Beat em up’s is a sort of genre of shooter game, that focus’s on the player defeating hordes of enemies with projectiles they can shoot. Most stereotypical, it is a ship of some kind or a entity with a gun.
An example game for a beat em up, is the most recognizable “Space Invaders”. Set in space, you are a pilot of a spaceship going through different levels which are all set in space, where you are ambushed and attacked by multiple types and/or hordes of enemies, which are enemies.
There is no story or names given in the first game, which was released back in 1978 on the “Taito System 16” arcade machine. It’s game play was set on one screen, and enemies would appear at the top of the screen in rows. The player (Ship) would be bound to one spot, where they would be able to move both left and right, and shoot projectiles from it’s ship. The game features different “Levels”, which is just different stages set in the same place, but the difficulty becomes more difficult with each one.
Games in Class
STARFOX 2
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StarFox is a genre that first started with it’s first game in 1993, and then went on to start production in 1995, but was later shelved and never released. Recently, in 2017 it was released for the Super NES Classic Edition on the 29th.
StarFox is a great example to use for a Shoot em up game, as it uses the style of shooting rapidly at enemies to continue on with the progress towards completing the game. It took me around five minutes to finish the first level, which had me having a one on one battle with a enemy pilot in a space environment. The game did not specify and form of changing difficulty before hand, and i was quick to realize that the game was quite difficult to get the hand off, and i had to restart and redo the level more times than i had hoped. Overall, the experience took around ten minutes when finished, and after I believed that I had my thoughts in place for what I could use from my experience and with that, how I could shape my game into the things that this game had as its strengths, and with not to include with its weakness’s.
En.wikipedia.org. (2020). Star Fox 2. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_2 [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]
Colour
Colour, with all forms of media, can effect mood and play onto what people feel when experiencing something new. In this case, video games.
Splatoon
Colours can also help differentiate good guys from bad, especially in multiplayer types. A great example of this is the Nintendo “Splatoon” and it’s sequel “Splatoon 2”, where colour in online matches help you understand what team you are on and/or what side to attack.
There is different combinations, but they never correspond with one another, which is perfect to greatly know the difference between two colours. If they were to have for an example, a red team and a pink team fighting one another, it could be harder to tell the difference on who’s on your team/your enemies. However, the actual reality is that Splatoon and Splatoon 2 uses colours very different from one another, that including most and nearly all colours of the colour wheel, even different shades of already existing colours.
Nevertheless, they do not use the colour “Red”, as to have the idea that it is actually blood they are shooting/throwing completely off the table. Though the idea of the ink being different colours is because of the characters all being squids, it is a great way to have the atmosphere and play field become colorful and vibrant with emotion. The backgrounds are also colorful, and this game uses colour to it’s full advantage, especially with the previously stated fact that the playable characters are “Squids”.
Splatoonwiki.org. (2020). Inkipedia, the Splatoon wiki. [online] Available at: http://splatoonwiki.org/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]
Animal Crossing : New Leaf
Animal Crossing is also a Nintendo licensed game, and we will be focusing on it’s 2013 installment “Animal Crossing: New Leaf”. It is already established as a kid friendly, simulator for mostly all ages to enjoy and put many hours in doing tasks around their own little town filled with many animal characters, all with different personalities. Your task is as the Mayor of this town, and that in it’s self is a stressful thought to a more mature audience, but you forgot this when you are in the game. You begin to feel less stressed when playing, and you become more involved in the game. Animal Crossing uses colours to help change the setting in world, (mostly with weather), which can also help change your mood.
An example, is that they use soft pastel colours to have an almost “Relaxed” colour scheme as to not strain the players eyes when trying to focus on the main ground and their own player. The background is, in fact, in the back..not the main focus. But this does not mean it isn’t as important as the main player, as it’s as important as any other aspect. If it’s a rainy day, you can almost feel the bleak atmosphere, and the blue-grey hue that surrounds you feels cold and feels almost upsetting that it’s not as bright as the other days. Though when it is sunny, it has a bright blue in the sky and it cant help make me smile just looking at it. It helps play with your emotions as much as in real life, with looking up and seeing the type of world you are in at that moment in time. How small the player is, compared to the grand background that holds this rich colour of emotions and sentiment. Below is a few examples of previously stated weather types, however this also includes the “Rainbow”, which arguably can make the player feel the most happiest when playing.
Animal Crossing Wiki. (n.d.). Animal Crossing: New Leaf. [online] Available at: https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Animal_Crossing:_New_Leaf [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]
Steven Universe
Steven Universe is a Cartoon Network show that centers around Steven Universe, a chirpy boy and his three guardians Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet. The show is mostly kind friendly, but as it gets more developed and goes further into plot lines and story based lore, the first kid friendly show becomes more mature…more dark, and this can be heavily due to it’s colour at times. For my examples, I will use the 2019 “Steven Universe: The Movie”.
