Week 2

Teamwork

Having had less than full attendance at the first meeting with our producer, we have been made aware that a strong understanding and commitment towards regular communication will be an essential aspect of the success of our project. We have set up a agreement to have regular progress check-ups at least once every two days using Skype. This will ensure that any issues which could arise between meetings with the producer can and will be addressed promptly.

Game Idea

Our team has decided on a single idea for a game. We have chosen to develop a rolling ball game. We chose this because we agree that it provides us the freedom to incorporate elements from a variety of other types of game genres, such as:- role-playing, puzzle, platform, maze, beat 'em up etc. We have yet to agree upon which of these genres will have a more dominant influence on gameplay, but this is the next major step in the design of the game.

Planning

We are currently at the stage of planning a full timeline of our project and producing deadlines for project milestones in preparation for the creation of a Gantt chart for the project. We plan to prioritise a steady progression of both the game design document and technical design document throughout the entire timeline.

Technical

Having reviewed the pros and cons of each game engine provided by Josh, we have decided to use Unreal Engine 4 for the development of our game. Popular/powerful/access to free materials/using it in 4th year/C++ experience/lots of tutorials available.

Week 1

Paul Fitzpatrick

My day 1 plan for third year

My favourite gaming genre is Roleplaying games. specifically I enjoy games with levelling up systems using numbers for character progression. I enjoy everything that includes this mechanic and all kinds of numbers/integers (some examples being “Level, Experience, Money, Health, Mana, Ammo, Attack, Defense, Speed, Equipment slots such as head and legs, the weight of that equipment, the quality and power of that equipment, your characters skills/qualifications and training them”).

I could go on about lots of number I like to progressing higher some more than others.

I think it’s the idea of training your character I like the most especially training their fundamentals that can be practiced in everyday situations.

3d fps’ like “Fallout & Bioshock”, third person MMO’s like “World of Warcraft & RuneScape”, multiplayer online team based games like “League of Legends”, to NES/SNES classics like “final fantasy & Super Mario RPG”.  Are all very different games I enjoy.

I really want to get experience working in this genre but for it I may have to sacrifice some level of originality, of course I plan to add plenty of my own twists game mechanics and theme wise. But I am usually used thinking more out of the box with my ideas so most people could notice the unique twist from a one sentence description, a borrowed example being “instead of being able to jump you just always fall and the jump button just flips the screen upside down”.

I would want to make a NES/SNES classic RPG but even for 1 person it seems like a lot of work so I was thinking of cutting the 2 main aspects of an RPG in half and working on one of those aspects.

I was wondering if you would recommend one of these 2 projects after reading each description or at least what’s highlighted in red.

For simplicity’s sake I will use the original Pokémon games and cut one of them into 2 games.

Game 1 – RPG Combat System

The turn based combat system of Pokémon lets the player select an option from a series of menus once per turn (for example this turn the player might want to select Fight followed by Water Gun this turn) and without going into too much detail it’s essentially a really complex game of rock paper scissors.

I could make a combat system like this as a project where my primary focus would be getting the options I can choose from a menu to interact with my opponent and my opponents options to interact with me (game could be 1 or 2 player, 2 player is possibly better for time constraints so I don’t have to make an automated response).
If you are going to release these games for sale you would have to balance the numbers so that a certain strategy, move or combination wouldn’t be overpowered, but since this is my first shot the main importance is getting these options to display a result or show the user feedback for what they have done before I think about balancing.

If I were to do this I would make a barebones Overworld that is basically just a still image with options to select from a menu that should lead to combat and possibly some other things that can be added after the combat system has been sorted such as a shop, tavern to rest and heal your character & equipment screen.

(Choice in both the combat system and town could be made from click or the arrow keys backspace and enter.)

Example from “Reccetear an item shop’s tale”

Long story short it’s a somewhat complex RPG combat system with a very basic overworld.

Game 2 - Overworld adventure game.

Pokémon is basically just Zelda with a different and more complex combat system.

Let’s compare Game 2 to Zelda with its hack and slash combat system instead.

Example from “The Legend of Zelda”

If enemies have 3 health it will take 3 swings of your sword (which will swing 1 or 2 grids in front of your character) to destroy that enemy.

Be careful to dodge enemy attacks so you don’t deplete your own health and die.

There’s not much to say here, Zelda is a game with very simple tools but with such detailed and expansive level design using implementation of those tools. And the sprite and background design is very good.

Long story short it’s a somewhat complex RPG overworld with a very basic combat system.

PROS & CONS of each

Game 1

·         Great combat system and use of variables weak Overworld and Level Design.

·         Very good for displaying programming skills and interactions between stats and numbers.

·         The AI might be hard to make a correct strategic decision.

·         If it’s just a beta test for the early levels the combat shouldn’t be so complex for it to choose the right decision however.

·         I don’t have to bother making AI if I make it multiplayer.

·         A lot of time spent programming to get it to work.

Game 2

·         Great Overworld and Level design/Sprites but simplistic combat system.

·         Very good for displaying design skills.

·         The AI is easier to develop for a single player game.

·         Is limited to single player.

·         These games are fun to develop because less time is spent on programming objects and more time is spent using your objects in interesting ways to design levels, basically like playing around with a level editor in one of your favourite games, except that you made the tools on the editor and can add more. (For example a wall can be used on almost every screen of a game with some tweaks to the sprite for the theme of the area, it’s pretty quick to make a single screen in this type of game once you have the tools and can easily make more).

The enemy design for both games could be quite complex

·         For game 1 it would be based on a strategic choice of option for the turn based on the strength of your character and weakness of your opponent.

·         For game 2 it would be more timing based, about the speed of your opponent and what types of attacks they have compared to yours like fast melee vs. slow ranged you could dodge the projectiles and rush the enemy because their mobility is weak.