Alpha

I'm not entirely sure how to show off my game here, as part of it is experiencing the story for the first time and making decisions based on what you feel in the moment.

Final Game Design Document

My Final GDD is here and ready to be watched/read/whatever the Hell.

I want to work more on the designs of the Mantis Alien and the Fish Alien. The backgrounds will be a big part, showing Earth, the different streets of Earth, grasslands, before changing to space and showing similar things on the other planets.

And for the image and image description I don't know here:

A character from Doki Doki Literature Club

One of my inspirations for the game.

Not everything is what it seems

Game Design Document

Goosebumps

By R.L. Stine

My GDD is about a Choose Your Own Adventure Story revolving around travelling to Space and meeting interesting lifeforms.

I haven't quite decided on a name yet, but I'm considering something along the lines of...

The Journey

It's The Final (Countdown) Draft

Developing your character is

much like creating a sculpture from stone.

It's already all there. You just have to get to it.

Character Development is one of the most important things within any form of fiction or storytelling. Without it, your character would stay the same throughout the entire medium, never growing as a person or learning. Your audience should grow along with your character, whether it be a book, a movie, or a game. Development is something we all go through and fictional characters are no different.

This Literature Review will cover why Character Development is such a necessity within media.

Imagine your favourite movie. Why did you like it so much? Was it the story? The action? Or was it the characters that made it come alive.

William B Russel III and Stewart Waters(2010) talk about how many different aspects of the creators views and opinions go into creating a character. Morals, values, beliefs. All these things and more are often taken into consideration when creating a character you want to take part in your choice of media. Every game you've ever played and every movie you've ever watched has had parts of the creator be featured within the characters you are seeing. Granted most people would call this projecting but the point is still there. Character Development comes from your views and how you want them to change.

The history of Character Development within fiction and stories has been around since before Biblical times. Plato's Story Of The Cave featured character development, with the character realising there was an outside world and that it was simply shadows being cast from the Sun. Henry Jenkins(2005) states that you need to make meaningful comparisons to real life growth and development in order to truly reach your audience.

However one thing Jenkins states within his piece is that, not all games tells stories and have development. Some are just simply that, games. Games to enjoy. Games to play. Development of a character is crucial within a piece of media, but if your media has no character, then you need not worry. Tetris (Pajitnov, 1989) has no characters, and it is the most widely known and played game as of now and more than likely forevermore.

With Judy Robinson and Judith Good(2005) they say that with the children that took part in the workshop of creating a game, the most popular part of said workshop as discussed with the participants in an interview was 'creating the characters'. Character Creation is always the most important part of any form of medium. Especially if you look at an RPG or something like DnD. The creation of a character will inevitably lead to the development of it, regardless of whether or not it was intentional. At the start your character could be a complete jerk and plan to rob or maim everyone you meet. But, as you go through the game and meet other characters, you will start to develop along with your character, and come to make choices you would not have in the beginning.

Lankoski, Petri & Björk, Staffan. (2007) say that computer games research literature use very little information when it comes to character and design. In fact, so little is noted of character development that the entire paper is based on how to properly create a character driven game design method. In order to create a game you need to create the characters within it, even if that character is yourself and every action is of your own choosing. It states there are three important aspects of character design, those being the physiology, psychology and sociology. Physiology would be the most immediately noticeable change within the development of a character, changing their shape to show how they have aged or gotten stronger, giving them scars based on injuries you have acquired, and so on.
The development of a characters psychology would depend entirely on their experiences since the game starts as the character might be required to make a questionable decision against their actual morals, which can shift and change due to that decision. The sociology of a characters development is the least like to change unless they gain more enemies and lose their family. Which, given the usual backstory of most characters is surprisingly likely.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the development of a character is absolutely necessary and can be found in quite literally any form of media that tells a story or simply shows a character going through a journey. The development a character takes is completely up to its creator, though sometimes you might find your character developing in ways you yourself never even intended. And sometimes, those are the best developments of all.

