Game Development Blog

When designing a game there are multiple platforms to choose from, all with their own benefits. This creates a bit of a problem when deciding which platform is best but as we had already used Unity last year we decided it would be best to continue using that . We are all so using Unity in our Game Development module so that is also a contributing factor. There is an abundance of tutorials and reference material with Unity also. Pro builder is a great tool designing and creating levels and maps.

The next problem we encountered was deciding which genre of game to make. There are a ton of options such as Battle royals, FPS, Racing, RPG’s etc. After carefully scanning the market to see which games where most popular at the moment and conducting interviews and questionnaires, we decided that the Arena Shooter genre would be a good genre to go with. The Arena Shooter genre was once a very popular genre but has recently declined due to other genres such a Battle Royals taking over the market. We felt that this might present an opportunity to bring out an Arena shooter and restore the genres popularity.

Overall the project went well. I found the research techniques that we learned in class helped a lot with finding out the most important features to add to our game. Making the personas and the paper prototypes was especially helpful when it came to the designing and creating the different screens and menus of our game like the leader board.

I think as a team we worked well and complimented each others strengths and weaknesses.

The main problems we faced was on the coding side of things. These problems where solved by just going back over the code and helping each other to find the specific problems.

I mainly worked on creating a functioning level and creating the weapons. There is still a lot to do.

Paper Prototype : First Iteration

This was the first iteration of the paper prototype. It has a main menu screen, a game screen and a pause screen. I asked some friends to try out the paper prototype and see if the knew what each screen was supposed to be and to give us some feed back. The feed back was mainly positive with most users understanding what was going on. Some of the user where unsure about the weapons and ammo situation and other did not understand the scoring system. Everybody also asked what happens when the timer runs out. I took this feed back and created the second iteration of the paper prototypes.

Second Iteration

For the second iteration of the paper prototype I added game over screen which will appear when the timer runs out. The game over screen consists of a birds eye view of the map, along with the leader board overlaid on top. I also made some changes to the main game screen. I removed the score as we are now using a leaderboard screen which can be brought up during the game and I also updated the gun and ammo UI to show the second gun the user has in the inventory along with the ammo of the currently equipped gun. I then got the same friends to test the paper prototypes again. The feed back I received was very positive towards the changes that where made.

User Research

To research what features where most important to include in the game I conducted interviews and handed out a questionnaire to couple of my friends . From the feedback received, it seemed that gameplay was the most important feature. Graphics and Audio where also important to people. I also found that PC was the most popular platform, with PS4 and Xbox 1 closely behind. Most of the people interviewed played for more than 10 hours a week. Bellow is some of the answers to the questions in the questionnaire and the interviews that where conducted.

Personas – Frank Doyle

The role of a persona is to implement the information gathered through user research into a visual representation of a user of the product. creating personas will help you to understand your users need, experiences, behaviors and goal. This is a very important when designing an application as the user is the driving force behind the success of the application.

Storyboard

The storyboard is a good way of visually representing a scenario. This makes a scenario easier to comprehend. The storyboard above is based on the actor from the persona earlier and it shows how the scenario will play out. For example in the storyboard above the actor is going about his daily routine which involves playing video games with his friends.