ending screen

this is the screen which will be seen by the player once the game has been completed.


here we see freds fish being returned home safely to their mother. the idea is that the fish will swim onto the screen and be greeted while the well done text pops up.

inspiration

while doing research on my game i came across a collection of games called 'black fish'

i really liked the idea behind this and the look of it.

http://www.freegaming.de/onlinegames/Adventure-|-Action-Games/black-fish-3-eat.html

font used

i decided to use the font 'ninifont' which i downloaded from dafont.com

i feel it goes with the childish feel of my game and doesn't use capital letters.

gameplay

this is the beginning of my gameplay. there is no point in me posting the full thing here in images as i think you can get a feel of it from here. you will control the fish through the levels which will be fairly short.

the sign at the start will be a rollover so that the user can be reminded of the aim of the game.

update

it doesnt look as though i have a lot of development here. this is because all my flash pieces are made up of images i created a while back - i was happy with these images and think they work well in creating my game. i am very happy with the look of my game at the moment.

actionscript is one thing which is worrying me as i have never used it before. earlier in the term at one of trev's lectures my stomach turned everytime i looked at the board and saw actionscript there!! I am slowly getting the grasp of it though, most of my work has been done through looking up tutorials and following them.

loading screen

i created a loading screen which will be seen after the user presses the play button. this screen can be seen below.

after the loading screen is seen it then goes onto gameplay.

the title screen

the title screen is the screen which the player will see before the play screen. it will include the title of the game.




screenshot 1 - the bubbles rise up the page. i did this using a motion tween and a motion guide.

screenshot 2 - the title begins to appear and the bubbles keep floating upwards. when each part of the title appears a splash of water is heard.

screenshot 3 - an underline appears in the same fashion as the word 'fred' along with a water splash. the bubbles keep rising upwards.

screenshot 4 - 'the fish appears' in the same fashion as mentioned before while the bubbles are still rising upwards.

in the background there is a sound of the sea.

this then leads on to the play screen.

name and objective

finally after much thought over my game concept and game title i have decided what to use.

game title - fred the fish

there is no particular reason for this, just the plain fact that it is catchy and simple

game objective - fred has lost his babies in the deep blue sea.

level one - fred must collect all his lost fish by swimming over them. they will then swim close behind him and follow him to the end.

level two - fred's fish are all collected - now he must swim through this level without loosing them. he will loose them if he touches certain evil fish. the idea is to get to the end with all his fish in tact.

each level after level two will be more or less the same - getting more difficult each time.

you may have a chance to rescue any babies which you loose from level two onwards.

once all babies have been lost it is game over. you complete the game by returning the baby fish back home safely to the mother.

into flash

I am a complete flash novice - never used it so even opening flash seemed like a big deal to me!

I didnt quite know where to start but eventually set on the play screen - the main screen which the player will see to navigate to play the game, see the intructions and view the demo.

above was my first attempt at the screen - the idea of a fish in a tank. although im still unsure about how this would fit into my game. i am still not 100% sure about the aim of my game. i like the idea of a notice board that could act as a button giving the player intrusctions and tips.

I like the colour pallette above as the colours are quite soft and sublte in comparioson to the harsh orange colour of the fish.


above is my final title screen with the play button, and intructions button.

I created a front facing version of the fish to go on here and left the idea of the fish tank as the fish tank limits where my game can lead to.

my characters

above is my final fish - the main character! i decided to go for the goldfish as it wouldn't normally be found under the sea, so thought it would be a bit different to use this. also the bright orange colours used will stand out against any background i create.

i have yet to come up with a name for my character so will brainstorm this at a later date.


above is a female version of my final character....i may or may not use her but at this moment i'm not sure what sex my fish will be.

i have basically just added lips and eyelashes to the previous image to create this - its amazing what small things can make a difference.


above is a baby fish - which again i may or may not use depending on the nature of the game.

all i did to get this one was shrink parts of the original fishes body parts, add a larger eye and take away some fins. i think the large eye makes it look cute.

