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Introduction
My task for my final major project was to create a game of my choice while using skills and knowlage i have learned throughout the year to make my game. I had to be careful how i managed my time and rescources as i had to work on my own and create a media piece, ethier a game, trailer, art book or animation. I chose to create a game beacuse i wanted to make something that i could enjoy and i already had the idea for my game before this project started.
I first came up with the idea for a side scrolling fighting game which would play like a side scroller game which you would play back in the 90s. I liked games like this and found them fun as they where all about trying to defeat the other player as fast as possible or deal the most damage before they knock you out, Street fighter is a game that is like this. Other fighting games such as Scott pilgrim vs the world: the game is a side scoller beat-them-up game which allows the player to continue moving in a direction until they reach a part of the level wich locks player into a small arena and they will need to defeat all the enemies to be able to continue to the end of the level. I feel this second game i mentions is alot more of a game i would like to replicate its fighting mechanics into my own game.
I knew before starting my game that i was exellent at creating assets both in 3D and 2D also i was good at comming up with mechanics for games as well as designing levels as well, making sure they both could work within my game. I however lacked more on the sound design and animation as i never really spent to much time improving apon it over the last few projects and i really lack in those areas as a result. I did want to improve on sound design and i even learned how to play my bass guitar and come up with some basic chords i wanted to record but inseatd all that time i spend wantig to record them was spend on programming and design of my game instead. The same follows for animation as i did wish to have an animated into and outro for my game but i only had an idea in my head.
Research
I looked at a few movies that would fit into the 90's category as my game inspired by rock music and comedy films from around that time. I looked at a few movies created by kevin smith which were a series he started in the 90's and is still continuing today. I looked at clerks at it was his first movie he released in the early 90s and i used that for a lot of inspiration for my own game because i liked its story, the dialog between the characters, the look of each of the scenes and the film effect they had to use for the film. I did look at other films by this director such as chasing amy and jay and silent bob: strikes back but i really look more into the Clerks 1 film the most beacuse of how much more useful i was as research.
I looked at a veraity of fighting games such as scott pilgrim vs the world: the game which was the most important game to look at as i wanted to replicate the mechanics, level design and HUD features that the game had. I liked the button mashing combat, the way the player has to mash a combination of attack buttons to pull a combo against an enemy. The player in that game had to fight a 10 minute level before having to fight a boss and this is the game play in a nutshell and i found it fun as they chnage the enemies, the level layouts and the bosses for each level - while keeping it accurate to the films and books the game is based off of. For my own game i wanted to have at least 3 types of enemies which have slighlty different attack rates, movement speeds and amounts of health along with a uniqe design for each type so the player can learn which enemy has which kinds of advantages. The bosses would be handled the same way but the advantages would be more powerful as they are bosses which in games should be tougher and more challanging to fight. I knew for my game i couldnt add some mechanics that the Scott Pilgrim game has such as pickup up and throwing objects, combo moves, a complex leveling up system and large levels as i only had about 2 months and knew i would need alot more time to add features like that in.
I listened to various music from the 90s mostly rock music by artists such as Yellowcard, Limp Buskit, Third eye blind, Red hot chilli peppers and a load others. I tried searching for a certain kind of genre of rock music which was indie music on spotify, songs you may not really hear in in todays mainstream media. I found a lot of girl bands such as CSS, Le Tigre, Hole, Brody Dalle to name a few, these songs are very grungy rock music that sound like they where recorded in a garage or have a very grungy feel which i felt suited my game well as my game was supposed to feel 90s old and indie.
I created a playlist on spotify and alot of the songs i picked can be played anywere when exploring the game and it would just work with the artstyle and mechanics which was exellent although it would of been nice to have all the songs in my game but i had a few reasons why i didnt add them. One was beceause i didnt own the rights to the song and using it in my project would be pretty bad for my side if i was to do this with a comercial game. The second reason was that consturct 3 takes longer to save changes to the game when im editing the game, I did however leave the opening song: CSS - rat is dead, as it was a song for the intro and i was going to change it for a song made with my bass guitar which i wanted to recorded . I wasn't able record sounds to due to lack of time and me not knowing how to record instruments within the sound recording room. If i had more time however i would of tried to make sounds for character movement, player combat, background music and sounds.
Play Testing
My play-test results where very positive but also showed me how i could improve upon some aspects of my game. One idea from the results was to add a notification for the player if they try entering a staic door by having a "locked" text apear when the player is over a non-useable door. I liked this idea and i wanted to add it to my game if i had more time.
Overall Thoughts
Overall I feel that my fmp was the close to a working prototype as i was able to add all kinds of mechanics such as a working enemy AI that would idle until the player comes into its line of sight, which the enemy would move towards the player and could damage the player a certain amount of health per hit, and the player can kill the enemy and recieve money. This was the minimum i wanted my enemies to have and it did take me a while to create the code behind it but im happy that i created a working enemy AI that attcaks the player. If i had more time i would of made variants of the enemy in my game with slightly different traits to challange the player as the AI in my game are very simple and easy to kill. I wasnt able to add the boss as there were levels i didnt make and i mostly worked on the town and the stores as it was easier to make and that was the minimum amount of work i wanted to get done before this project would end. If i had more time to work on the game i would of added the enemy levels which would be areas smaller than the town map and they would be filled with enemies which the player would be tasked to defeat to progress in the story which would lead to meeting the boss of the game.
During the last few weeks of using construct 3 I have encountered two very painful probelsm with the engine which made me wish i stuck with gamemaker. One was i tried using plug-ins which dint save with the cloud engine; this is how i saved my game when i was editing it from home and collage which i think saved me time using a USB and transfering data between two computers. I had to have the plug-in file saved on my USB and import it to each new computer i used in collage, which wasted my time trying to edit my game. The second issue was that a computer i used at collage was more up to date than my home or other collage computers which means that i could not access or edit my FMP game because my game was somehow more up to date than any other computer i had access too whcih also means at home to... This made it hard for me to add anything to my game as i need to wait for a update or a fix to repair this error on construct 3 and as far as i know i still cant access it and i wish i used a more complex engine like Gamemaker 2 which i have used before and it lets me do so much more programming and game design compared to construct 3, but i wanted to use construct 3 beacuse of how easy it is to build games.
I personally feel i have made a large game again that i thought i could finish but i spent too much time working on the coding trying to work things out myself rather than researching tutorials or guides which i began to do in the last few weeks as i began to panic. I still feel i did alot and i am very happy that i made the game playable and it could be a game i could further imporve upon in my own time as i think the game could be a fun game to play. I need to start learning how to do animations and sound design, sound design is mostly important as sound design in a game is important as a main feedback to the player, weather it be if the player has interacted to something in a game or the sounds of enemies closing in on the player but maybe the player cannot see them. I miss out on the sound design element of my games alot and i did try to be more creative and make my own sounds using home instuments, but i didnt have the time or knowlage how to record the sounds and have them in my game, instead using music by others and free sound effects to fill in the holes in the game.
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