BA6: Starting an Indie Dev Team

  For this current project we were given the option to design and write our own work brief. For my project I wanted to form an indie group, so I asked around on my course for people that also were interested in forming a group together. Luckily I managed to find someone with a passion for each area of game design.

  So once we had formed our alliances we did what any good student would do and went to the pub to discuss roles and the direction of the game we wanted to create.

Blue Crystal is the title we are going by as an indie developer. The team consists of four members, Rhy Judges, Joshua Bryant, Kai Smales and myself Zak Field.
  As project manager I will be leading the group in a unified direction to ensure the game is completed to its full potential. I'll be overseeing all areas of development working closely with the whole team individually and together making sure that we test and explore all relevant ideas.

GAME IDEA #1
  At the start of the project before we had the official green light from the university to say we could work as a group, we had already come up with some ideas for what type of game we were looking to make. We decided we wanted to create a game that followed the conventions of a traditional platform, much like 'Crash Bandicoot' for the Playstation 1 and 'Spyro the Dragon' also for the Playstation 1. We felt that these were the games that first inspired us to play games and that they hadn't really been visited in the current games market.

Here are some very quick sketches the group came up with when bouncing ideas around for the game.

The game would of worked along the same lines as 'Temple Run' on the iOS with you the player being on a linear path having to move the avatar left and right to make sure they are not hit by falling objects, whilst the speed slowly increases and therefore increases the level of difficulty in the game.

From the start we knew we wanted to create an app; we all got excited about the idea that you could just pick up the game on a whim and just play until your finished despite where the gamer is.

In terms of mechanics for the 'Cliff Climber' game, we wanted to play with the iPad as much as possible without over complicating the screen with control commands. So we looked at another game I personally really enjoy playing on my iPad because of its amazing visuals, beautiful soundtrack and fun mechanics... 

'Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP'

 Sword & Sworcery is a throw back to old fantasy games where you as the character explore a magical forest completing quests given to you by people you encounter. The game with it's beautiful 8-bit art style and it's award winning music makes for a very fun and calming experience once you get yourself immersed in the world. 

Now with any good magical forest, there has to be monsters and with 'Swords and Sworcery' there is no exception. When entering battle mode, you have to rotate the iPad into the portrait position, this will cause new controls to appear which allow you to block with your shield, slash with your sword and displays your health meter.

I really liked this concept and wanted to find a way to incorporate rotating the device into different positions in order to display and use different ways to interact with the world. So I was playing around with the idea of if you wanted to climb up the mountain you'd have to have your device facing upward, whereas if you wanted to move/swing side to side you'd have to have your device in a landscape position.

Also another reason I wanted to create a game for a portable device was after watching the Twitch.com live stream interview of Hideo Kojima talking about his new upcoming game 'Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeros'. He mentioned that the gaming audience in Japan are moving away from large titles and would rather play quick portable casual games.

"Young people are losing interest in high-end games and focusing on mobile and social titles, especially in Japan. I wanted to show people that Japanese high-end games are still worth playing and that big Japanese games still have a future." Kojima 2014.

Whilst discussing the idea with the group, some of the member's said they wanted to make a 3D game with exploration elements with high polished 3D assets and were worried what we would not be able to achieve that on a tablet device.

RESEARCHING MY ROLE

  I knew from the begging of the project I wanted to push for project leader. I like to ensure everything is done on time and to the highest degree in my work and also wanted to learn the business side of setting up and starting an indie dev. So I did some research on what It takes to be head of a team in the games industry and I found that with the role of project manager you are responsible for the amount of work the team achieve and to ensure that the milestones set are hit on time so that the group can progress forward. You need to make yourself visible to the team that you are an authoritative figure so that everyone pulls their weight when working and that no one falls behind. Whilst keeping everyone in the team with a shared vision and purpose of what you want the game to be.

  I read these articles to give me a better idea of my role;

 'Building A Strong Indie Game Development Team' by Alistair Doulin of Gamasutra

 'Aglie Game Development With Scrum: Teams' by Clinton Keith of Gamasutra

GAME IDEA #2

  Later on in the research and development stage we came up with a second idea which saw more 3D based. Instead of having a character that just moved up and down the screen in a not very interesting way we wanted to create a more third person experience where you would control the character running or chasing someone or something up this mountain. This idea made us think of many older games that inspired us in the first place, like the 'Hog Wild' level of Crash Bandicoot and chasing the 'Blue Theif' in Spyro the Dragon.

 We wanted to recreate these experiences in our game with a deeper and more meaningful message. A common concern within gaming is that gamers obsess over the game to such an extent that they form an unhealthy obsession with the game. I wanted to look at monomania and themes of obsessions.

Unfortunately our lecturers thought creating a game like this in a 3D environment might be to much of a hard task for our first game attempt, so instead we decided to make a 2D side scrolling platformer with 3D assests. Much like Media Molecules 'Little Big Planet'

LEVEL DESIGN

  Whilst working with Kai we discussed different ways we could portray the level for the game. We wanted to create something that was clean and polished whilst at the same time achievable for a team that had never worked on making a game before. So as I created a layout of the level I took inspiration from old games such as Mario to create a bare bones plan of how we wanted the level to play.

