This is a cool XBox Live Arcade community game called Johnny Platform’s Biscuit Romp. It cought my eye because it’s levels are all disigned around a single screen.

As my games will be played on single pages of my sketchbook hopefully this will help me come up with some ideas for my own levels.

I came up with a design for an enemy character today. Again I’ve tried to keep it nice and simple, keeping the sketchy look. I also kept the animation simple. I think it works well with the tone and feel of the other characters I have created so far

[kml_flashembed movie="http://zikayn.com/fmp/wp-content/uploads/enemydesign.swf" height="500" width="500" /]

I had been planning on trying to design a level that included platforms that would rise up and down. I built some example levels to see how they worked when projected but I soon ran into problems. I found that there is a slight delay on the movement when the platform is projected onto the sketchbook which means that the character lags behind the rising platform so he doesn’t stand upon it properly. It didn’t look very good and ran poorly so I decided to scrap the idea before taking it any further.

Today I was trying to think up some other types of game play that I could include in my game. I came up with the idea of having the player have to push a block from one location on the page to another. The challenge is working out how to get the block through the page.

I managed to get the code functioning so that the blocks can be moved around the page whenever the character pushes against it. I also animated the character so that he looks as though he is pushing against the block when he touches it. I added a jump animation as well.

I still need to tighten up a few bits for when it is used in the actual game, but you can get the idea of how it’ going to work in the video below.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://zikayn.com/fmp/wp-content/uploads/push_animation.swf" height="500" width="500" /]

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The last few days I’ve been working on my game some more.

I want to try out making a variety of different games that can be played on the pages of the sketch book. I currently have one simple game functioning where the player has to simply collect an object that is projected on the page. The challenge is to see how many items the player can collect in a set period of time. So they are battling against the clock.

I decided that I would also like to have a game that included enemies that would chase the player while they move around the platforms. So I have been working on building some enemy types. I looked back at Mario and some of the other early platform games and took a look at the enemy types. Many of the enemies are mindless and just move around the levels without taking notice of the player, they are just there as a moving obstacle that the player must avoid.

They also have the types that will chase after the player. They lack certain abilities however, such as being able to jump. This gives the player an advantage over the enemy but the player is required to think through their actions a bit more as the enemy will chase them while they are within reach.

I have currently made two enemy types for my game. One will chase the character around on the floor, moving left and right after the player, the other will constantly jump making it harder for the player to avoid them.

I haven’t designed the look of them properly yet, nor is there a consequence if the player comes into contact with them. At the moment they just have a place holder graphic. But you can see how they will act when in the game.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

An idea for a game type that I had was to have doorways that would teleport you to different parts of the page. I managed to get these functioning properly but couldn’t come up with any games that really took advantage of this ability so I decided to scrap it

I borrowed the projector again today and have been playing around with projecting using a different colour background.

I have been projecting using a white background in all my previous tests. I find that the white is a little bit intense when projected on to the page and this sort of ruins the illusion of playing the game in the book. So I decided to experiment with projecting using a black background. Unfortunately the results weren’t very successful and I feel that the white background actually works better than the ones I tried.

When projecting using black it’s nice because the light is less intense and it makes it hard to notice that anything is being projected. However my character is drawn with a black out line, so he gets lost in the background when both he and the background are projected in black. I tried to solve this by changing the colour of the character, but this made it feel even more like a projection because he becomes very faded and doesn’t stand out well or blend with anything else on the page.

You can get a better idea of what I mean by looking at the images below.

Here I have kept the character with a black outline and made the background a grey. This works quite well but the character still doesn’t stand out very much

I’ve been working on trying to come up with some games that can be played using the current engine that I have put together.
While coming up with ideas for the games I have to take into consideration the limited space available on the page of the sketchbook.

I have come up with a simple game concept which can be seen in the video below.  The objective is to collect the item that is placed in a random position on the page. Once you collect the item you get a point and the item then moves to another random location. In order for you to be able to reach the item when it is in a position that is higher than that which the character can jump, the player can draw on the page to create platforms that the character can then jump on to reach the items that are higher up.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

To give the game an objective and a challenge I will add a timer that will count down from one minute. The challenge is to collect as many of the pips in the minute as possible. Because the items are placed at random positions the game will be different every time, this will hopefully add to the reply-ability of the game. Also once I add a timer people will try to beat their own or other people’s scores making them want to play again.

A lot of games use timer based puzzles and challenges to add reply value to a game. Because the rounds are short people won’t mind having another go.

While looking around the Information super highway today I came across a cool collection of flash games/tutorials that attempt to teach you some of the basic elements of game design. The series has a brief look at how people understand the rules of a game, interactivity, what makes a game hold the player’s attention and many other subjects.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

I found these useful in helping me plan my own games