Frontier Smash
Sprint 1
Our first task as a team was to set up our ground rules for working on the project as well as getting a rough idea of what we wanted for the paper prototype. Our game is a hack and slash action adventure where the player clears swarms of enemies and obstacles to clear the way for corporate development. My primary task as the game designer was to establish what we wanted tested in our prototype, as we would not be able to include everything. While our game moves in real time it made most sense to convert it to turn based for the paper version.
The first sprint of any project can often be a bit disjointed as the team begins to get to know each other and the work groove has yet to be established. I felt we got off to an okay start but I struggled to correctly explain my vision to the team and was not diligent enough in getting our Game Design Document (GGD) ready quickly enough. I have since made good progress on it and am keeping in mind how each of our skill sets can be applied to create the most engaging experience possible. I am looking forward to getting more done this sprint and seeing our ideas fleshed out in the digital version.
Sprint 2
For sprint number two the team set forward in getting our ideas and features into digital form. I was first tasked with cleaning up and consolidating our GDD, as it was left over from the last sprint. It was a time consuming process and after talking with the group I needed to rethink what our capabilities and limitations were and how to make sure the vision stays true while be realistic with our skill set. We unfortunately lack in programming but make up for it in art and modeling, therefore I tightened up our mechanics to be more straightforward and limited the amount of different weapons we will have.
Going forward I will be trying new techniques to animate our character appropriately into the game, which is a new area that I will need to look into. I am also getting the HUD ready to be implemented for our programmer and artist. Overall we made some progress but we are still not hitting a good swing of momentum. This was especially the case before because I did not have the GDD in a good state.
As the lead I need to be making sure everyone has realistic expectations but also pushing people enough that we are able to move cards more steadily. Much of this falls on the producer as well but since it is my game concept I have extra responsibility to see it through. We are making progress towards our first level and with a better direction from the GDD and better understanding our limitations the game may have changed from initial conception but not in ways that take away from the core fun that we are trying to find.
A core part of the game is clearing out ‘hard’ obstacles, in this case boulders. We had these placed on our play map and had enemies spawn on the top, left, and right side of the map. Each enemy type could only spawn on its respective side and we kept their movement a bit restricted to test out how quickly our player would become overwhelmed. Their attacks reflected what we would like to achieve in the digital version with the larger enemy having an AOE smash attack and the smaller quicker enemy having a lunge attack.
I put together a 3 page rule sheet with the set up procedures and rules for movement, attacking, and enemy spawning. As will be the case in the digital version, the enemies will spawn in timed waves that the player must manage while also clearing out obstacles to progress through to the next level. A key part of the game will be managing corporate laborers who will spawn to develop the land that is cleared away, this way kept out of the paper prototype because it felt too unwieldy to get good playtest results. Instead, we focused on testing out enemy types, spawn timing, and overall player strength against enemy swarms.
I similarly limited issues on the levels that may cause issues with AI path finding. I also researched the pros and cons of the isometric perspective that we are going for as it will be new for all of us. One of the advantages is that we can use 2D art and modeling together and use the skill sets that we have available, in this sense we can get something unique and cool looking that can make up for some of the skills we do lack.
Our backlog also needed to be reworked to better reflect the changes we had made to our GDD. This was no small task and we spent at least a day and a half updating the backlog so we could get a better start for the sprint and also adhere to the vision we are setting out to accomplish. Lastly, I created a mock up of our main menu that our 2D artist can take for when they get assigned the card. I had a lot of fun creating the menu and tried to blend the sci-fi and western themes that we are combining for the game. I was unable to complete work related to our player HUD which will be a key part of the player experience. The other cards I were assigned ended up taking longer than expected so it has been pushed into the next sprint.
Sprint 3
Our goals for Sprint 3 were to finalize our enemy designs, flesh out our level, create the obstacles for our first level, and get some rudimentary animations ready. We were able to complete most of these goals and then a little bit extra. This sprint also included building out our first prototype. For myself, I started off doing edits and changes to our GDD as to better elaborate and formalize the role of 'laborers' who play a key role in progressing through our game. To make sure that it would be clear to players what the role of the 'laborers' are we wanted more visual indicators for when they spawn as well as dividing up our levels into sections that the player makes their way through instead of the vast level we initially had. This change will really help us for providing more feedback for the player and once we implement the system into the game we will already have good documentation.
For the first level itself, I worked with our programmer and level designer to place our spawners and make sure they were working properly with our attacks and movement. This was pretty successful as the enemy type, a Howler, is a light and fast enemy that is intended to swarm the player. The enemies also successfully blocked the player if they did not move out of the way fast enough. The dash for the player also worked well but we ran into a camera issue on the level where hitting the collider on the obstacles. The solution for now was to remove colliders on our obstacles since they are purely aesthetic at this stage.
The level was able to be textured and fleshed out with our obstacles as planned although enemies were still reduced to capsules as we did not get the sprites into the game like planned. I added a audio file with some forest and alien themed music to give the feeling of being on a hostile alien environment. Finally, I created our google drive for easier access for the team, especially for our models and sprites. Since our modeler was sick and unable to access his model on Zbrush I ended up UVing the model and exporting it out so that he could get it textured for the level.
