Documentation of Boot Camp 2 - The Power of Ahi

 Hey Guys!
Today is Monday the 26th of July 2021

This Blog Post is for Assessment Three of BSA503 - Boot Camp 2 (Project: The Power of Ahi)

These past three weeks have been interesting to say the least. We decide on what video game and garment we are making in the first week. Second week worked on projects and last week, continue working and the complete a garment and video game.

I was in the groups of UX/UI (What the player/user experience in the video game), Level Design and Coding. Initially, I wasn't in UX/UI but then become the Head of Department, that's where most of my time went into. Personally, I believe that most of the UX/UI work done by myself, which, upsetted and made me feel very alone in the huge group.

So I'll show you the work done I done during these three weeks for this project.

Level Design:

Frist sketch of a level design, to get thoughts on paper:

From the feedback from the Rachel Mann (gaming tutor), she suggested that the level design would look more natural, ie, curvy areas rather than square/rectangle. A recommendation to look at was, Ori and the Blind Forest, which was one of the inspirations of designing this game.

After looking at Ori and the Blind Forest, I looked also at Hollow Knight and Bloody Trapland 2, as they were games that I've seen people on YouTube playing.

Sketch above was the rough sketch from week one, where the rest of Level Design team was happy with. Week two started, Level Design team had a chat with Environment, Character and Animation team to see what they think of the level and what their thoughts on what the enemies and the player would be doing.

Shown below was a few notes of what they said for me to interrupt into the level design.

This is the Final Design of the theory of the game.

Optimal Pathing drawn over by Morgan Allington.

That's that for level design, unfortunately. I wanted to help Morgan out but it seemed he knew what to do and whenever I tried asking him can I play test it, so I know what's going on, anything I can do in level design or in UI/UX. He would say sorry I'm busy or something. Then ask someone else to test for bugs in the game. Which, as a team-mate in this project, made me feel left out and unable to comment more in this sector.

Maybe for next time for a three week project, maybe to refine the area of of the game. Not so huge area for the player to play around, or maybe for an early access game just show the forest area, then so in the exhibition the possible next areas, ie the caves and the lava/Mahuika Boss area.

UX/UI:

Head Display:

Let's start with the head display for the player to know what their life is or how many fingernails/gems they collected.

When designing the life bar, I took inspiration of the Hollow Knight life bar and incorrupt Maori theme. 

The Fish hook, which Kasey (Our Student Maori Liaison) told me, was meaning strength in Maori Symbolism. But Google said something on safety during travel across seas/water and prosperity, which that was probably a mistake for me, should have research online as well as asked through people experience.

The Greenstone I thought would be a good representation of live. Without research my understandment was greenstone was life to Maori culture, research with Google; 

"Treasured, valuable and with spiritual significance, pounamu – New Zealand’s highly prized stone – has been used by Māori to denote status and authority, for adornment, and for making peace."

Information by https://teara.govt.nz/en/pounamu-jade-or-greenstone

Personally still, with this information, does make sense to the game. As stated above with the fish hook, I should've research into this before design.

With the fire hand, I originally just design it as separate flame, then added koru shape in the middle. Then suddenly the flame started to look like a hand. Blessed unintentional design.

Final designs for this and the different stages the players is in (what I mean, when the player has three, two, one or no lives left and when they collect between no fingernails/gems to collecting full ten fingernails/gems)

I'm pretty satisfied with this design as it is clear and easy to understand for the player. On top of that it fits well with the Maori theme of the game. Like to thank Argus Chey and Abby Stirling with the feedback, as my confidents with these designs weren't fully there. Was doubting if the player would understand and/or if it was offending to Maori culture.

Death Screen:

I asked the group, the full team, what would be the death screen, so when the player/character dies, what would it look like. They said embers, as the main purpose of this video game is to return the fingernails/gems to Mahuika, the Fire Goddess. So by dying, the player failed in the mission and the fires die out.

So basic by effective death screen. White font, that's been used throughout the game and chosen by the Comms/Marketing team, with the embers flying around on a black screen.

