Mind Factory: Pre-Production Deadline

Today is the final deadline for all our pre-production work for Art, Design and Programming. Mind Factory is finally starting to take shape and I am looking forward to next term for Production, after Christmas. Keep an eye out on my blog or the Dark Jester blog for more information on Mind Factory and to see our progression with the game. I am going to upload all the research I did earlier this year for Mind Factory, below:

Mind Factory Research Document - Gina

Summary of the purpose of this document:

In "Mind Factory" there will be two interactive windows, both in 3D. One will be focusing on "the factory", the brain of the protagonist and all its functions. The other window will be the world of the protagonist, seen through their eyes. In other words; their vision. The second window, which can be referred to as "the world",  will be affected by whatever the player does in "the factory". The player will have to control and manage every part of the brain in order to complete simple tasks the protagonist is trying to do in "the world". This research document will be focusing on camera views and general art style, mainly of "the world". Whatever is found during research that is relevant to either of the two interactive windows will be included here. Anything that is found during this research will hopefully be of interest to the other team members of the group. Any general ideas that spring to mind will also be added into this document for future reference.

General Concept / Camera:

1. Second Life

Second Life is an online life simulator, basically a visual 3D chat room where you present yourself as a customised 3D model to your liking. There are gameplay elements like exploration and the collection of items (usually sold for real life currency) but it is mainly just an impressive and massive virtual chat room. The reason this is relevant to the project we are working on is because of two things: the art style is appropriate for the "world" of the protagonist, the general interaction with the world is a good source of inspiration for our concept. 

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z3gHCupXSMs

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life    /    http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US

2. The Sims series

The Sims series may not be exactly what the team was thinking of when the concept of Mind Factory was introduced. The group already settled for 3D first person view, but the game series is still relevant to this research since you can control a character and its actions in life.

Mind Factory is basically a life simulator with the mechanic of controlling the brain which affects the protagonist's actions in a separated world, whereas the Sims is a life simulator where the whole point of the game is to control their actions by clicking objects and telling them what to do directly but without going too in-depth. Still an inspiration for our concept and a similar art style would be appropriate for any type of life simulator, including ours. The style of this game would be better suited for the "world".

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTyuRksaDds&feature=related

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_(series)

3. Live Action Videos

3a) Skyrim Live Action @ YouTube

This is a very good example of a well done Live Action video, like CollegeHumor, it is the same concept, except that this is based on/inspired by Skyrim and not real life. If we were to do live action, and include a health bar, ammunition or narrative, this would be the way to go about it for our concept.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzAVAkmGhSc

Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/NatesDailies

3b) College Humor POV @ YouTube

I tried to find an "appropriate" video of this but there aren't really any, but to make a point I've included one of their videos below. College Humor POV is a series of videos set in POV (point of view) of a college guy or girl, doing everyday things in and outside college, all in Live Action. Something similar would be good for our concept if we end up doing Live Action and not 3D, it's a good inspiration if we were to do it in 3D as well, with the same camera style. Video below:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV--gIaYxGI&feature=relmfu

Source: http://www.collegehumor.com/tag/pov

Game play:

Window 1 (The Brain):

·         Faster Than Light:  http://www.ftlgame.com/

- Management of the crew, power balance and general strategy

·         Point and Click (High Tea):  http://www.kongregate.com/games/ExploreWellcome/high-tea

- The point and  click feature, general management mechanic and general strategy

·         Strategic Drag and Drop  (Tentacle Wars, The Purple Menace) http://www.kongregate.com/games/gamezhero/tentacle-wars-the-purple-menace

Window 2 (The World):

·         Live Action (as shown in concept/camera research)

·         Semi-Interactive 3D 1st person camera

Think "Dear Esther", you have some control but it's mostly an interactive film. Since the player will be focusing on Window 1, the brain of the protagonist, there has to be a minimal amount of control and interaction with the second window. There are two options, having no control whatsoever of the second window as mentioned below, or small amounts of limited interaction (perhaps just walking or clicking things, as you do in Dear Esther).

·         Non-interactive cut scene based 3D 1st person camera

- A realistic 1st person camera view through the protagonist's eyes, the character you control indirectly via the strategic window next to it. For the camera view alone (and not gameplay), good examples to have a look at are: Dark Messiah, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series, Amnesia/Penumbra series, Thief series, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Their cut scenes and general camera style would be perfect for the second window of the UI.