Alright, with all of these tasks out of the way I can talk about where I spent the majority of my time this sprint. I took it upon myself to animate the sprites we will be using for the game. We are using an isometric view which means our sprites are oriented differently than in a 2D project. It has led to some early challenges as this perspective, while popular, is tricky to get right. After looking at some tutorials which were primarily for 2D sprite work I tried many times to get the animation working. Initially it was somewhat successful as creating and cutting the sprite sheet was handled by unity and creating an animation clip was straightforward as well.
However, getting the animation to flow and move properly was a big headache that required multiple revisions and resets of my animations in Unity. I went back and forth with our 2D artist multiple times to touch up on the sprites and separate them into different pieces in an effort to get a smoother animation, even if it was just a first pass. Ultimately, I struggled a lot with this and became frustrated at the lack of progress I was making. Not only because it would reflect poorly on me as the game designer but also hamper the rest of the groups work.
I was not able to get the animations working for this sprint so they have carried over into the next one but on a positive note I am much more comfortable getting the animations ready to go even if they were not completed in time for this build. I will need to communicate better with my 2D artist to make sure we are on a better page for what I need to animate the sprites properly.
The sprite sheet above shows the progress I was able to make during the sprint even thought it was not entirely successful. Animating 2D sprites was something I had never tried before and it was a new challenge to try and get it to work in an isometric perspective, which is in between 2D and 3D. Although it was challenging and not completed the way I set out to at the start of the sprint it is not always realistic to expect success with something new right at the start. For the next sprints I need to give myself more time and reach out to those I know that have more experience animating and learn what I can from them. I was happy to see our game get more into shape for our first build and get it into the hands of some players.
Sprint 4
At this stage in the semester and the project we are about halfway done, and it has gone exceptionally fast. This sprint was particularly successful for me and the team which hopefully will set us up for a better play test next time. I was able to complete 8 points worth of work in this time which included some backlog work and other behind the scenes work to incorporate what we learned from our first play-test, which did not go as well as we would have liked. I considered the scope and skills that we have in the time and re-did our asset list for the first level as well as the style of the assets which was starting to drift away from the initial vision of the game. I also laid out the basic features that we absolutely needed in our next build and created a priority list of tasks for the team so we could all be on a better page of what we need for the game to be complete.
After this backlog work it was time to take a look at our level, which needed some serious work. As a designer I did not initially put enough care into the direction of the level and it ended up in a very awkward state that after messing around with for a while resulted in a complete scrap of the initial concept. Although never a fun process to say 'hey this just isn't working' it does mean you can start with a clean slate, that we sorely needed.
Looking at other games in our genre, namely Bastion, I redesigned our first and subsequent levels with various floating platforms that can still remain within the theme of our game while making each level a bit more unique and also making it easier to design enemy encounters around. It immediately made a positive impact on designing the levels and how our enemy encounters would work and it was a good motivator for finishing this sprint and moving onto the next one.
Up above is the block out I finished for level 1 which although not fully completed yet went a lot smoother and easier than the first passes at our level. Using this model as a template I completed the annotated maps for level 2 and 3 which take the player to a new biome but will keep the same platforms that you can see up above. The assets we had ready were put into their relative positions and each platform was placed. I'll still need to test out the nav mesh with our enemy AI and make sure that the various obstacles can be destroyed properly but overall, I was really pleased how much better this felt than our original pass. So even though it was late to make a redesign I think it will be worth it in the end.
Rough mock up of the first level
Revised block out for level 1
Cut sprite sheets
The annotated maps for level 2 and 3 came together a lot better this time because of the better direction I gained from creating the block out for level 1. The second level takes the player from an extra-terrestrial forest into a desert biome that includes new enemies and obstacles for them to destroy. It follows a similar path toe the first level but with distinct environmental differences on each platform and it was much easier to draw the ideas out here than with our old level designs. I’m much more inspired to work on the levels now than I was before and really enjoying it now.
Following suit, the third level came together a lot better as well and takes the player into a swamp with further new enemies and obstacles to overcome. Each level having a different biome should add some variety to the various platforms that the player will engage with. I'm pleased with how the change in direction revitalized the levels and not only will look more interesting and coherent but also give us more room to play around with props and skyboxes for each level. For me and the group we had a successful sprint that saw us really move forward on a lot of the ideas we are trying to create, and that feels extremely good considering our slow start.
Sprint 5
We are nearing the end of the semester and this project. Sprint 5 had its challenges and triumphs for the team as we had a new build for the play testers. We are still juggling a lot of production classes but ultimately, we got a much better build out to play testers for this round. This sprint was pretty successful for me as I was able to get our new level working and tested before our second playtest. I had to do a significant amount of catch up after redesigning how our levels would work as well as account for how our current mechanics would fit in. Namely how our enemy spawn times would work and how much space the player should be given.
