This week we did our formative feedback, which is held by both Sophie and Vanissa. After the formative feedback session I had, this is the feedback I have gotten:
Week 7 – Formative Feedback
Week 6 – Reflections
Art and Programming – Guest Speaker
In this lecture, we were brought an alumni of Sophie. He would talk about art in programming and how programming can be intertwined in art. This lecture was conducted by Louis
Key take aways:
When starting with programming in art, you can start small. Don’t worry about the end product as it isn’t easy. Although I’m someone who is very into 2D art and prefers to stay away from coding, after listening to Louis’ lecture, I feel a bit more encouraged to try programming shaders for 3D models.
Creative Coding – Lecture
Key take aways:
When coding and when you stumble across a problem, you should first identify what it is then try different solutions, iterating them each time.
Reviewing Bug Report / Feedback
On play testing day, I took some notes as I was observing the testers:
With these notes, me and Izzy highlighted what is a priority fix and what can lay low on our radars for now:
Luckily for us, since we’re using Ren’Py to execute the project, there were little to no bugs.
Week 5 – Mandatory Playtest
Building Your Brand Image – Guest Speaker
This week, we got another guest speaker that will expand on building your own brand image and how to garner an audience. This lecture is conducted by Jupiter Hadley
Key take aways:
If you are a company making a farming simulator, your audience are people who like chill games. If you were to switch up genres for your next game I.E. an FPS game, your audience won’t be as interested with the FPS game. Games of this nature are the polar opposite of chill games, so it would be beneficial to make a game that is relatively the same genre.
Playtest day
On Thursday, we did our first mandatory playtest where people in our class and from the Uni come in and play our game to give us constructive criticism and feedback on the games
Photos from the day!
Bug Report / Feedback Form
Credit for making the form and QR code: Izzy
Responses
Summary of results
After our playtest, it was evident to us that there were no major bugs that needed to be a priority fix. The only thing that was noticeable was when the player pulled up the pause menu, whoever was last spoke, head would pop out of the left bottom corner. This would block the return icon, making it challenging for the player to continue playing. We also got comments on was the grammar and that some sentences needed to be broken up to make it more digestible. Another comment we received was the choice of text colour. This is an easy fix as we can make the text darker.
Week 4 – User Testing and Accessibility
Games User Research – Notes
Games in the Disabled Community
Games are an important part of the disabled community. If someone has been stuck in the hospital for months, one of the things they don’t want to experience is feeling boredom. We see it everywhere, people play games on the bus, in the park and in other public places to cure their boredom. All access needs are unique, but everyone should be able to engage with the same experience. Games give them a sense of control out of their situation
Why can haptics be bad for someone that’s disabled?
Haptics can be a bad thing for disabled people because it can cause sensory issues
Fundamentals of QA and User Testing :
Give the game to someone and watch them play
Don’t speak only write
If you find yourself wanting to talk and justify something that means you should prioritise fixing it
Games cannot be played wrong but they can be made wrong
Mobile game supremacy!!!
Clean up on Isle – Bug Testing
In this activity, we were asked to find a game on Itch from the Global Game Jam and find bugs if possible. The way that I played this game was to play the game in the most unconventional way, I.E I would press random buttons on the keyboard that were not used for the game play, spam click and spin around multiple times. Some how this method worked (I think), during one point in our game play session, the player stopped taking damage. When Izzy was playing it, she made the player invisible.
After finding the bugs, we wrote them up in a bug report:
Update on Project!
Week 3 – Team Work
Team Exercise
This week, Vanissa went over what we did a check in on how we were feeling mentally. As team members, it’s important to look out for one another and to know when to use empathy to resolve basic conflicts.
Here, we did an exercise pointing out how we work in teams:
In this exercise, I plotted out grid as set out on the presentation from our Monday lesson and labelled each corner. Here, we were given post-it notes and what we had to do was state our working preferences (I misunderstood the meaning and wrote down the sections of games design I work best with). Strengths entails what each person is great at in team environments, I have jotted down that I was very good at coming up with multiple variations of the same concept. Communication preferences is what someone prefers to be communicated through I.E online, in person, email. For me, I think it’s important to have in person talks as sometimes communication can get misunderstood over text. Lastly, struggles are what someone has trouble with in any given project. I couldn’t write all of mine but I greatly struggle with giving out criticisms at the right time and how to say it. Another thing I struggle with is finding the motivation to work and get a solid work flow going.
Update on Project!
Before the week had properly started, I began on drawing another draft of Yami which can be found here. The reason why I changed his overall look is because I wanted him to present as his occupation and with the current design he had on, I think he looked a bit too plain. I kept the major elements of Yami such as the leopard prints and his hair colour but aside from that he went through a drastic change.
On our Thursday’s lesson I pointed out to Izzy that the character and the environment don’t really go well together in terms of colour palette, which is going to be quite the struggle to solve. This is because it’ll be hard to make an aesthetic colour palette with Yami’s current dark and warm tones and pair them up with the pastels Izzy has.
