Story and Production Line

With every plan and idea coming together, only one thing remains to do: develop a story. Now my game is designed to be a quick, arcade-like game so from the start I never really considered introducing a story to it. Saying that, I think there should be some form of context to what the players are doing somewhere in the game but not one that’s too in depth else it will slow down the fast pace of the game.

My short and quick concept is that each player is one of two brothers who are arguing about which one of them is the best shooter in the West. Eventually they decide to resolve the issue with a target shooting contest. At the end of the game, the player who did best is crowned the winner and that brother is the best shooter of the two.

Coming up with a short story didn’t take very long and adds a little bit extra to the game in terms of some context. Finishing that allowed me to go onto the final stage of the design process: the production line. This isn’t the same as in a factory where items are created, instead it’s a timeline of the projects design, showing when criteria were accomplished and when deadlines are approaching. My production line starts at the end of October, with the first marker being the creation of my specification, and ends approximately halfway through December when I’ll hand in my GDD containing all the details and plans of my game. Production lines are good for monitoring the progress of a project and assessing what areas may have needed more time put into them.

Production Line

Tutorial and UI Flow

At this point in the design process we have our game mechanics pretty much figured out and everything is falling into place. The next step is figuring out what goes on outside of the main game, by which I mean we need to plan out the menu system the players will interact with. Having an amazing game is one thing, but if the player struggles to get into it then the experience of the game will be damaged.

Upon starting the game, the player will be shown the splash screen and then taken to the main menu screen. Here they’ll have 3 buttons they can press: play game, options and quit game. Clicking play game will first play the optional tutorial video, then take the players into the game. Upon finishing, the win screen is displayed and players can choose whether or not to go again. If they press yes the game restarts else, if no, both players are returned to the main menu.

The options menu gives players a choice of another 3 buttons: audio, video and controls. The audio option allows players to adjust the overall volume and the SFX volume. Video lets players adjust the brightness and resolution to suit their needs. Finally, controls can be configured to meet the players needs/preferences.

Quit game brings up a yes or no option. Clicking yes exits the application, no returns them to the main menu. 

UI flow diagram

Something I was debating about whether to add to the menu or not was a tutorial. I was considering a small section where players could read up about what to do and how everything plays out, but felt something visual was more interesting. My new plan was to play a small ‘cut scene’ at the beginning of the game for players to watch and learn from. Both players can opt to skip it if they already know what they’re doing because being forced to watch a tutorial you already know is very boring.

It starts off with the main camera panning around the town then zooming in on targets and explaining the controls and to shoot as many targets as possible in the time remaining. The camera then pans over to the power ups and briefly explains each one before cutting the screen to black and starting the game.

Prototyping

Once you've designed the game and researched what you want in it, the next step is to start prototyping a few mechanics to get things going. Prototypes don't need to be stylish or flashy, they simply need to test a mechanic and show it working. The entire point is for the prototype to be quick, simple and rough around the edges. I took the separate mechanics of my idea and wrote down a rough plan of what needed to be done for each one, then went to work adding bit by bit to the prototype.

I started by creating a character controller and mouse look because the character is the most essential part of the game as that's the players entry point. Once the character was in place, I focused on adding the bullets and gun, which went with the character, then set bullets to destroy in order to keep the scene and hierarchy tidy. With the bullets added, I needed something to test them on therefore the next mechanic and item I worked on was the targets. To create these I recycled and modified the interpolation script I was taught how to construct a few weeks previously. I used it to create targets that rise up only once and others which bounce between 2 points. At some point I'd like to implement a pool manager to deal with bullets, bullet holes and especially the targets I'll being creating as this will improve the efficiency of the game.

General shot of prototype

At this stage I was happy with the amount of mechanics that had in my first prototype, so moved on to create a map prototype. It's a simple layout that shows how each player will be positioned opposite each other and locked into separate sections that unlock over time. As it's only a prototype of a straight street, there isn't a huge amount to look at. However it does it's job of showing what I want the game area to like look, which is all it needs to do.

Street layout prototype

I plan to do a quick run-through video of my prototype and will get to it once I've learnt more about how to use OBS.

