Game flow illustration

As preemptive work for semester 2 I've done mock up screens showing the game flow from TITLE to FILE SELECT to OVERWORLD to STAGE SELECT to STAGE to STAGE CLEAR. None of this has been coded yet but it gives a good indication of how I would like the final game design to execute...

TITLE:
Title screen is simple, showing only the game title, names of the developers, and presenting 2 self explanatory options for the player: start and quit.

FILE SELECT:
Upon starting the game the player is presented with this file select screen. The genius here is that the file select screen gives new players the chance to familarise themselves with the controls before even playing the main game. If this screen is left without input for a length of time it will present pop up help captions:

FILE SELECT HELP A:The help caption here clearly shows the movement controls. It may not be immediately apparent to new players that the left and right arrows spin the player clockwise and counter-clockwise as opposed to moving them explicitly left and right, but it is my hope that this realisation will dawn on them quickly enough.

FILE SELECT HELP B:
This help caption shows the first of the polarity controls, limiting it to only red/positive to lessen the flow of new information being presented to the player. Having the file select screen function as such will allow new players to learn the functioning of the red magnetic fields before even beginning a level. Of course, players already familiar with the game's workings aren't even required to view the help captions. New players in fact, if they chose can figure things out themselves via experimentation with explicit help only appearing when they need it.

FILE SELECTION:

Once the player has worked out the functioning of the fields in respect to the player object's polarity they will be able to move themselves to one of the four green "portals" representing the save files, upon which the above menu appears giving the basic options of start, delete, and back (the back option allows them to go back and select another file if they've chosen the wrong one by accident). I want to keep on screen menus and text to a minimum as I feel it makes for a more distinct and universally appealing game with focus placed more on the control mechanics. The save files themselves clearly indicate the most recent save time, whilst the silver and gold crown tallies indicate the progress: a silver crown for each stage cleared and a gold crown for each stage cleared under the preset challenge time.

OVERWORLD:
After starting a save file the player is taken to this overworld map. From the beginning the player only has control of the red/positive polarity control, in order to ease them into the game design by slowly introducing new elements to them. Having learned the function of red fields in the file select screen they can now experiment and learn the function of blue fields. The other element introduced here is the charge station; a yet to be implemented challenge of the game, one of economy. The inner green squares of the player object indicate the charge level which depletes as the player changes their polarity, replenishing slowly over time, or quickly when in vicinity of a green charge station. Here the player can come to understand how these elements work before even beginning a level.

The 3 green "portals" encapsulate the 3 phases of the game (a silver crown indicating that all levels withing have been cleared; a gold crown indicating that all levels within have been cleared under par time). The bottom most portal is phase 1 which can be reached by the player from the start using only red/positive polarity control and contains levels that only allow red/positive polarity control. By reaching the phase 1 portal the player will have come to understand a minimum of 2 things: changing their polarity to red will 1) repulse them from red fields and 2) attract them to blue fields. In this way we are skipping the need for any sort of explicit tutorial, rather embedding the tutorial into the front end of the game, it will hopefully be so seamless so that new players aren't even aware they are being taught things and returning players aren't encumbered by compulsory tutorial stages.

There are yet more lessons hidden in the overworld map: upon reaching a certain milestone (ie: collecting a number of crowns) the player will be granted blue/negative polarity control in the overworld, thus allowing them to reach the left uppermost portal; the phase 2 levels. Just by reaching the phase 2 portal it is hoped the player will understand the role of switching their polarity back and forth to reach new areas, the learning will be further tested within the phase 2 levels which give the player control of both positive and negative polarity to present more complex challenges. As before, reaching the next set milestone will then turn the overworld to a zero gravity state, which will allow the player to access the right uppermost portal; the phase 3 levels, which are all designed without gravity and will present the hardest challenges to the player. Note the faint particles in the background of each screen, designed to indicate the presence of gravity: the particles will fall in the direction of gravity when present, their speed giving an indication of the strength of the gravity;the particles will be stationary on levels without gravity.

The overworld has been designed in such a way as to head the player's advancement ahead of time (phase 2 cannot be reached until negative control is granted and phase 3 cannot be reached until gravity is turned off) whilst preventing the player from becoming stuck in any spot under zero gravity conditions.

STAGE SELECT:
Once the player has entered a portal the above menu appears presenting thumbnails of the numbered stages contained within, as well as their clear status. Selecting a stage from this menu will begin the stage. Note that not all stages will need to be cleared before gaining access to the next phase. Thus stages that a player is having difficulty with can be skipped and returned to at a later date.

