Evaluation

The long term goal of the game was simple which is to survive and get the highest score which the final game lacked as the end screen did not show your high score. However the challenge was still in the game, the trains enters after a certain amount of time so the player was able to learning the pattern after a few amount of play through and the challenge ramps as more trains enter the screen and you have to avoid more than 1 train whilst collecting packages to bring back to the station to gain a score which is the immediate goal.

Although when you click the arrows it shows visual cues on the screen to indicate which way the train will go, the arrows can confuse you as you think the train will go the way the arrows point but it doesn’t, the contradiction can and will confuse some players.

The game still has the tactics and strategic play to the game such as learning the pattern, going to the centre of the level to collect packages whilst changing the arrow direction to make the enemy trains to go around the outside. However even though you keep making the trains constantly going around the outside whilst you are in the middle collecting points, it will be hard to get to the outside lane and go to the station so you have to think about what to do. The trains all move in the same path so they have the same pattern but because you can change the arrow direction of the enemy trains it can mix up the pattern a little bit and because the enemies don’t come on the level so quickly it won’t feel like they are following the same pattern but after playing for a while you will recognise all the enemy trains are going in the same pattern and makes the game start to feel boring.

Deadline

The final day to get our game finished, we had extra features programmed in separate flash files and we thought it would have been as easy as a copy and paste task but sadly that proved to be wrong as new problems came about and because it was so time consuming to copy and paste codes from a separate file to many objects in the final version of the game, it was close to deadline that we found these problems so we had to revert back to what we already had.

 

This left us with not implement a nice visual starting screen and game over screen with a high score because we kept pushing this task to end as we thought we could do it in a matter of 10 minutes so we just tried to implement the new features which we shouldn't have done since we have experienced many problems when adding new elements to the game so we should have known that it couldn't be done in 1 day. Instead we should have tried to refine what we already have since we still have the core mechanics of the game. The elements we could have refined was the train moving along the tracks properly so it looks visually better, changing the visual lights of packages to have the last circle large, showing you have reached the limit, made a starting screen with an option for players to read instructions,  change the arrows to leavers to players don't get confused with where the arrows is pointing as it doesn't indicate which way the train will be going unless you click on the arrows which gives a visual cue on the screen which way the train will go. 

 

Finally the upgrade train feature was not implemented because just getting the trains around the course was a lot of trouble to get working and to do the same job with a new train would be overwhelming as there are many codes in the game exactly the same except the name of objects so when a problem occurs, it will be hard to pinpoint the problem. This was also an extra feature to visually please the player and increase the challenge so we put this feature at the back of the list to do which kept getting pushed back like the title screen, game over and high score as we tried to solve problems we had before.

 

Although we worked well as a team, the problem we had was not having a team leader which would make the crucial decisions whether we should implement the features we tried to do on the last day as we were blinded by trying to add as much features from our design document into our game instead of refining our game which doesn't feel like a polished game. The last day should have only been adding graphics to our game or replacing graphics we already had.

Downfall - Mass of Problems

Trying to get the arrows have 3 frames for the 3 way corners instead of only 2 frames was more time consuming then expected and eventually we got working and wanted to derail/crash trains at bad junction which we were able to do on 1 corner but this really showed to be harder than expected on other corners since it was checking variables from objects on each side of the object which turned the train so we decided to remove that feature because we already had a lot of variables and codes going on because we couldn't use arrays or didn't know how to use it in our case since the arrows changed the trains direction and if you only changed on train and it touched a directional object which tells whether they are moving forward or backwards, the array will tell every train it is moving backwards so we did separate codes for each train and this became overwhelming.

The bridge code was also removed and we left it so that it became a normal track path because although we had the bridge working the codes would affect the entire game because it changes the depth of each objects so when a train crashes or it goes game over, the object will not work so we had to write a code to make the object depth go back to it's original depth but even though we done that, it still sometimes didn't work which we did not understand so we thought instead of having a feature which causes problems further on in the game we should just remove it for now.

Once we decided what wasn't going to be in the game because we knew we were going to need more time, we decided to add things which would help players understand such as circle lights at the bottom beside the score to indicate you have picked up a package, we also added scores to the game.

Testing

Today we had a beta testing of our game with outside people from the group and problems aroused which we took into account to try and fix such as people not understanding the what the arrows do because they can't see which direction the train will be going. Another problem was that the trains went out too fast so a timer was suggested, that way the players can digest everything that is going on before being rushed with legions of trains. We were also told to fix the hit detection between trains since they would crash from opposite side of track which would have been game over for the player if your train crashes into an enemy train. However we did not have a game over screen so players didn't understand the actual point of trying to avoid trains since the players train would just keep driving through everything so one of the first changes was to add a game over screen when the train collided with the enemy train.

Train Movement - Chosen Method

after getting it to rotate around 2 corners we found problems with the lines that the train moved along since it was telling the train to move along but because it was too close to the corner the corner will also tell it to rotate so in the end the train ended up spinning in one spot so we decided to change the codes and remove the lines it moved along.

We done so by making the train moving in a constant direction and when it touches the box it will make the train play few a series of frame and once it has reached the end of it, it will stay in that direction and move along the y axis or x axis depending which way it is coming from, before we had all the codes in all the train which would get confusing which is the reason why we broke down the programming into several objects the train will collide to do a new task.

http://megaswf.com/view/59695106459cdf678c7a632e39be4253.html

Train Movement

We finally have a finalised design document after reviewing and play testing our paper prototype so we are now starting to program our game by sorting out the parts which we feel will be the hardest part of programming which is the corners the train turns on the track.

