Heroes of Rock Prototype Video

I love the new title of the game. It evokes the images of guitar hero and it also brings in the story of the game.

I'm really excited for our presentations over the next week. I'm proud of what we've done and I hope we get chosen into the top 2.

Here's the video of the prototype that we are using in the presentation:

Quick Post About Guitar Hero

We think that we have settled on a new name for our game: Heros of Rock.

The point of this name is to invoke the image and ideas of rock band but it also ties into our story of two characters going to save the music industry. Especially in the indie space, the consumers need to have an idea of what their getting when they see the title. The word Hero with a musically inspired game certianly is associated with Guitar Hero. That's exactly what we're going for. First of all, we need people to think about the guitar hero controller and how that is different and special. Second - we need people to remember that rush of playing Guitar Hero.

That rush of playing guitar hero is our biggest selling point. Using guitars and drums to control characters will be a fun twist that's a bit of a gimmick but the real drive of this game is the music. People didn't like Guitar Hero because of the controller, they played it because of the reward system. There is something rewarding about creating music and Guitar Hero really nailed the points system. When you were playing those games, you got into the game because you were trying to get star power, you were trying to get more points, and you were constantly trying to create a song. It felt really good to put it all together. You felt really good when you got star power and when you nailed some awesome riff. I think that if we work hard, we can capture that feeling in our game. If we can nail that, we'll have a hit on our hands.

This is something we really need to remember during our pitch

Using Free stuff (MORE)

For our prototype, we have to fake a lot of the stuff that we're going to have in a our final game. We can't make everything we're going to do over the next year so we have to use other resources to produce our presentation. Here are some resources that I've found for this prototype stage. I'll leave them here so I can find them later.

Art http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9381.0

Royalty Free Graphics http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-royalty-free-graphics/

Textures http://www.mayang.com/textures/

Sound Design http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-sound-and-music-creation-software/

Royalty Free Music list http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-royalty-free-music-and-sounds-free-edition/

COD

My roommates play a lot of Call of Duty so I've been getting back into the games a little bit.

We have been playing the most recent COD games, Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3. I enjoy first person shooters and I love online multiplayer but I honestly have never been that into COD. I've been more of a Halo fan over the years but I still enjoy the games because so many people play them and I usually play these games for the social experience.

My Favorite COD game so far was MW2. I loved that game. I really put some time into the game and I pursued a lot of the multiplayer content. I was quickly becoming a Call of Duty fanboy. When Black Ops came out, I traded in my copy of MW2 to play the newest game. I enjoyed the new content of Blacks Ops but for some reason I didn't enjoy it as much. I didn't want to play as badly and I definitely didn't strive to unlock everything like I did in MW2. There was just something missing. I thought that Call of Duty had just become stale to me so I just forgot about it mostly. I played the game every once in a while but not seriously.

A couple months later and I have just moved in with my new roommates. James has a copy of MW3 so I decided to give it a try and I was immediately reminded of why I loved the first game. There is one big thing missing in Black Ops that I think makes it a dramatically inferior game, a reward system. A really addictive/fun video game should be like gambling. You should get sucked in. You should feel good playing the game, you should be aching to play more, and you should get excited everytime you win or get something.

In MW2, every time you get a kill points come up. Every time you rank up, there is an epic guitar riff. Every time you do something cool, you are given a new item, emblem, or logo. The game is constantly giving you an endorphin rush by having you feel like you're "winning" constantly. As I said earlier, you get that gambling feeling and I wanted to get that feeling more. I also loved the mechanic of unlocking special logos and items for your character from special actions. It made you want to play the game just for the possibility of a cool thing happening. You wanted to constantly pull the slot machine to try and have that super rare event happen so you could have the super rare logo. I loved that. I really liked seeing similar mechanics come back in MW3. I think that MW3 might even continue that "win" feeling even better. The game feels a little stale for other reasons but that's another post.

When Treyarch was first showing off black ops, I remember them showing the callsign and emblem creater. In MW2 you had to earn a cool callsign but in this game you could create a cool one. Treyarch was under the impression that people wanted cool looking call signs. Well people do but they didn't want them because of asthetics, they wanted them because they were rare or difficult to get. A huge driving force to play MW2 was to get those cool callsigns and emblems. Black Ops completely removed those mechanics. When that mechanic was removed, it also made the challeges section of the game useless. People didn't really care about if they were completing challenges when there was no reward for doing so.

This little change in game mechanics really sucked the fun out of the game. I think that Black Ops has great weapons, fun kill streaks, cool game modes, and better maps that MW3 but the removal of that reward system made the game less addictive. Playing the game is fun but Black Ops made it so you didn't want to keep playing.

This is an incredibly important concept to remember when designing games. Why does the player feel good? Why does the player want to pick up the game and play? What makes the game fun? Why do people want to play over and over gain? All good questions and I think the difference between a game that is good and a game that you never eject from the console.

