FMP Production

Task 6

Produce the media production as per the brief.

PLAY-THROUGHS: Full-game Play-through




My Section of the game containing all of my production work




Production

In the beginning stages, I also developed the coding for a top-down adventure game, similar to that of The Legend of Zelda. It worked well, but various elements were proving difficult fix and create. This was taking too much of our time up, so we decided to abandon this project and use some of its parts for our other games. This section would have been our 'hub-world' when the player would begin the game. In this section, the player would be presented with doors and each door would lead to one of our own games.

The beginning stages of my game can be seen in the video above. I decided to create a 2D plat-former and have gotten some of the player controls completed already. Once I was at this stage, I firstly spent a lot of time developing sprites, with a main focus on platform sprites such as rock, wood and dirt. I needed to make sure I had enough platform tiles so that I could begin construction of the first level. The image above shows the tutorial room in early stages.

I then began to improve the player by giving him a UI and various attacks. These attacks were dark magic, fire, ice and thunder. Each one operates differently and can be used in different situations. He also now has a health bar that works and has been tested on the enemy seen in the video. 

I was then able to work on a lot more sprites and objects, resulting in the creation of lots of the first level. I had added coins, diamonds, signs, trees and traps. I then thought of a new mechanic I could add which would be swimming. I then decided to attempt to code a swimming function for the players. Once I had it working, I added a swimming area to the tutorial level and a jump-test section at the end. Whilst doing this level, I also decided to code a moving platform, but was having problems with the code, so held off this for a bit. A coin counter is also currently being worked on too. Once I had created the coin objects, the UI was updated to display how many coins the player had picked up. Then, I decided to create an enemy for the next level who used a sword to attack. His production was quite simple and worked well at the end. 

Whilst testing out the level, I thought it would be best to update the health bar, so I followed a tutorial video showing a legend of Zelda-like heart system. Afterwards, I pressed on to finish the tutorial level.

The next few weeks saw me focusing on completing the next couple of levels. During this time, I had added a lot of new things, such as blocks, mushroom objects, enemies, lava, backgrounds and the moving platforms were completed too. I tried to follow the plan as much as I could in my level designs, but I decided it would be best to add more sections if I could and more objects to the levels.

In my initial plan, I created diagrams set out similarly to these levels and created a storyboard based on what I wanted my game to go through. I have so far been successful in creating these sections and all has gone to plan. I wanted the player to go through the tutorial, then into a forest, then into a grass field section and into a cave. I will now need to work on the castle and the roof top boss battle.

Above, is my fourth level. It is set out as an invasion into the enemy castle and pits the player against lots of traps, tough plat-forming and  a lot of enemies. So far, I quite like all of my levels and have been able to keep up with the initial designs and even add more content. As you can also see, many more sprites and objects have been added, such as banners, a table, refined spike traps, a doorway at the end and a drawbridge as well as a few more detail objects like supports and platforms.

Above is my final level to the game and contains a boss fight with the monster you see on the right. When the player gets near the portal, the boss will appear from out of it and attack the player. It is designed to be quite powerful, so I have added a plat-forming section around the portal in which the player can climb around to get more health is necessary.

The boss has 4 phases. His first sees him as he is on the right, firing orange flames at the player. The next sees his animations speed up and red flames burn around his hands. He can also produce red flames which are bigger and do more damage. In his third phase, the orange flames explode into purple flames and he attacks slightly faster and there is more chance that red flames will be fired at the player. On his fourth phase, he will be defeated, break down and be set alight by his purple flames. This then creates a portal on the right which leads to one of my team mates games.

Once each main level was complete, I could then focus on the two beginning controls screens. The first displays basic movement controls that include moving left and right, jumpimg and how to use attacks. The second screen shows the player which attacks do what, as well as how they work, so that in a combat situation, the player will have memorized each of their attacks abilities and usefulness. 


 I plan to go into more detail as to how and why these items were produced in my evaluation.