Theme Part (1) 'The Crying Man': Reason behind the background choice

I think I'm finally there in terms of finishing off the artistic look for 'The Crying Man'. Although I'm not quite finished on the game mechanics, getting the artwork done is certainly the break I needed after the burn out of last weeks prototype, which all in all didn't go too bad!

The look and feel of a game is very important to me, achieving a interesting look for a game is an interesting challenge that I thrive off. 'The crying man' was certainly no exception. Obviously the theme I choose for my project was 'virus' and therefore I needed to create the illusion that you were playing inside a computer. It took several iterations to get to this stage but I'm almost there. Here are some of the earlier concepts, and then to what I have now.

I gathered a lot of inspiration for this first prototype from a game called Jetpack Joyride by Half Brick studios. However my real problem lied with the shelving on either side of the image, it almost looked like a platform the player could jump on and that was something I wasn't going for with my game. I almost had no obvious way for the player to retrieve files as part of the game.

In this iteration I added the two portals the player can access and jump up and down on in order to retrieve files. I liked the animation I created for them too, I find that the more you have moving on the screen the more your scene comes to life.

For me in the two previous versions of the background they were simply too plain. Originally I had the idea of breaking up the solid grey wall with some simple lines and adding rivets and accidentally stumbled across this which I think personally looks awesome. It reminds me of a motherboard and really creates that computer feel. The vaults to the left on the other hand I'm still uncertain about. I like how it creates the idea that the files are valuable and worthy of protection, but at the same time I'm not quite sure if it works with the computer theme. Notice how the vaults are significantly smaller and it creates a 3-D effect.

I continued with the vault theme on the other side and spiced it up a little bit with more of the motherboard look in the centre. Personally I really like this final product and I think it gets across my theme well. It still needs a few touches here and there but it's definitely worthy of publishing.
 

My first build/demo

Today I have released the first build/demo of my project called "The crying man" and although it is a very very basic version of the final product it still manages to demonstrate most of the core mechanics of my game.

Story and objective
My game is about a virus called "The crying man" that is trying to infect a fictional characters PC. In response to the virus the computer has activated it's anti-virus software which for now we will use as "Kaperski" until I think of my own name. The player controls this anti-virus software which is represented by a soldier that can shoot and kill the virus and who can also retrieve files. The game offers a set amount of files up for grabs (right now it's set to 100 because enemy health + spawning is not fully implemented) and both the virus and player try to obtain as many files as possible, once they are all gone the player will be given a score (not fully implemented) of how they did. At the same time the viruses have special units to try and kill the player (health not implemented) and a full rundown of enemies is below. My main source of inspiration for my game comes from "Dude and Zombies" which you can play here to get a sense of the direction my game is going in.

Enemies

Basic virus:
I played a lot of tower defence games whilst researching my game and decided to stick with three very common types of enemies found in almost all of them. The first is the basic enemy, or the average one. This enemy usually has average health, speed and damage and normally spawns in large groups. In "The crying man" this is the first enemy that spawns and it spawns every 5 seconds from both sides. When the game is fully complete it will have all of the typical qualities above as well as the fastest growing spawn rate of all enemies. Note: This enemy will not do damage to players.

Offensive virus:
Although it's abilities are not yet implemented in the game, this virus will deal damage to the player and will not try and infect any files. The speed of this virus is notably quicker and it's aim is to take a lot of the bullet fire off of the other two viruses, as the game progresses they will become tougher and do more damage. Currently in the game their spawning rate is 10 seconds but I expect this to be more around 7-8 seconds once It's been fully play tested.

Tank Virus:
Almost all games have a virus which can take a lot of player damage and do a lot more damage, but consequently suffers with slower spawn rates and slower movement. In my game that is also true. The tank virus will have significantly more health than the other two opponents however it will suffer severely with spawning rates which right now is set to every 20 seconds. This virus will also not attack the player but can infect lots of files. In this first version of the game you can't really appreciate the level of difficulty these final two opponents offer and making sure this is balanced along with spawn rates is proving the most difficult part in creating my game.

The Player
The anti-virus software which the player controls is almost finished now. The player is able to shoot left and right using z and x, move side to side using left and right arrows and also jump using the up arrow. Generally it is difficult to make the player balanced at the moment as the enemies are not set up with health, the guns rate of fire is also already to large and once again will need to be play tested in order to get the right balance.

My challenges

Although creating this game so far has been fun, stencyl has also offered myself a lot of challenges.