Citation

1. Reel Character Education: A Cinematic Approach to Character Development
   By William B. Russell III, Ph.D., Stewart Waters.(2010)
   Reel Character Education
2. Story Creation In Virtual Game Worlds
   By Judy Robinson and Judith Good (2005)
   https://sites.google.com/site/judyrobertson1/ACMArticleRobertsonGood.pdf
3. Game Design As Narrative Architecture
   Henry Jenkins(2005)http://blogs.bgsu.edu/honors1120/files/2013/08/Jenkins_Narrative_Architecture.pdf
4. Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflicts and Gameplay
   Lankoski, Petri & Björk, Staffan. (2007).
   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236680480_Character-Driven_Game_Design_Characters_Conflicts_and_Gameplay

Laying out the Layout

Intro:

This literature review covers the different approaches and research gone into the importance of character development within games and media.

Body:

1. Kathleen McCaffrey (2008) Creating an Advisory Program Using Hollywood Film Clips to Promote Character Development, Middle School Journal, 40:2, 21-25, DOI:
   This piece tells of all the important traits within Characters, and how to change them as well as why you should change them as the movie goes on.
   
   
2. Reel Character Education: A Cinematic Approach to Character Development
   By William B. Russell III, Ph.D., Stewart Waters.(2010)
   
   
   Morals, values, beliefs and attitudes are all a part of the film industry. It is common for the viewers to ask 'what is the moral of this story?' and it's your job to make the moral a good one. Characters and their personalities are something a viewer will latch onto, project and discuss with others. It's also your job to make sure that the growth the character goes through is felt and shared by the viewer.
   
3. Story Creation In Virtual Game Worlds
   By Judy Robinson and Judith Good (2005)
   
   
   Children spend a lot of time playing video games, teaching them logic, teamwork, and giving them motivation. A lot of games that are researched with children playing them are solely software designed and developed games. Stories and development play a much more important part for children's minds growing up.
   
   
4. The Character of Difference: Procedurality, Rhetoric, and Roleplaying Games
   By Gerald Voorhees
   
   Regardless of what game you make and how well developed your world and characters are, there will be a forum picking apart what you have made piece by piece and finding flaws.
   
5. Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflicts and Gameplay
   Lankoski, Petri & Björk, Staffan. (2007).
   Video Games use characters. Every video game has a character or two. Even Tetris (Pajitnov, 1989) has characters, as people have given the different shaped blocks characteristics and personalities.
   It is quite literally possible to give squares characteristics and developments as evidenced by Thomas Was Alone(Bithell Games, 2012).

Thomas Was Alone

Bithell Games

Driven_Game_Design_Characters_Conflicts_and_Gameplay

Game Design As Narrative Architecture
Henry Jenkins

There was almost a blood feud between those who wanted to see games focus on the mechanics of game play, and those who wanted the story to become the focus. There is demand for both story and good gameplay, which causes conflict. Divergence from a story's path will make a less satisfying story, as would restricting the players freedom.

Conclusion:

The articles above show how important character development is within media, and how you can make it so that the characters you create are just as well developed as those within your favourite movie or book.

Links: 

Kathleen McCaffrey (2008) Creating an Advisory Program Using Hollywood Film Clips to Promote Character Development, Middle School Journal, 40:2, 21-25, DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2008.11461668

Reel Character Education: A Cinematic Approach to Character Development
By William B. Russell III, Ph.D., Stewart Waters.(2010)

Reel Character Development

Story Creation In Virtual Game Worlds
By Judy Robinson and Judith Good (2005)

Story Creation

The Character of Difference: Procedurality, Rhetoric, and Roleplaying Games
By Gerald Voorhees
Difference

Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflicts and Gameplay
Lankoski, Petri & Björk, Staffan. (2007).

Character-Driven

Driven_Game_Design_Characters_Conflicts_and_Gameplay

Game Design As Narrative Architecture

Henry Jenkins

CCG

Annotated Bibliography 2: The Return

1. Reel Character Education: A Cinematic Approach to Character Development
   By William B. Russell III, Ph.D., Stewart Waters.(2010)
   
   Morals, values, beliefs and attitudes are all a part of the film industry. It is common for the viewers to ask 'what is the moral of this story?' and it's your job to make the moral a good one. Characters and their personalities are something a viewer will latch onto, project and discuss with others. It's also your job to make sure that the growth the character goes through is felt and shared by the viewer.
   
   https://books.google.ie/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kP4nDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=character+development+in+film&ots=u1GKTFm8mp&sig=JQ7SU_YMqB4UlPupJH6myQeZYW4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=character%20development%20in%20film&f=false
   
