Reflection on my video game

1. Production Reflection
Georgia Brown

2. Week 1
In week one of production I started off by researching a case study. I decided to research the game ‘Pippa
Funnell – Secrets of the Ranch’ which is a game that I have played a lot since around 2007. we started off by
watching a big PowerPoint presentation which explain and taught us all of the key aspects of video games.
Then we had to match all of the terminology that we had learnt to the game we were doing our case study
on. This really helped me to understand what each term meant and how you should properly implement
them when making a game. This task was meant to be completed on the Tuesday and then finished off on
the Friday as it was very long. Doing this really helped me t understand how complex games really are and
how there are so many different things like the characters and world and rules and interface to consider
when planning our own game. On the Wednesday we started our initial plans which consisted off coming up
with potential game ideas and then whittling them down to one main idea which we would end up making.
We then went into more detail on a different slide about as many aspects of the game that we could so that
when we came to making it we already knew what we had to do and we knew that the game wouldn’t be
missing any major parts. We also made a mood board to get ideas from and then made a schedule so that
we wouldn’t fall behind in our allotted time. This schedule helped to keep me on track as I referred to it
when needed to know what to do when I was unsure, it also helped me to get things done as I then knew,
once looking at it, how much work I had left to do and how long I should spend on each specific task. The
finial thing that we did in week one was research of four games and the interviews of some of our target
audience. The research wasn’t that in depth as it was just an overview of the type of game it was and how
that compared to my game idea. This helped me to understand how these popular games appealed to the
target audience, which was a similar one to mine, and how I could do that too. We then did interviews of
some people from our target audience so that we could understand what aspects of these other games we
should include in ours and why. This definitely helped me to appeal to them more as I took on board many
of the things they said in order to create a better game for my target audience.

3. Week 2
The first thing we did in week two was our production experiments. I did two Photoshop experiments, one
was a match four and the other was animated. Then I also did an audio experiment on BeepBox to learn how
to use their website so that I could use it to create songs and sound effects for my game. The match four that I
made wasn’t very god, it was only an experiment and as I only had to animate one I didn’t do that to this one.
Another reason I didn’t put much effort into it was because at that point I knew that I wasn’t going to make a
match up game. Because I knew this I decided to try to create a side scroller and therefore I made an
experiment where a dog jumps over hurdles to get hotdogs. I think that it was very successful as the dog had
a very good walk cycle where it could jump up over the jumps and land well. Tis was very good practice as I
hadn’t done any animation since the Irn-Bru project so it was a good way to get into it again. Even though it
was good the background on the dog experiment didn’t move yet that was time due to time restraints and the
fact that it wasn’t necessary. Towards the end of week two I also finished off any work from week one that I
hadn't completed as we had been set three PowerPoints and there was a lot of work in them and I wanted to
make sure I had done them all correctly. However on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I wasn’t able to get
to college as it had closed due to really bad snow which was unexpected. Because of this is pent the week
doing the audio experiment and writing it all up on the fourth PowerPoint. The audio snippet that I did for my
experiment was okay however I am not very good at music and therefore it wasn’t very advanced. If I could re-
do it I would maybe try to add more instruments and change the settings around as mine was very plain and
straight forward. After this I then wrote up a reflection on each experiment including the audio saying how I
felt it was good or how I could improve. I also wrote about the process that I used to get to that final product
which is shown on the production experiment PowerPoint. Despite doing this there wasn’t really much else to
do that week as we hadn't been set any work and therefore everything else had to wait until the third week
which was meant to be for production which obviously set us back slightly.

4. Week 3
At the beginning of week three we started off with the proposal which was the fifth out of eight documents we
had to complete. The proposal covered the things that, if it were real, you would pitch to someone about your
video game and the reasons why and how you would do it. It covered the name, the audience, your rationale,
the projects concept and how you would evaluate it once it had been made. I decided on the name ‘Crazy
Mare’ because it reminded me of a game which is called crazy taxi yet mine is about horses and therefore I
though crazy mare sounded good. Then I researched and decided upon the audience for my game however I
had to factor in the part of the audience that had already been set for us in our brief. As we had to do a game
for people aged between 16-19 I researched what I thought they would be like and came up with an audience
who liked and own smart phones, they were all genders and sexualities and were of the psychographic
‘achiever’ or ‘needs driven’ as my game was aimed towards peoples competitive nature. I then explain how I
had learnt a lot of Photoshop skills over the course on the Irn-Bru project, video rotation and most importantly
the print rotation and how I thought that would therefore benefit me greatly when creating my video game.
Once I had finished the rest of my proposal I started to do my pre-production PowerPoint and the first part of
that was to do a style sheet. Despite making one I don’t feel as though I used it enough as I just made the game
to what I thought it should look like in my head. For example the background wasn’t related to the colours I
had chosen it just looked realistic as it was set outside. In addition as I did everything in pixels I didn't use a
font at all and therefore that part was additionally wasted. the only part f this planning that I did use was the
layouts that I had created as they were a really good reference for how I was going to set out my game and
how it would look and work. After finishing that PowerPoint I finally started the actual production of my video
game. I started off at the end of week three by creating the background for my game which was a racetrack. It
took quite a long time as I had to count each pixel across the top of the screen so that it was all equal as I
wanted it to be as professional as possible. I then had to draw out the railings and lines in the floor which took
quite a long time as well because the lines had to get from one point to the other but equally and that is
difficult when you only a set number of squares/pixels available. I think that the floor was really good as it
genuinely looks like a race track however I now regret having it go all the way up to the top of the screen as it
looks as though it goes up into the sky.

