Assessment 2Assignment brief – QCF BTEC

Qualification Unit number and title

BTEC Creative Media Production (Games Development) 70 – Computer Game Engines

Learner name Assessor name

Joseph Dewar

Date issued Hand in deadline Submitted on

W/B 3/10/16 17/10/16

Assignment title 2 – My first gameIn this assessment you will have opportunities to provide evidence against the following criteria. Indicate the page numbers where the evidence can be found.

Criteria reference

To achieve the criteria the evidence must show that the learner is able to: Achieved?

P3 create a 2D game world following industry practice, working within appropriate conventions and with some assistance

M3create a 2D game world to a good technical standard following industry practice, showing some imagination and with only occasional assistance

D3create a 2D game world to a technical quality that reflects near-professional standards following industry practice, showing creativity and flair and working independently to professional expectations

Learner feedback

Learner declaration

I certify that the work submitted for this assignment is my own. I have clearly referenced any sources used in the work. I understand that false declaration is a form of malpractice.

Learner signature: charlotte Hughes Date: 12/10/16

PAGE 1

game reportCHARLOTTE HUGHES

TO BE MARKED BY JOSEPH DEWAR10/10/16

PAGE 2

PlanningThe game over all, I’m planning to have a dog and owner that are at a park but the dog runs off chasing a female poodle, which appears after so many points collected, but then gets lost. Then the dog has to find his way home trying to ovoid bad cats, rats and dog catchers. Each level will be a different variety from having to jump onto platforms moving and static to moving around a maze being chased by the game villains as well as having to collect an x number of treats, each treat is 10 points, before an exit appears for the dog to move to the next level.

I’m aiming the game at 10 year olds mainly with no gender choosing. It’s going to be a 2 player recommended game meaning it can be played 1 player but 2 players are recommended. By primary research I know 80% of children around the age of 10 love animals which helped me create the story line to the game.

I’m thinking about having 8 key movements instead of the 2 sets of 4 “same movements.” What I mean by same movements is the standard key press movements is up down left right and then w a s d which do the same functions. Generally, w is up a is left s is down and d is right. What I’m thinking is, use the left and right to move left and right and then the space bar to jump up and then gravity would pull the character back down and have the up and down keys working for up and down because of the maze level.

Then with the w a s d keys I was thinking that the dogs could do tricks earning more treats for extra points which would make the villains move slower or give the dog power ups like dig holes for the villains to fall in or poop to slip on which makes them unable to move for 5 seconds. After the villain respawns, the power up/trap would have disappeared meaning it’s a one use product until it’s called upon again. Can have more than 1 visible power up/trap at one time. This is how I plan making the game a 2 player game as 2 people can work together to get the dog home.

For sprites and sounds I plan to sketch images on Photoshop and royalty free music and pictures with sources to make the game more interesting. If I don’t get to this point, I will just be using the figures I put in place to get the game working before I put the sprites in.

As I’m very new to creating games of any type as well as having a limited amount of time, this plan is my overall aim of the game. I fear that there is no guarantee that all of this will be what the game is and even if it is, it would probably only be a short version of it. I aiming for a minimum of 5 levels with all the described story plan. I also plan on adding a frozen shot at the end of each level which gives it more of a story line. This would mean

PAGE 3

that the game may not be top down but 2d with parts of top down characteristics.

− Screen shots of work

− Images of drawings you’ve done for sprites

− Production proof screen shot everything trial and fails

− Show all planning

− Alfa, beta user testing

− Conclusion your progress your good and bad points what you like what you don’t what you struggled with what you wished to do better

− Zip the game maker file of the game before handing it in

− Make it excutionable before handing it in

HEADING 2You might like the photo on the cover page as much as we do, but if it’s not ideal for your report, it’s easy to replace it with your own.

Just delete the placeholder picture. Then, on the Insert tab, click Picture to select one from your files.

PAGE 4

Ive been able to create a path for the dog treats to move. The point is for the dog to capture the treat as its like the owner is throwing them for the dog to do mix air tricks.

PAGE 5

This is technically level 1 created except I’m going to add a score board and fix the controls on the dog so it goes left and right on the ground. After an x amount of time the dog seems to automatically disappear and won’t come back unless you close and re open the game. Once a certain amount of points are collected, a poodle figure will appear and the dog will automatically go it to go to the next level.