   
2. Story Creation In Virtual Game Worlds
   By Judy Robinson and Judith Good (2005)
   
   
   Children spend a lot of time playing video games, teaching them logic, teamwork, and giving them motivation. A lot of games that are researched with children playing them are solely software designed and developed games. Stories and development play a much more important part for children's minds growing up.
   
   https://sites.google.com/site/judyrobertson1/ACMArticleRobertsonGood.pdf
3. The Character of Difference: Procedurality, Rhetoric, and Roleplaying Games
   By Gerald Voorhees
   
   Regardless of what game you make and how well developed your world and characters are, there will be a forum picking apart what you have made piece by piece and finding flaws.
   
   http://gamestudies.org/0902/articles/Voorhees
4. Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflicts and Gameplay
   Lankoski, Petri & Björk, Staffan. (2007).
   
   Video Games use characters. Every video game has a character or two. Even Tetris (Pajitnov, 1989) has characters, as people have given the different shaped blocks characteristics and personalities.
   
   It is quite literally possible to give squares characteristics and developments as evidenced by Thomas Was Alone(Bithell Games, 2012).
   

   

   Thomas Was Alone
   Bithell Games

   
   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236680480_Character-Driven_Game_Design_Characters_Conflicts_and_Gameplay
5. Game Design As Narrative Architecture
   Henry Jenkins
   
   There was almost a blood feud between those who wanted to see games focus on the mechanics of game play, and those who wanted the story to become the focus. There is demand for both story and good gameplay, which causes conflict. Divergence from a story's path will make a less satisfying story, as would restricting the players freedom.
   
   http://blogs.bgsu.edu/honors1120/files/2013/08/Jenkins_Narrative_Architecture.pdf

Annotated Bibliography

I made the mistake of picking 'Character Development' within Video Games and there are little to none Bibliographies. However, there are a few on Character Development within film and literature.




Kathleen McCaffrey (2008) Creating an Advisory Program Using Hollywood Film Clips to Promote Character Development, Middle School Journal, 40:2, 21-25, DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2008.11461668




This piece tells of all the important traits within Characters, and how to change them as well as why you should change them as the movie goes on.






Reel Character Education: A Cinematic Approach to Character Development

By William B. Russell III, Ph.D., Stewart Waters

This piece has a lesson plan on how to teach students to notice character traits and how they develop.

It focuses more on the teaching aspect on how to educate students, rather than define the actual importance of character development within film and literature.

Alright that's about all I could find for these honestly I picked a damn hard one. However, I will give my own personal examples of character development within Film and Literature.

In another blog post cause I don't think I'm meant to do that here.

Multimedia Project Research

So, back on this again. It's been a while since my last post (and for good reason) but now I have a whole new idea.


The members of this project are as follows:

Me.

There we go. Every member listed.

I am going to be creating a choose-your-own-adventure story using Twine. It's a program that easily allows you to create how your story will go, and then add in code for things like designing or having text show up later.

In order to help myself use this application I joined the Discord associated with it, where I could ask people who have experience with this in real time and get answers rapidly.

My progress so far is going very well.

My Current Progress On My Story

So it is going very well. There are several different choose your own adventure stories, my immediate thought being the Goosebumps 'Give Yourself Goosebumps' series. Though in some cases, choose your own adventure stories are older than print, such as DnD and the like.

Testing, Attention Please

Solo Testing is something I've done almost exclusively, seeing as its only been me designing and playing this game so far. I've also been bug testing by myself. By which I mean accidentally being launched off screen in game and trying to prevent that from happening again by trying to recreate it.

Balance testing is something I don't really think I need to do because my game is that advanced as to have a bypass. Apparently I am my own most valuable Playtester. I could probably get some complete strangers to play my game by putting an ad on craigslist.

I would just like to say that I would be absolutely overjoyed if my game started 'making itself' because that would be a lot of stress off my back.

"Your game is not perfect." Yeah I'm well aware of that trust me.

Alpha Beta Soup

For my game right now, I'm surprised with how well it's going. I have a level laid out, and any level I design after that will have similar elements in design, maybe one or two things different.

I'm having a bit of trouble adding in a menu screen that will lead to the game, but it's not something I would say is an absolute difficulty for me.

