So this marks the start of the third project for Studio 2 where we have been put into teams and must make a music video game (music-video video-game) for a client. The client is also a student at SAE in the audio discipline. The music that we will be creating the game around is of the folk music genre.

Our client already had quite a clear idea of what he wanted the game to be when we met with him and brainstormed some ideas. Stefan (the client) is a christian and wanted the game to have a religious meaning to the game. So far the idea is that the player walks along a path in randomly organised (not procedurally generated) scenic areas. They do not control the speed or direction of the player, they are simply taking in the environment that is reacting to the music. This repeats for the songs duration before they arrive at a hill of three crosses with the sunset in the background and the credits roll giving it a film feel.

As for the player interaction, the player can click on elements in the environment to cause small events. As an example they might click on a flock of pigeons in the park and they all fly away, or they click on a pond and there is a splash and all the fish swim away. Think of how Hearthstone handles its environment interaction on the playing field. The player will approach a juncture at the end of the current area where they can choose between 2 different directions that will lead to the next area.

After looking at some folk music videos I noticed some common trends that has definitely shown in our clients vision. These music videos tend to tell a story about a particular person, most of the time involving them walking through a scenic area. As someone who doesn’t listen to this genre of music and has never seen these types of music videos, it’s great to see how much our client had already considered them in the vision he proposed to us.

Above are some example music videos of the folk music genre that all center around a single individual. They all involve very vast and beautiful scenery through the characters journey. Something that has stuck out about these videos in comparison to our clients vision is that some of the videos have character development while some don’t. Our client said that he wanted low a low level of detail so that the player can fill in the blanks with their own imagination. Because of this focus on player interpretation, I think it is a good idea to keep the character depth to a minimal and focus more on their journey and let the player be the character.

So from here our goal is to get the core playable down so that we can get the client to tell us where to go from there. The main issue we had from the initial brainstorm is that the client wanted the world to be viewed from top down but to also see the oncoming horizon. I did some research and found something called horizon bending which I applied to a test scene and it seems to give the desired effect. It needs some tweaking to get the right amount of curve and camera angles and height, but we will have to see what the client thinks after the core playable.

This was my second project for Studio 2 and was based off of an art piece that we chose at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. I personally chose Sandra Selig’s piece called mid-air, for further reading read up on my other blog post here. The itch page for this game can be found here.

So this project was a great learning experience for me, I was able to apply myself to learn new things again and put myself into the unknown. mid-air is simply a space where form is almost non existent in tandem with its space. The idea is that the beads that travel along the threads take up very little space, seemingly low density and still our minds fill in the space to create form.

What Went Right?

1. Scope

Because this project was only 1 week long, it was obvious that a low scope was needed and so I essentially treated it like a game jam. Given the art piece I chose, I tried to pick the most efficient idea that would be both interesting to play and fast to make. Even though the game changed a lot throughout the week which is quite normal for such a project, it still maintained the same space and concept that was initially planned.

2. User Interface

Because I was able to get the functionality polished earlier on than I expected, I decided to focus on other aspects of the game which, in the end gave it a more professional feel. I have spent a lot of time in the past working on menu navigation and scene management and have grown to like it. That much is also true with this project because I spent a majority of the polish phase creating a visually appealing, simplistic feeling and bare bones UI that I was very satisfied with. Some notable elements of the UI includes both keyboard and mouse navigation, a volume slider that saves to player preferences and audio feedback.

3. Applying Level Design

I have always had trouble with applying the level design concepts that I have learnt throughout my game dev experiences. This one is kind of a good and bad, I didn’t really plan for this or actively make it happen and so it ended up making me both learn new stuff and lose a lot of time. Because the player movement mechanics was severely altered half way through development, I was forced to come up with a solution to the levels layout. I also had to account for the terrible optimization issues I was facing. The idea is that the player moves along a current and is sent to a random node along a fixed number of options. The issue is trying to make a loop that i both interesting and also uses the least amount of nodes possible. Here’s the image I used to visualize my idea (the red arrows are the direction of the current):

What Went Wrong?

