Final Devlogs

I started off with a different idea than the game I ended up working on! Initially, I chose the study skills client brief, as nutrition felt like a bit of a cop-out and research skills was going to be too difficult, but I found myself working on a nutrition game anyway. 

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I'd severely underestimated how much time and effort my other game was going to take up. It was also a bit awkward trying to figure out a way to make a topic as dry as study skills into a game that uni students would actually want to play and I eventually came up with the idea of a retro, Street Fighter style game. 

It took a few tries to get a working alpha prototype but I managed to illustrate my plan by using Twine. This is a demo: the idea was to teach students how to extract the most meaningful information from a paragraph in order to improve their note-taking skills. Each round would present the player with a short passage, and then make them choose the most optimal notes from that text, given three choices. The choices would've been allocated a point score from 1 to 3, and at the end the player's total score would be tallied up. If they achieved over a certain threshold, they won and "passed" the hypothetical test. 

This entire concept got scrapped, though, and I was happy to join the Time Well Fed team to work on the nutrition game. They quickly caught me up on their plans and I was soon able to start helping with the ideation process. I didn't have research applicable to nutrition, but our focus was fairly simple - teach students the importance of healthy eating in order to perform better academically, as well as teaching them how to manage their money. 

This is the high concept slide from our pitch presentation. The player would be encouraged to make mindful decisions based on their stats, which were energy, stress and health. 

At this stage, I also contributed to our general brainstorming and we came up with some random events that could occur during the game. Ultimately, these didn't make it into the final build, but the objective was to give the player opportunities to boost their stats, as well as to increase the realism of the life sim aspect. 

I wanted to take more of a "backseat" role for this project so as to free up more time to work on my solo one. To begin with, I volunteered to do just audio but I ended up also doing quite a bit of the UI stuff as well. I was worried that it would be too much, but audio was actually pretty straightforward and I enjoy doing UI. 

These are my sketches. Whilst looking around on Google for some preliminary inspiration, I came across a screenshot from an in-development indie game (whose title I couldn't find) which incorporated this cool, notepad design for a dialogue box. 

It prompted me to decide on a notebook motif for the whole game, since our target audience was university students and I wanted it to be reminiscent of the notebooks you'd have in school. 

I made a couple of mock-ups to get a feel for how the UI would look, and found some free fonts. The grocery store menu also unfortunately didn't make it, but I designed it based on a screenshot of the game Coffee Talk, by Toge Productions. I kept with the notebook theme by making the pause menu and dialogue box actually be the same asset. The idea was to have the sprite move upwards when the game was paused, and then return to its starting position on resume. Here is a short clip of that working. 

I did much of the UI-related programming myself, such as getting the pause menu to work and animate properly, as well as making sure all of the buttons worked consistently. I did have a nagging issue for a while that the player couldn't easily return to the main menu from the pause menu, because the button didn't work on the first click. It also affected the quit button, where the player couldn't quit until they'd pressed the other buttons a few times. 

I couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong, but by resetting all the buttons manually I was able to fix it. I couldn't say what was causing the quit bug, but part of the problem with the menu button was that I was trying to call the scene by its build number. George suggested I try calling the scene by its name instead and that seems to have sorted it out. 

These are the final assets which I made. I didn't include the buttons as part of the static background, because they were supposed to change colour when hovered or clicked, so it was easier to make them their own sprites. Again going with the notebook theme, I made the start menu to look like the first page of a standard journal or planner. 

We also incorporated a win-fail state that depended on the player's final academic score, which was based on their other stats. I designed these pages to look like exam papers, but in place of the questions it would show the credits. 

I also chose to reinforce the healthy-eating message we were trying to convey by the snacks lying around the paper. If the player failed, the snacks were unhealthy but if the player won, the snacks were healthier and actually included a bowl of soup - this was also meant to show that full meals are better than constantly snacking. 

