Production Reflection

1. Production Reflection
Hannah
Palfreeman

2. Process
Wednesday
Today I started my production of my
video game. Since I was ill on Tuesday, I
started to create some production
experiments so I know what rough idea I
wanted to create. My game falls under
the genre of a retro game. Most of these
games include a black background
somewhere in the game. As you can see
in these two screenshots they both
include a black background. In my game
the character closest to the text is the
enemy. This is very easy to spot as red
have negative connotations. Below is the
space ship which I am thinking of
adapting into my video game somehow.
However, with the spaceship I will be
changing the colour of it as it isn’t very
realistic.

3. Thursday
Today, I had to start fully making my video game. Instead of
having all my game on the same document, I have decided to
finish one aspect of the game and then create a new
document. Firstly, I found a background which was very
detailed and had an element of space. I found an image on
google which I could draw on top to create my own. To the
left is the screenshot of my main screen. I really like the
background but If I could do it again I would of added more
colours. The title really stands out against the background
and it makes me like it even more. After doing this
background for well over an hour I started on making my
main menu with the options to ‘Play’ ‘High Scores’ and
Instructions. These are all in yellow as well. The rocket at the
bottom right hand corner is the is the tool which the player
will use to select an option on the main menu. Seen as
though I missed all of Tuesday, I decided to stay in college till
3 on Thursday to finish off my character design. I am not
going to use these characters in my actual video game but I
wanted to create a walking sequence. I was also very proud of
creating this character. This is mainly because I don’t
consider myself being the best at Photoshop but I created
something which was moving and actually looks decent.
Process

4. Process
Friday
Today, I started to finish my main menus. At
first, I added in a Instructions slide which is to
the left. I was very proud of this slide, just
because it looks very professional and the
colours really stand out next to each other. I
like the way the font is as it all looks very
identical. The four arrows looked very weird
when they were just white. Instead I decided
that I would add a yellow outer stroke, this
worked out really well! If I could ever do this
menu again I would change the rocket and
instead have a little ghost with different colours
for each menu. As well as creating this menu I
started to animate my work. I started off with
rotating the rocket on the first page to create a
loading effect sequence. This took all Friday.
When I next have a lesson I am going to start
animating my game.

5. Process
Wednesday
To start off with on Wednesday I made
the last finishing touches to my work. I
created the earth at the bottom of the
screen and I also created the two
enemies at the top. At the end of the
day, I started to animate my actual
game. I had not decided what I wanted
the playable character to be lookalike.
I ended up choosing this design. This
is very practical as when the character
protects the earth the rocket fits in the
gap and makes it look very realistic. I
liked the layout of this screenshot but if
I had more time I would created a
more creative and imaginative
background for the game to take place
on.

6. Process
Thursday
On Thursday morning, I was part way
through animating my actual game.
This took a while because I wanted
everything to be perfect and not
messy. It took me all of the Thursday
morning just to create the menu
animation. I created a rocket which
was the arrow bar, this took the
longest to animate as I had to create
different layers on Photoshop for the
animation to work. I liked the animation
which I had created but it took too long
and slowed my production time down.
Tomorrow, I will finish animation my
game and export it.

7. Friday
The first lesson on Friday I finished animating
my video game. On Thursday night I created
two soundtracks on Beep Box to be my
soundtrack for my game. The only thing I had
left to do is create my own sound effects and
export my file into Premier. By the third
lesson I had exported my file over into
Premier. However, this took me the whole
lesson as my computer kept freezing and
was very slow, there was not any spare
computers in the room we were in so I just
had to get on with it. This meant that I hadn't
got the soundtrack in or created my own
sound effects. Since I don’t have any adobe
software at home I have decided to start my
evaluation over the weekend and then when I
get back to college I can finish my production
and therefore have more time so make every
detail perfect.