1. Artist Interpretation

Something that continues to bug me is that I didn’t dedicate enough time to coming up with a solid concept that really communicates my own interpretation of the art work. It was more of a “make it virtual” kind of project which is what we were meant to avoid. I am still very satisfied with the outcome, but I still think I could have done it better if I put more thought into the research and figured out what the piece was really about.

2. Planning

So this one pops up on every postmortem in some way or another, this falls under time management, planning, etc. Due to a lack of planning my methods for make the core art works effect was very inefficient although it was very adjustable to customize the effect to my liking. Because of the lack of planning I started ‘roaming’ around different ideas and concepts, mainly working on the UI and image effects. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing, I’d like to think it breaks even in this scenario but because the bead effect was the core experience, I kind of hope I did more for it.

3. Optimization

This ties in with the level design problems because I was unable to really expand the space to what I wanted due to the technical limitations of instantiating and destroying dozens of beads every frame. I was recommended Unity’s object pooling feature but was unable to because I already had the core functionality in place for spawning the beads and object pooling would not have worked in the given time frame.

Conclusion

Overall I think I don’t need to say it again but I am very satisfied with the outcome, probably more satisfied than I’ve been with most of my projects. I didn’t put the most time into it nor did I produce something amazing, but what I can take from this project is arguably more than most of my other projects especially given its production time frame. I have further cemented my understanding of “scope”, it can really be approached in two ways depending on what your project is. Scope high and filter out the bad stuff, or scope low and add what you want. I have found recently that scoping low and building up is great for exploring creativity and learning new things, whereas scoping high can be effective in a very well planned project.

Learning how to make a bare bones, clean and effective UI is important as soon as you get the game to functional stage. A nice rule of thumb that I have started to go by is; If the game has passed the functional stage and I cannot start and quit my game through the main menu then that is the first priority. Having balance between good game play and good UI is a solid way to have a great product. Although I feel more comfortable with my level design abilities, I still don’t feel that they are good enough for my liking. Level design is something I am really interested in but I still can’t nail down. I need to do more practice in this area since I am aware of my own inabilities.

Time management and planning is a struggle for most people in the industry and it’s something I am constantly looking to improve. This project wasn’t as heavily restricted as others but it’s still good to try and take something from. Having a well thought out intended experience I think is key to a lot of my problems. I had issues with interpreting the artists work, planning the project and time management. If I were to start from the core, intended experience, I think it would result in a lot less stress of trying to make something decent.

The week is over and so is the last project, I didn’t blog much on it due to its small period but it has come along nicely. Instead of going down the labyrinth idea, I decided to make the character get pushed around the tunnels in a current. This was way more difficult than I thought it would be because I also wanted to have the player choose which direction they go at corners and intersections. In the end I made it pick a random direction with a fairly simplified layout which allowed me to have a functional game and to focus on the polish aspects.

I added some image effects including depth of field, ant aliasing and bloom. I wanted anti aliasing because of all the small threads and beads that can be seen from a distance, having this effect will blur edges so they seem less pixelated. I used bloom to enhance the lighting and making the game feel less like a prototype. The same goes with depth of field, I was actually unsure of if I would need it, but after testing it with the bloom, it just further complimented the effect.

I made sure I had enough time for audio this time and was able to get some basic audio down that fit nicely with the game. Firstly is the UI sounds that I found at opengameart.org, one for navigating between the buttons and one for selecting a button. Because I spent the amount of time I did on the UI, I felt it was a good decision to make it feel better with feedback sounds. I wanted some audio that was loud, subtle and based around stringed instruments to relate it with the art piece. I found a great track at freesound.org that was exactly what I wanted. To further compliment the sound I placed 6 objects at each intersection each with 3D sound playing the same file in sync. The effect gives a very surreal feeling about the space. Finally I added a sound for when the player triggers the shift ability. I wanted it to sound like a very low frequency ring as if the world was shifting or the space was transforming. I found a simple bass sound that I edited in audacity to extend the length of the tone.