I also had to consider the amount of destructible props we would have on each platform. There needed to be enough to make the environment feel lived in but also space for the player to move around. A core mechanic for the game is to be able to destroy the environment as you progress through each platform. Our 3D modeler created a good variety of props that I could use and I was pretty happy with how they ended up looking, although I imagine there will be more tweaking after we get back our playtest results. I spent a good deal of time adjusting the enemies and spawners for our level as well because they had not been looked at after the redesign of our levels.
For the sake of the playtest and the feedback we got from the first round of tests I knew that the player was vastly underpowered. To compensate I made the enemies a fair bit weaker in terms of health but kept their damage high enough that they felt threatening when within range of the player. We still lack some visual feedback for when the enemies attack but when we did internal testing, they felt a lot better to fight and dodge. The player received a huge boost to their health and damage which should add some more fun moments when doing battle. The final platform of our level was much larger than the rest with more enemies and obstacles overall and it might be the direction players want in the final version of our game, or perhaps a mix of larger or smaller platforms.
We had some new textures and were also in need of new prefabs to accommodate gameplay changes. The new prefabs included the enemies as well as the destructible props so that we could make changes to textures easily and quickly. The new textures really brought to life the feeling of being on an alien planet ripe with resources and hostile alien fauna. The easily editable prefabs were really helpful for changing the environment and our enemies to accommodate the level. I also made sure that our level had appropriate collision detection for when the player moves around the level and the platforms.
New annotated map for level 2
New annotated map for level 3
Starting platform for level 1
Sprites for the Mauler and Howler enemies
Prop prefabs and full level 1
Sprint 6
For this sprint, I was able to take feedback from our last playtest and implement a lot of the changes that our testers wanted to see. My first task was to actually see our final results. We had about 6 play testers actually fill out the google form with a few more who left critiques on our forum post as well as some people I had try out the game casually. The game received much better feedback than our first build and was a lot more fleshed out. Firstly, the dash felt unimpactful compared to how fast the player was moving so I tweaked some of the numbers affecting base player speed and the dash time allowed. It’s in a better spot now but will have some more informal testing to make sure it works for the size of our platforms as well.
I also moved the spawners to new locations with their own platform so that it is also more clear where they will be spawning. Speaking of laborers it was unclear to players how exactly they were be spawned, which was tied to a destructible object on the platform. Therefore I decided to change the object needed entirely.
There was a fair amount of tidying up that I did on level 1 but I also created the block out for our second level which takes the player to a desert environment with new enemies but will keep the crystals from level 1 to add some continuity that I think is sorely needed. The level follows a similar formula of the first where there are platforms with resources that need to be destroyed by the player, protect the laborers tied to each resource and then destroy a rune stone tied to laborers who are protected.
The block out did not pose any significant problems as I followed the formula from the first level but will be doing more iteration on it so it stands apart a little more. One of the changes will be having a longer bridge platform to the final platform so that there is a challenge on the way to the final platform which will be unique from the first level.
Although points wise, I could have done more, each card that I did complete was valuable for the development of the project and getting more specific feedback from our playtest was helpful in steering me in the right direction for which cards I should take on for the sprint. I am happy we have more to show as a group since it has been a struggle to get new content in as fast as we would have liked and cut other features that may have improved the game. Currently the game has a defined core loop with challenge that we will be able to refine for the final push of the semester.
The form also revealed that many play testers were not aware or did not use the dash ability at all. Only half of the testers used it which also resulted in them saying that the enemies were a bit too powerful at close range, the dash was intended to compensate for the enemies attacks. This shows that we need more feedback on the player HUD to show the cool down of the dash so at least there is more feedback for the player. We also saw on the form that the enemy spawners for each platform were too overwhelming for players so we implemented a limit on when and how many could be spawned at once as well as making sure they were able to correctly target the laborers who the player needs to protect.
We already had a bright blue crystal as a prop for the level so I decided to use that for now. The different dimensions of the prop and size made it a bit tricky to function how we wanted but it is much better visually because it also shows it is a valuable resource that you are breaking up to work on. It seems sort of obvious now but the change made a big difference on the aesthetic of the platforms and is much more clear visually, so I hope that players will welcome the change when we publish.
Blockout for level 2 and new enemy sprites
Due to time constraints we had to drop our level 3 entirely and I spent the remainder of our project finalizing levels 1 and 2, balancing enemy encounters, and assigning the final cards on Trello. Our levels ended up in a decent place and looked great with our finalized textures and props.
Checkpoints on the left and laborer sprites on the right
Final level 1
Final level 2
This was an extremely difficult project to get over the line, but I was exceptionally proud of the team for sticking with it and putting in a lot of hours to get us published on itch.io. For me personally it was a lot of new roles to juggle and I learned a lot about scoping a project, managing sprint expectations, and advocating for the team. One aspect of the game I was very proud of was our 3D and 2D assets that really added a lot of color and variety to our levels. Similarly, our music added a lot to playing through the levels.
Thank you for sticking with us and reading through the design process for Frontier Smash!