• The audio side of things was very, very simple - I found clips that I liked and that fit the calm and relaxing aesthetic we wanted, and then implemented them where appropriate. This is a video of the background music working in the start menu, as well as the UI feedback. [[play audio slide]] 

• Since recording that, I got the music to play nicely across the scenes without any trouble. I originally wanted to have the background music change when the player's stats changed - for example, playing slightly more up-tempo music when their stress level was high - but that ended up being cut as well, because we really wanted to get this game out and done as soon as possible to work on our other stuff. 

• [[next slide]]

• I then had the problem where the scene would change before the UI sound had finished playing. In order to fix that, I had to learn about coroutines. This was difficult and confusing, but I sort of managed it with lots of help from YouTube and the team. I also sourced a couple of sound effects, such as pages turning and a cash register ding when the player spends money. 

• [[final slide]]

• The biggest issue I encountered with this project was seeming to not have the same project version as the rest of the group. This caused some headaches for me, as I couldn't work out why. I had to refer some implementation to others, as I didn't appear to have access to later stages of the game. However, this turned out to be no more than a GitKraken thing, which I honestly should've expected. I was pulling changes from my local branch, instead of the main one. I have deleted GitKraken now, and will not be using it again!

• With everything said and done, I'm proud of how Time Well Fed has come out, and would definitely like to work with this team again! Thanks for watching!

- I did audio and UI for this game 

- wanted to take a more backseat role to free up more time for the other project

- started with wildly different idea to what I ended up working on 

- initially chose study skills brief 

- nutrition felt like a cop-out and research skills was too difficult 

- it was kind of awkward trying to figure out a way to make such a dry topic into a game that uni students would want to play 

- came up with Street Fighter style game 

- here is the alpha prototype 

[[play prototype]] 

- the idea was to teach uni students how to extract the most meaningful info from a text to improve note taking skills 

- each round would show a short paragraph on a random topic, and then give three options for possible notes 

- these would give a score of 1, 2 or 3 points 

- at the end, if their score totalled over a certain threshold, they won and passed the hypothetical test 

[[next slide]]

- this entire concept got scrapped 

- TWF team quickly caught me up on the plan 

- I didn't have research applicable to nutrition, but our focus was simple 

- teach uni students the importance of eating properly to do better academically, and managing their money 

- this is the high concept slide from our pitch 

- the player would have to manage three stats - energy, stress and health - to generate a hidden academic score 

- I helped brainstorm some random events that would occur 

- these didn't make it into the final build 

[[UI sketches]] 

- these are the sketches I made 

- I found an example from an in-development indie game on Google 

- it had a cool notepad-style dialogue box

- I decided to do a notebook motif for the whole game 

[[next UI slide]] 

- I then made some mockups and sourced some fonts 

- the grocery store menu didn't make it either, but I designed it based on a screenshot from the game Coffee Talk 

- made the pause menu and dialogue box the same sprite 

- it would slide up the screen when the game was paused and then back 

- here's a clip 

[[play next slide]] 

- did most UI programming myself - also made sure the buttons worked consistently 

- had a small issue where the pause menu buttons didn't always work on the first click 

- couldn't figure out the exact problem but resetting the buttons fixed it 

- George suggested I call the main menu scene by name rather than build number 

[[show finished start menu]] 

- this is the finished start menu 

- made it to look like the first page of a journal or planner 

[[next fail state]] 

- our win-fail state depended on the player's final academic score 

- designed to look like exam papers 

- if the player failed, the snacks lying around were unhealthy 

[[show win state]] 

- if they won, the snacks were healthy 

- audio was very easy 

- sourced clips that fit the calm, relaxing aesthetic and implemented them where appropriate 

- this is a clip of the background music and UI feedback 

[[play audio slides]] 

- originally wanted the background music to change with the player's stats - e.g. more up-tempo when they're stressed - but that got cut too 

[[next slide]] 

- had a problem where the scene would change before the UI sound had finished 

- to fix it I had to learn about coroutines 

- it was difficult and confusing but I managed it with some help 

- these are some sound effects I found as well - e.g. pages turning 

[[final slide]] 

- biggest issue I had was a GitKraken problem 

- I didn't have access to the same version as everyone else and didn't know why 

- had to get others to implement some stuff like SFX 

- I'm proud of how TWF has come out and had a great time working with this team