We thought of 2 ways of doing so, the first idea was to have the train hitting changing frames which constant went forward and something pushing it down which can be seen on the swf file located on link below.

http://megaswf.com/view/07f9f105fee8f5e493d3ca35045f303c.html

The second way is the way we decided to use. The second way is to have the train touch an object and it rotating and then it moved along the line which can be seen below.

http://megaswf.com/view/b8121ea3c2dc6b12e2c75cea85bb038b.html

Paper Prototype

We played our paper prototype of our train game and found out that more features should be drop such as being able to reverse because this feature made the game way too easy. After removing features of our game we wanted something to also ramp the difficulty so we decided to have carriages.

The group recapped the idea the next day to see if everyone remembers what changes has been done and to clarify what we want in the game. After some thoughts, we stumbled upon some problems which we needed to solve such as if the player is too good for the game or really bad so we thought of the idea of the train slowing down after a certain amount of packages was collected, ideally 5 packages was the amount to slow down your train which indicates to go back to the station and drop of the packages.

The Green Light

The first day back to college and we discussed our game design to an outside person from our group to see what he thought, who was able to give feedback on the spot such as the disadvantages of all the hot key features originally planned.

 

We also removed other features like the light dimming down and track breaking if you crash into another train which would also been accompanied with lives which got removed as well and changed it to a 1 try highscore game. After removing features from out game we thought of another feature which will help ramp the difficulty which was to make the train upgrade to a slightly more longer train as this will mean that enemy trains have a higher chance at hitting it but this also pleases the player with them gaining a upgrade.

 

The light feature was removed because we believed although it increased the difficulty of the game, it was unfair to the player now that we have removed the stop, reverse and accelerate feature to the game.

Game Ideas

The group all thought of our own ideas but at first we thought about doing the first brief but after some research there were far too many games in this field which limited us whereas the second brief was about viral marketing of any product we desired so each member of the group came up with their own idea and discussed it between each other and had a vote.

The ideas that we had were:

1) A bird eyes view maze game which you start at point A and you have to reach point B, you control the players with keyboard functions and enemies will be placed in certain areas which will have certain stats so one enemy could have 5points of strength but 2points defence and if you have 5points of strength and the enemy life is 3 then you will defeat the enemy but if you can’t you will lose and go to game over so you need to go around collecting upgrades which would be the product we are advertising that hasn’t been decided. There are 2 enemies, 1 guard which blocks some routes to get to point B and there are several ways to get there and another enemy type which will move around. The difficulty would ramp as time goes by and certain amount of enemies you defeat, stronger enemies will move on the screen through multiple spawning places. However it won’t only be strong enemies coming out as we also want to let the player have a chance so we will mix it with some strong and some weak enemies. There will be not battle system but a quick stats comparing game which you charge at the enemy and they disappear if you are stronger and you can continue to play.

2) it's a side scrolling game, A large enemy is behind you and you're a little ahead, it starts like that and it continuously move but you only click or press a keyboard function and that function makes your character jump, there will also be other enemies in front going towards you, some on ground and some higher up, there will also be something to hit and it will randomly choose a item whether to slow down the large enemy behind you or clear up a bit of the enemies in front of you. Drinks laying around, not too much of course but that increases your speed and you can only lose when the large enemy behind catches you so the enemies in front slows you down so your moving speed is 5, if you hit into 1 enemey it drops to 4 and keeps doing so when you get hit but if you pick up the drink that fixes your mistakes or increases it if you haven't done any mistakes.

3) You operate a mechanical arm your job is to pick up products from the conveyor belts each drink is worth 1 point and the special flavoured ones are worth 2 each, crap that makes it through will deduct 1 point. There will be two conveyor belts once 6 drinks make it through you must press a button for them to be packaged and sent out.

4) game you play as a bee we make it so it either follows the mouse or its click and the bee goes there you play in the beehive, the bee colony is being invaded you must collect as much honey as you can and leave before its completely taken over. You must avoid the incoming bees and collect the honey that spawns randomly.

5) The player must go around collecting packages that spawn randomly around the map, they will always spawn right beside the track itself and the train will pick it up when its range. There will be two types of packages the player can collect. The normal packages spawn one at a time and each add fifty points they will not disappear till they are picked up. Special golden packages will also spawn these appear every minute and only stay around for thirty seconds before it disappears these are worth hundred points.

In order to ramp up the difficulty the following will happen. While collecting the packages the player must avoid other trains a new one appears every minute. The game will start with three lives and each time you hit another train you lose one life. When the lives drop to zero it will be game over and the final scores will become the highscore. This means that the longer you survive the more points that will be gathered.

As the game goes on the level starts to become darker if you don’t collect a package within two minutes from start, when this happens the playing field will be less visible but the player train will gain a new light aura around them. This means that the player will need to make much quicker decisions as they will have less time to react to on coming trains and lanes. The NPC trains are not hostile they will not follow the player train this is so the trains will not be predictable and adds more of a variety.

Once we shared all our ideas amongst each other we voted on a game we wanted to create and develop, we chose the train game because we thought it was the most solid game idea out of all the ideas as the train game had tactics & strategic play which is as the playing field is going to be bird’s eye view this means that the player can see where the next package is and where the trains are this way he can plan out the safest route or the risky but shorter route. It is important to make sure that the player train is not stuck between NPC trains if the player figures this might happen they can act fast and reverse and change lanes.

The game also had the goals, challenges and interactivity so it had everything we thought a game should have and would be fun so we decided to develop this idea and create a design document by the time we go back to college to show our game idea.