PAGE 6

Although its not at the point of being playable, im currently at the step of being able to move to the next level by reaching the poodle that is there all the time at this current time.

Im now at the point where the treats disappear on contact with the dog and where the dog can sit on the levels without falling through or getting stuck

My next plan is to get a score board on the screen for per level and the poodle fig to appear when all treats are collected and to get the cats and dog catcher casing the dog.

PAGE 7

Ive now made the dog be able to be controlled by up and down left and right arrows as well as being able to move up with the space bar but still having issues with gravity at this point so the dog just bounces down. For gravity direction needs to be 270 and at whatever strength you want

This stopped the dog falling through the floor without the bounce setting applied. This is set under floor settings

PAGE 8

Wasd buttons now control the image of the dog, theres the default, paw, jump, beg and roll.

Beta testing 1-

19:33pm 11/10/16 a family member in late 40s tested game, comments were game is fun but controls are slightly irritating to use. Crabs were a little fast for choice. Said she wasn’t good with games in general but seems to be okay and entertained by what I have created so far.

Based on this comment I have changed the controls to make it seem easier. Ive done this by taking some of the release commands away and then giving it back to her for re testing.

I have placed enemies through the game including crabs, cats, a dog catcher and rats. On various levels.

PAGE 9

On this level the cats and dog catcher don’t seem to be following command of collision with dog character, restart room. I imagine it’s something to do with the sizing of the characters. Not a size issue as I have up scaled the images 1:2 and it has not changed the carrying out of commands. This level was re-created and had villains taken out as there was a bug issue that couldn’t be resolved.

The moving platform seemed to of gotten stuck via path, this is a sizing issue and the reset room on contact with the dog catcher works on this level.

PAGE 10

Moving platform stopped dog and its self from moving. Level was re-created to give more of a top down puzzle game.

A part of the process of creating a nice start to the game by creating the screen for controls. Will have a box saying start that when clicked it will start the game.

1/3 of the way

PAGE 11

Complete. This is the first screen people will see when they play the game. I plan to add a button under sprites and then objects which players will press to play the game. It would have to be saved in a certain format game maker is okay with using. Saved under backgrounds under project assessment 3 saved as tif file without layers, image shows as I want it to but wont appear under backgrounds. Going to try cropped screen shot saved as a normal image. Success!

PAGE 12

Now to add the continue button to start the game.

Due to this small experimentation, it has informed me that I can create images in photo shop to use in my 2d game but I would have to use the snipping tool and save it as a jpg.

PAGE 13

Got score board to appear with coordinates 270: 40 y:x but it doesn’t collect points on collection of treats or tricks.

This is how I got the points to change but now I want to get them to add up so any treat collected = +10 points and then something similar with the tricks. Wanting it to reset when the room is reset but the min points they entered with stays the same when reset. For example you get 50 points on level 1 and then go to level 2 and get to 80 then hit a crab which re sets it stays at 50 min for that level.

PAGE 14

Clicking the relative box made it add 10 points every time a treat is collected. W a s d keys give 5 extra points so people are encouraged to collect the treats for more points instead of just pressing keys to gain as many points as possible.

I have decided not to have small cut scenes because the basic appearance of it all together just didn’t seem right. The plan now is:

1. Exit to next level appears after so many points is gained. 2. Bug repairs, finish level objectives3. Add better images made in photoshop via changing sprite images, this

will automatically change all those sprites used. 4. Finish the report, explaining what tools and actions I used to get to

point x, how I fixed the bugs I came across, show the process of any sprites made in photoshop and the final image, screen shoot every finished level

5. Excute the game and hand it in with some alpha and beta testing.

Finish levels 4 and 5 Final score board at the end with the end game box Get ai characters on paths. De bug game Better sprites Get animation working in game so it has more interactive

character

PAGE 15

Finish report conclude Excute finished version of game

Decided to do a complete re-model of level 3, 4 and 5. needed to change angle on all backgrounds and animations on dog and enemy’s characters. Decided there wasn’t enough time to put power ups into the game. At this current time, I would be planning on how to get the villain characters to chase the player character, instead I decided to just set them on paths as this is easier and will suit the puzzle levels better.

