2D Games Engine Reflection

For this part of Unit 68 we had to create a 2D game that could be playable on a Wii console, we did this using Adobe Flash Player. This was a new experience for the majority of us so we had assistance from tutorials in order to complete this project. I decided that I would create a game that incorporated the Nintendo Wii in somehow. To do this I made the very first screen of the game a sinple “click the Wii logo”. Throughout the game you will see things to do with the Wii, this could be a game or a controller for the console. The most difficult part of this project was adding the “actions”, this is how your parts of the game connect. You would have a multi choice question and with one right and either one or two wrong, the right answer would let you progress through the game whilst the wrong would bring up a screen telling you that you lost and making you start again.

As I said before we used tutorials to help is make this project and this is where I really needed it. I struggled to understand about Keyframes and ActionScript. Working with the tutorial walked me through these steps and I was able to create a fully functional game that is also fun to play. From the beginning my idea was to create a game that incorporated the Ninetendo Wii into it so I was very satisfied with how my game turned out. I believe that if I would have had more knowledge of Adobe Flash that I would have been able to create a more professional looking game.

Visually I think that the game is very good, the only problem that I have with this was that when you clicked the wrong answer the screen that said “Try Again” looked very rushed and unprofessional. Other than that the game looks and plays fine.

There were no problems at all with time management as I had the game completed in time for the deadline. I feel that I learned quite a bit from this project as I now have a better understanding of Adobe Flash, this will help in case I need to use this program for any future project. Another thing that I learned was patience as this is necessary when working with this program as it will sometimes have faults that you need to re-try until works.

I succeeded in creating this game for its original intended audience and I think that it could be very popular if installed to the Nintendo Wii.

Once I had created this game I then compared it with other professionally made flash games. To do this I researched other games online, Kerb Games was a very useful website that showed me a wide range of user created games. While playing games such as Rap Attack & Student Park, I realised the amount of effort and time that is put in to create these games and made me respect their creators even more than before. Not only do they have levels and screens that transition well, they also have fully animated characters. Even the sound is implemented well, something that I never had in my game.

To play this flash game on a Nintendo Wii first I had to put my flash game up onto a website I was going to do this through my blog. Once it was up on the blog I would use the Wii’s Opera web browser to go to my blog and access the game. Then once I had done this I could play the game.

Project Summary & Review

For my end of year project we were told to create a game trailer that would be released. To do this we must first make our teams, and come up with a company name. Once we had done this we had to research game ideas and come up with a plot and series of events for our trailer. This was done by going out and looking at environments and searching for other ideas on the internet, in books, magazines etc. We had to ensure that we did not have any similarities to other games or names. Once we knew what we wanted we nominated jobs and began production, we pretty much all worked on the things that we were good at; this being the reason why I was in charge of all of the sound and music. We used 3D Studio Max to design the environments and character models that would be incorporated into our trailer. Occasionally we did have to use 3D Max tutorials to help us when creating certain things for the trailer, for me it was the car as I had no knowledge of doing this before. We used Photoshop to design any transitions slides and cover art for the trailer.

The style of our trailer was a very dark urban feel and this was implemented very well. I was extremely satisfied with the results of this trailer, even though we did not follow through on a few original ideas we still came out with a great trailer that hopefully will leave viewers wanting to see more. Some of the reasons that we did not use original ideas were that they were too similar to other games or they simply didn’t fit the style we were looking for. Even ideas on the sound that would be used were changed after realising that they didn’t fit the trailer. Especially the song which we changed 3 times from the original idea, but eventually we decided on a song that worked well with the trailer.

I think that this trailer will do well for our target audience which is 18+. This is due to the level of violence and language that the game has.

If we were to do another game trailer I would make sure that we started a lot earlier and made sure we decided on a final plot a lot sooner, leaving us with plenty of time to create the trailer. I think that we did waste a lot of time in the beginning as we struggled to decide on something and this left us with little time when it came to our final animation. Although we managed to get it finished it would have been less stressful if we had more time to do this in.

I believe that I developed a lot of skills in 3D max while working on this project and I now feel more confident to do another project in a shorter amount of time. Some things within 3D Studio Max I learned that stood out for me was generating very realistic lighting as this is what made the trailer look so high-quality. Another was the animating as I got to understand the movements that had to be made for the effect of realism, for example the way that a car slightly leans when turning a corner. Some people might look at these as small things but to create a successful trailer these things must be done and I am very happy that we went into that much detail.

I think as a team we all worked together really well working with each others talents to produce something in a limited time.

To help assess how well our game trailer was I compared it to other game trailers that I had looked at in the beginning of our project. A good comparison for our project was the Final Fantasy Versus XIII game. This showed a car moving through an urban environment kind of like ours, so obviously this trailer is far more detailed and professional than ours but I think that we created our city scene to a good standard.

Production Log

I have covered a lot in this year with creating our game trailer, so I will show you some of the steps I went through in my work.

Inserting a Camera

Using 3d max select the camera icon on the right hand tool bar. Choose the type of camera you wish to add at create it.

The camera can be moved and rotated wherever you wish using these icons.

There are two types of cameras within 3D studio max. A target camera and free camera. The difference between the two is that the target camera is given an area that can be changed to follow any movements or actions within the scene.

A free camera does not therefore is often just used to shoot a still scene.

Inserting Lights

There are a few different types of lights to use in 3d max. First I will talk about the Omni light.

This light provides surrounding light and good shadows for a suitable project. In this case it was in a city. Once the light was selected I created the light at positioned it high in the centre of the city. The brightness can be changed in the options on the right.

Next is a skylight, this is probably the most useful whenever creating an outdoor scene as it can give a natural daylight illusion.

Like the Omni light I will put this in the air but instead it will be a lot higher so that it looks like the light is coming from the sun.

Texturing

This is a very simple procedure. You texture an object because you want it to have the appearance of a real object. For example you can have buildings created in 3d max but without textures to make them actually look like buildings it doesn’t look too good.

Once the editor is up you can begin to create your desired texture. You can also add an image onto the sphere for a texture if you have one. Once your texture if finished you can drag and drop the texture onto your object.

If you wish to further edit your object like for instance you want different textures on opposite sides of the object this can be done by right clicking and clicking convert to editable poly. This will allow you to do more with the object that the whole thing at once.

Rendering

This is at the last stage of your production, where you create your animation. All of the lighting and shading is finally processed and put in a viewport for you to see.
In my animation I selected the camera view port.

When you render an animation you have to change some settings and decide where you want your video to save to. I will show you how to do this.

First click range and type in the amount of frames you want to animate. Usually you look for your animation to start and finish on the last frames of the render.

Next change the output size depending on how big the file size or how detailed you wish for it to be.

Then make sure effects and atmospherics is ticked because this will animate any special effects you have added to your scene.

Now scroll down to the render output and tick the save file box, click files and then show where you wish for the animation to be saved.

Once this is done click render and wait for your clip to be animated.

I will show a slide show that will help you to understand what I have done in 3d max.

Other things I have covered are

Importing/exporting

Viewports

Saving/Opening Files

Animating

This is the final storyboard we had made for our trailer