Game Project Log: Antz 1

One thing i've learned so far about making games is that it is always a good idea to get your game ideas documented. This provides a few benefits, namely to give you somewhere to refer to when designing games. Too many times have I started to develop a game and then about half way through after adding loads of cool and interesting things have I looked back and gone oh... somewhat sidetracked and gone off on a tangent here. While this is all well and good while your in an academic environment or prototyping, when your working for yourself time is money. Additional benefits include but are not limited to: giving you a clear way of demonstrating your idea in writing so you can set about protecting your intellectual property, increases the professional look of your game development should you wish to sell the game or seek sponsorship it also helps to provide structure so that you can focus your creativeness on what needs to be done to fulfil your own established criteria when setting about making a game.

The first official document I would suggest you put together for any game you make is what's generally known as a game design document. This will serve to outline the selling points of the game, who your aiming the game towards, how the game will play / mechanics, what style of art your using with the game and potentially a list of assets you'll need, how the levels will look, character descriptions, how the user interface will look. Following this or a structure  similar to this will ensure that your game design document is easy to refer to and update as the project progresses.

With this in mind, here is my initial design document for my mobile puzzle game 'Antz'.

Antz is a Sokoban style puzzle game designed as a pick up and play game for a mobile oriented market. I have yet to finalise my monetisation method for the game however I will initially be focusing on releasing on android and html5. The game will be for all ages with a cartoon graphic theme throughout which will lean towards a younger audience.

The core concept of the game is that each level will have x numbers of rocks on screen and x numbers of holes (these will be the same number on any given level). The player will control an ant who has been tasked with removing the rocks from the ant's nest by pushing them into the holes. Once all rocks have been sunk in the holes the level is complete. The control method for the game will remain as simple as possible and allow for touch screen or move to mouse functionality which will cater perfectly towards mobile phones or people playing the html5 version on a pc instead of their mobiles. Menu interaction will follow suit and be via clicking / tapping buttons or screen clicks / tapping of the screen.

In my prototype of the game I created 13 levels of increasing difficulty however my initial demo of the game will probably only include 10 levels with a further 30+ being developed either to sell as an addition to the demo or to release as a whole game with ad support.

The only playable character in the game is the ant and the only interaction with the player will simply be to move the character on screen, no extra dialogue or character development is required.

In terms of assets required for the game I will need a tileset to make the levels, an animated sprite for the controlable ant, a boulder sprite, an open hole sprite and a filled hole sprite. title and menu screens and a level select screen as well as generic buttons to be placed on screen. I've copied my initial mock ups of the title and instructions screens so far so you can see the general theme / style i'm aiming for.

Obviously this is a very basic outline of the game and the details involved but hopefully this should give some background to the game and what i'm aiming towards. If you have any questions, comments, feedback or suggestions please don't hesitate to let me know.

John

My current ideas, works in progress and how I go about documenting my ideas

Hello and welcome back to my game development oriented blog if your a regular reader and if your new welcome!

In my last post I touched on my background and gave a brief overview of where I am with my Game development career. If your new to the blog I invite you to check it out here. Next step is to start documenting properly the various games I have in development and establish a standard way of displaying these for easier reading for you my blog readers.

So with that in mind my current list of games on my to do list are here, these range from concepts and ideas through to games where I have made some assets and have working levels. They all share one thing in common though, they all are not complete!

Project list:

• Antz, - a puzzle game for web / mobile,
• Elementz, - a platform game for pc,
• Gravity, - a puzzle game for web / mobile,
• Loggers Run, - a fast paced reaction oriented game for web / mobile,
• Lynx, - a side scrolling shooter for web / pc,
• Redwood Creak (joint project with +James Macleod), - survival / horror platformer for web / pc,
• Zombie Survivor, - action strategy shooter for web / mobile / pc,

For each of these projects I have numerous scraps of paper lying around the place with all sorts of things written on them, mechanics ideas, level layouts, character descriptions, rough outlines for gameplay etc but for the most part they lack structure, one thing I will fix with these blog updates. I also intend to use a program called spiderscribe. If you've never used this program before then I can highly recommend it, I've historically used it for brainstorming / mind mapping and documenting this process for academic projects / assessments. While the idea may seem tedious it really does help to have something like this that you can form your game ideas and concepts around. It's free and allows you to import documents, pictures, links etc that make for easy reference and a way of securing your information so you don't loose all that precious game related stuff.

For each game project I try to follow a pretty linear approach when developing my concept into a working title through to releasing it. Flesh out my idea using spiderscribe > create an introduction to the project piece outlining what the game is about, who it is aimed for, which platforms I want to release on, my initial ideas on what revenue model I will adopt, graphical concepts > then focus on more game oriented assets like tile-sets, characters, backgrounds, sounds etc. > start making the game mechanics, menu's and bringing it all together.

Each of these projects will form the basis of my ongoing project oriented blogs where I will document them further and provide a bit more insight into each game and what stage I am at with it, with uni coming to a end my intention is that I will upload at least 2 blogs every week, one being an update on one of the above listed projects (or new projects) and the other being more of a topical piece exploring one of the aspects I have had to face or come up against in learning about my new trade outside of the lecture theatre's and labs.

My background, my future.

I've established this blog after being inspired by my friend and colleague +James Macleod and hope that I can inspire him to keep blogging because honestly I think I'd have gone insane without him to keep me on track the past few years.

Lets have a look at where I started out and where I am now before looking at what I plan on doing in future.

I worked for an International insurance company straight from completing sixth form, spent roughly 9 years moving from being a general admin bod through to running department wide training schemes and managing my own small team of people along side this I was the guy who you came to when a problem needed fixing.

I then moved to Scotland to move in with my then partner at the time however the job market crashed and i found myself in a low pay high burnout job that wasn't cutting it, my relationship also kinda went sour leaving me with little choice but to move back in with the parents and contemplate my next move. my choices at this time were relativly straightforward, sign on and look for work or use the opportunity to learn to do something that I'd wanted to do since leaving sixth form, just never knew how.

In 2010 I started an NC in Games Development, followed by a HNC, HND and i'm nearly finished and will be graduating this year with a bachelors in Computer Games Development. Some time in late 2010 / early 2011 I Co-Founded a 'Proto-Games Studio' under the title of Prickly Productions. +Prickly Productions was initially a blank canvas whereby we could showcase our work and start a portfolio. As our confidence, ability and knowledge grew we began to realise that theonlything stopping us from establishing Prickly as an actual games studio was our own lack of understanding of the market and a lack of finances. We have since gone on to publish our first games title, Nightmare Island.

I have since gone on to publish a few free to play titles and have several projects that i am currently working on which I will begin to document properly over the course of the next few blogs to create a more structured approach to creating these games.

As my degree is now nearly over it's about time I actually focused properly on not just making games and publishing them, but actively trying to make money from them so that I can sustain myself and my family I will also use this blog to document my progress in this regard.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and if this sounds like something you'd be interested in following then please do like / follow / +1 etc.

Thanks

John