FireFly | gamestechnologist

Team FireFly

University Project 1 - Ninja Katsui

My first project at university was to develop a point and click game; using the mouse as the only interface for manipulating the game content and allow the player to progress through the game.

The target audience was for 12+year.

The target software for developing the game was Scratch 1.4.

The target hardware (platform) for the game was the Raspberry Pi B+.

The team: varied in skill - ranging from individuals like myself who have never programmed before and those that studied games development the previous year at college; we all had grand ideas and wanted to push the limits of what we could learn from this project.

I personally researched the following mechnics: expressing them with code - images shown below.

Gravity.
Randomising movements.
Hiding and showing content.
User Inputs: specifically text.
How to have the game respond to text inputs.
Broadcasting.
Changing backgrounds; using a variable as a switch.

Hint code Making use of broadcasts; this could makes the hint sprint viewable. The sprite itself can be clicked on to produce a message on screen.	Enemy code Lint to my hint sprite this code employs gravity to the enemy in the level and make the enemy visible. When the enemy is visible they well be randomly moved around the level; changing in appearance and produce a message on screen	Player interactions Linked to the hint code; when the plays is asked for the enemies name and get the input correct the enemy is shown and the fight begins; again the enemy is subject to gravity , changes in appearance and random movements around screen
Last level begins When the player enters the last level a broadcast is sent that triggers the interaction process; in which the player is ask if they remember the name of the levels enemy and boss. The enemy will remain hidden until the play input the correct name which is Ronin (this is not case specific); if the play get the name wrong eventually another broadcast will trigger the hint sprite to become viewable to the player.	Costume change Based on the position of the move point in regard to the games hero a walk cycle is produced - however at the time there was not enough to to create a left hand walk cycle I plan to update this feature.	Changing Backgrounds This code illustrates how background in the game were changed. The Majority of the group came to the decision it was best to fix the character to a specific point on the y axis; as we aimed to forefill the brief which wanted a point and click game with no other interactions.
Using mobile platform Interesting feature none of us thought we would be able to do for the first projects but we felt by not limiting our ideas we could learn new things; with some research and good lecturers we found a solution and were able to keep this idea of ours in our game.	Moving Character & death condition The character is moved on the x axis only and here the death condition was developed as when health is less than 1 the death broadcast is initiated and produces a death screen/die state.	gravity.png
change background.png	2players.png Research code for game as I also make a tennis game

Issues: optimizing the software to the Raspberry Pi hardware.

Our game was primarily deveoped on PC; whilst the target hardware was the Raspberry Pi, this created initial issues where the application run time was much slower in the target hardware; This resulted in several iterations taking place where the software had to be optimized to run at satifiactually on the Pi.

Changes such as altering the use of forever loops and only having calculations run when necessary was a typical over hall of the software. This meant linking the start up of methos of calculatiosn to the conditions of variable and or environments the player enters throughout the game.

Other stuff.

My Games Technology Bsc is structured to produce games programmers; however as part of all pojects I had to create the assets used in the game; such as

High, Medium & Low resolution assets.
Character design.
High Concept documents
Pipeline Document
Userability and Playtest documents.

Using software suites such as Adobe photoshop and illustrators I created the following artwork:

output_nCQWM2.gif	output_D2PMV3.gif	ezz2.jpg
10730225_1514403992148553_6523678314308961297_n.jpg	10392497_1514397832149169_8028717492598242646_n.jpg	10359559_1514397818815837_481808174963778158_n.jpg

Team FireFly

University Project 1 - Ninja Katsui

Hint code

Making use of broadcasts; this could makes the hint sprint viewable. The sprite itself can be clicked on to produce a message on screen.

Enemy code

Lint to my hint sprite this code employs gravity to the enemy in the level and make the enemy visible. When the enemy is visible they well be randomly moved around the level; changing in appearance and produce a message on screen

Player interactions

Linked to the hint code; when the plays is asked for the enemies name and get the input correct the enemy is shown and the fight begins; again the enemy is subject to gravity , changes in appearance and random movements around screen

Last level begins

Costume change

Based on the position of the move point in regard to the games hero a walk cycle is produced - however at the time there was not enough to to create a left hand walk cycle I plan to update this feature.

Changing Backgrounds

This code illustrates how background in the game were changed. The Majority of the group came to the decision it was best to fix the character to a specific point on the y axis; as we aimed to forefill the brief which wanted a point and click game with no other interactions.

Using mobile platform

Interesting feature none of us thought we would be able to do for the first projects but we felt by not limiting our ideas we could learn new things; with some research and good lecturers we found a solution and were able to keep this idea of ours in our game.

Moving Character & death condition

The character is moved on the x axis only and here the death condition was developed as when health is less than 1 the death broadcast is initiated and produces a death screen/die state.

gravity.png

change background.png

2players.png

Research code for game as I also make a tennis game

Issues: optimizing the software to the Raspberry Pi hardware.

Other stuff.

output_nCQWM2.gif

output_D2PMV3.gif

ezz2.jpg

10730225_1514403992148553_6523678314308961297_n.jpg

10392497_1514397832149169_8028717492598242646_n.jpg

10359559_1514397818815837_481808174963778158_n.jpg