Here are just a few of them:

-Enemies spawn at the left and right side of the screen in my game, implementing changes such as adding new enemies or changing the objectives position does not seem to affect the way enemies from the left behave, but almost certainly require me to reposition all the right side.
-I tried around 5 different shooting behaviours built into stencyl or from stencylforge all of which were broken. On the sixth attempt I made my own.
-Keeping scores and displaying them is proving to be difficult, many of the behaviours already existing will only keep one score and display it as Stencyl does not allow you to duplicate existing behaviours for one scene or entity.

What's left to do:
-Add an intro and finish off assets in order to improve the players understanding of the story.
-Add enemy and player health.
-Balance enemy spawning rates that change as the game progresses.
-Balance players rate of fire.

Changes to the idea

I have decided to change the theme of my idea ever so slightly in order to meet the theme of the project 'virus'. I have moved away from 'Billy in the fairground' to a fictional soldier from an anti-virus software who is defending the computer from a virus invasion called 'the crying man'. Many of the gameplay features have stayed the same, I.e there will only be three enemies and instead of a health/burger bar, there will be a number of files infected bar.

My progress
So far I've created an example of the art style I want to use with the enemies, I think it gives the enemies a lot of character and will look great when fully animated. Below are some of the frames I used to show the when killed sequence. I used paint.net and ms paint to make all my artwork.

I've been struggling to try and create a suitable background for my project but I am we'll on the way to creating something I like. Recently I've been replaying an app called jetpack joyride and have took a lot of inspiration from it, especially in regards to character and art style. Heres the direction my background is going so far.

Thats just some of the asset work I've been messing around with. In todays workshop I'm to focus purely on game logic.

The big idea!

The genre
I love strategy games and especially tower defence games. At school we played the popular 'Bloons tower defence' for hours on end and since then I've been hooked. The problem with the genre however is that there are many sub-par clones and mimics making gameplay boring and repetitive.

My Inspiration
Sanctum was the first game that I'd seen someone take a fresh approach  to the genre and I was amazed. However, my primary source of inspiration for my game is Dude and Zombies which can be found here. Although it's not strictly part of the tower defence genre it certainly felt like it was. My final source of inspiration came from playing TD 2 here. It offers the interesting game dynamic of being able to buy back 'lives' and that's where my idea comes in!

Outline
The game I'm going to create puts you in the role of Billy, a typical chubby kid eating burgers and sweets at the fun fair. Billy enters a burger eating contest where he must try to eat as many of the mountain of burgers as possible located in the centre of the map. However standing in his way are the swarm of insects and bugs that get attracted to the event. The player must try to eat as many of the X amount of burgers whilst squashing or hitting his insect rivals, that or he dies before the burgers are all gone.

Actor types 
In my game there will be three actor types; the player, the enemies and the objective. I want to keep the actors as simple as possible as I will be designing all of the animations. Therefore I have narrowed it down to three enemies; the fly (average moving speed will eat the burgers but not attack players), the maggot (slow moving lots of health, will eat burgers but not attack players) and the Hornet (moves fast, wont eat burgers but will attack players)

Game Dynamics

Victory Conditions
-The player is not given a time limit, however once the burgers have all been eaten its game over.
-The player has X amount of health and once that spent it's game over.

Enemies
-I haven't had a chance to play around with enemy spawning just yet, however I want to spawn the enemies from the left and right of the scene at a gradual progressive rate.
-It will take me some time to play around with what kind of enemy will spawn when however I will not be using a wave system.

Objective
-There will be a mountain of burgers in the middle of the map with a health bar or NoOfBurgers. As the player consumes the burgers the mountain will become less and less until it is no more.

Scene dynamics
-The camera will follow the player as they move left to right.

Additional Features
-I am considering making two different modes for the game; one which is endless, so the player can effectively buy back burgers to get a greater score.

So this is the basic idea of my game, over the coming days I will begin to flesh it out even more as I fully understand what Stencyl is/isn't capable of. Generally though I think it is a very exciting project!

First post!

Hello, and welcome to my game development blog!

I am a student of Plymouth University studying computing and game development. This blog is going to follow the progress I make on my first module which is to create and publish my own video game!

The project is reasonably short (6 weeks) therefore I hope to update this site at least three times every week. It will be filled with images and videos that inspire me as well as original pieces that document my progress towards completion.

Feel free to comment/criticise on all of my work.

Thanks,
Scott