Reflective Journal

Course Review

 

Class Mind Mapping

To start our Final Major Project, we discussed our theme 'Location'. Location is a particular place or position. In groups, we made mind maps with images that we think that are related to location. I added an image of BBC News because the news always have stories to cover from all over the world in different locations. I also added a globe because the world itself is a location with many locations. Another image in my group was a location from a game, and even though the location is not real, it's still a location in a fictional world.

10th March

This week for my FMP, I played through old Zelda and Pokemon games for my research. I researched about the player's movement in both games. In the Zelda game I looked at the main character's 4 directional movement which had many frames because the movement was very quick and had attacking frames for it's combat system. The location of the Zelda game made the game feel like it was in a medieval timescale. There is a castle in the middle of the map, houses made of wood in villages and caves with treasure chests and monsters. The overall colour throughout the map is green which creates a sense of safety and when the colours of the location are red, for example Death Mountain, it's more dangerous and sort of warns the player that they need to be careful. The clothing and items that the main player and non playable characters have also indicate where the location is. Villagers and NPCs would be wearing robes and would have pointy ears like the main character. Enemies would be wearing a knights armour and would be in different colours to represent the difficulty of the enemy.

The Pokemon game is also 4 directional player movement and I focused more on the locations of the game because the player doesn't have any attacking frames. The first location the player spawns in is Pallet Town and is surrounded by trees which indicates that this is the starting location. Furthermore, when the player is indicated where to go, there is an npc that talks about the exit which is very close to her and when you try to leave into the grass, the professor stops you from going because it is dangerous to go without a Pokemon. The designs of the gyms are centred around the type of Pokemon the gym leader uses. For example; Cerulean City has a swimming pool for the water type gym leader and Celadon City has a garden for the grass type gym leader.

I think my research for my game and Pecha Kucha is very relevant towards my project. These games are games I have played before and have been wanting to take inspiration from. I don't feel like anymore research was needed for my contextual analysis.

17/03/25

For this week in my FMP, I was working on my Pecha Kucha which is a presentation with roughly 20 slides having images of what my idea is and I explain a short summary of what I am doing for my FMP. This had my thought process of what pathway I am taking on the theme 'location'. I thought of different locations related to games, animation, photos and filming. I included the video that I researched on location in video games and the ZombiU game that I played through for research.

Level Design Concepts

These are level design concepts to start off my ideas for my game. I designed it on graphic paper to scale everything as close it would be on the game. Game designers also have used graph paper to design simple objects on the first level. For the first level, I loosely based it on basic beginning levels in top down rpg games, which is a small village. Everything in the concept is mostly a square which later when I design my game I can reference the placing where future sprites would be. The square also sets a measure of how big the sprite needs to be. I also coded everything by using letters and a code key to show people what they are on my concept use more of the space on the sheet for designing the game. 

I think I did enough for a level design on graph paper with the ideas I had. I could've taken a more slow approach when making this because it feels very rushed. I felt like if I showed this to another classmate, I would have to explain more in depth of what type of type of game I am making. This is where the problem lies in my level design, it doesn't explain well of what type of game it is. However, I added a key code for all the objects in the level design. There could have been more detail into what the sprites could be; for example the trees are just boxes and could've been a different shape to make the other objects more different, or more colour could've been added.

24/03/25

This is my game design document which has a summary of the game and it's mechanics, ideas, levels, blockers and visual style.

This is a discarded summary of my 2nd idea which had a first cutscene description because I wanted to learn how to code a textbox. I added this to my reflective journal to add context for my production of character and game design:

-Young adult wakes up in a different time period and place.

-Dialogue like "where's my phone!?"

-Wakes up in a different house-house is old and made of wood with old structures

-Goes outside to find out he's waken up in a medieval time period

- Gets greeted by his childhood friend-female wizard called Aoi

-Goes into a building called the adventurers guild

-Finds out the demon king (main antagonist) is his friend that he lost 2 years ago

-Decides to travel to him and find out how he got here.

My Game Design Document is different than other official documents, but this was a starter for my ideas. I typed all the mechanics, levels, blockers and style that I wanted in the final game, therefore I feel like this is a good enough Game Design Document to start with.

31/03/25

For this week in my FMP, I started to design characters for my game. I started to draw the sprites on graph paper (the same paper I used for my level design) to scale each pixel/square accurately, so when I design it on pyxel edit or pixilart. For my first initial ideas for characters, I wanted to give them a medieval design because the theme I had so far was in a fantasy/medieval setting. Also the research that I did on locations in games had the idea that what the character's identity or clothes can tell the player about what type of location they are in.

I started to design the first character design for my main player on graph paper. I wanted to design my character wearing medieval clothing to make people believe and understand what time period they are in whilst playing the game. The designs that I created were first based on the main character of The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap because I thought it looked simple and had fantasy feel to it.

Here is my attempt at recreating this on graph paper.

Next I attempted at making another character for my sprites.

The one on the left is another practice of a pokemon character sprite to give me some reference for designing my sprite. 

I think I spent too long on creating character/sprite designs as it cost me time on making my game. Maybe sprite designs should be done if there is more than one person with the amount of time I was given. 

14/04/25

For this week in my FMP, I had started to design my character design for my game and I started off with the wizard. My reference of the character was Megumin from an anime series called Konosuba and she was a wizard.

I couldn't copy the character design, so I changed the colours so it can be more original. I made the design in the pixilart website.