I think I met my goals well enough. I created a character that can jump and move, I made a level that works well. I just need to make so he returns to the start when he falls off of the level.

I haven't managed to get the title screen animation where the Main character constantly walks up sets of stairs but I feel like that's a long term goal that I don't need to worry about right now.

I didn't have a screenshot available I hope this will do

Unity Free Tutorials

So, I finally get to talk about all of the Unity Tutorials. Well I know one thing for sure, and that's that I will be hearing "Hello there, I'm Jimmy Vegas" in my sleep.

I enjoyed the videos, they were helpful in almost every aspect, and I seem to do better when I have a set of instructions to follow. And also the huge amount of videos and other tutorials on Unity gives me hope that I will be able to actually complete this game.

I followed his tutorial on how to make a SuperMario Clone while editing and changing it to suit my needs and my game. It is a very good tutorial, in fact, most tutorials for Unity that can be found on Youtube are excellent.

However, one issue I have is that most of them are for Windows Unity, and also they have earlier versions of Unity, which can make it difficult to follow as we have only used the Mac versions and we have a different version to them.

Hello there, I'm Jimmy Vegas

Games Stories

Not going to lie, when I saw the word 'stories' my eyes lit up.

I am very fond of Wikipedia's definition of art being 'the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to senses or emotions' because it means that whenever I write a story it becomes art.

Purpose, form, idiom,structure, craft, surface. All these are things I have to take into consideration while writing, as they all have a part to play in the creation of a story.

The small bit about 'What was your first great game idea' and the response being 'It'll be just like Pacman meets Space Invaders. Only better!' is quite literally the driving idea behind what most people like to call 'Fanfiction'.

Which is a perfectly acceptable form of art and if you disagree I shall gladly argue my point.

Tragedy meaning a serious and lifelike story hits a bit too close, as nowadays people try to make the worst things possible happen to characters who don't deserve it simply for 'wangst'. And I agree that there is still a lot of bad writing out there, but there is a greater amount of good writing!

Plot: An important thing that we figure out later.

Theme: Something we don't think about or realise until after the story is complete.

Character: One of the two things that probably created the story, thinking of a character, or of powers and wanting a character to use them.

Diction: Ary The other thing that might create a story, simply thinking of a line of dialogue that sounds amazing and you are so amazed you thought of it you need to make an entire world just so you can say that one line of dialogue and then after you've finished writing it you realise you forgot to say it.

Rhythm: Ha. What rhythm?

Spectacle: The 'eye candy' of the story. What makes your story unique. What makes it different to every other story about magic or about a dystopia. What makes your story?

All stories include crossing gaps of some kind? All stories are about change? Ok yeah that I can accept. Change can come in many different forms, and usually that change is a victory. Changing a goverment, changing the world, changing your clothes. Hey, not all victories are about the big things.

Ah, found something I disagree with.

"Having the player make moral choices for the main character is hard, because the choices often don’t involve real consequences."

\

It has consequences for the player character, and for the person playing it. Plus, consequences on the players emotional state. 

A scene from TellTales 'The Walking Dead'

Frankly, if you don't have a heavy moral decision without consequences in your story-driven game, you haven't written a good story.

First Playable Level

Hopefully this works.

This is a short video showing my prototype and the basics of my first playable level. I would like to point out the character is able to jump I just didn't hit the button in time. 

Week 8 Progress

My progress in class has greatly improved in recent times! I guess it's because I actually sat down and did the work. In one day I managed to build a level, import a character, and have the camera follow him as he runs and jumps.

I didn't really have a good weekly routine, just doing most things last minute and hoping they were good enough to merit counting towards the points. I used some of the extra credit options earlier in the year but have since stopped doing them simply because I didn't have the time or because I didn't see the need. I was also very confused about what exactly what the Wiki Trails were.

I still need to fix it up a bit but for now it's working very well.

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Looking back on the blog comments I've left I think that I could have wrote more and for more people. I only left comments on a few blogs because I was interested to see what they got up to with their game.

I was trying to be as kind as possible with my comments and leaving what I hoped were good suggestions and references to other games that I thought would help them with their game.

For the other comments I was very confused and didn't really know what to write so I just kind of left whatever I could and tried to make it over sixty words. I think I did it right, or at the very least no one has come to me and said my comments were rude.

