Summary of what client wants in the game.
Overall the clients wants something educational and appropriate for young kids aged from 3-7 and not too difficult. She wants something that will teach he kids about the pollution in the sea and also about the endangered species in the Plymouth sound. We were shown a few famous creatures in the aquarium and learnt the names of them so we could maybe use them in our game to give the kids and friendly face.
Clients Response.
After our pitch to the client she talked us through what she liked and what could improve the game idea. First she explained how she like the character choices and the way the game will play and the point system. She also liked how we said we'll involve education about the pollution and about our characters species. She noted that we should consider more than one character and maybe a more intriguing menu page with a character selection menu if we decide to have more than one character and also a high score at the end. We took her advice and looked to see what we can do with her input and try to include it in the finished project.
Ideas
Idea 1
Target audience. 5-10
The first idea will consist of moving a character up and down whilst gradually moving across the screen dodging obstacles such as jellyfish and hermit crabs. Once finishing the stage you will be given a number of questions about the aquarium and if answered correctly you will progress to the next, more difficult level.
Idea 2
Target audience. 5-10
This is idea will consist of the user controlling a character preferably an eel and the user must eat food smaller than itself and each time it eats something you will get bigger and be able to eat bigger food, but if you get hit by jellyfish or bigger food you will get smaller and have to start eating smaller food again. Once you get to a certain size you will finish the level and be given information on a certain specie and then when you complete the next level you will be given questions about that information.
Idea 3
Target audience. 5-10
This idea is similar to doodle jump app on the iPhone. The difference for ours will be that we use a seahorse and you will progress upwards through the water dodging obstacles and gaining power ups. And if you collect a certain power up you will be given a question and if answered correctly you will gain a special upgrade for your character.
Chosen idea.
The idea we have chosen is the first idea. We are going to use a clown fish avatar, the controls of the game will be the user each time he/she taps the screen the fish will rise up and then sink back down so the user will have to keep tapping to keep the fish up whilst dodging dangerous objects such as jellyfish and hermit crabs.
This is an example of the kind of controls we want to use. And sharks which will only appear a few times which will eat the clown fish if not dodged and cause a lot of damage. There will be a point system which you will gain by eating shrimp or marine worms. We will use a health bar system and you will lose 25% of health each time you are hit by jellyfish or hermit crabs and 50% if you are hit by sharks.
Character for game.
Clown fish like to eat anything smaller than them but mostly leftovers from other fish left in the anemone shrimp and marine worm.
Clown fish live in sheltered reefs and shallow lagoons, they like to stay near anemone.
They live in the red sea the pacific ocean and the Indian ocean in warm parts.
Evaluation.
Our group work was shared fairly and concentrated on what each of us did best. Jordan Triscott was in charge of scripting which is a big part of the production so was only given that one job and if he wanted he could contribute to other jobs which he did by helping with some graphic designs. Richard Burdon was in charge of designing all graphics such as characters, menus and backgrounds etc. I was in charge of producing sound for everything we wanted to make a noise and also the animations of characters movements etc I also helped with some graphic designs of the characters to sometimes help it be easier to animate.
Jordan was very focused when producing the ideas for our game and throughout the research and then work very hard on scripting the game and also made sure that the graphics were ready and animated and always kept me and Richard up to date with the progress of the game so we could know what he needed and when.
Richard worked well on the graphics and had a good idea of what style we wanted for our game and asked us if there was anything else to improve on the graphics and we talked about making them more efficient for animating. He also worked hard to come up with the questions and answers for the game.
I was very focused on animating the character trying to make them as good as I could do and always made sure the group was happy with it. When I worked on the sounds I had Jordan and Richard listen to the sounds and had them give me any pointers to improve. I also helped Jordan slightly with scripting when he needed it and also gave Jordan pointers on how to maybe improve the presentation of the game. When making the animation I used flash and creating animated fins to make it look like the fish where swimming by using Photoshop as well to change the distortion of the fin then importing them back in on a different key frame. I used Adobe Audition to make sounds for the game such as bubbles,sparks for the jellyfish,movement in water and shark bites, some were made to loop and some were for when clicked on so it took longer on the looping once as it need to sound much better because people will be constantly hearing it. I also produced the time plan and tried to make as efficiently as possible but think I could have made Jordan start the scripting a few weeks earlier for a better and less stressful time scripting. I also helped on looking at ideas generation such as making the mind map and researching what the characters we used looked like.
When researching our group went to the aquarium and set out to find what characters to have in our game after a good 2 hours we decided our main character would be a clown fish and the other points/enemies would be a shark,jellyfish and marine worms. This was good to get figured out first after choosing the game idea so we could then go back and research each individual character in depth and look at pictures for reference for designing them.
I thought that the finished game produced was a succsess because we kept to our design and made what we wanted to have as a game. I enjoy the controlds of the game and the graphics look good in game and the links and rollover animations came out well and made the game look more interative and enjoyable to look at. I'm glad that the education part was including because it's one of the main aspects the client wanted in the game and that we kept to creatures in the aquarium. I was a bit dissapointed that Jordan couldn't import the sounds in the end because of time but I take part responsibility on behalf that I made the time plan, and a little dissapointed with the quality of graphics because it became hard to animate and needed to be edited a little.
Team Timeline
Week one - Concept and Ideas generation.
This week we will go through as a group the ideas and produce and mind map to show each one. We will think about what species we want to use for the characters and decide on a final idea and then go into more depth such as deciding game controls and what options we should have such as high score. This will all be sketched up as a storyboard and rough sketches of our characters.
Week Two - Producing Graphics and importing to Flash.
This week we will start producing the graphics on Photoshop because we need to have bitmap graphics, Richard will have main responsibility on the graphics but me and Jordan will work on some as well.
Week Three - Creating animation for graphics.
This week Dan will produce animation for the graphics using Flash and Photoshop, the rest of the group will work on looking at the types of scripting and ideas for button controls and look of the menu. The group will also give their thoughts of the animations
Week Four - Creating menu and help pages with interactivity
This week the group will look at what our menu colour way design we want to use and then put it in Flash and then Jordan will add interactivity and a roll over button effect, whilst the rest of the group continues to work on anything that needs to polished up so far such as the animations etc.
Week Five - Writing the script and importing final graphics with animations.
This week Jordan will work on writing the script for the game in Flash, the rest of the group will help with the script as well and be beta testers for Jordan. At the same time Jordan will be importing the final graphics with animations into the Flash file. Whilst Jordan is doing that the rest of the group will begin other tasks such as Dan will be creating sounds and Richard will be making questions for the education part of the game.
Week Six - Creating and importing sounds and questions to Flash
This week Dan will be finishing his sounds for the game using Adobe Audition and then he will import them to flash where Jordan will add them to the game with correct script. Whilst Richard will correct the questions and multiple answers for the game and then import them to the game where Jordan will again add them to the right place.
Next I used the selection tool and highlighted a part of the left side of the rectangle and cut it out then made a new layer and pasted it in the same place. And then moved it to the opposite side of the rectangle and painted the lines to blend it in. And then cut the part again and pasted it back into the first layer.
