December 8th 2018

From where the last post left off, I’ve changed direction with player abilities. One thing I took away from the presentation was that my ideas for abilities did not fit with the feel of the game. Shooting/fast killing abilities take away from the slow paced feel I would like the game to have.

 Working on those abilities has been my main goal since then. Over the winter break I’ll be looking into two things:

A while ago I purchased a textbook pack on humblebundle. It had a bunch of useful books on everything from Unity, C++ to blender. I’m awful with raycast so I’ve been trying to work on different sized, more accurate ranged attack and would like to read into that more over the break. 

Secondly animations. After taking a class on maya, I don’t really like how animation is done and I think I’m better off learning blender. I know the models I’m going for aren’t going to be crazy, it’s mostly up the imagination but actually animating it might be tricky. Regardless I have a entire textbook full of information so I should be alright.  

Enemy Ability/Game Ability Ideas

When I first started a major theme for me was Spore & its cell stage. I got kind of hooked on the word “cell” and that microscopic idea but the more I think about my game and what the end goal is, it feels less and less like a “cellular” theme would fit. Mostly because the player relies on enemies to switch & obtain abilities. 

After a lot of thought I think the best way to implement combat in my game would be to making it feel almost like hunting. Player(taken by enemy) abilities will be there to slow down the enemy, block a path, stop their movement and damage them.  

The destruction of enemies occurs only through the player “eating” the enemy. When the enemy is a low health, slowed, etc the player will be able to move up and consume the enemy. The player will then be prompted on whether or not they would like to take the enemies power as well. 

Playable Prototype shows the Dash ability as well as enemy AI. Currently working on getting power ups to pick up & apply the ability to player. I wrote the powerups as different scripts and I’m trying to figure out a way to add the script to the player and remove/add a different one when a new powerup is picked up. Currently the player can not clip through walls or enemies and enemies can’t clip through each other. For the dash ability I’m considering allowing the player to clip through the enemies. 

Elevator Prop. 10 Seconds

Aura is a top down evolution-based sandbox game where players use unique creature abilities to fight and unlock new creatures. Kill and absorb other creatures to acquire their abilities and looks.

Aura is an evolution-based sandbox game with unique creatures and abilities which the player will use to

Aura is a sandbox exploration game where players will find and combat different creatures to evolve and survive.

* want to improve upon it, at the moment takes up to 9 seconds. 

Prototype October 18th

For this playtest I have added the “bump” feature that I wanted where the player, upon collision with the enemy will be pushed back in the direction the player/enemy is looking/attacking. 

UI Prototype. Showing different ideas for the UI with different elements on screen. In the end Everyone preferred the less cluttered screen. (#1)

Showing Camera angle ingame and tweaking the movement now. Need add a terrain to the plane to make movement more visible. 

Basic movement prototype

Movement Goals: 

* Movement to have some sort of drag

* feeling of being in water - gliding through 

I’m going to be using a ball rolling as the player. I believe that the by having the ball roll it’ll create the desired effect I’m going for. After that it’ll just be tweaking it. 

Similar Games Thoughts

Osmos: Osmos captures the atmosphere and smooth but slow movement I’m trying to capture in my game. My game not as relaxing but still the negative space really adds the depth I think I’m looking for. 

Intertwined: Intertwined has a sort of alien element to it, which I am looking for in my game. Other than that I don’t see much in it. 

Everything: Everything really blew me away with its depth. The layering/ going deeper/further out is a similar mechanic to what I am trying to do in my game. 

UI Comp Prototype

Is the UI understood with the screen clutter form layers?

This is a simple paper UI prototype. Lay out the UI on paper with simplistic ideas of what I would like the UI to look like.

Levels Comprehension Prototype

Levels Comprehension Prototype:

The goal of this playable paper prototype is to see if players can understand what the levels mechanic does and if it's clear enough with the minimal UI I would like to add.

In this prototype testers will be given a mock game with a minimal UI and see if as they trigger the level changes they understand what's actually happening. When a tester (starting out with smallest spore cell stage) presses the (+) symbol I will move change the Spore picture too a slightly more condensed spore cell stage. A small building (apartment building) icon in the bottom right corner will be moved up to the second floor as well. I would like to see if this and the changing of the size of the enemy cells is enough to understand the action itself and possibly the caution needed while while moving up to fast.

** possible mechanic I would like is if a player goes up levels too fast, the larger enemies will follow the player back down levels if they try to flee. **  Perhaps adding power levels to help instill that caution for going up levels

Images explained from left to right top to bottom.

Bassnectar:   Bassnectar’s music is mysterious and tells a story through the emotion conveyed by sound. I would like to use music similar to capture that element ingame. 

Galaga: Enemy AI work together in patterns and groups. I would like for at least some AI in my game to have separate parts and divide similar to the way they do in Galaga. Further, the negative space in Galaga is something I’d like to incorporate into my game. 

Maze: The maze is readdressing the AI idea. I would like to give at least some enemy AI patterns that they can go through to make the game less unpredictable and more tolerable for the player. 

Flow: Flow is an incredible game and doubles as a bit of eye candy. I’d like to try and capture that mysterious and somewhat melodic energy. 

Spore: Specifically the earlier cell stages. Similar to Galaga, even though spore looks clustered there’s actually quite a bit of negative space for the player to roam. Further, I’d like to look into the level mechanic. As the player grows they go up to face larger cell creatures. I would like to try and work on a multi level environment where the player can change between the levels as they want. 

Abzu: Movement in Abzu is slow and the character floats in a slow but controllable manor. I’d like to have something similar where the player flows only slightly after movement has stopped.