Today I had a 1 to 1 tutorial with Adam about my project and the progression of it so far. We spoke about my ideas and where my project was moving into.
The notes below show the main points of discussion from the feedback.
From our discussion, the key points I got was that my project is focusing a lot on co-operative play and that this is something I need to research in more depth, by reading into journal/ articles, as well as analysing a whole list of co-operative games. Which he felt would help me to define what different types of co-operative games there are and use these types to influence the development of the game ideas I currently have. Ultimately ensuring I have a vast amount of knowledge of cooperative games and how to design for them, so my ideas are well designed.
Another area we spoke about was prototyping and how I was concerned that I hadn’t yet created anything. Adam suggested create basic prototypes, for example a Unity build that tested out having 2 players on a screen, then 4 players then 44 players. Simply to show I have explored creating multiplayer games and identified what is possible.
During the talk Adam also suggested many games to look at, which are linked below, that link to co-operative play.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/448510/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/448510/
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2016/10/crazy-karts-board-game-review/
Possible Game Engines
One of my main worries with the future of the project was how I was going to actually code the game. I felt worried about this due to programming not being a strength of mine and I didn’t want my whole time next semester to revolve around me trying to code the game and not being able to focus on any other elements.
I spoke to Adam about this (the notes of the discussion are below). He felt it would be best for me to research into different engines and different ways of programming the game, to help me identify if there is anything out there that does what I need to do very simply. Therefore remove the worrying element of having to code from scratch, which I would find very difficult.
As this isn’t a major issue right now, I will research into this later on, possibly over Christmas, therefore allowing me more time now to focus on the game idea.
Links to different engines we talked about that I plan to research into later.
http://retrogamecrunch.com/primer/
http://wiki.adamprocter.co.uk/doku.php?id=creative_coding_game_software
Plan
- Research into co-operative play as suggested by Adam, to help me identify types of cooperative play and how to make entertaining multiplayer games – Helping to refine and develop my ideas, to create more informed and better researched concepts.
- Research into cooperative games, forming a long list of games which I plan to play or watch videos of, which I will analyse, to identify what about them makes them cooperative, stressful and entertaining. Then using the points I have found, I will use them to development my current ideas.
- Research into different game engines, how they work, what they are best used for. Helping me to discover if there is an easy way for me to programme the game without having to code from scratch
- Form simple prototypes focusing on single features/ mechanics from my game ideas, to explore them in a game form, to test and analyse them.
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