done and who was waiting on someone else. If I could get around to doing this project again I would work In a group of people I can guarantee will work with me in unison as well as take more time to work on the ideas generation so I had a clear idea of what it was I wanted to do. To improve the game strongly I would’ve worked more into the story or made it more scarce, I feel the way we used it in our game was very lacking in any detail or backing to it, it was just placeholder for reason in