I spent a lot of time on the UI and menu navigation to give the game a professional feel given its simplistic mechanics. This involved making a selection image change places when navigating with the keyboard and being able to select buttons with keyboard and mouse. I also opted to add in a volume slider since there is a lot of sensory type noises going off that may need to be varying volumes depending on the user. This volume amount will save in the player preferences, so whenever the scene is changed or the game is started again, it will load the previous value. As with the original art work, I decided to make every word in the game lowercase (except for the names in the credits).

So with the first project done and dusted last week, we now have a new project in which we have to complete in 1 week. This project is meant to be a game crafted around an art piece we chose at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. It was difficult for me to pick out of Timo Nasseri’s Epistrophy VI and Sandra Selig’s mid-air. I really like both pieces and was leaning more towards Epistrophy VI but because Unity probably wouldn’t handle the reflections necessary for my idea I went with mid-air.

Sandra Selig is an artist born 1972 in Sydney, Australia and now lives in Brisbane, Australia. She often crafts her work with household items like string and paper to explore concepts such as intangibility and formlessness. Sandra Selig’s art piece mid-air is only made up of nylon threads and styrofoam beads but still appears to have density and form. It’s like the the viewers mind fills in the empty space.

I decided to incorporate the idea of formlessness to my design by making a series of tubes that look the same as the art piece and create a labyrinth. The concept is that the player must navigate through a world that has little to no form to find the exit. The beads will be moving at different speeds and intervals to make the world more alive. The player will control the players horizontal movement and will be able to navigate through the tunnels. When entering a vertical tunnel, the player will be pushed in the beads direction of travel.

So far I’ve got the basic tube visuals down pat, now I’m exploring how I can make the labyrinth idea work. The player can move along the horizontal plane within the tubes, and when they enter a vertical tube, they will be pushed in the beads direction of travel, like lifts. The current game loop is that the player can explore the space, learn its rules and take in the visuals until they reach the exit.

Unfortunately I have come across the bug that has been haunting me since the last project so I will definitely need to find a fix for it. For some reason the camera will start randomly rotating causing the player to spaz out.

Next Location is a meaningful game that is based off of a personal experience, it was created for a university project in 2 weeks. The main goal behind this project is to convey the personal experience within a game as close as possible. The game takes place in a 3D world with 4 different school areas. The games core mechanic is the anxiety system, the player starts with a set amount of anxiety that will go down when interacting with NPC’s, but getting within their proximity will increase the player characters anxiety. The player completes the game by talking to all the NPC’s in each school.

The intended experience is for the player to feel anxious about approaching the NPC’s to interact with them. The way I have added this is with use of a variable that controls the grayscale image effect, vortex image effect, motion blur image effect, player movement speed and the volume of the heartbeat sound effect. Interacting with NPC’s takes a second of holding down the mouse button and will change their shirt to blue to signify befriending them. After befriending all of the students and the player character has no anxiety, they will be taken to the next school in a car. As the player drives away, the camera is locked on the previous school and show all the NPC’s shirts fade back to black.

This game was influenced by a few other meaningful and personal experience games. The Ride by Nic Lyness influenced me to be simplistic in my design, not to worry about making challenging game play and to override the players camera to convey meaning more effectively. The Ride puts the player on a motorbike for a ride where they experience the joy of riding before being reminded the dangers of motorbikes. Tunnel Vision by Jake Garret influenced my methods of communicating through image effects. Tunnel Vision puts the player in a school environment against anxiety and uses saturation effects to communicate the player characters anxiety level.

What went right?

1. Scope

This project has had a relatively small scope since the beginning and has looked visually like a Unity prototype level for most of its life. The game revolved around a single core mechanic which was the anxiety system, being able to have the core mechanic early on in the development phase allowed me to add more to that mechanic and flesh it out. The game went through a major pivot only days before its completion due to feedback from play testers.

