Final Reflection

Intro

I am currently a senior student from Ridge High School enrolled in a game design class. Our teacher Mr. Isaacs introduced us to classcraft on the first day of class. I had no idea what this was, so he explained how it works and how we would get our grades. On classcraft, we created our own profiles, our own character and our first mission or task which was to create an awesome backstory for our characters. On classcraft, our teacher sets out the missions we must accomplish in able to unlock more missions and earn more game points. These game points are the ones that define our grade for the game design class.

Classcraft

Blogger

Each student from the class had to create a blog on blogger. The blogger is also very important for this class because this is where everybody has write about the task that was set. So, in classcraft we see our tasks, then we would publish our task in blogger, then copy and paste the link to our blog in classcraft and then submit. This way, our teacher will see the missions submitted and click on the link to see our work. If everything is good, he’ll give us the game points, if not, our teacher will send us some feedback on things to be corrected and things to keep in mind.

          First Big Project

My first big project was to play and observe several table top games with other members of the class and choose one game I liked the most to start with the creation of my mod version of the game. So I chose The Mind. The Mind might look simple at the start, but as the game progresses by passing it’s levels, things start getting very interesting. The players would work as a “team” to defeat all of the levels. Well… why “team”. During the game, players must not share their information to the rest of the members and can’t show their cards before they set their cards on the table.

Canva

In able to complete the final game mod of the mind, I had to go through several steps to get there. The first step was to write a google document about how I was planning to create the game mod, brainstorm ideas, set new rules, mention if I wanted to add items in the game and some other details. Then I started to design the new cards with their new features, so I used Canva which was very helpful. It took several hours to design the cards in Canva but a t the end I was very satisfied with the final design. Afterward, I had to print out the cards with the same size of the original cards of The Mind. This process was not as easy as I thought, I had several complications which made this whole process longer. I implemented some tokens, eliminated some other cards the original game had because I thought they were not useful. Then I had to buy the original game from amazon which cost me like 10 dollars. I couldn’t use the one the teacher because I also changed the cover of the game and the name of the game. Finally during the creation of the game mod, it looked very good, I loved it!

It was time to make my first test of the game during class. Gathered up four players that have already played this The Mind, I explained the new rules and I watched them play. It turned out to be very good, the difficulty was not as hard as before but not too easy. There were a few things they told me to keep in mind, but in overall, my first test play of the game was a success. Afterwards, I arranged a couple of things in the game and tested the game a second time in class. This time the game was good to be considered a finished product. Finally to end with the project, I made my reflection, I typed the whole process I took to make the game mod and I post the information on my blogpost to submit the project and get my points.
        

During the game mod, I also had other assignments to complete from the game design class. We can do these at any time, there is no specific due date for these, but it doesn’t mean I’ll just ignore them. These other small assignments also give points and by the end of each marking period, we have to earn at least 700 points to get an A+.


        Second Big Project

For my second and final big project, this time, I had to create a game, from my own imagination. This game could be a non-digital game or a digital game. It can be any type of game, anything I would desire to make. So I decided to go with a digital game. I already went through the process of making the cards game and out of that experience, it was not as simple as it seems to be.  There were also some expenses I had to make and right now, I am not in the conditions to spend too much money. These are some reasons why I wanted to go digital and I also wanted to learn more about digital games.Now for the type of game,I felt like making an RPG, where the character has to explore the world, collect items, fight with enemies during the journey, etc. It sounds like fun to me.

Iterative design process

Now that I have these two main ideas about how my game is going to be, I started making the game design document. This document is meant to have everything planned and be sure of what I am going to make, it is much more organized and understandable.

     The document consists on

 - Giving the game a name: Alderaath - A New Dimension (the game sounds similar to a planet from star wars, that’s where I got the idea for the name).
 - The creator’s name: Me, Carla
 - What genre the game is: RPG (players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting).
 - The platform/tool that was used: Crey (A free online platform I found after searching and searching, it looks new but I liked how this platform works. People make their games and upload them in crey. In able to play a game or make a game, you must install the launcher in your computer.)
 - The game’s storyline or backstory: go to the Game Design Document to read my game’s backstory. (It took me a while to write this story. I did some research on the internet to know more about the universe, how a black hole works, what dark energy is in outer space and more terms related to the universe. But keep in mind it is a fictitious story I made, this is not going to happen in real life, just saying).
 - Characters involved in the game:
          Playable character: Mia
          Enemies: Golems, Piggles, Talos sampsoni
          Boss: Darkus
          NPSs: Erik, Lucy, Roger.

 - The stages or levels of the game.
Objects the player will encounter in the game: food, weapons, coins, keys.
 - Winning and losing scenario.
 - Automation.

Click here to check out my game design doc.

Crey

After the design document was complete, then is was time for me to get started with the fun stuff, also hard stuff. I had no knowledge about this platform so I had to do the tutorials and watch youtube videos  about crey. There weren't many videos about crey because it looks like it is a fairly new platform. This lead me to figure out many things by myself.

I created a new world that had only terrain, then I started to implement small details in the game such as, plants, trees, craits, fishes and more all around the map. This took me several hours to make it look like it has life and to make the game look more adventurous. Then it was time to do the hard stuff which was all of the sound effects, the timing of things, the enemies, obstacles, the movements and more things related with physics involved. This was hard because there are certain tools in the platform to make such things happen and when you click on the settings of the tools,  you can do a variety of adjustments that can affect the movement of the players or other objects in the game. Most of this part, I had to figure out myself and this is what took most of the time I spent creating my game for hours and hours. It would have been easier if there were more tutorials on the internet or if I didn’t have much homework from other classes or if my other priorities apart from school weren’t so many. Anyways, I did my best, I put a lot of effort into it and I am very proud of what I have accomplished up to now and who knows what other adjustments and improvements I can add to my game.

Objects that contain game logic and code

The game had a start and an end, so that means it was time for my classmates to test my game and provide feedback to me. I still had a lot to fix, but at least it was playable. After it was tested and received my feedback, I continued to fix a variety of fallacies my game had. The feedback can give me an idea of things I don’t had in mind when I am testing the game. So I made additional adjustments based on their opinion.

Game creation process reflection

If I were to work in the game design field, it would like to work on the animation part of a game or the creation of the characters and other assets in the game. I would apply some of my artistic side on this and it also seems very fun for me. I enjoy this part of the game creation. I would also like to have programming skills, it can be hard but it is worth it.

After all of this experience I went through, as I was creating the game, I learned many things game designers keep in mind and some of the basic steps the whole crew has to go through. I also had many challenges as I said before and there were several times I felt proud that I finally got out of challenging situations. It was a fun, frustrating sometimes, and also satisfying experience. I liked this project and I will continue fixing and adding more features to my game.

Click here to checkout my game