Typing Reviews

Week 8 Reading And Writing

Looking back on my previous works I realised how different my game was going to be before I started the Game Design Document. Originally it was going to be a 'Temple Run' style game with Yoink running away from the screen and from the player.

I realised I was being very impersonal when it came to the readings, giving my honest opinions and make little jokes to try and get people more interested in my blog because they would find it funny. I think this worked well but I haven't really hear anyone say anything about my blog being noticeably funny or more interesting than others.

Looking at the Customisation Screen I figure I could still use the same design for it, and just change the dimensions to fit the game window.

In my most recent blog post on my project I showed a small drawing on what my level design would look like, very different to my original design and I am actually quite happy with that.

Original Level Design

Final Level Design

I never really realised how much I read until I had to go over it and talk about it. And that so many of the subjects I read related to the many games I played, such as Stardew Valley, Civilisation and Undertale.

I disliked the idea of there being types of fun, because I don't think fun is something you can accurately define. I was fine with the idea of comfort and coziness, but risk and reward is something that really makes a game.

Then there was the thing with Meaningless Decisions that I don't agree with because every decision has an effect on either the player or the game. Like changing an outfit or deciding not to go down a particular path.

I think when it comes to what I could improve on or what I would change is just, detail. I need more detail in my Readings but on the other hand it's just meant to be a quick summary based on what I read.

Maybe try and making things less casual and being more professional about how I write down the information I've gained from reading the various pieces of work on the hundreds of different needs Games require.

PrototypeA

Leg It

Level Design

A Small Hand Drawn prototype of my level

My levels for Leg It will mostly follow a similar pattern, the player character (Green)  running across the cities rooftops, the Thieves Highway (huh another idea for a game with a good name), in order to get away from the Heroes he's running from.

Hazards are coloured in red, so the two lines at the bottom are drops between the buildings that if the player character falls down they will lose a life and have to start the level over again, or if I decide to add in a checkpoint system start from there.

The red character in the middle of the page is an enemy, who moves from left to right normally, but if they spot you they will run straight to you. Similar to the pitfall, if the enemy hits the player they will return to the start.

The Blue is an interactive object within the level, much like Mario's pipes, you can jump on it and proceed to go down it, where you will enter a new level or a sub-level where the enemies are lightly different and the level will be different because you will be inside a building or on the street below.

The items in circles are power-ups. The one above the enemy is the Stop Sign Weapon which the player can use to deal damage and to reflect projectiles. The power-up on the far right is the Freeze Breath power. The player can use it to slow down enemies and projectiles.

The end of a level will have a small building with a red door on it that the character runs into to avoid the Heroes.

Unity Free Tutorials

For this week's free Unity Tutorial I decided to watch the Jimmy Vegas tutorial on How To Make A Super Mario Clone.

I watched these videos because it is the closest I could find to my own game, 'Leg It', which has a similar style but completely different concept. I followed the first video to learn how to put the blocks in, but used a completely different design for them, as Yoink is going to be running along the roofs of buildings, not bricks.

Screenshot Of Unity

This video helped me make the layout I needed for my game, and it also showed me how to bring in assets already in Unity, such as player characters that I won't be copyrighted for. I used a default player character that already had all of the movement programmed into him.

He vaguely resembles a knight which I found mildly amusing given the name of my blog.

Game Fun

Ah, so we're back to the 8 different types of fun. The thing I do not agree with whatsoever. Although reading through this it labels Monopoly as a Social game. Monopoly is not a social game, if anything it will ruin your social life because of the arguments it causes.

It does make a good point however about why making a game with all eight of these kinds of fun, would not be as fun as one thinks. Not everyone likes the same type of fun, some people prefer one kind over the other.

I didn't think reading the words 'sans Pokemon' would make me as upset as it did but here we are. If a Caveman found it useful you'll find it fun? I feel like there are somethings a caveman did that we would not find fun and instead find deeply disturbing.

Griefing as a form of fun is something I disagree with intensely. You should not feel better because you destroyed someones mansion they spent more than five hours building in Minecraft.

Planet Minecraft
Explaining why people Grief

 

Final GDD

The Main Character,
Yoink

This is the final blog for my Game Design Document.

I have updated my Dundoc and I hope that you find it interesting. It's the bible for my game so please don't treat it like the actual bible and completely misinterpret it.