More In-Depth Gameplay Research

1. Faster than Light

"In Faster Than Light, the player controls a spacecraft and crew that intercepts a data packet from a rebel fleet. The player's goal is to reach a Federation fleet, which is waiting a long distance away, without being destroyed or caught by the rebel fleet in pursuit."

The concept of this game is very similar to Mind Factory, at least when it comes to the factory window. The goal of Mind Factory is to manage and give orders to the crew of the brain itself, that will make sure the brain functions as it should and the player must balance out the power of the crew to make sure there's enough workers in each part of the brain so the body of the protagonist functions properly. The Dark Jester group also mentioned that the player may be able to buy upgrades and such in order to improve performance and power of the crew of the brain, which is exactly what you can do in Faster Than Light.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4imWvoqxmc

Source:  http://www.ftlgame.com/

2. Civilizations Wars

Not as relevant as "Faster Than Light" but a good example of a way we could handle all the mini-men in the brain. You capture buildings and give orders to a small civilization by dragging them to each building, which is basically what one would do in Mind Factory, just swap the  buildings with sections of the brain that needs to be controlled by small groups of people. You learn skills and defeat enemies along the way, which could be something we could implement into our concept as well to make things a tad more interesting.

Game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/tjcarlos/civilizations-wars?acomplete=civili

Art style

Protagonist window research

1. Comic book/cartoon

a) XIII

b) Outlaws

c) Team Fortress

d) The Sims

I did research on The Sims on page 2 of this document where I explained why this is comparable to our concept, personally I think the art style is the most appropriate for our concept as it's not too serious and much more achievable in the time we have to make this game than having realistic real-life graphics.

2.  1st person Pixel Art

a) 8-bit Killer

8-bit Killer is a 1st person shooter in pixel art style.

Download 8-bit Killer here: http://www.locomalito.com/8bit_killer.php

b) Delver

Delver is a 1st person pixel art dungeon crawler.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dattsmkfzhU

Brain Section Research:

1. Odd World - Abes Exoddus & Abes Oddyses

Sources: http://www.oddworld.com/2010/08/abes-exoddus/    + http://www.oddworld.com/games-new-parent/abes-oddysee/

Goodbye "Spin Doctor", Hello "Mind Factory"!

Having worked for an entire year on Spin Doctor with a group of people from my class, I can say it was definitely a good experience and I learned quite alot from it. In September, this year, I started my 3rd year at the same college (Futureworks in Manchester) and separated from my usual team members. We were put into 2 groups of 4 people each. I got in a group with Harry, Sam and Adam. We picked the name "Dark Jester" as our company name.

So, here we are, 2 months later, with a tech prototype and a final concept document with concept art. After a few initial concepts, we decided on "Mind Factory". We'll be working on "Mind Factory" until August 2013, and any work related to Mind Factory will be blogged about on our company blog. If you are interested, keep an eye out for my blog or  the company's blog, as we'll be posting about updates to our game and uploading work to showcase. Wish us luck!

Link to our company blog: http://wearedarkjester.blogspot.co.uk/

Spin Doctor Release and Post Mortem

Just my two cents...

Spin Doctor has finally been officially released, and it is available for download on IndieDB. A direct download link has been provided below in our post mortem of Spin Doctor (format of the post mortem was taken from GameCareerGuide.com). To anyone who actually has already or plan to download the game, any feedback is appreciated and I hope you enjoy the game! This is probably the end of any Spin Doctor related blog posts (unless anything interesting happens...), and you'll see any future work published here regarding my 3rd and final year, starting this week. 

Spin Doctor - Post Mortem

Title: Spin Doctor
Platform: PC
Release Date: 31/08/12
Development time: Academic year
Designers:  3
Artists: 3
Programmers: 2

Engine built in XNA (C#)

Links
Download:  http://www.indiedb.com/games/spin-doctor/downloads/spin-doctor 
Website:  http://spin-doctor.webs.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SpinDoctorTheGame

Over the second year of our Diploma into game development, the class was assigned the brief to create a short Beta demo based on a game concept which would be designed throughout the year. Programming, Art and Design were all done in house and from scratch, by students whom were still learning and improving their craft. Initially the class worked separately in groups in order to come up with initial concepts that would form the basis of our demo. From these short concepts, "Space Game" was selected which simply used the core mechanic of rotation and gravity to overcome puzzles. This game would later become the steam punk Victorian world of "Spin Doctor" and form the basis of our year long project. Programmers were tasked with creating both an engine and editor to run the game and help the designers create levels in them. Artists then, were in charge the entirety of the visual content for the game including asset creation and animation.