LEARNING GAMESALAD

  Along side project manager I have taken on the role of game programmer. For the type of app we are looking to create and with the time frame we are given I thought it would be best to use a program such as game salad to code our game. 

After designing a rough outline of our game I decided to teach myself how to program and create an endless runner game on game salad, unfortunately I did not have the funding to buy the official tutorial guide so I used community tutorials on YouTube.

This is an image of the early build of the game I created in GameSalad

I followed the video by 'jamie cross, Gamesalad Endless Runner Sample' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF47UYgMNnA

I managed to replicate the sample and was very pleased with the outcome. Now that I have a better understanding of how the program works I feel more comfortable wanting to create a game of our own for the group.

As our ideas moved forward I sort out different skills and ways of working within GameSalad. I wanted to teach myself the foundations of the program in a way that would sink for me. I went through many tutorials and forums picking bits up but I found that just playing with the program was the best way for me personally to keep the information locked in.

As I progressed I added the assets into the game and even started to add elements of the game in from memory that I hadn't looked up from tutorials.

ENVIRONMENT DESIGN

As a team we discussed what themes and styles we wanted to go for within our game and we all liked the Idea of the Himalayas and Tibetan cultures. 

Kai and myself worked closely when coming up with mood boards and templates of what the level could look like, we liked the use of colour and the interesting artifacts that almost looked like they were natural and formed by the environment .

When first discussing what kind of layout we wanted for our game I sketched up a couple of ideas for what I personally thought the game could look like. I first thought of something underground and dark with some light coming from the surface and subterranean plants. It would of had platforms that would rise and fall, bugs and beasts that you would have to dodge and attack.

Then we did some searching online and found this image and knew we wanted to create something where you could see the world around you. We wanted lots of colour and not so much doom and gloom.

I started drawing a couple more images just for fun and to establish what kind of world this game would be situated in.

Myself and the team did play around with the idea of having a boss battle at the end of our game once the player had reached the top of the mountain. 

It made us think of the game Reus with its giant god like titans that roam the world.

We finally decided that it would be best to do just a runner/platform for now as we had never really coded before and would rather have a small good looking game then a half finished over ambitious game. So Kai started looking at areas in Tibet and Nepal that would make for interesting view points and environments which we could take from and use for our scenes. He created this concept images so that we as a team could talk about the elements that appealed to use and would like to see in the game and that would mold and encourage the look of our characters.

As we were working in GameSalad and wanted to create a 3D looking game we decided that creating 3D assets in maya then taking screenshots of them from different angles would be best for giving the look of 3D when actually its just 2D.

These are some assets that Kai created for our game.

CHARACTER DESIGN

  When coming up for a character for our game we wanted to follow the style of the old traditional platformer where they had cartoon animal mascots. We started by looking at native animals of Tibet, we wanted to find something that the gamer may not recognize so we had more freedom when creating the character to fit our game.

We looked at traditional characters known in games with fun characteristics that just made elements feel more playful and inviting.

From the early designs I worked with Josh to figure out what direction of figure we wanted our character to have. Since the game was a runner we wanted to have something that showed of the fitness of the avatar.

I also suggested that we create some items of clothing for the character to have encase we went down a route where the character would have to actively collect or retrieve something in the games. The bag pack was just a way for us to story ideas on the character without us having to have them on show.

To create drive for the story and motive for the character we needed a villain for our game. I wanted something that would be fun and recognizable to a mountainous area. So we went with a yeti with cartoon features of a villain.

Josh also worked on the cover art for the game.

NARRATIVE DESIGN

When creating a narrative for our game myself and Rhy wanted to create something that would drive that game play as well as lead onto our next project. We we're well aware that with creating a small app for our first game that it wouldn't be a very balanced gameplay vs story. 

This is a passage of the story that we came up with to give our game purpose, since this is a game where the character travels across the land, solving challenges presented to him we wanted it to be all worth while for the hero.

For the island setting that the games story revolves around we wanted to have different biomes so that we could play with different terrain and weather conditions throughout the level.

This is just a rough sketch of what we were thinking of just so that the group had an idea of what we were planning to achieve once I and the environment team had researched the native terrain of mountainous areas and villages. 

To fit with the traditional platformer conventions we wanted to add tokens which the player could collect throughout the game which would add to a score or unlock different abilities and items. We looked at already recognizable tokens in games along with different charms and tokens from Tibetan cultures.

http://ryangadblog.tumblr.com/

http://ksmalesygad.tumblr.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owxT2sAOJQw

https://www.facebook.com/TempleRun/photos/pb.215459165171017.-2207520000.1395931993./241883379195262/?type=3&theater#

http://www.metalgearinformer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Hideo-Kojima-Twitch-Interview1.jpg

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/03/04/young-people-are-losing-interest-in-high-end-games-kojima-says

http://www.musicgamenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/metal_gear_solid_ground_zeroes_wallpaper_by_jayveerk-d5e2xgf.jpg

http://www.swordandsworcery.com/

https://www.facebook.com/sworcery

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/03/24/sword-sworcery-ep-ipad-review

http://www.indiegamemag.com/sword-sworcery-ep-wins-big-at-2012-canadian-videogame-awards/

http://papo493.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/spyro-thieves.jpg

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/f-gsmKOw2YM/maxresdefault.jpg

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/821/821369/littlebigplanet-20070920011413366.jpg