Again, I had spent too long on character design instead of the actual game itself. I was also having trouble with creating multiple sprites for this character because my game featured 4 directional walking. I did like the outcome of the design, but it looks very blurred because the image is small and it's because I didn't think about the dimensions of the sprite. Older games had sprites in a similar size and this had caused me to think even more about how are all the sprites that I imaged will be in this size. After this, I had decided to stop creating character sprites for my game and focus on the game mechanics itself.

28/04/25

For this week in my FMP I had started creating my base game on Construct 3. I started by designing the 4 directional walk which was a bit difficult at first. I needed a sprite sheet of a character walking in 4 directions, so I got a sprite sheet of Looker ,a character from Pokemon. I created a sprite and made 8 separate animations which were his idle animations for he stands still and his walking animation in 4 directions. Then I went to the event sheet to create the code for his walking animation and controls. I set whatever key is pressed (WASD) Looker would move in a tile movement (one of his behaviours) and play the walking animation in the direction he is facing.

There were some problems such as Looker would move but be in an idle animation and the walking animation playing when he isn't moving. To fix this I needed to use the debug layout feature and see if there is anything wrong with the sprite. When nothing is wrong with the sprite, I went to the event sheet to change the coding none of his walking animation is playing when he has stopped moving and the problem was fixed.

Next I started to add the sword to Looker. I quickly made a sprite that resembled a sword and set it's origin point to handle, so it will look like the sword is attached to Looker. With sword attached to Looker, I started with the swinging animation which was supposed to go left and right, but my sword only went right and went back to the beginning of the animation. I had just made a little mistake by typing in the wrong symbol. I also added damage to the sword so that whatever it hits that is registered to be hit takes damage.

Overall, on the beginning of making my game, I think I spent my project time well by prioritising all the important aspects of my game first. I also fixed my problems relatively quick, so I had extra time to work on another aspect of my game this week. If I had started doing this a little earlier in the project time I would've created longer levels and more features. It was rushed and my biggest drawback in my opinion is that my sword doesn't look like a sword at all and that goes to if I had more time, I would've design it better.

05/05/25

For this week in my FMP I added more features such as blockers and dialogue to my game. To get my sword fully working, I had to add an enemy to destroy, so I created a simple enemy ai that will follow you by the behaviour Pathfinding and Line of Sight. With this, once the enemy spots you, it will follow you until you defeat it. I made the enemy have 3 health and I tested the enemy and it worked, the enemy followed me and the sword killed it with 3 swings. However, the enemy clips through the walls sometimes and I have tried everything to fix this issue by looking at the debug layout and seeing what the obstacles are and it still clips through.

Next was adding in the dialogue textbox which was very hard to do, so I followed a tutorial on how to do it. The tutorial was more advanced than mine because I had one layout and he had many, so I had to copy his layouts that he would be using. After following the instructions, I previewed to see how the textbox would appear and it appeared on command but no text was showing. All I did was miss an instruction and the text box worked fine.

Next I added the health bar for my character and heart replenisher to gain back health that the player has lost. The health bar had to be on another layer and the paralax had to be 0. This means that no matter where I do the health will stay in the same spot of my screen the top left corner. The global variable sets my health in the event sheet and made a different heart that adds 1 by changing the number of the global variable. Also, When my character takes damage, it flashes which indicates its taking damage.

Overall, I felt very confident in my skills in Construct 3 because this made me understand more techniques that I can use in further projects that is related with this topic. However, I felt the enemy not working properly is something that is noticeable and something I am not proud of because I wasn't able to find the issue.

12/05/25

For this week in my FMP I started to add an objective which was finding the key to get to the next level and a title screen. The key worked similarly to the sword, to pick it up it has to be attached to an image point to the player and once it touches the door, it would bring the player to the next level. I set the key invisible because I thought it ruins the look of the sword with the player. To make the player know that they have the key, I created a counter by using the text object that says 'Keys' and would add a value of one when the player gets the key. When the key is destroyed, the value goes back to 0 ready for another key.

Next I wanted to create a simple title screen to give my game a beginning and a description. I followed tutorial and made another layout with the tile of the game 'Dungeon Explorer' and added a text description of what the game's about. Then, I added a play button so when its clicked, the system will go to level 1. With this in mind, I used the same thing with going to the next level by destroying the key, the system will go to the next level.

Overall, this week had made me more knowledgeable about Construct as a whole now. This time I didn't need any tutorial on how to create the coding in the event sheets. It also made me think that this is starting to shape up into a real game with a beginning and an end.

19/05/25

For my last week in my FMP, I concentrated by getting the game completed. The next levels had the same coding and events sheets and added the discarded sprite that I created for some more dialogue. My player changed colour of jackets from brown to white to look original. I created 2 more levels one with blue colours to represent a cold polar location and the final one with a lava floor with a metal fence floor. I created different coloured keys because the key had been destroyed in the previous level and all I needed to do was re-route the coding to the other coloured key, same task with the enemy because I wanted the enemies to be harder. The final boss room/level had an idea that once you found the key, the wall separating the player and the Boss would disappear and the Boss and enemies would come charging at the player. It turns out it didn't work and they would only follow once the player had passed a certain point. Nonetheless, I ignored the problem because the Boss can still be defeated and I added a defeated screen for when the player dies and a victory screen for when the player finishes the game.

Overall, I have mixed feelings with the final outcome because I have to explain on how my game links to location. Players won't understand why its related to location and even when its explained it can be doubtful because of the lack of detail in the game. I am not too proud of the final Boss because it was supposed to be a climatic ending and send the player into panic.