5. Week 4
For week four I continued with the production of my video game. I had to create my avatar and it’s walk cycle if it was necessary
which it ended up really needing to be done. My avatar was a horse however the perspective was from behind and aerial and
therefore it had to be the back of the horse which was difficult to get right where you could still tell it is a horse however I feel as
though I completed it well. The way the game played the horse had to jump over the jumps that were coming towards it and so the
way I should it jumping was just through lifting his body up and retracting his legs and it worked quite well and successfully looked
like a horse jumping. I also had to create the jumps that the horse would jump over yet because some had to look like they were
further away I had to draw them really small and then the next would get bigger and bigger etc. this would really well as the jumps
were obviously show jumps and the did look like they were far away and were getting closer and closer. A tricky thing that I
encountered was the sky and making it look realistic. This was because I had made the track to go all the way to the top of the page
and therefore if I put the sky at either side it would look like the track was going up into the sky. The way I finally got around that was
by only colouring in the diagonal corners in blue for the sky. I thought that this was best as it looked like that was the sky from the
slightly aerial perspective that it was shot from. After completing everything that was on the center of the page I had to create the
hud and the trees and things to go at the side of the track. I decided to draw trees and bushes as they are generally outside near
grass and I thought that they would be easier to do in the time I had left rather than drawing loads and loads of people which would
take too long especially as it wasn’t a really important part of the game. To make the trees as good as possible I tried to add shading
and multiple colours and I think that it worked as they look good and it is easier to understand what they are. If I could go back and
re-do my game I would definitely make the things on the hud bigger as I don’t think that they’re obvious during the game. Another
thing would change if I could re-do this would be the fact that the side of the track doesn’t move. Originally the barrier moved
showing how we were getting further down the track, however I realised that if that moved, everything along the side would have to
move as well. Since I didn’t really have enough time for this I decided to just keep the barriers how they were when they were still
and just leave the outside objects in their places. After I had made sure that I had drawn all of the objects in my game on different
layers I had to make numerous slides at the bottom of my page on the timeline to create my animation. This took a very long time
and it was quite tedious as it just involved placing everything on each slide where it needed to be so that it would move along yet not
be too jumpy. After making around 50+ slides I thought that it was enough as it sowed my game running through once at one speed
and then again slightly faster for the second level. After I had finished the main game I had to make my start menus, this was easy as I
just duplicated it once I had made it as one had to say ‘horses’ and the other had to highlight the ‘start’ instead. I animated this page
too to give it something extra by making the horse go down to eat grass, I think that it looks really good actually and it makes the
game look more professional and less rushed. The last part of production that I completed on Photoshop was the horse choice page
where the player would theoretically be able to choose which avatar they wanted to be. I did this by drawing one big horse in a
certain colour then drawing over it in a different colour on another layer. If I could re-do this I would change the horses available and
have a part where the player would have to pay with the coins they had won during the game for a new coloured horse.

6. Week 5
Once I had finished all of my production work on Photoshop I had to export it however to do this I had to
change the image size and then export it so that it wouldn’t be blurry. Once I had exported all four of my
animated Photoshop documents I put them on PremierPro and put them in the order that I wanted them to
go which was the first home page where horse was highlighted, then the horse choice page, then the home
page with the start highlighted and then finally the main game play. Once the visual part of my game flowed
smoothly and made sense I had to start doing the audio sound effects and music. Most of the sound effects
for my game were just beeps at a different frequency (higher or lower) and therefore that part was quite
easy to do and I made them sound effects on BeepBox. I think that being a different sound helped you to
differentiate was was happing on screen like when you were just scrolling or actually selecting something. I
also decided to add a neigh/whinny to the firsts screen because I thought it linked to the fact that the game
was about horses and it made the game seem more realistic as this sound was real and not animated. Once I
had added all of the sound effects under the appropriate part of the video I had to start doing the actual
music for the game which was very difficult. As I have previously stated I am not very musically gifted and
therefore creating a song even on a website as easy as BeepBox was near impossible so I had to just
download one that was royalty free instead. It was difficult to find a song that fitted with the game play and
that wasn’t too fast or slow however in the end I think that the song fitted with the game well as it was
happy and jolly. I know that for my future projects I will have to improve my audio skills by either making it
myself or getting someone I know to play/create something and I could record it as I know that I cannot just
keep downloading things every time I need music. Once I had finished the audio part of the production it
meant that I had completely finished my video game and that I could export it which I did. I then put it on
YouTube so that it was easily accessible and so that I could put a link to it in my PowerPoint. The final thing I
had to do was to evaluate my work which I completed in good time. I think that my evaluation was good
however I could maybe have done more for my audience appeal however at the time it didn’t seem as
though there was much to write about. Another thing that I had to complete in week five was this reflection
as I had a couple of weeks to finish because we had missed a lot of Fridays I had fallen behind however I feel
as though I have written enough and I think that I went into enough detail in the appropriate places.