Mood Boards

Once I was happy with the concepts I had come up with, I moved onto the 3rd stage, research. This involved looking at all the ideas I'd had and thinking about how to develop them further, into proper mechanics/objects. A great way to do this is to create a series of mood boards; a page full of images that you can use for reference when designing your mechanics/objects. For my mood boards, I choose 4 different ideas to make them around: Western High Street, Guns, props and targets/power-ups.

For the Western high street idea, I gathered images of straight western main town roads and the old wooden buildings dotted along them. I got a nice mixture of real life town streets, movie set versions and a few from games. Using a variety like this will show me what the most popular definition of 'Western High Street' is, allowing me to create the most realistic environment for my game.

Western High Street ideas

My second mood board focused on the weapons I was hoping to use in the game. Since the setting is a an old Western one, I wanted to use authentic weapons of the time. This meant fully automatic weapons are pretty much out of the question and single shot ones are what I needed to look at. To have a western dual flare to the game I wanted to have the players use revolvers because they were the staple handgun in the era. I had an idea to possibly add a rifle as a power up that allows zoom and has more ammo in it, so looked up a few designs for those as well. I got a mixture of both real life and model pictures, so I have an idea of what to aim for in the long run.

Gun ideas

With the setting and weapons researched, I wanted to get some ideas for a bit of detail to the scene so created a board of props. The 3 things I had an idea for were barrels, crates and some plants. These aren't a huge part of the game but adding them in will make the scene seem more realistic and they can also be used to hide targets behind. I got a real life image of each thing to see what they would really look like and then checked out some 3D models/game versions to see how similar the 2 were. Each were very close in appearance, most likely due to the fact that there never is much variety in the appearance of barrels and crates etc, however it's always good to double check and get references.

Prop ideas

The final board was filled with my ideas for the targets and power up icons. I chose generic red and white ringed targets because they're recognisable to people and will be easy to see in the game scene. I also wanted to add a few different things into the scene which may not be as obvious to shoot but will still give points. For this I was planning to use some props, such as the barrels, or even add other new objects such as scarecrows or lights. For the power ups I wanted a variety of things to keep the game as interesting as possible. I obtained images for:

• X2 points(doubles points for short time)
• Explosives(grenades or dynamite with AoE damage)
• Dual wielding revolvers(double the ammo/negate reload time)
• Rifle(more ammo and can zoom)

Each of these will have a chance to randomly appear in the scene and the first person to shoot it will be given that power up for a short time.

Target & power-up ideas

Game Specifications

Along with 3D modelling, we are also being taught about the design process in the games industry. This will cover everything from coming up with basic ideas to creating a GDD with enough information to build the game from. An effective design process is essential to creating the best project possible. Knowing how to generate ideas, refine them and implement them is key to success. In general, the stages are:

• Specification - Clarify the specification/requirements
• Analysis - Break down the specification into component parts
• Research - Gather information on these components
• Conceptualisation - Experiment and filter ideas from analysis and research
• Prototyping - Develop prototype solutions based on concepts
• Iteration - Refine prototypes to a final level product

Following these steps will allow you to create a far greater product than if you simply pluck and idea or concept out of thin air then try and build it straight away. In order to practice the process I've started designing a game and will follow the steps to make it as successful as possible.

As I'm coming up with my own idea rather than creating one from a specification, this step is replaced with creating a brainstorm to generate as many ideas as possible, very quickly, that can be inspected later on. To start with I had to generate an idea/name to branch from, effectively a concept to start working from. The concept I chose was a western style shooter, which I scribbled down and added anything and everything that came into my head from there. The entire point of this is to generate as many possibilities as you can which can be tweaked later of when needed. The result looks messy and uncoordinated but that's the desired result, the next step is where we tidy up these ideas.

Brainstorm

When we have a brainstorm we're happy with, we can start to organise what we've written into more comprehensible sections that are easy to read and understand. This is the conversion of a brainstorm into a mind map. Rather than have many messy sections dotted all over a page a mind map orders these into components such as UI, objectives, settings and game play. From these larger generalised terms we branch into the finer details of them but in a neater more readable way. This is also the time to remove anything that was generated during the brainstorming that, on second thought, doesn't seem right or may not be needed for the game. This entire process organises the thought process and slightly refines it.

Mind map