Poodle now appears after so may points:

Final coordinates x=880 y=600 varying for different areas

I decided to use royalty free images for my top down back grounds from: http://kenney.nl/assets/map-pack

my alpha testingI ran my game many times and let each level run for a minute or two trying all controls on each level. By doing this I have uncovered and fixed most of the bugs. There was only 1 bug that couldn’t be fixed so the cause had to be removed resulting in an easy level mid-way of the game.

By alpha testing I came across bugs like: the dog disappearing after x amount of time. This was fixed by changing gravity and horizontal and vertical speeds.

PAGE 16

I then had issues with the gravity over all with jumping, the character wouldn’t come back down without the down arrow being pressed or it bounced down. This was fixed by changing the gravity to direction 270 and then the strength of 0.4

The third issue occurred with the score board. It took a while to get it to appear and at the right location. In the end I chose the coordinates 270y and 40x to get it at the top near the center of the screen. To get it appear I had to create an object without a sprite and go to draw then draw the value of score which now increases every 10 points when a treat is collected and 5 points every time a trick is done.

MY BETA TESTINGBeta testing 1-

19:33pm 11/10/16 a family member in late 40s tested game, comments were game is fun but controls are slightly irritating to use. Crabs were a little fast for choice. Said she wasn’t good with games in general but seems to be okay and entertained by what I have created so far.

Based on this comment I have changed the controls to make it seem easier. Ive done this by taking some of the release commands away and then giving it back to her for re testing.

Beta testing 2- friend in America sent a draft .exe file via skype at 10pm got feedback at 2:30am

Age 26 previous world of Warcraft beta tester and graphic designer- “I like it. Beat it finally. The controls are good just some of the mobs will kind of hit me from a far but I think its lag on my end but yeah it runs good and tried all the tricks which I noticed added +5 points. Would be better if you post the final score at the end.”

With this feedback, I am going to add an overall score at the end of the game that comes up with the end game thanks for playing message.

PAGE 17

New bug, dog character can still get stuck between the wall and object. Solved by shortening the path of the object and taking vertical speed off collision with object vs dog. As a back up plan, the enemie character paths go across where the platforms are so if a character does get stuck, it will be reset within a few seconds

Unfortunately I am un able to get walking animations also known as a type of interactive characters due to not enough time for editing game controls that work, I have attempted to create back front and sides of the dog character to see if it will work and only the front which would be linked to the down button actually works. I tested it with the up button and the view of the back of the dog and it didn’t budge no matter what sizing scale I set it at. This is very disappointing.

Here are the two images, they were re sized and had the white backgrounds taken out. They were made in photo shop and then snipping tool took the image that I wanted. I used snipping tool because of the image format it saves in is compatible with game maker studio.

PAGE 18

I plan to use the pre made regular 2d sprites for the rest of the characters because it is really messing around with the controls and I have run out of time to edit them to get them in a working harmony. I did plan to but a royalty free music track in but I decided not to because of not finding an appropriate song as well as the scenes being different every time. It would involve a lot of cutting and editing and partially coding for making it loop for x level.

ConclusionAt the start of creating the game, I enjoyed it and watching pieces of the puzzle of new software come together. Now I know how much time and effort is required to make a 2d game, I’m not too thrilled about it. I’m fine with giving objects commands and trial and improvement but it’s when you get everything just right how you want it and then try to add to it and it throws everything out of proportion.

I like how this is my first official game and it works, like the controls of the key board and being able to create paths that the enemy characters can move along on creating it more challenging for the player. Creating sprites to use in the game and getting trigger points in the game for certain actions to happen. As well as being able to find and fix bugs easily.

What I don’t like is that I was unable to create a proper 2d top down game. I’m a little disappointed by the graphics of the characters as well as not being able to tick every box in my planning. But I feel like I did as best as I could despite not using this software before and just going off what my teacher has taught me how to do x, y and z as well as some of my class mates helping me figure out. At the end of the day it was about me applying my knowledge and asking for some help when needed.

PAGE 19

By charlotte hughes

PAGE 20