The result was a short 30- 40 minute 2D gameplay demo released in August 2012. The core concept of the game was the use of a rotation mechanic, allowing users to shift the orientation of the levels and therefore change their route through it in order to avoid obstacles and hazards. Story elements were added into the game giving it more depth and playability, following main protagonist Harland Shears on his journey through a hellish maze of underground hazards and traps as he seeks to find answers to his strange surroundings and ultimately, freedom.

5 good things:

1. Solid core mechanic
One thing that had been maintained throughout the whole project was the use of the "rotation mechanic" as the main gameplay tool. Story elements, setting and characters were changed frequently during development, but the concept of gameplay remained essentially the same. Having this strong vision for the rules and mechanics early on in the pre-production phase allowed the class to stay focused and work cooperatively to a shared ideal and goal. Ideas flowed more organically since the concept was something everyone had already agreed on and felt comfortable with. This bled into our designs of levels and elaboration of additional mechanics, all of which complemented the main idea for the game.

2. Abundance of content
From the early development brainstorming and idea creation phase, it's fair to say the class had too many ideas for the final vision of the game. This down the road would help us out infinitely. When ideas didn't work or something needed to be changed, there was an ocean of concepts for new characters, mechanics and levels talked about and documented early in the development cycle. Again, this allowed the team to naturally and organically bounce ideas from one and other, with all ideas falling back and facilitating our main mechanic, from our story implementation and characters, to the location and setting of the final game.  

3. Planning
Every aspect of the game was planned out in the pre-production phase of development. The team spoke endlessly about ideas and brainstorms were frequent. Everything was documented down into what would become our Concept and Games Design Documents. The GDD acted as our blueprint for the game and kept the class up to date and on the same page with development. Whenever team members had conflicting ideas or misunderstood elements of the game, we could easily reference the GDD and work from it as we progressed.

4. Dedication
Only having limited class time, it was important that members were dedicated to the cause outside of college hours and needed to provide a steady income of work for the game. Through the dedication of the class we were able to push through some difficult times and problems we faced through development. The majority of these problems came from technical and work load issues and could have potentially crippled the entire project. Problems with programming and lack of content in the art side of the project were rectified by long working hours and enthusiasm from those involved, to simply finish the project.

5. Personal Development
The project allowed each of the members on the team a chance to flourish in their chosen specialisms as well as adapt and improve other areas of their development careers. Thanks to the necessity of work the project demanded, the class was forced to learn new skills and improve on old ones to deliver the final project. Naturally working on the game has made everyone better developers overall, however the format of “learning whilst you work” is something that was really pushed and created a better learning environment. Everyone would regularly chip into areas outside of their specialisms which created an overall stronger connection between the classes and helped refine our ideas down.

5 bad things:

1. Lack of communication
This became a problem almost from day one when starting this project. The group tried many methods of establishing strong lines of communication such as weekly meet ups both in person and on Skype, group emails and finally a Facebook group, which would act as our private social link to everyone in the class. Using Facebook worked the best and ensured we could be in constant communication. However, the laid back nature in which this was approached meant people would frequently be kept out of the loop on important areas of the project, which lead to confusion and overall decrease in moral and productivity. Work was forever being chased and deadlines missed, pushing back the workload of the class and creating stress and tension.

2. No working procedure or format
Once we hit production phase, without any methods of work submission there was much confusion into where documents were and just who was working on them. At times we even lost digital copies of important documents like the Proposal Doc. A shared group Dropbox account became our primary way to distribute work through the class. During asset creation the Artists had a difficult time advertising new versions of their work and sending them over to the programmers, which brought more problems through image formats and sizing issues. The closing months of the projects saw new builds of the engine and editor being completed almost daily. Keeping up with this steady stream of updates meant members of the team were using back dated version to complete levels. This confusion hindered progress and made the production process for convoluted and confusing.

3. Over ambition

From the outset we know the goal of the project was to complete a simple but effective 2D game. During the idea creation and pre-production phase work flowed smoothly and kept to a relatively good standard. Once production rolled round however and the class fully realized the scope of what we had planned and how much work needed doing (specifically from a programming side) we started to struggle with work load. Poor attempts at rationing tasks across the class lead to more confusion and slowed development even further.

4. Prioritized work incorrectly
At times during development the 3 areas of our project, design, art and programming, would progress at different levels based on the classes opinion of importance. Initially, design was focused on more than any other area which left the programming and art creation during the concept phases lagging. Eventually these areas would catch up, but not at steady rates. There was times when designers needed to use parts of the editor to craft levels for deadlines, when the editor was unusable through programming issues. Likewise at times when art was expected, artists were bogged down helping in design areas.

