Part of my original reason for adding the ability to have two players was so that you could play competitively against each other. I tried to think up a game that would take full advantage of having two human players and that would also incorporate the ability for people draw up their own levels. I looked around the net at all different types of games and then remembered a classic Mario bros game.

In this game you are working against each other to collect the most points while avoiding getting killed. The level designs on these games are nice and simple and consist of simple platforms. I felt that these types of levels would be easy for people to draw up themselves and would be great areas for a fighting game.

I took a look at a game called Super Smash Bros Brawl. This game has a similar sort of level design to what I had in mind.

I decided that I would attempt to make a fighting game where the characters can punch and kick each other and whoever’s health bar depletes first loses the game. I decided to keep the controls simple and only gave the characters two moves so the game is easy to understand.

I think that this type of game will work well because the player can have fun drawing up new levels to battle on and because you are playing against another human player the game will be different every time.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Once one of the characters health has compltly depleated the loser will fall and the winner will hold out a winner sign

This is the player-two character. I’ve made her a girl in an attempt to make a clearer distinction between the two characters when they are jumping around. I built this character on top of originals design so it shares the same animations and will save me time if I need to add new animations to the characters as it only requires a little bit of editing.

Today I had been trying to come up with some other game types but was finding it difficult to add interesting challenges. I have made levels that let you battle against the clock and enemy characters already. While I am quite happy with how the enemy characters react in the games I have made already they don’t offer a great deal of challenge and once you have solved how best to win, the game doesn’t offer a great deal of replay value.

So this got me thinking of ways that I could make a game that would play and react differently every time. After sitting there playing the game for a while it suddenly clicked with me how much fun could be had if I made the game two-player. By making the game two-player you could either play cooperatively of competitively depending on the game type you wanted to play.

I took the current character and duplicated it within flash and edited its code to function independently. Seeing the two characters moving around together worked really well and even though I have not created a level for them at this stage it was still really fun to run around with the two characters together.

It was easy to get confused with which character was which when they were both jumping around so I plan to create a new design for the second character to make it clearer.

An important part of any game is sound. It helps to make it clear when the player performs certain actions and can set the tone and atmosphere for a game. It is also useful tool in communicating with the player.

Because my game is to be played on the pages of a sketchbook I was struggling to decide whether I should include sound or not. My concern was that if I use music or sound effects it might shatter the illusion for the player. However I understand how much of an important role sound has in a game and felt that I should at least try some sounds.

I felt that adding music would be a step to far but thought sound effects could add something to the final piece. I came up with the idea of recording myself scribbling on and flicking through pages of my sketchbook. I then took the audio that I recorded and tried to match it up to the different character animations that I have created. I choose to use these sounds in an attempt to keep everything consistent. I hoped that by recording sounds from the sketchbook it wouldn’t shatter the illusion that it was all happening on the page.

I tried to keep the sounds quite subtle and kept the volume of them low so as not to draw attention to them. I’m not totally convinced that the sounds I have chosen to use are right at the moment, but I do think that the game works better with them then without. I shall continue to experiment with some other sounds to see if I can find some that work better.

Below are just some of the sounds I tried

Jump sound

Step

Long Movements

Walking

I thought it would be nice if I could make it so players could create their own characters. The idea being that you draw what you want your character to look like and then I would import the drawing into flash where I would have a system in place to animate the sketch with the required animations for the game.

Drawn to Life is a game that lets you do just that and I think it’s a really nice idea that would work great in my game.

I set about trying to work out a way to do this but unfortunately I was unsuccessful. Theoretically I can work out how it should work, but unfortunately my skills in flash aren’t quite good enough to get it to function properly. I could not work out how to make it so that when you drew on specific areas of the guide it would change movie clips meaning everything would animate the same way rather than breaking up into individual parts.

Below is an example of some of the tests I did. If I had more time I would have continued to pursue this but unfortunately there are more important parts of the game that I must focus on.

Today I have been working on making my game more gamey. Up till now there has been no consequence for taking damage or getting hit in the levels that I have created.

In order to show that the character has taken damage I created a health bar. Whenever the character is hit or takes damage the health bar will deplete. Once the health bar is empty the game is over and you must start again.

Tablet
Touch Pad box
Mouse
Keyboard
Control Pad
Homemade pad/keyboard.

While testing the game recently I have been finding it quite difficult to control the character. The character was being controlled via the mouse. The character will go to where ever the mouse pointer currently is on screen. I chose to do it like this because I was planning on using either the touch pad that I made or a tablet to control the character. The reason I had chose to control the character in this way was that I wanted to try and remove the idea that the game was being played on a computer and was in fact being played completely in the sketchbook. The trouble with using those methods however is that it becomes very difficult to control.

I decided that I would try a more conventional method of controlling the character for my game. I didn’t want to use a keyboard from the computer because it was too large and completely shattered the illusion of not playing the game on in the sketchbook. So I decided to try using a control pad from a console instead.

In order to get the controller to work I used a program called GlovePie. This program lets you assign keyboard key presses to buttons on the control pad. Once I configured the button presses the pad can then control my game.

At first I wasn’t sure that this would work very well because it did feel a little out of place with the rest of the project. However once I had set up the game and started playing using the control pad the level of control that I had over the character and the game was increased vastly and was a lot more responsive then the level of control that I had when using the mouse. By having more control over the character it also made the game a lot less frustrating and more fun to play.

I feel that the trade off here is worth it. The control pad is still small and I don’t think it intrudes too much on the idea of playing completely in the pages of the book. Using the pad also means that people won’t put their hands in the way of the projector blocking the projection of the level.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

While I have been working on my game I have been testing some of it on an onscreen version without using a projector. I did this originally to just save me time when testing something quickly. However I’ve realized that this could be a nice addition to my project. So I have also decided to make an onscreen version also. This will allow people without a projector to still play the game and hopefully have fun designing there levels.

Below is the game in its current state. I made a menu that uses images and textures from my sketchbook so it is consistent with the rest of the project. You can select which level to play using the menu.

Please note that it is still a work in progress and as a result may still have some bugs and things may not function as they are supposed to. To control it use it arrow keys Z and X. The game requires a webcam.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://zikayn.com/fmp/wp-content/uploads/alpha_onscreen.swf" height="360" width="479" /]

Here are a couple more games that I’ve found interseting both for their art styles and game/level design

And Yet It Moves

Castle Crashers

Alien Hominid