PROJECT 72-2 (2021)
Jan – Feb 2021
Over Christmas and the new year we had a lot of thoughts for the Game Demo including, what assets to add, what should we use certain mechanics for and why? It seemed as though we had gotten ahead of ourselves designing and programming ideas we thought could be of interest without considering the main quest.
With all of the changes, we had made throughout the game, new questions were asked as to why the player is in this environment and what precisely the main goal was? With this in mind, after discussing the issues we were facing with Ryan Smith, we took a step back to hash out the narrative and main quest.
This didn’t mean starting from scratch; this just meant we would Create the game path on paper before programming the game. Also, we would look at the fundamentals of RPG gameplay and how we could implement the knowledge gained from research to further the player’s experience.
Step 1 in this new development journey was putting together a narrative and a story with the team to develop the character, their quest and what they will encounter along the way.
we agreed that our audience is to be aimed at indie gamers and players ages between 12-30 that are new to rpg and puzzle games. our aimed rating for release is pegi 12 meaning we can include representational blood through pixel art when in combat or top down.
Fig 1.1 shows out new Gantt Chart plan for completion on the game demo
( UPDATED 11.02.21 )
Fig. 1.2 is a schedule I designed through the Microsoft Planner app. we arranged to meet each week to discuss tasks and updates with few adjustments. We stuck to the schedules with some minor delays along the way but overall, our plan has been successful.
B.R.I.T.E. ISLAND
The story of BRITE ISLAND began when a billionaire family known as the ‘DUPRIS’ had purchased an island with-in an archipelago back in 1938 to test new technology, power sources and other genetics modifications.
When the island was bought, neighbouring island communities began to as questions as to what may of happened to the native people of that island.
Concern amongst the community started to build because for as long as the island had existed, people were strictly prohibited from ever visiting as those who dared to attempt entry had been either attacked or killed by “mysterious blue ‘Goblin-Like’ creatures”.
Over the years, people had developed all sorts of theories about how the Dupris had moved the goblins away. Did they kill them? Or did they make peace? These theories tarnished the reputation of the Dupris, and for the next many years, the theories would only become wilder and more untrue to its reality.
The Dupris had not once released a statement to the neighbouring islands explaining how they were able to control the threat of the island or how they came to ‘Purchase’ the property instead they decided they would stay isolated on the situation.
Neighbouring islanders have reported sights of weather manipulation. Creatures, unlike anything they’ve seen before also views of enormous clouds of volcanic ash and toxic waste streams in the ocean. Some items from the mysterious brite island have floated on to the neighbouring beaches; however, it only ever seems to be empty cartridges for an unknown machine.
the island also has a gigantic bronze dome that opens its roof once a year. Islanders have reported sighting of a small community within this dome sheltering the people inside from the dangers of the testing environment.
Once this was discovered, people were in disbelief and shock to find that the Dupris family has been keeping people on the island isolated from the rest of the world. This angered many local islanders and began to get the attention of news sources around the world.
The media attention had become so large that on July 22nd 1985, the Dupris’ invited neighbouring islanders and journalists to the island to prove to the world that life on the island was not as bad as they had painted it out to be. Or at least that’s what they think…
Lulaya Umayma (Main Character)
Giving our character a name and personality was vital to the story ‘theory suggests that flow and the identification of a player with their avatar are vital aspects of video games’ (Soutter and Hitchens, 2016) As our game demo is a character focused game it was important we spent time to make her character likeable as it can be tricky to have a player finish a game where they play as a character they dislike.
Thankfully there are plenty of studies as to how a character or person can become likeable. Travis Bradberry describes ‘13 Habits if exceptionally likeable people’. Down below are the traits found in this study that we can implement to our character.
They Are Genuine
Being genuine and honest is essential to being likeable. No one likes a fake. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them. It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel.
Likeable people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. By concentrating on what drives you and makes you happy as an individual, you become a much more interesting person than if you attempt to win people over by making choices that you think will make them like you
They Don’t Pass Judgment. If you want to be likeable you must be open-minded. Being open-minded makes you approachable and interesting to others. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who has already formed an opinion and is not willing to listen.
Having an open mind is crucial in the workplace where approachability means access to new ideas and help. To eliminate preconceived notions and judgment, you need to see the world through other people’s eyes. This doesn’t require you believe what they believe or condone their behavior, it simply means you quit passing judgment long enough to truly understand what makes them tick. Only then can you let them be who they are.
They Don’t Seek Attention
People are averse to those who are desperate for attention. You don’t need to develop a big, extroverted personality to be likeable. Simply being friendly and considerate is all you need to win people over. When you speak in a friendly, confident, and concise manner, you will notice that people are much more attentive and persuadable than if you try to show them you’re important. People catch on to your attitude quickly and are more attracted to the right attitude than what—or how many people—you know.