STAGE BEGINNING:
There will likely be an intermediate animation between the stage selection and the stage's actual beginning in order to avoid the transition being too jarring. All stages will be presented in full screen at a zoom level most befitting the stage. Before clearing a stage no timer will be present, successive run throughs after clearing it will however have a timer in the corner of the screen.

STAGE CLEAR:
Upon reaching the green end portal of a stage the above menu will appear showing the stage number, completion time, preset gold crown completion time and the type of crown awarded. Text below this will instruct how far away the player is from reaching the next milestone in order to provide incentive for the player to keep playing. Below that the 2 choices of restart, to allow the player another chance to better their time, and back, to return them to the overworld stage select screen.

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Game flow of this type I feel is ideal for our game concept and it's what I hope to implement in semester 2. Dividing the game into the 3 phases (only positive control, positive and negative control, positive and negative control without gravity) will provide 3 distinct styles of challenge whilst avoiding a strictly linear progression of challenge (ie: later levels in phase 1 can be harder than early levels in phase 2 and 3). I feel the 3 phases are unique and distinct in their restrictions and will over a great deal of variety to the player. Obviously the hardest part of the game design from this point is making the levels themselves...

End of semester studio reflection

A.K.A. - what should have been in my presentation only I lack public speaking skills hence it was omitted.

So the first semester is over. It's interesting to see where we are at the moment and what's become of our group. It's odd for me to say but I feel the biggest challenge of the semester for me has been working within a group. This is not because our group doesn't get along; we've been working quite well together and all have a similar understanding of our objectives. The challenge for me has mostly come from having my game design ideas rejected by the other members and struggling to find a way to present them as viable. I imagine the group as a big four headed beast, wrestling in 4 directions whilst I'm trying to wrangle it through 1 door; we all have varying ideas, targets, or concepts of "what's best" yet we only have one deliverable to produce at the end. Struggles aside, I am very satisfied with what we've produced for semester 1 though I still feel it could have gone better.

Having the title of "Lead Graphic Designer" has meant that I've spent most of this semester working on the graphic look of the game and I'm honestly quite happy with the minimalist look we have now. The irony being that the graphic look is little different from the rudimentary graphic engine that comes with Box2D, meaning a lot of development time went into producing little effect. It has been valuable for us to limit the scope of the game design, particularly the graphic design area, allowing more focus to be put on game design. If I may use my favourite game design example: Mario. "Super Mario Bros." was made 25 years ago, with limited 8 bit graphics, very few enemies, very few power ups, and tiny memory restrictions, yet it's a testament to the developer's game design skills (those of the great Miyamoto) that the game is still renowned today despite its restrictions. Limiting our project in much the same way to a @D game with minimalist visuals, linear level design, without narrative has been a positive allowing us to really focus on executing the core gameplay concept. Being able to now take the focus away from developing graphics I am especially looking forward to spending more of semester 2 working on the actual game design as it is my preferred area of interest.

I'm a little bit surprised by the work of our lead game designer. While he has contributed a lot of good ideas (eg: the player object's shape and function) and done a lot of level design work that we've used in the prototype, I don't feel he's done much of what I would expect from him as the lead designer in order to further the game concept from its initial idea; it has in fact evolved little from what I had originally designed prior to the semester beginning. That said, it has been great to see the concept I had at the beginning of the year become a reality, to the point that it has received a lot of positive feedback; I'm very impressed by the work we've all done individually and as a team, nothing could be more gratifying than seeing what we've produced and the effect it has on people. My main worry now however is that semester 2 is going to be a frustrating struggle to marry together varying visions of what the game should be into one final product.

One such example of this kind of struggle is the recent design idea I had, inspired by Derrick's demonstration of the indie game "Hello Worlds" ( http://www.kongregate.com/games/richwsnider/hello-worlds ), to replace the front-end menu of our game with an interactive overworld using the game engine. I will explain the idea in greater detail in my next post, only now to say that no one in the team really saw the value of the idea; I owe Matt thanks for championing the idea for me; it is now my duty to implement it so I can convince the rest of the team. Perhaps it is merely my lack of credentials, a failure to be taken seriously, or my design ideas aren't as great as I imagine them to be, or maybe I just don't belong in a group environment...

Bipolar logo final

Above is the final title logo design for 'bipolar'. I made it from shapes in Adobe Illustrator and refined to the level that it fits with the graphic look of the actual game. The red and blue colouring conforms with the colouring used in the game. I spent some time tweaking the spacing between the characters in order to perfect the balance. I particularly wanted to balance to spacing of the 3 circles that make up the polarity symbol, shrinking the space between the 'o' and 'a' so that the circles aren't space too far apart.