I really like how this came out, I was unable to connect the two works together in time for the documentation. Even though when the character the player is playing dies, makes the player annoyed/irritated that they die, I feel peace and hope to try the game again with this animation.

Okay to something that wasn't about this artwork/design, but the process with working with difficult people.

I animated the embers as the person in the Animation team, didn't understand what I was asking. Also when I show them an example and what I was doing as an example they said "that looks good enough". Which irritated me, cause there wasn't even a glow, transparency or form in the rough animation/animatic. Their reaction to my request felt like they didn't want to do it or cant be bothered. With that experience, has told me that if I am going to collaborate with people in a project;

1. If someone doesn't understand what I am saying, don't get frustrated, taking a step back, rethink my words or think of an example of what I like them to do,
2. If someone doesn't want to do the work I ask them to do, ask them if they want to something else. If they really cant be bothered, don't ask them again.

This person's action (I'm not naming names) has told me a lot about this person and people like that. These events with this person really took a lot out of me, mentally, physically and emotionally.

Menu and Control Screens:

The Menu Screen is the introduction to the game, so we (UX/UI team) thought the best way to welcome the player to the game would be last level, the lava level. I took inspiration from caves from inside volcanos and other lava-based games.

My idea of the Menu to Controls Screen (and Controls to Menu Screen) would be something on this line of transmission. Unfortunately, I haven't designed a game before, only played/watched people play, thought this was a good idea, apparently doesn't work that way. It was still a good idea I thought.

This Animation transmission was made before the Credit pages were thought of.

Dialogue Box:

Fireballs for the Environment Team/Moving 'Enemy':

Any Callable Works:

Credit Pages:

I say these works are done as a callable as the back drawings are done by other people, but the design layout done by me. I wanted people to be knowledge truly by the work they done and to see how many people worked on this huge project.

Each page showing each levels of the game and having the words clearly seen. 

I did forget to add the buttons on the last page, but will be Menu and Back Buttons.

Back art done by, (from top to bottom) Francis Jerome Tangle, Shizuka Ueda and Juan Velez Gaviria.

Pause Screen:

The Pause Screen went through a couple of phases as one, different people were designing the hawk differently as shown on the first design (Designed by India Pryer) and the second design (by Braden Ainsey), which in the end was the final design within the game. I kind of wanted to keep India design in the Pause Screen as it was a well-designed hawk and worked well with the signpost, but for the consistency in the game, I felt like we had to use Braden.

During the overview, making sure things seem to work for the game and to make it easy for the coding, I realised that the Control button would make the player go back to the Menu and wouldn’t be able to go from the Control Screen to Continue Game. To make it easier I took the Control button away then added a feather with the controls on it, for those that didn’t know the controls. After talking to Rachel and the rest of the UX/UI team, we decided no on the feather, as controls are quite simple and the visual of the feather is a bit overbearing.

Sleeping Taniwha/Still Enemy:

The design of the Taniwha was designed by Jessica Steininger and this was also sketched by her, but I cleaned line and colour this.

Dialogue Box with Character Sprite:

These are the dialogue boxes set up with the characters sprites placed. These were as asked from the Character team, but the Audio team didn't really agree with it as what they produce doesn't fit this format. But these were still made for the exhibition/protentional for the game. 

Artwork of Mahuika done by Kasey Leonard.

Final Words:

I learned a lot through these three weeks, not just how fashion is important to gaming, but how these video games are made. How good communication in a team is very important.

I would believe that we should have been clearer in our proposal or have some sort of design bible for this project as something were confusing or inconsistence in design.

I kept going back and forth with the different teams making sure we had consistence designs throughout the game and marketing. It doesn't help that my English and understanding of English has been rocky, ie, words don't work with me some days, it’s hard for me to explain myself and understand what people are asking me or telling me to forward to someone else. (By the way, English is my first language, unsure what's cause this to me. I'm checking it out with Doctor).

For Myself:

• Should have made things a lot simpler in design for this three-week project,
• Research into the culture/theme more before designing,
• Make a few design concepts and ask the team,
• When asking for feedback be more concise in what I’m asking for feedback, as I did notice people would just brush over it, saying its fine.