Above are some scenery images which i put into illustrator using the same approach as i did with the fish.

I think when it all comes together it is going to look good, although as mentioned before I dont know if these colours are going to match with the feel of my game yet so some development may need to be done on these.


same again for the images above.

above are some of the sketches i done after they have been put into illustrator. i experimented with colour and i also decided that they looked better without a black outline. although this could prove to be a problem when I start developing scenery as I don't want the fish to blend into the background. I also still don't know the feel of my game so some of the colours used here may be inappropriate.

I am also not sure on the type of fish to use yet so this is something I have still to look into.

Hmmm....!?

I have been having some trouble with my game in the way of the concept and aim of the game. I feel it is very simple at the moment and with me creating a game in flash, I should be designing a game with a unique concept.

Something clever and something which has not been done before, but in a simple way. I feel I came to a wall which has prevented me from going further therefore I put off any work, which I know is not the way to be approaching this problem.

I am now going to re-look at any concepts I have came across during my research and come up with something which is going to be simple enough for me to achieve (as I am a total novice with flash) but also keeps the player playing.

Above are more character sketches. I wasn't too happy with the previous ones so too another approach to designing these ones. I think they will look good once they get put into illustrator!

Afew sketches above of plantlife and other objects which could be featured underwater.

Character Developement

I took one of my sketches and placed it into illustrator to create a vector image from it.

I slightly changed the shape of the fish before adding colour and shading





Above I was experimenting with colour. I like this fish due to the simplicity of it, although when I showed people this image the first thing they said was 'it's a little bit boring'.

above is another sketch which I then put into illustrator




Above is the sketch with colour and shading added. This one is a little more intersting in comparison to the first fish. This game is going to be mainly aimed towards children so I want the fish to have character.

Again a sketch which I put into illustrator

I really like this fish, I think it has a lot of character. My next step is to develop this fish further.

Class - 16/10/2009

Today we looked at things to consider when developing our games. We looked at what is in a game, characters, storyline, marketing, gameplay, levels etc. We watched a a talk by Tod Howard (ted.com) which I found very interesting.

After chatting with mike and telling him my idea he has given me some ways in which I could develop my idea further. He suggested that I do different levels in different scenery. For example the first level could be in the pipes, then the second in a stream, the third in a river etc. He also suggested that I do each level from a different angle - such as birdseye view, then a side view and maybe a view slightly tilted. I feel this has helped me and has given me a direction to go to develop my idea further.

The next steps I will take is work out my character profile. I will consider everything that was discussed on Friday to bring together the look and feel of my game.

Research

I thought about what fish do and what they might want - its sounds stupid but it helped me to deicde on the aim of my game. My initial idea was a game about a fish, who starts life in a small bowl and wants to get to the sea and after each level is completed the fish gets into a bigger bowl, eventually ending in the sea.



I thought about this idea some and took it further. I am going to develop the idea of a maze game, where the fish has to find it's way through pipes after being flushed down the toilet. It will eventually make its way into the sea.


Above is a story board which I did for the idea.

Here are some sketches I did for charachter development.

Research

Above is a mindmap looking at the types of gaming out there from table top to console games


Above is a mindap looking at the various genres of console games. This helped me to determine what sort of game I want to create.


First of all I researched problem solving gaming. I thought about a game where the characters need to get home but they find obstacles along the way which prevent them from getting home. I took inspiration from a game called 'ben there, dan that' by zombie cow studios.

http://www.zombie-cow.com/?page_id=17
download that game here.

I then thought about a maths game which would primarily be aimed at children.

This was another idea for problem solving. I though about doing a hidden object game where a diffrent member of the family are looking for certain objects in certain rooms, but this has already been done before and would be hard to make original.

I then jotted down some ideas for an adventure game. From this I looked at characters I could use for a game.


After doing my research I have decided that I want to use the theme of under the sea for my game. I would like the game to be for children. The next stage of my ideas is to look into game ideas using this theme.

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