2. Intended Experience

This was my first time really focusing on the intended experience and nailing down a solid idea. Researching ways of communicating my personal experience taught me a lot about different ways to design games through meaning. Thanks to getting the core mechanic done early on I was able to experiment with ways to make the intended experience clearer.

3. Trying New Things

Doing the unknown and trying new things was one of my main goals prior to working on this project so I was able to go all out on this one. Using exaggerated image effects, stealing the players control and otherwise not trying to make the next big thing was very educational for me. I learnt more about having fun making games than making games because I have to.

What went wrong?

1. Concept

It was very difficult for me to think up of a concept because this is the first project I’ve made that focuses on meaningful game design rather than trying to make the game challenging. It took me a while to gain the momentum that I had towards the end of the project. I think I still made do with the concept I had but I would have preferred a top down 2D game with stylized simplistic visuals using the same core mechanic. Using different methods of designing games is something I wanted to expand on prior to this project and I ended up resorting back to what I know.

2. Risk Management

I did not account for many issues during this project which in the end led to lost time and crunch. Issues such as assets not performing as intended and bugs making the game unplayable pushed me past my own deadlines meaning I had to work more than I had anticipated.

The issue that took up most my time and still has an unknown cause is when the player character will rotate viciously while looking in a certain direction. Another issue was that the raycast that draws the interaction UI would stutter at some points throughout the levels. Fixing this just involved moving the raycast start point away from the player  character collider. Another issue is when I tried to rig a 3D model I found on unity forums I figured half way through that it was more work than I had anticipated. So instead I created two different models, one for the sitting pose and one for the standing pose.

3. Crunch

Because of previously mentioned reasons, there was a lot more work done in the last few days of Next Location than the rest. Being the first project of the trimester I had no initial drive until after I got back into the swing of university life. Most of the wasted work time was due to not being able to think of a quality concept that I was comfortable sticking with. Crunch time is a constant issue I am still trying to tackle along with time management.

Recommendations:

In the future I hope to try new things such as a 2D platformer or top down view game so I can expand my knowledge of games. Throughout this project I was only thinking about the game in a first person view and not trying to think outside of the box. I will continue to tackle time management and ensure that I have enough time to account for any risks or issues that occur to avoid any crunch. Planning out the visual aspect of the game to ensure consistency in the assets and help me with the projects vision also.

Something I can take from this project is to start small, with a single core mechanic and build on from that. By doing this it makes it easier to aim for an intended experience, or find out new things through trial and error.

During yesterdays class there were some major changes to my project called Next. There were some issues that I wasn’t too sure on that I was able to really flesh out. These issues include;

• Changing between scenes for each school gave a sense of progression rather than the sense of repetition that is intended.
• Simply clicking on an NPC a single time to “befriend” them has no impact and fails to give the player the sense of befriending someone.
• There is no information of what happens to the friends from the previous school seeing as it is an important element of the experience.
• There is a lack of indication to the player of the player characters anxiety level.

Having different scenes for each school made it a lot easier to manage a lot of the functions that I had in place. After I merged it all to the single scene, I realized that I needed to modify a lot of my existing code and add more functions to get the desired effect. Due to time limitations I wasn’t able to be efficient with my methods, or at least meet my own standards but it works nonetheless. Now when the player moves between schools, their camera view will be forced onto a focus point. When leaving a school, the focus point will be the school they are leaving, when approaching the new school their focus point switches to the new school.

The method of interacting with NPC’s was the main thing I was unhappy with, but thanks to some feedback and some brainstorming on these ideas I came up with a nice simple system that communicates the experience better. In order to befriend an NPC the player will need to aim at the character and hold down click. A radial progress bar will fill up the more they hold down click until it reaches completion. The characters material colour changes depending on the interaction progress to signify the characters friendship to the player. If the player shifts their aim away from the NPC while interacting or cancels the interaction in any way the interact progress will reset along with their colour.