Game Research 2

While I was looking for inspiration for our game, I stumbled across some resources for our game. 2D animation - "I just try to make the most awesome and ridiculous thing I can think of," explains Robertson. "I always imagine other people's reaction when they look at something I've done, and if it seems underwhelming I'll push it further or add more to it till I think it's good enough. Actually this works for any art, not just pixels." http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176663/5_tips_for_making_great_animations_for_2D_games.php/?buffer_share=d3238 Level Design and Level Creation http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AIIDE/2006/AIIDE06-022.pdf Telemetry Data, Heat Maps - Using heat maps to help design a game. You can track player movement to understand difficult areas of the game or the unintential paths. - You don't want difficulty to spike too soon in a level. http://lucasartsworkshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/telemetry-data-heat-maps-and-unlearning-what-you-have-learned/ Good thread on level design http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/15892/what-are-some-techniques-for-designing-fun-challenging-mario-style-platformer-l List of game design articles http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-design/# Difficulty in Platformers http://www.supermeatboy.com/13/Why_am_I_so____hard_/#b

Game Research 1

I am incredibly excited that my game got chosen to advance to the second stage for pitches. I think my game has a lot of potential but I still need some inspiration to bring the whole idea together. There are a couple things that I want to think about: - The art style - Perspective - Music inspired gameplay - Co Op interactions - Interesting Platforming Elements - Platforming Level design - Combos - Special Ways to Use the Controller And of course how to make it all fun. Last night Scott sent me an email confirming that we can use guitar peripherals and drums with the game. That was the first technical hurdle to the game. Now Scott is going to have to think about how to implement the musical elements to the players. Leaping that first hurdle is incredibly exciting and it allows us to think beyond the basic mechanics of the game. Now that we know we can perform the basics, we have to think about the rest of the game. I played a couple games last night for inspiration: Sword and Soldiers - This game is described as an entertaining 2D strategy game. I wanted to play this game mostly for the 2D art style and the animations. I think the game does a great job with the 2D style. There are layers giving a good sense of depth and the weather effects make the world look more open than it is. The characters are very simple and the animations are barely anything more than a slash. I really like the bright, comic book-y look of the game. I think we could make some good looking characters that look similar to this. It will be a lot easier to animate and I think it will be more visually appealing. I really like the squat characters as well, I think proportional characters look funny in most platformers.

Castle Crashers - Castle crashers is a 2.5D hack and slash game. I wanted to take a look at that game for the fighting mechanics and the set piece sequences. One major limitation of our project is that given the control system, our game is limited to a strict 2D with no depth movement. Castle Crashers has this depth but I still think that it pretty similar. Although we've been talking about reducing the fighting in the game, Castle Crashers is a great basis to go off of. The game looks fun and hectic as players try to eliminate all of the enemies. Castle Crashers is known for it's hack and slash elements but I think that the biggest element to draw from are the set pieces. There are a couple "special" sequences in the game that are a break from the normal gameplay. Usually played out as boss battles, these sequences are intense and very different. I'd like to implement similar "special" events in our game. I can imagine boss battles, chase sequences, or power build up periods that could be made more interesting.

Super Meat Boy - Super Meat Boy is a very recent platformer. When we were thinking about the controls of the game, we realized how compelling the platforming elements could be. The game is a hardcore platformer but the game really nails the abilities of the character

The level pictured is one of the early levels of the game. Very early on, the player has to use the character's abilities to advance through the level. The player has to use the wall sticking mechanic to advance. You try over and over again to complete the level without using the unfamiliar mechanic but you finally realize you have to. The level design of SMB is great but I think we have to think about what our characters can do before we think about where they are. Trine 2 - The trine games are 2D action platformers. I was able to pick them up very cheaply with the steam summer sale so I gave them a try. Our game is basically an action platformer so I figured they would be a good place to look for inspiration. I am not really thinking about a completely 3D wold for my game but I think we can draw ideas from the game. Trine is 2D game that gives the appearence of 3D and it does a lot of this with it's production value. Trine 2 looks great and the little effects in the game really make it stand out. In one of the first moments of the game, the player walks in front of a fire and their shadown is projected onto the wall behind the character. For a 2D game, that effect was shocking. Trine 2 takes the 2D space to a different level. If we are talking about production values, this game is something we have to think about. Shadows, layered depth pieces, light effects and more - if we have the technical and artistic ability, I'd love to get some of this stuff into the game. Fret Nice - Roger mentioned this game after I gave my first pitch. I had never heard of the game but it employs the mechanic of controlling the game with a guitar. Fret Nice is a platformer controlled with a guitar, much like the game I pitched but I think this game gets it wrong. First of all, the controls are insane. I think that the people designing the game got too caught up on linking the gimmick to guitar hero and forgot about actually playing. Playing this game with a guitar, you feel like maybe the developers were using a controller the whole time, then threw the guitar on there. One of the most annoying parts of the game is that you have to raise the guitar to jump. There is nothing intuitive or practical about making jumping difficult in a platformer. The game also employs a mechanic where you play guitar notes to kill enemies. I think this mechanic is cool but when you do it over and over again, it gives annoying. I don't think game controls should be annoying, they should help you get into an experience or they shouldn't even be noticed. There were some interesting mechanics used in the game though. I think that Fret Nice played on the guitar mechanic too much but special jumping sequences or attacks with guitar riffs could be interesting in our game if they added to the game. I want the players to feel more power using the guitar or drums rather than less power.