Ryan Crim, Week 8 Journal PPJ, Blog post 8, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

Getting closer to the end of this project, my main focus this week was to clean up different aspects of the game structure and my individual games, as well as implement a new one if I got the chance.

To begin the week, I tried to make the game more uniform by adding the pink bar of pre-game instructions I had in my mini/micro-games into each of the others as shown in Figure 1. This required modifying the timer and stateholder scripts to consider when a game actually “starts” (instruction bar disappears) as well as updating the scripts for each game to consider this new logic. Furthermore, there was the issue of the low amount of points the game awarded from playtesting, so I centralized and increased the point values and updated all the game scripts to use these variables so that the point values can be easily modified. Lastly, in terms of structure, I noticed that when I updated the transition screen to compare the scores from the last game to decide what music should play (as part of my score changes from the last build), I accidentally had the updating of previous scores in an if-block so it did not update every time as it should and does now. (2.50 hrs)

Figure 1. Screenshot of pre-game instruction bar in existing Runnerz game

Moving on, I made a few additions and updates to my each of my existing games listed below...

• Abducktion (0.25 hr) 
• Added sound effects for X-ray and cup swap (whoosh) 
• Draw at Noon (2.00 hrs) 
• Created an animation controller and added/modified scripts to handle animating the alien as shown in Figure 2 
• Modified motion of human knockback to coincide with the alien’s as well as to keep the camera on the animating alien 
• Fixed issue where alien would shoot itself after Ricardo shortened the transitions 
• G-Switch (0.25 hr) 
• Slowed spinner speed to make it easier for aliens to affect the game 
• Added sound effect for jump to make it easier for Human 2 to know when to switch gravity 
• Dance Off (0.50 hr) 
• Modified motions of player object and added slight motions to camera to try to get more consistent motion and feedback

Figure 2. Animating alien model in Draw at Noon

After modifying my existing games, I had a bit of time to create a game based off of the Whac-A-Mole arcade machine (cleverly called Whack-An-Alien) as shown in Figure 3. Just like the real machine, moles (or aliens in this case) randomly pop up out of the nine holes. The humans need to position the hammer over the corresponding hole (by holding in the correct direction(s)) and slam it down on the alien in order to get points (see the screenshot for controls). After a short time of not being hit by the hammer, though, the alien will retract into its hole and the aliens will be awarded points. Aliens continue to pop up randomly until time runs out. The work for this game consisted of building the scene up with all of the assets (including modelling a simple Whac-A-Mole-esque machine in Maya), writing the two scripts to handle the moles and the hammer, and retrieving the background music for it (http://www.playonloop.com/2016-music-loops/dolphin-ride/). (3.50 hrs)

Figure 3. Screenshot from Whack-An-Alien micro-game

Lastly, since we are nearing the end of the project, we were required to watch a post-mortem presentation from the GDCVault in order to familiarize ourselves with the mindset we should have in thinking about how the project went well and how it could have gone better. After watching parts of a few different presentations, I finally settled on watching Chris Harvey’s “Learning From Our Mistakes: A Post-Mortem of Guacamelee!” all the while taking notes. Below you can find my summary of these notes. (1.75 hrs)

As a co-founder of DrinkBox Studios, Chris had a prime viewpoint to see how the process of creating their first game, About a Blob, compared to their process for creating their much more successful third game, Guacamelee, and thereby outlined what changed to bring this success. Within this presentation, Chris split the process into three main stages: Concepting, Development and Marketing.

In the Concepting stage, there were a few different aspects that needed to be considered, including choosing a concept, defining the game and finding the fun. In terms of choosing a concept, they changed up their process by having members of the studio in all different departments meet and create single page pitch sheets outlining a game idea complete with genre, platform, target audience, story and mechanics. Therefore, they could select the game idea that the consensus enjoyed and refine the selected idea with pieces from other pitches to make it even better. Moving on to defining the game, DrinkBox refused to enter production until they understood and nailed down the basics of the game and had as few loose ends as possible. That way the team could stay focused and synchronized meaning that time would not be wasted later on second guessing decisions. Lastly, in terms of Concepting, Chris mentioned that in order to find the fun while keeping consistency, the fundamentals of the game should be conservative and individual elements should instead be riffed on. There is no need to reinvent the wheel for every aspect of your game, and it is better to have existing similar games to see what works and what does not, since that could end up wasting a lot of valuable time in the process.

In the Development stage, there were also multiple aspects that needed to be considered, including pre-production, deadlines, personality and charm, toolset and target platform. Starting with pre-production, Chris mentioned the importance of having a small, dedicated team (from different disciplines) with clear goals and roles to get the process rolling and keep it focused. He also stressed that the leads of the project should not be working externally or this focus could easily be thrown off resulting in rebooting and second guessing. Lastly, he mentioned the importance of keeping constant discussion and to work on small pieces at a time instead of trying to create the whole game at once. This led directly into the idea of setting incremental deadlines with small and obtainable goals. On this front, Chris also noted the effectiveness at making the deadlines external to publishers/the public, since it would put pressure on the team to actually get it done, allow the team to see what each person is capable of and to identify what in the project is not as important as originally thought. Despite having deadlines, though, the DrinkBox team found the importance of switching to the mindset of saying “yes” to more of the team’s ideas so their personality could define it. Therefore, they would have team meetings to see in-progress work from all departments and accept feedback/suggestions as well as encouraged experimenting, which created a more positive atmosphere and revealed unexpected talents from individuals on the team. In addition to being more open and creative, the team realized the importance of making the development faster, easier and more efficient in any way they could. Therefore, when they found a deficiency or an iteration process to be slow, they made modifications to the process to improve the situation, such as creating a programmer-driven, artist tunable system to create visual effects instead of relying as heavily on the artists. Lastly, in terms of determining the target platform and the release process, Chris said they had basically no change in the result (still self-published), but they did change their attitude to question presumptions and to put proper thought into it before making a decision.

Moving onto the last part of the process, Marketing, Chris laid out the importance of making the game as visible as possible through the game reveal, public relations and the launch. Starting with the game reveal, DrinkBox was initially scared to show About a Blob early due to changes possibly confusing people and the belief that showing a game not polished enough would ruin the reputation of their game, however, this resulted in a lack of anticipation for the game. For Guacamelee, though, they took the opposite approach and announced the game just out of pre-production with an announcement trailer that was not perfect, but it still built excitement. Furthermore, they showed the game off as early and often as possible anywhere they could. This lead to them to continuously work with a PR firm to help with the marketing side. Chris mentioned that there was not much media coverage for About a Blob since they were trying to do it themselves and put it off until the end. Considering marketing is a huge part of selling a game, it makes much more sense to hire people who know what they are doing, instead of trying to figure out it out yourself and wasting time that could be spent on the game. Lastly, Chris discussed the importance of planning and taking the launch extremely seriously, including a press tour, reviews and store placement/timing.

Overall, Chris started out the presentation sounding a little nervous, but I think he definitely warmed up throughout it. The information provided and the idea to compare the process of creating a successful game to one that was not so successful really helped drive home the points he wanted to make. This presentation definitely brought a different set of ideas that I never really considered and I plan on putting more thought into the process next time I work on a game.

Content Positive:

- Implemented a bit more uniformity with pre-game instructions and centralizing point values

- Added to and fixed up various parts of my four existing games (including alien animations in Draw at Noon)

- Created Whack-An-Alien micro-game

- Watched a very interesting and helpful post-mortem presentation

Content Negative:

- N/A

Total Hours for the week: 10.75 hrs