When you’re being given attention, such as when you’re being recognized for an accomplishment, shift the focus to all the people who worked hard to help you get there. This may sound cliché, but if it’s genuine, the fact that you pay attention to others and appreciate their help will show that you’re appreciative and humble—two adjectives that are closely tied to likeability.
They Leave a Strong First Impression
Research shows most people decide whether or not they like you within the first seven seconds of meeting you. They then spend the rest of the conversation internally justifying their initial reaction. This may sound terrifying, but by knowing this you can take advantage of it to make huge gains in your likeability. First impressions are tied intimately to positive body language. Strong posture, a firm handshake, smiling, and opening your shoulders to the person you are talking to will help ensure that your first impression is a good one.
They Balance Passion and Fun
People gravitate toward those who are passionate. That said, it’s easy for passionate people to come across as too serious or uninterested because they tend to get absorbed in their work. Likeable people balance their passion with the ability to have fun. At work they are serious, yet friendly. They still get things done because they are socially effective in short amounts of time and they capitalize on valuable social moments. They minimize small talk and gossip and instead focus on having meaningful interactions with their coworkers. They remember what you said to them yesterday or last week, which shows that you’re just as important to them as their work.
Bringing It All Together
Likeable people are invaluable and unique. They network with ease, promote harmony in the workplace, bring out the best in everyone around them, and generally seem to have the most fun. Add these skills to your repertoire and watch your likeability soar!
We have already decided that our main character is a young mother with a child she loves dearly. The child is missing throughout the demo and through this panic the characters personality should come to light. As the game is surrounded around fighting off enemies to gather information we feel that the character should have a history of fighting giving understanding to her skills in her combat skills. From this Che came up with the idea to have the mother be a retired MMA fighter or “Destroyer League Champion AKA DLC”. This gives the character that rough background without having her experience originate from a negative source. She is an athlete who is dedicated to the sport and champions in the ring. This is a likeable feature as it shows dedication and hard work meaning ‘Bringing it all together’ and being ‘Genuine’ come into play.
We also need to hit the other habits early on in demo as the history of her past is planned to be revealed to the player in increments throughout the game.
So to address the balance of fun and passion we will have NPCs respond to the main character with Insults swiftly followed with disappointment or surprise as to indicate that the main character has the upper hand and can have ‘Banter’ with the other NPCs and is causing them to either like or dislike the player.
We decided to name our character ‘LULAYA UMAYMA’. The name Lulaya comes from Indian Origin and means Strength, Humble, Successful. Whilst Umayma comes from Egyptian origin meaning ‘Little Mother’
Lulaya’ s Story before the island was being the undefeated ’Destroyer League Champion’ and international superstar. Lulaya never dreamed of being in the spotlight. The fame came unwanted with the success of the sport. After becoming pregnant with her son ‘Bari’ she swiftly retired from fighting in the league and relocated to a remote archipelago found with in the centre of the ‘Atlantica Ocean’. From here she would begin her new Life with her son leaving the fame and fortunes behind. For the next 7 years Bari and yuri would enjoy the luscious landscapes and sparkling surfaces of the endless oceans until the central island of B.R.I.T.E opened their gates.
Synopsis
‘Enkay island’ AKA as ‘Brite’ island has been used as a testing and bio research facility for over half a century by the Dupris Family. Since its inception in the 1930’s neighbouring island communities have reported sights of suspicious activity taking place within the large Bronze dome found in the centre of ‘Enkay’. These reports gained unwanted attention for the owners and triggered them to invite their neighbours for an ‘open day’. This way they could prove the dome is “not as it seems”.
On July 22nd 1985 the Dupris open the roads to ‘Enkay’ Island and Lulaya Umayma is one of many to visit with her young son ‘Bari’. However, Things take a terrible turn for the worst when a creature breaks loose from the underground lab facility knocking luyala unconscious.
She wakes in an ambulance to the realisation that the facility is in lockdown and her son is trapped inside. Lulaya will begin her quest to find her son by gathering clues to access entry to the dome whilst she faces off against enemies within the mysterious compound to battle for Bari’s return.
The Dupris Goal
Since a young boy, Timmy Dupris was left on the island of BRITE with the Dupris’ guards and scientists. For years he would try to make contact his parents via letters passed through Britehaven… he would not receive a response. Seemingly Timmy has been abandoned by his parents leaving him with emotional scars and a hatred for the world he resides in.
in 1967 Timmy went behind his parents back and formed a group of scientists to begin working on his own project…The goal was to create a portal to a man-made universe built upon his wildest dreams and desires. using a “MOLOCH DEVICE”. 18 years later Timmy’s device is complete. However, the Moloch device needs the souls of the innocent to function.