A core element of the experience I intended for this game is that after moving between schools, the player would likely never see the friends from the previous school again. After finishing the previous update to the NPC interaction, I came up with a way to communicate this effect with some feedback from a classmate. As you can see in figure 1, when leaving a school, all the NPC’s that the player befriended will fade back to their original colour.

In the previous iteration of the game, the players movement speed, mouse look speed, the heartbeat sound effect and the grayscale image effect will all scale with the player characters anxiety. To those who tested my game, these effects were not prominent enough, so communicating how anxious the player character is feeling wasn’t coming across. I decided to add two more image effects, those being motion blur and vortex. These two effects really enforce a nauseating feeling which was entirely relevant to the experience I was trying to make. Currently the effects are very exaggerated and I will need to play around with the values.

So there’s been a lot of changes in the past day to the games functionality. I thought that my game was fully functional before class, but I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied with the games ability to communicate the intended experience. After fleshing out the functionality this class I feel much more satisfied with my game and I can start polishing the crap out of it. Some things I need to add before completion, is to setup a different environment for each school, creating a simple model for the NPC’s, add more sounds (ambient sounds, walking sounds etc.) and just general variable tweaks.

It’s been a week since I started working on my first project for Studio 2 which I have named Next. This project is meant to be a meaningful game based off of a personal experience so I chose to base mine on my school life and how I was always moving school as a kid. The main feature of the game is an anxiety system that affects how the player controls and views the world. I have been to 7 different schools (5 primary and 2 secondary), but because this is a 2 week project I opted for 4 schools to keep the game to a reasonable scope.

The biggest challenge I have come across during meaningful game design is stopping myself from trying to make the game enjoyable in a challenging way rather than trying to induce emotion in the player. I settled on a simple game loop that involves simply talking to NPC students throughout a small school yard. The anxiety system controls the colour saturation of the players view, the players mouse look sensitivity, their movement speed and will also induce a loud heartbeat sound the higher it is.

Here’s a quick overview of a game loop that you might expect. When entering the school the player characters anxiety will be rather high because it signifies their first day at a new school. As the player approaches the other students proximity, their anxiety will rise, but they can interact with the student to befriend them and reduce their anxiety. Befriending students also removes the increasing anxiety when in their proximity.

 

After the player interacts with all the students and their anxiety is completely gone (signifying that they are comfortable in their new environment) they will be pulled out of the school yard and have a car door shut on their face. They will then move to the next school and repeat the process for all 4 schools. The change of levels is meant to be sudden and unexpected much like it was in my personal experience.

For now all of the functionality is in place, I just need to work on environmental additions to make the game feel less like a prototype. I have my mind on some additional flare such as a pulsing camera effect that syncs with the heartbeat, but we will have to wait and see. The anxiety system has a large impact on the experience since it’s the core mechanic, but because even the smallest tweaks can drastically affect it the game could change a lot functionality wise until its completion.

Leading on from my previous blog, I mentioned the game OASES (Gibson, 2015) and how it conveys a personal experience of its creator. The game is about the creators grandfather who was a pilot that went missing in 1960 during the Algeria Independence War, part of the description reads “This is what I like to think happened to him.”. The game places the player in a visually beautiful level with the control of an airplane where the only purpose is to fly around and enjoy a world where there are no problems or worries. After a short amount of time the game ends and is taken back to the main menu. There are various levels that the player can load in to at random with different landscapes and visual effects.

Eventually we all lose someone and it puts us to ease to think that they went to a better place. The meaning that Gibson tries to convey with this game is that believing wherever your lost one may be now is a blissful place where all their dreams come true can bring comfort to those who are grieving. The use of visual effects and awe inducing colours makes the player feel the timeless sense of bliss and a worry free world. While the use of an airplane has its own meaning in this story, it also compliments how the player experiences the level by giving them the freedom of flight.