5. Lack of a project lead / manager
Whilst planning was something that worked perfectly, the ability to maintain strong lines of communication and risk assessment fell short. Implementing a project lead who could act as a buffer for all 3 areas of design and keep track of workload and deadlines, would have ensured a more structured path through development. Without this, the confusion that arose in all areas became worse and with no-one to look for in times of management needs (or indeed blame when things went wrong) the team suffered.

Spin Doctor website and Facebook page!

Keep up to date on everyone involved with the project and Spin Doctor on our website and/or Facebook page:

http://spin-doctor.webs.com/


https://www.facebook.com/SpinDoctorTheGame


Any likes will be very much appreciated! Spin Doctor will officially be in Alpha on July the 18th. Stay tuned...

- Gina

    Credits to Jonny Pickton for the image.

Spin Doctor: Finalised Room 4

Original Room 4: 

Amended Room 4: 

Spin Doctor: Finalised Version of Room 3

Amended Room 3  - Version 2 (from an earlier blogpost)

  Rough but amended sketch of Room 3 (Final version)

Finished Finalised Version of Room 3:

                                                      What has changed since Version 2:

1. Added "trap door" (floor will fall apart here when the player runs on it)

2. Added a fake switch here working as a focal point for the player, and added spikes on the side so the player can't rotate and jump to the switch, avoiding the trap door (although the switch wont work anyway, but is "meant" to remove the wall with the spikes on it)

3. Added a trap wall here, that will crush the player if stood below it. Player has to avoid this. Behind the wall there is also a switch that will enable a moving platform to the left of the hidden "room".

4. The moving platform has been enabled by the switch and the player can stand on this to reach the exit door. The green wall between the moving platform and exit door will be pulled up as well when the switch has been touched.

Spin Doctor: Cross Section 3-5

Cross Section 3:

Cross section number 3, drawn up and just been played through.

I found two issues with the cross section:

1. Harland wont fit on the tiny platforms between the ropes.
2. If player falls down, he/she will be stuck... The player can also take advantage of the gaps and rotate and run along the high platforms and in fact get straight to the platform near the stairs. I suggest adding spikes so the player dies if they fall down or try to cheat.

Other than that, the level is good to go, I will just add spikes and make the platforms a little bigger.






Voila! The finished amended cross section that now works 100 %!

Cross Section 4:

Level works perfectly, only one flaw, which is that it's quite a jump to get ahold of the rope  from the first platform to the second.




Amended Cross Section 4:

 I made the platform slightly wider so Harland can reach the rope. Nothing else was changed.





I also timed this cross section, and it took me approx. 9 Seconds to complete the cross section.






Cross Section 5:

Level works perfectly so no need to change it. Completing the level took me approx. 25 seconds. (00:25.1)

Spin Doctor: Room 5 - Version 2 and Finalised Version

                                                                            Original:

The original drawings' problems have been mentioned in an earlier post "Playthrough of Room 5". This post is for the amended and finalised version only. 

                                               Amended Version 1 including notes for Version 2:

Things that need to be changed for final version:

1. Add more spikes

2. Remove a gap near the start

3. Change one note into a switch for more gameplay

4. Make the two ladders into one long ladder

5. Make platforms bigger, thicker, longer, for visuals and scale

6. Make room bigger in general (for more space)

7. Move platform with star (note) further to the left

8. Remove rope near exit

9. Change two rotating platforms into regular platforms as they don't need to rotate

Finished & Final Version:

Things that have been changed for the final version:

1. Added more spikes in most places, for a more  challenging gameplay.

2. Made the trap near the start a horizontal one that goes to the left, instead of a vertical one that goes down. Changed the position of it slightly.

3. Removed gap near start, added spikes, made the rope distance longer as well.

4. Made platform under pendulum thicker for scale problems and room size, generally made other platforms longer and thicker so Harland can reach them, and also for visuals.

5. Added switch where previous note was, that enables a moving platform near the exit to move back and forth so the player can reach the exit door.

6. Changed old "fake" note to a real note.

7. Made the two ladders into one long ladder.

8. Made rope "distance" slightly wider near the switch.

9. Added the moving platform enabled by the switch.

10. Made the room bigger in general to fit everything in it nicely.

11. The platform that had the old "fake" note on it was too close to the rotating platform to the right, so it was moved slightly to the left (which is why I had to make the room bigger)


Overall, the time it took me to complete this finalised level, was 1 minute (1.00.3)