With that Timmy sent an invitation to the surrounding islanders to come and see the mysterious and wonderful world of BRITE. What people were unaware of was that their children would be taken from them and used to power Timmy’s twisted fantasies.
Benchmark
Shortly after we had agreed on how we could continue the story, Che and myself got to work on designing a base walktrhrough for us to work on and perhaps expand after completion.
We chose to use the common process of game design by creating a game playthrough on paper before programming and design. This method was also used by Toby Fox AKA Creator of the ‘Undertale’ game (2015). which is a benchmark for our design.
I chose to use ‘Undertale’ as a benchmark among other games like ‘Pokemon Ruby’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’ because unlike the other titles, ‘Undertale’ was made with a very small development team infact Toby fox had programmed the entire game with assistance for art from Temmie Chang and a handful of other collegues. Using ‘Undertale’ as a benchmark is a posotive reminder to myself and the team that even with a team of 3 it is possible to produce a solid narrative and gameplay in a short space of time (4-Months).
Feb – March 2021
Blueprints
Seen in figure 3 is the base walkthrough myself and Che Williams made this design keeps many of the same design elements as what has been produced already whilst including some new details like a lab stage And other adjustments to the gameplay creating a more linear story approach. Story branches can be included after the demo has been successful.
Once we had a base design I began work on refining each stage of the demo seeking out different methods in which we could design the mechanics around the narrative. Whilst always checking back with the team to make sure we were all on the same page with the designs
Each stage of the demo should be planned from point A to B. Figure 4 displays a. Rough readjustment to the car park stage. As the car park had already be designed to satisfaction the only changes to the stage itself are NPC interactions and Introduction of basic mechanics like navigation and melee attack. This is what would usually be found at the start of a game if a player does not enter a tutorial or instruction screen.
Figure 6 shows the plans for the forest stage of the demo. Here is where the majority of mechanics for the game come into play. To achieve this I have designed the stage so as to introduce the history of the island and the ‘Dupris’ via the use of the ‘Greenbos’ AKA “Greenskin Bogey Goblin’.
These goblins were native to the land before the dupris invaded and began their tests on the environment. As the goblins were not protected by the dupris safe haven dome ‘BRITEHAVEN’ they were subject to exposure of harmful chemical clouds causing genetic mutations transforming ‘Greenbos’ into a bloodthirsty monster known as “Redbo’ they Take this name because of their red skin complexion.
This stage of the demo will send the player on a quest set by the ‘GREENBOS’. They will ask the player to retrieve their leader and in exchange they will let the player pass through to the forest. A new projectiles mechanic will be introduced to the player via a weapon received from the ‘GREENBOS’. The player will then be able to use the weapon throughout the game via pick up locations. The player will not have a storage system for the weapons. It is instead simply one replaces the other. As we plan to have different speeds and damage infliction on the enemies the player will have to consider the best course of action to take when selecting weapons found on the map.
After completing the Greenbos quest the player will be allowed to travel through to the second half of the forest where they will be introduced a character named Timmy,
Timmy is an unusual and suspicious character. After finding out information as to who the dupris are and what they have done within this land the players caution level should be high and finding a regular looking man in a dark and damp forest seems slightly odd.
Timmy will ask the player what they are doing in the forest and kindly tell them to meet over At this cabin. He will then direct you down a route in which you will face off three guards before arriving at ‘Timmy’s Joint’ This raises further suspicion of Timmy. The player at this time should be asking themselves:
Is Timmy a dupris?
Why is he in the forest?
Why does he want to talk with me?
once arriving at the cabin Timmy will be surprises but pleased to see that the player has made it safely to the cabin. He will proceed to ask further questions about why you are on the island. Timmy will tell the player that he is trying to get into the dome and he will need your help to sneak past the guards. At this point the player will fight a guard to steal a uniform and gain entry into the dome via the use of disguise.
The Park stage introduces the “Elites” these are high ranking guards with a much more Fierce appearance being larger than ordinary guards with a black uniform these characters are not one to be taken on with low health.
At this stage the player will fight off the marshmallow monster that had caused the lockdown. In a side view fight scene and the Dupris’ ‘Clean-up guys’ also known as “The Butlers” these characters should be introduced later for a boss fight however in this case they are only inspecting the threat of Umayma and are just glad they she took care of the marshmallow for them. At this point the butlers will exit scene.
ADJUSTMENTS:
After revising the latest designs with Ryan Smith. We took a suggestion on board to scrap the ‘Park’ and ‘Town’ stages. They seemed to drag on the demo for too long. The main point of the demo is gaining entry to the facility to recover ‘Bari’. So we should focus more on these elements rather than drag out the story through side quest after side quest. So instead of entering from the forest to park the player will go from forest to lab.
