Week 11 brought about a lot of changes for our project as well.
That Monday people from the games industry game in to playtest our game, and we got a lot of feedback about things to change. We also had a lot more conversations about which things to cut and change.
Sadly, one of the things that ultimately I suggested was taking out the animals from the game.
Due to us having to rescope our project so last-minute, our game concept had turned around from a platformer game about saving animals from a collapsing building, to an abandoned, overgrown office environment meets Indiana Jones type of game where the goal was to get out as fast as possible while collecting things along the way. The zoo animals simply didn’t make sense anymore.
Admittedly, the change was a lot for me to adjust to. Mentally, I was preparing to speed through the character animations in the final few weeks of our project, perhaps with an extension of a week or two, but this left me having to find a completely different role to fill, with Chika being in charge of the character animation.
However, this was both a good and a bad thing, as this meant that I could help with other aspects of the game, such as the GUI.
Individual notes:
I also briefly refreshed my knowledge on GUI by reading up on it a bit:
I did also have a look with Dave at whether I could open the Unreal project myself even just to help with having a visual reference of how the game looked at the time, though for some reason none of the textures were loading for me, so I just stuck to uploading assets to our shared OneDrive for the Game Design students to implement the assets from.
Dave sent me a video of a bit of playthrough of the game to help me with designing the GUI.
As I mentioned we had changed the concept entirely. Our project had now been renamed to “Paulina Bones: The File of Destiny” (based off of Indiana Jones).
^Anna’s art
Based off of that, I put together some references to try to think of concepts for the GUI.
I joined the hoard of students who had referenced My Little Pony for their game projects as I enjoyed their gem designs as well as some of their ancient storybook like designs.
Initial concepting and ideas:
I initially wasn’t all that happy with how it was looking, it looked a bit off and I couldn’t figure out a colour scheme I liked.
This was fine but I felt it blended in with the background too much.
I tried to trust the process with this.
And eventually figured out something I liked a lot more! I liked the bottom left design the most so I tried to implement it into the line art I already had drawn.
But it just felt off, so I tried again.
But it still looked off. Then I noticed I way preferred the lineless look and it fit better with the style of the background without actually blending into it, so I decided to just develop that look instead!
Tested things out with a screenshot from the game:
And finished it!
Onto the timer, I decided to sketch it out on the screenshot itself.
Finally, the score:
Probably the least creative out of the three, however I think at least it was clear and matched in theme with the other GUI parts.
Also, I didn’t label the heart meter as “health” personally because I figured with the heart symbol it would be more obvious. GUI isn’t my strong suit but I think if I were to have a go at it again, I’d avoid straight up verbally labelling the GUI elements and focus on communicating what they mean visually.
Then came the process for the beginning cutscene, based off of Anna’s storyboards.
^ Anna’s art
I started by just putting together the storyboards in an animatic format.
I timed it alongside the music that had been made for our game so that it would play alongside the game audio. I also added some potential extra scenes for extra story detail, though due to time constraints I wasn’t able to get those finished up. So I just focused on the scenes that Anna had made, and the rest could be inferred anywho.
I uploaded these without audio for the games students to use in the project, recommending the first video as it had a more finished look to it.
If I had the time, I think I would have made the first part of the opening cutscene more grand and more on model, as well as adding some more fluid animation to it.
I sadly wasn’t able to get this done in time to be put in the game, but I also put together a potential “You Died” screen for the game.
It’s not perfect, and I think some elements blend together a bit too much, and if I had more time I would have liked to have added some animation, even if just slight. I also think I could have made the backgrounds more similar to the ones in-game. But I do think it looks decent.
Also, I didn’t want to make it too gory as the game itself had moved away from our initial idea of gore into a generally more friendly and approachable game for a variety of ages.
I sadly wasn’t able to get any background animals such as dogs/cats/rats animated either, although in fairness I’m not sure how well they would have fit into the game anyway, and as well as that we had some issues trying to implement sprites into the game.
And so our game had finally come together!
Final Reflections
Despite learning a lot this semester, I did struggle quite a bit with this project. Dips in my physical and mental well-being made it more difficult to be productive and creative and complete work as well as organise myself along with plans changing along the way.
I was happy to explore certain other roles such as GUI, however since it’s not what I’m familiar with it did feel a bit intimidating and rocky. I felt most confident when I was doing 2D animation, and it’s a shame I didn’t get to do more of it for the project. However I do acknowledge that was partially due to my own time management difficulties. I am glad to have at least had the opportunity to complete the opening cutscene and “you died” screen, and I am glad I had the opportunity to at least animate one character sprite and learn a bit more about the process of making 2d games overall. It was interesting to learn more about an industry that I wasn’t very familiar with before.
Adapting to the changes was difficult, but I think we found some creative ways to deal with it regardless. For example, the zookeeper outfit was now turned into an adventurer outfit, and we found ways to change the game while still reusing most pre-existing assets. However, due to the change in our project idea in the middle of development, some things weren’t maybe as thought out as they could have been, and although we made it work, it was a shame and I think it limited our potential for the project.
I think if I were to approach a project like this again, I would have spent more time at the very beginning firmly nailing down the concepts, as well as trying to be more realistic with expectations and perhaps creating a weekly plan/layout right off the bat to help keep track with things.
However, it wasn’t all bad. I think we had a group of genuinely really creative people, and we all got along and worked together very well in my opinion, which definitely helped. We listened to each other’s ideas and persevered despite the difficulties that came up. I’d honestly be very happy to work with our group again.
I also feel that I learnt a lot throughout this entire process about game-making, what to do and what not to do, and I think it was a great learning experience. I feel confident that if I were to approach a team to try to make a game together again, I’d feel a lot more prepared and like I knew a lot better what to expect in the project.