Tuesday 21 October 2014

The different suits of Mary

Continuing on our five weeks project spoken about in the previous post.

This week we first had a brief meeting discussing the basic mechanics of the games. How the character is going to move, shoot etc. We changed a few things. First, we would have the game runt from room-to-room, but now we decided on a continuously moving screen not locked to the player avatar. We decided this because it would offer a better flow to the game, and a bigger challenge if the player was always forced to move, never being able to stand still.

So the avatar is always in movement, even if you don’t touch the forward key. If you touch it, you will speed up, hence moving forward. If you press the backwards key you will slow down, but you can’t stop, as you reach the left edge of the screen it will continue to push you forward no matter how much you press the backwards key.

The player will move through a level full of enemies that will shoot randomly, and the avatar will defend itself by shooting as well. The avatar takes damage when hit by enemy fire or colliding with one. The avatar has three health points and will die and the level will reset when those three lives run out.

During our second meeting we built our paper prototype. We made a simplified grid-based version of a level. The player always moves one step forward each turn, but can additionally choose to take one step forward, backwards, up or down. Backwards is only available if the frame allows it. Onto of the board is a frame, that also moves one step forward each turn, illustrating the continuously moving screen in the game. We have yet to playtest enough to figure out how the battle will work, but there is monsters and projectiles as well.

So, as for the story of the game. The game begins during a public demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Bell call’s up a volunteer from the audience, which is the avatar of the game, Mary. There is two telephones on the stage. Bell makes picks up one and makes a call to the second, and Bell is to answer that one. But behind the scenes Elisha Gray, Bell’s self-proclaimed nemesis is fumbling with the cables, wanting to sabotage Bell’s demonstration. But something far more unexpected happens. Too much electricity enters The telephone, and when Mary picks up the telephone she is sucked into it. She comes out through another telephone, during world war 1.

Mary has traveled through time, and now it is her mission to find her way back to Bell’s demonstration back in the late 1800-centry. She has to find a working ringing telephone (the one she came through broke). She will be opposed by static creatures that interferes with the phone call and has to fight her way through. When she reaches another phone she is taken further into the feature, going through the 30ies, 50ies, 70ies and finally 2010, where at Bell’s museum she will find the original phone and be able to return home.

As for the personal work I have done so war for this project I’ve made the different outfits of Mary. At each level, which is another era Mary has a different outfit, a different suit, that is proper to that time. That is how we included “suit” into our game. “Telephone” I think is pretty obvious how we included it.


Until next time.

Different suits of Mary

Monday 13 October 2014

Suit and Telephone

For our next project we were assigned to make a space shooter game in five weeks. More or less.
We have the restrictions that the game must fulfill which is as follows;

  • No Gravity. The game shall not contain elements that an additional force needs to be programmed. So jumping can’t be a feature in the game, yet walking up and down is allowed.
  • The game needs to be played on PC.
  • It needs to have 2D Graphics.
  • Can be produced within 10 weeks.
  • The game must contain some kind of projectile, and at the least 3 different kinds of power-ups.
  • High score. A score system.
  • The game scene which can either scroll together with the player, move from room to room, or just be one scene and the enemies comes to you.
  • The game must contain the two key words given in some way.
That’s the requirements. Today our group sat down to come up with a concept for the game. The key words we were given was “Suit” and “Telephone”. In 2 and a half hour we sculptured a concept for narrative, levels and their basic features, aesthetics, key feature, and ideas for power-ups.

The game we came up with centers around “Telephone” and is more of a comical exploration game. In fact, it even has Bell himself in it. I’m not going to explain the actual narrative of the game, much rather how the game works. The game progress from level to level. Where each level is built up by moving from scene-to-scene. You can walk rather freely around the scene. Up, down, left, right. You are only restricted by certain obstacles like house walls, crowds and such. Every scene has one entry and one exit, moving from left to right. Enemies and power-ups will rain down from right to left on each scene, going against the character. The character is hurt if touched by the enemies, and the character can shoot them to make way to get forward to get to the goal. Each level has different outer forces instead of just the enemies, making the player have to keep an eye on the surroundings as well. As an example, if there is a war going on in the level. The player needs to watch out for bombs and bullets. Each level has a time limit which will determine your score together with enemies shot. That is the basic of the game.


Next time I’ll maybe get into the game setting and what it is about, and how we included suits and telephones.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Game: Spectral Traces


A game design by Emma Mörk.
“Want to hear the other side's part of the story? In Spectral Traces you can find the truth from the spirits that has yet to pass to the other side.
Switch between the two main characters to gather information from the dead and the living to solve the mysterious crimes in a darkening city. Solve puzzles to access hidden areas, and witness the consequences whether you caught the right guy or not.”

That’s the high concept for the game. It is a puzzle adventure game. A Detective game with a supernatural twist. The basic gameplay consist of running around in a level with a crime-scene and surrounding areas with clues and witnesses. Both real and ethereal, namely ghosts. You gather clues and talk to the witnesses to conclude a suspect of the crime. The crime can be a murder or burglary.

Concept of split screen gameplay.
Features of the game:
  • Switch between characters with different access’s in the game. Sarah has the authority to arrest the suspect, access the crime-scene and be taken seriously when interviewing witnesses. Alexi can talk to ghosts to get clues, he is agile and can access difficult places, and he is able to eavesdrop on conversations.
  • Co-op. Played on separate machines, or split screen. The split screen function works that when the characters are close enough the screen become one.
  • No identical crime scene. The clues are randomized to a certain degree for each game, providing a slightly different play through each time.
  • Puzzles. Everything from pressure plates to dilemmas between ghosts. All puzzles is rewarded with a clue or the access of another area with a clue. These clues isn’t affected by the system of clues disappearing when another one is gathered.
  • Consequences. View and listen to the consequences. The game world is affected with what is said on the radio, how the civilians behave, and events on following levels.
  • Color highlights. The color highlights will give the player a hint of what is going around them. Blue is neutral, nothing special is happening. Green is safe, having positive conversation. Yellow, alert, something suspicious is going on somewhere close etc. The color’s meaning will be taught early in the game.

The characters of the game is Alexi and Sarah. Sarah, a special police investigator with authority. Alexi, a boy who have been able to communicate with ghosts since birth. Alexi’s brother was murdered and the culprit was never found, as the police wouldn’t listen to Alexis’s first hand proof from his brother’s ghost. Sarah was the only one to listen to Alexi. She claims to believe him, and offers help in catching his brother’s bane in exchange for his help in solving crimes. Together they’ll find out whether influence from the dead is really good or bad.

Character Concept.