Overcoming Issues

Try and Triumph!

Programming can be a frustrating task and no more so did this fact strike home than when developing the code concerned with game play. Before I delve into the issues I experienced I should first note that I have
been able to create a simple interface system which, using buttons, switch from one page to another.

I was able to achieve this using a enum variable containing all the different states which can be found within the game such as playing, main menu and quitting.

Using boo-leans I could then switch state and then load everything needed within that one state using if statements which works very well and effectively. To those of you who aren't very confident with coding so far it simple means that I can set the game state to say main menu and then write code saying if the state is equivalent to main menu execute the corresponding code snippets.

I was able to switch between each state by writing that if a certain task is performed then the state needs to be changed to the next appropriate state required. This was fairly simple to code and I didn't encounter any issues however this changed when I began developing code for game play.

I should first start by explaining that when producing my code I wanted to create re-usable code which would then increase game performance as the less game assets that's needed to be loaded the less time is needed to run code making it more efficient. The game consists of a list of civilian agents and a number of targets which will walk randomly on the screen.

This was easy to achieve as it was simply an extension of a task I had learned a year previous during my first year at university. There were two ways which I could program the agents into the game which was to create separate lists for each level which would take up considerably more lines of code and decrease performance or create one list and simply reuse them in each level.

I wrote the code and then tested my game and the first level worked well however it was when I progressed to the second level where the first error was encountered. All the game agents were still and the code wasn't executing properly. The source for this error was that using a boolean value I would set all agent and user variables to null/zero meaning they wouldn't move again. I figured I could use a while statement and then reset the boolean value at the beginning of each level however this proved problematic as the game would freeze straight away.

After many tries and errors I came up with the idea of adding a loading page between each level and adding a reset method to each agent class. The reset method would simply set each variable to their default values and using a four second loading page I could call and execute this method for each agent as well as all the other game play variables. Doing this proved successful as the booleans would all be set to false again and the agents would spawn randomly again and walk randomly.

Design Phase

Designing an Interface

The first part of the game which needed designing was the main menu interface as that will be the first type of feedback which the user is able to interact with. I needed to create a background which conveyed the theme for the game and give the user an understanding of to expect.

Here is my first design for the game background:

I rather liked the design for this background as the blood spurt depicts a scene of violence within the game which the user can then immediately associate the game with. I also use the colour purple as it is bright and lively colour which I believe fits the arcade genre giving it a retro feel and also the two colours mix with each other very well.

Having created the menu background I now needed to develop the navigation buttons which will be used to navigate through the game.

The reason I hadn't simply put the buttons straight onto the background is because I need to add code to each button such as a vector position before they are drawn on screen to check for mouse click interactions.

This could be achieved by placing a rectangle variable on top of the buttons but is much harder to do as you are unable to see where you place the variables on screen whereas when drawing something on screen in Microsoft Visual Studios you add a rectangle position to the button before drawing them.

Here are my three menu navigation buttons:

I feel the colours work well together as it allows the purple to stand out making the buttons and writing easy to see especially as the background colour is only a slightly darker shade of purple meaning without the white border they simply blend together making them hard to distinguish. The buttons look good in my opinion however if I was to change them I would maybe remove the sharp corners and make them smoother.

Game Concept

Game Concept

Inspiration for my game concept comes from the popular video game Hitman. Hitman is a shooter game with added stealth aspects to create a game in which the player must kill targets silently and without detection or they face a backlash which ultimately hinders the ease to complete the main goal.

My game concept doesn't follow the stealth concept which is so fundamental in this game but rather uses an aspect of the game called 'instinct' in which the user has a limited amount and can use it to single out the target by blacking out the game world and highlighting, in gold, the target they need to eliminate. 

My game will use this game aspect but differently as for a short period at the begging of each level the game will change the colours of all game agents to either red or gold. 

The colour red is significant as in psychology red is used to communicate the feeling of danger or failure and I want the user to instantly recognize that feeling. 

The agents colour will then revert to a neutral green colour at which point the user will now be able to move the player agent and then track down the target.  

As you may have summarized the game will be a mixture of a shooter game and puzzle game as the user will need to recall the target (gold agent) and the pedestrians (red agents). The user will be given thirty seconds to decide and then kill the target to progress.

They're no restarts, paused or saved games as I'm creating this game similar to a retro arcade game meaning my game will be a short and consecutive causal game which the user can play when they've a spare ten minutes. 

The user will be given a score for each level based on how quick the player completes the level and can then add their game score to the leader-board provided they were able to complete the game. It is my hope that the drive to increase scores to reach higher up the leader-board will play a massive part in replay-ability.

To summarize the game will be a shooter/puzzle game which the user is given a short period of time in which they agents will turn either red or gold depicting which agent the gamer needs to kill. The agents are constantly moving at a steady pace making them harder to remember than one might expect.

After this period of time the agents turn green and the use can now play the game. If the user does not finish the level within thirty seconds or kill a pedestrian the user loses and is taken back to the main menu. If the user kills the correct agent they proceed to the next level. The game gets progressively harder with the addition of more agents.

Software Intoduction

Microsoft Visual Studios 2010

Microsoft Visual Studios is programming software developed by Microsoft which supports all variations of coding languages such as C, C++ and C# to name but a few. This program is made available to students for free. There are a large quantity of frameworks available all serving a multitude of different services however the one I'm interested in particular is the XNA4.0 framework used to develop video games.   

The reason I have chosen this software comes down to three key aspects which are experience, usability and accessibility. The first point, experience, is straight forward as I have been using this program for the past year and a half and feel confident using this to create a good and efficient project.

I feel the interface and overall software to be very simple and easy to use which I feel is defiantly a big factor to choosing a program as I don't waste time unnecessarily by trying to locate features which aren't easy to find and lastly this program is easily accessible as it is installed on all computers on the University of Plymouth campus.

GIMP

GIMP, The GNU Image Manipulation Program, is software used for creating and manipulating images. This software is an free open-source software which was engineered for Windows, Mac and Linux. The reason I have chosen this to create my images is simply because I have better skills using this software than Adobe's Photoshop.

FL Studios

FL Studios is a free open-source digital audio workstation developed by Image-Line. I have little experience using sound manipulation programs so needed to find one which seems easy to learn and easy to use and this particular program seems to fit the bill.

Now that I have decided on which software to use in the development of my game I now need to come up with a concept and hope to have a decent outline in my next blog update.