The design below in fig 10 shows a lab stage where the player will be guided through by Timmy via an earpiece. At points of the journey area animators will be triggered to prompt a text box to shows timmys instructions. If the player chooses to ignore Timmy’s orders the player will be ambushed by guards. Timmy will also grow impatient of the player.
If the player takes Timmy’s route they will be told that it is too late and Bari has already gone through a portal to other side and will fight the final boss ‘THE BUTLERS”. If however the player ignores the demands they will see Bari get pushed through the portal by Timmy and a boss fight will commence. (Timmy will kill player with one hit).
If player wins they can enter the portal and end game. If player looses cutscene will play showing Timmy enter the through the portal which will then close ending the demo. (not a final design)
Mar – April 2021
Building stages has so far been the trickest task especially with the lack of peers to help test the game. So far I have been the only play-tester trying to get a feel of what a player will feel and how they navigate through the game. this is obviously a biased view however and only goes fo far with developing a game.
This being the case I created a build and asked a 4 friends to play the game (seperatley) whilst i watched there gameplay on stream. down below are notes i made from these tests.
- players have trouble understanding what they can interact with (create text prompt or outline objects)
- Players dont understand where they are or why (mostly intended but should show basic information)
- not enough interactable npcs
- Car Park scene is too large (too much space to explore with no reward)
- tunnel scene is too dark and redbos are too fast (certain death unless aware of there spawn location)
- more collectable items (pending)
- more 3d scenes (these were good they gave the player something to help picture there environment.
- more humor/querkieness
so from this I decided to stop developing the lab map to go over the notes and make edits to the game whilst introducing new characters to the mix to expand the narrative and give more context.
down below in fig 15 is the car park redesigned. This version of the map should give the players a clear indication of where they are meant to go. Using npcs to guide the player and blocked entryways the player will become cornered into leaving via the secret passageway on the left side of the entrance.
fig 16 is examples of new characters and a text prompt that will appear when a player is within range to interact with an object or npc this will.
A few weeks have passed and Tom and I have been working on a cutscene builder we can use to give more context to the scene.
The cutscenes have been designed so that I can enable and disable objects and animations in the scene. Also the builder allows me to direct the main camera to any object/animation I direct. There is also the ability to add and cut steps of the scene if something is no longer desired.
using this builder I spent the next few weeks building the world with the finalized tile maps and introducing the narrative in a fun and humourful fashion.
Adding cutscenes to the game has drastically improved the way the story gets told to the player. Without having to carefully consider how we tell the story in items and environmental changes we can simply add scenes that focus on a subject forcing the player to take in the information.
Cutscenes were made in almost all scenes of the game.
below in fig 17 is an example of a cutscene. This scene shows the main antagonist “TIMMY DUPRIS” taking to an elite guard by the name of “GUARD ZADA”. Zada is informing Timmy that The Moloch device in in completion and that he will soon have everything he need for his latest project, “PROJECT: CANDYLAND”.
As well as adding cutscenes to the game I also included a long side quest to use some of our abandoned scenes. In these side quests the player will gather more info about the Dupris, Find new weapons and gain experience by fighting guards in preparation for the final battle with “GUARD ZADA” an elite guard of BRITE and Timmy Dupris Right-hand-woman.
The side quests involve using the portal gun mechanic to traverse through risky underground stages with enemies and translating turret guns made by the dupris family to protect their most valuable assets Including the “WINTER’S PINCH”; A powerful ice staff that shoots projectiles faster and further than any other “ammo-less” weapon in the game.
New Title screen
Originally we wanted something minimalist and ambiguous however as we progressed and learned new tricks with layering particles on the UI layer we chose to add some colour and animated particles to produce a space-like environment.
New scenes & UI Finalising
This month was also spent finalising the stages and side quests for the beta release next month. this entailed finishing the lab stage and cutscene designing and animating the MOLOCH DEVICE, creating drain mazes for the journey to new locations, new bosses and spell/bug checks.
the UI was updated to keep create a consistent theme throughout the game.
April – May 2021
Top-Down Gameplay
as of the 29th of April the top down gameplay has been completed. at this point we are finalising the fightscenes and preparing graphics and plans for demo release in mid may.
down below in fig 19 is a gameplay walkthrough of the top down game. Fig 20 is a Speedrun of the game covering the basic quest.
Reference list
Bradberry, T., n.d. 13 Habit of exceptionally likeable people. [online] Available at: <https://www.region10.org/r10website/assets/File/13%20Habits%20of%20Exceptionally%20LikeablePeople.pdf> [Accessed 9 February 2021].
Sheknows.com. n.d. Umayma: Name Meaning and Origin – SheKnows. [online] Available at: <https://www.sheknows.com/baby-names/name/umayma/> [Accessed 9 February 2021].
Soutter, A. and Hitchens, M., 2016. The relationship between character identification and flow state within video games. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, pp.1030-1038.