So we have set up a meeting with Sophie to talk through how to resolve this issue.
Week 2 – Project Management
Guest Speaker
This week went by quickly for me, the pressure of wanting to produce something great was already weighing down on me, although it was just the second week. This week, we were introduced to guest speaker, Paul MacGilivray. In his lecture, he came in to talk about production in games development.
One of the key things I have taken away from his lesson is that to make a quality product, there are 3 things to take into consideration: time, money and scope. Sometimes, projects will never have time, money or the scope is too big. Which is why it’s important to manage a project as soon as possible and giving time for external factors that you can’t control. I.E getting sick, family affairs.
User Story
In this lecture we were taught what user story is by Sophie. User stories are a simple sentence describing from the customer’s perspective. I.E “As the player, I want to solve murder so that I can feel a sense of accomplishment.”
As a game developer, it is not only your job to entertain the user but to understand their pressure points and frustrations. This gives a basis for you to communicate priorities to your teammates, it’s a way to make sure that you play your player rather than making unenjoyable art.
Takeaways:
- Empathy and attention to detail are how we take our games from amateur to professional
- You will always have to iterate but it’s easier to make minor tweaks than major changes.
We were then tasked with making our own user stories. I came up with, “As the player, I want to interact with the characters and explore their over the top personalities”.
Crisis Project Management
In this section of the lesson, Sophie shared with us a very inspirational personal story about her and her struggles coping with a chronic illness, which also lead to the removal of one of her organs.
You will be disabled or die suddenly and unexpectedly. You will therefore probably have to work whilst disabled and it will probably suck.
This quote made me realise how bad the economic climate currently is and in my lifetime, it most likely won’t get any better (WOOHOO!). Although I haven’t and hopefully will NEVER have to face a chronic illness or be disabled for a period of time, this also made me realise that as a games designer, it’s important that we have to face the crisis. When money is involved, we unfortunately don’t get extensions.
On a much lighter note, despite the short comings Sophie had to face, she came out with a massive accomplishment, she managed to win an award for her game in 2022 and managed to reach charts on the app store (a big congrats to Sophie!!).
As part of the crisis management, I have underlined what the minimum product will be and what the product could feature if all of our efforts were maximised:
Week 1 – Choosing Projects
This week, we were informed of the itinerary for the rest of the semester and going through how the teams would work. Sophie sent us a form describing what games we’d want to participate into making and the professional roles we’d be interested in. When picking the games I wanted to make, I took into consideration how much work I would be contributing to the team and how that would be spread out until the deadline. I was relatively stressed out up until the day we got put into groups but all that dissipated when I saw my name as the main character designer. I was ecstatic when I got this role as it’s something I’ve always pursued. To me, the type of game is something that came secondary to me as my priority has always been to improve on my chosen career path. We were given a form to complete detailing the games we would want to work on.
There were a selection of games I wanted to contribute my skills to. But there was one game in particular that beckoned me forward. This game would need a lot of art assets that I would love to draw, and that game was Violet’s Dates. The day that groups were announced I was beyond excited to be working on Riya Limbu’s Violet’s Dates, which will primarily be spotlighting the game’s narrative and art. This is the team I will be working with until the end of the semester:
Doodle of me Izzy maja Jessie
Task Management & GDD briefed
As I wanted to get a move on with what everyone would be doing, I set up a Trello board, Discord server and made a short summary of the Violet’s Dates GDD on Google slides. The rean why I chose Trello as our main form of task management and not Click up is because in my opinion, I think that Trello looks pretty straight forward rather than Click up.
Trello Board – Task management
Discord – Main form of communication and sending files
Here is the link to the GDD briefed I have made for our team, this was made so everyone can look back on and serves as a guideline:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13cUwTYpHmBd5Ym83vb0CWOIWrJnSSpzhpLpDES0N0tQ/edit?usp=sharing
Here is a screenshot of the Trello board I made. Everyone can add tasks for themselves and move them to the completed list at the end. Any developmental work will go in the light green boxes, these weren’t here before but I added them to ensure that we don’t get mixed up between what has actually done for the finished product and anything leading up to it.
Additionally, I added this extra list for tasks that haven’t been delegated to anyone yet:
Here is a screenshot of the Discord server I have made and the channels my group will be using:
Deciding on a Vertical Slice
In a lesson conducted by Sophie Artemigi, we were asked to decide on a vertical slice of our game. A vertical slice is a portion of the game that will be made. It’s sort of like a demo, but should have a decent amount of game play to pitch the idea to the audience. The purpose is to show the game’s vision, quality and potential. This vertical slice should contain assets that represent the final quality and should be stable to play. It should showcase the main mechanics and features.
In this A3 sheet below, me and Izzy got straight to work and planned out what must be done throughout the entire project and tried to categorise them.