Another meaningful game I’d like to mention is The Ride (Lyness, 2016) which was created by a student that did Studio 2 in the previous trimester. In The Ride the player is placed in a garage with a motorcycle and riding equipment (helmet, jacket etc.) where the player needs to gear up to go on a ride. After leaving the garage on the bike the player heads in a straight line surrounded by a luscious scenery followed by a tunnel filled with awe inspiring visual effects. After leaving the tunnel a line of stop signs is brought to the players attention followed by the player being involved in an accident.

The message that the creator is trying to convey is that he enjoys riding his bike and it gives him a sense of bliss, but at the same time it can take everything away in a blink of an eye. As the characters head pans from the stop sign to the collision there is a gasp sound effect that made my heart drop when I first heard it. While on the ride the player is travelling at a minimal speed but can accelerate if they wish, they can also strafe side to side and look around with their mouse. The controls are minimal and the player does not need to even press a single key to experience the game, but it still gives them the ability to enjoy the ride and visuals. That is until the control is taken away from the player and the accident takes place. The creator is trying to bring awareness to safety on the road and encouraging riders to stay focused.

As you may have noticed these two games have very similar methods of conveying their two completely different messages. OASES (Gibson, 2015) grants the player full control of a vehicle while The Ride (Lyness, 2016) has limited control of a vehicle. They both use stunning visuals to convey a sense of bliss and enjoyment while controlling a vehicle.

Both of these games have influenced the approach I am taking with my games design. While I may not have the skill set or time frame to make a visually stunning experience there are some things that stick out for me that are very helpful. Something that I have found to be prominent in most personal experience games is that the mechanics are not designed to be challenging or reward the player with accomplishment. Limiting the players movement like in The Ride is something I have always been avoiding but because it does not ruin the meaning behind the message I am considering it because it works well with my design idea. The alteration of colours through image effects and such is something I want to experiment with to convey the playable characters emotions such as in The Ride where the player leaves the garage and the world slowly fades into colour (see Fig 4.).

Bibliography:

Gibson, A. (2015). OASES [Video Game].

Lyness, N. (2016). The Ride [Video Game].

This blog marks my first week back at uni and the beginning of Studio 2 where we will start focusing on meaningful game design. My motivation for this trimester has been lacking up until now, but after seeing what we will be doing throughout Studio 2 I’ve had a change of heart. I think I’m ready…

Previously we have been learning about new tools and how to get comfortable with those tools. During this trimester the focus will be moving away from the tools themselves and learning how to make more meaningful game design with the tools we know. I think this is needed for me at this point because new tools have become quite overwhelming, so being able to sit comfortably with what I know is what I needed to become more interested in this module.

During my time in Studio 2 I would like to explore many different aspects of game design so I can find out where I fit. As someone who is more interested in indie development and doing things my way as opposed to the industry standard, I want to explore different methods for achieving goals. I want to make sure that the method I use to design something compliments the design itself.

As I mentioned earlier, this trimester will be focused on meaningful game design which is something I have never fully taken the time to appreciate. During our first class we were asked about an experience in our lives that has shaped who we are today because that is what our first project is about. With the terrible memory I have I managed to pull out the worst “experience” I could at the time, but it got me in the mindset of meaningful games, more specifically personal experience games. After exploring different personal experience games, some I knew and some I’ve never heard of, I can definitely see the purpose and meaning behind them.

An example game I’d like to shed some light on is OASES (Gibson, 2015) which is a game where you fly a plane around in various random landscapes. The purpose of the game is displayed at the end and reads;

“My grandfather’s plane was reported lost in 1960 during the Algeria Independence War, days before the birth of his first child.

This is what I like to think happened to him.”

This game definitely takes a less subtle approach with its meaning, but I love the way it translates the creators intentions and emotions into the game.

As I mentioned earlier, I want to explore different aspects of game design and creating meaningful games is definitely one of those aspects. Previously I have only seen the more mainstream video games to be something I would work on in the future, but it is because of those very games that I had lost interest in game development over the holidays. Maybe diving into this area of games is something I need to regain my interest and find what I want to do with video game development.

Bibliography:

Gibson, A. (2015). OASES [Video Game].