Animated Slide Show

Final Slides for Presentation

Presentation

For presenting my game concept I have decided to do it in powerpoint because it will make it easy to read (nice and clear) plus I will be able to add animation to my game itself showing how the different items would fall and be caught, missed etc.

By the time I have included everything I will probably end up with about 10 slides which will be a good amount to stay within the 2-3min presentation time.

Final Drawings

User Testing and Feedback

After having a few of my class mates look at my paper prototype I was given some very good improvement ideas for my game. Although they were only small improves I was happy to try them out and ended up going with a few of them.

It was suggested that I have better tokens that were less like bejeweled. So i was given the idea of having tokens fall that made the back of the truck bigger (easier to catch with) and smaller (harder to catch with). I really liked this as it added another aspect to my game and would help keep it interesting and fun to play.

Another suggestion I have to do with my tokens was one that made the truck speed up for about 5-10seconds. I liked this idea as well so decided to include it to.

A few other suggestions were made about the layout of my game but I decided to just improve my original choice for the layout. User testing proved to be a big help and Im glad I listened to what my classmates had to suggest for improving my current concept.

Research

I looked at many games on the following websites to get a better idea of what makes a game work and fun.

www.friv.com
www.onlineflashgames.org
www.addictinggames.org

Majority of the games are for children so they had very simple mechanics but were very colourful and fun to play. I hope to achieve this with my game. Have it simple yet fun and addictive to play.

Different Layout Ideas

I personally like the bottom layout the most but after asking a few people for there opinions I have decided to go with the top layout and just alter it a wee bit in order to make it have a more cleaner look to it.

Different Rubbish

There are four main groups for recycling. They include: Plastic, Glass, Paper and Metal. For each of these groups there will be 2-3 types of objects that fall. The group of non recyclable objects will include 4-5 at this stage.

Items that will drop:

 

 

So far my Game will definitely include:

- A time limit in which the player has to have caught all the recycling. If waste gets in truck or a recyclable object is missed then the player will lose a life.

- Player has 3 lives per level.

- Levels get harder as player progresses. Such as speeds up.

- Power ups will also fall. These will either extend the time limit or destroy all rubbish falling at that specific time giving you extra points.

Possible Character Ideas

Chosen Concept

I have decided to go with my first concept of the falling rubbish. I will now brainstorm different ways in which I can improve this game before I decide on my final concept.

Possible characters include:
- Rubbish Man
- Dump Truck
- Rubbish Bin
- An animal such as a rat maybe


Environment:
- I will have my game based at a rubbish dump obviously, As that is where rubbish is sorted into its recycling categories etc.


Possible Game Options:
- Missed rubbish means a life lost.
- Sort rubbish into separate bins maybe.
- Catch power ups.
- Limited time to catch all the rubbish.
- Gets faster and harder each level.


I have many ideas for my game but have to work out how I can make them all work together to form a good kids game based around recycling.

After Feedback

After receiving feedback in class on Weds morning I am unsure what idea I should develop more. I like both of them but I do agree that they both still need a lot of development especially with the mechanics of the game.
I am going to ask around and see what idea my classmates think has the most potential.

Concept Two

Still needs development.

Concept One

Still needs a lot of thought.

Brainstorming Kids and Sustainability

I found a website that had definitions of sustainability for children and also written by children.

Project Two - Prototype 20%

Expanding from the previous project, the theme of the assignment will be again about sustainability with an aim to encourage better habits (energy saving, recycling, insulation, etc) with regards to the environment. How can you design a game for children that will help them develop new energy habits?   

For this project, you will develop a game proposal that should be of suitable size and scope for a small team to develop in a 6-week timeframe. The proposal should discuss a sustainability theme, the game mechanic, its narrative (if applicable), and the target audience. The focus should be on a simple game mechanic that can be prototyped quickly.

Decided to Add Second Scene

So ive decided to add in a second scene with includes information about me and this assignment. 
As the character leaves scene one (shown in previous post) it will fade into this scene and vice versa. Took me a very long time to get the code right to make this work but finally got there in the end after a wee bit of help from google.
Credits scene:

Character still walks across the screen and is controlled by left and right arrow keys.

Game

Here are some screen shots of the character in the game.

Starting position.

 After sucking up the water.

Before sucking up the water.

Character Collision

In order to turn the hose off I have to have it collide with the character. With this collision the character will also turn from dehydrated to hydrated then back down to dehydrated. The code to do this was:

Hose Code: This didnt originally work. But I changed the actual animation of the behavior and from there it worked.

Hose Now Working

To get the hose to appear I had to remake the sprite sheet and import it again. For some reason it worked this time even though I did nothing different from the first time. Must have been a corrupt file or something amongst the sprite sheet some where.

Ive decided to make the background look darker. I reckon it looks much better with a darker look and feel to it as wasting water shouldnt seem like a big happy occasion. It doesnt help to get the message across.
Before:

After:

Character Walk through water

I have decided to have my character walk through the water in order for the hose to turn off. I feel this makes more sense as having him both jump and change from dehydrated to hydrated would seem a bit much all at once. I am aiming to have drippy look like he is absorbing the water then once again becoming dehydrated and continues on his way to the next hose.

Having a issue with hose. For some reason it will appear on my scene but when I test the scene or game it does not show up.

I am not sure why this is but will keep trying to fix it.

First Step - Importing Character and Background.

Done. Very simple to do. Screen Shots of different stages in Stencyl:

Stencyl Time - Finally

Am now ready to put my idea and animations into stencyl and create my scene. I do know that I would like my character to remain in the centre of the scene and have the camera follow it. And also not show my entire environment at once, but move with the character.

Sprite Sheets

 Dehydrated Walk Right

 Dehydrated to Hydrated

 Hydrated Walk Right

 Hydrated to dehydrated

 Water sucked up

Water and Hose moving

Hydrated Walk Left

Dehydrated Walk Left

I created all of my sprite sheets by using Bens Processing code that he provided. Could not get it to work to begin with but then realized after wasting some time that my images werent name correctly. Very glad I got it working as it saved heaps of time rather than putting them together myself in photoshop.

Hose

This is my hose completed in illustrator. The water will move which will give it a running water look.

Different Animations needed.

1- Hydrated Walk (Left and Right)
2- Hydrated to dehydrated
3- Dehydrated Walk (Left and Right)
5- Dehydrated to Hydrated

6- Hose with moving Water
7- Hose sucking water up

Hydrated Walk

In order to create the dehydrated walk I have just changed the body on this character and kept all animations the same on the legs. 
To make him go from Small to Big I am just going to flip the images vertically in preview. Same with the walks to make him walk left.

Had to resize

I had forgotten to resize everything to the correct size before putting the character into flash. Have redone that and added in legs and face.

Making character big to small

Using the blend tool in illustrator I was able to create each both shape as it transforms from hydrated to dehydrated. 

From here I copied them all into flash on separate layers in order to animate it. This is what it looks like so far.

I chose to use the character without a stroke around the body as I feel this will look more effective when placed on the background. It also adds emphasis to his facial expressions and to me, just looks more appealing.