The third song in, the main characters sing about their past, and their past worries and errors in their ways. It has the main character look back on their past, and on their younger selves. The main character has a darker, shadier palette then their previous selves, which has two feelings towards it. For one, it helps differentiate between the past and future character so we can understand who’s who. But it also shows how much the character has grown emotionally. When all four of their single songs start, they become darkened, and look distressed when speaking about their past, and look to their past selves in disbelief and almost- grief. Colour here is shown to be a form of emotions, and maturity. Though after they finish singing what their worries once were, they become light again and smile, having their problems now in the past and not looking back on the past- but instead the future.
Another way emotion is used with colours, is the apparent change from “Good” to “Bad”. Much later, the main antagonist “Spinel” fights Steven on top of her terrible machine, that is going to destroy the world as they know it by feeding toxic goo and destroying everything. Despite this, Steven keeps his head strong and keeps trying to give Spinel the closure she deserves and tries to befriend her, for which she struggles to discard.
The mood here is tense, and you can feel the tension rising as she becomes more distraught and annoyed. With this, the colours are red and dark, portraying the feelings bubbling around. I noticed that nearly all (Ignoring the foggy sky and Stevens clothes) all were a red/pink hue. This colour, specifically Pink, plays a big apart in the show and movie as their is a character named “Pink Diamond” who caused Spinel to become evil and attack everyone, including Steven. Spinel holds strong emotions towards Pink, and it is show with the colours flowing around her- even her clothes.
Seconds later, Steven “Shows her the light” both figuratively and literally, by stating (in song) “We don’t have to fight” and throwing the clouds out to have bright white and blue spread across the two. This is a great portrayal of colour, as it contrasts with the dark red and pink to a soft dark blue and white, having Steven literally and figuratively lightening her perspective.
Sidenote:
A smaller example of colour is between the first introductions to “Evil” and “Nice” Spinel, where her fusion shows the black colour with menacing white outline for eyes and mouth looking afar, but then her nice form with a white, promising glow and a heart in her torso. This is an example of how light can differentiate bad from good, sometimes more noticeable than others.
Steven Universe Wiki. (2019). Steven Universe: The Movie. [online] Available at: https://steven-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Steven_Universe:_The_Movie [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]
Games similar to mine
The Binding of Isaac
I would like my game to be a landscaped side scroller, with the character being 2D with a cartoon-ish style. One game similar to the art style I would like to use is “The Binding of Isaac”, where the character is small and cute, but the enemies and backgrounds are detailed and mature. I feel like this games style might be too graphic, and holds more of a pixalated art style then I would actually like to use, but this still resembles a good 2D style I will take inspiration from. I also like the inclusion of the heart counter, and how much of life the boss still has. I would like to have this in mind when creating my own game, as I believe this could be a great inclusion.
Wiki, B. (n.d.). Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Wiki. [online] Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Wiki. Available at: https://bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/Binding_of_Isaac:_Rebirth_Wiki [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]
Sally Face
I would like my game to include a main character that holds both emotion and actually well-built characteristics, much like the main character in the indie game “Sally Face”. Though that is a story driven point and click game, I would like to include as much character as they do with their main portrayal of Sal Fisher, the boy with the prophetic mask and two bright blue pigtails. I also would like to include the 2D landscape view as they do, with the character moving only left or right. Also the act of the screen scrolling with the character and where it appears to go also would go well with my game, and I will bring this up later, further into production.
Sally Face Wiki. (n.d.). Sal Fisher. [online] Available at: https://sally-face.fandom.com/wiki/Sal_Fisher [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].
Construct Mechanics
One construct Mechanic I would like to include in my shoot ’em up, is the inclusion of a health bar. In Construct 3, I will use different global variables and assets like I had previously completed in previous games, but whilst following the guide posted on Construct’s official website and guide (2 and healthbar, 2013). The guide also provides the different names that the assets/objects should be called, all provided are needed in order for it to work.
2, C. and healthbar, C. (2013). Create a proper healthbar ★★★★★. [online] Construct.net. Available at: https://www.construct.net/en/tutorials/create-proper-healthbar-277 [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].
The Flock
The Flock was created by a small Indie team “Vogelsap”, and sadly became an abandoned, shunned game with a fan base of zero. It wasn’t always like this, as it’s trailer in 2015 accumulated over 250’00 views (to date), and was praised at conventions by people who had given it a go.
From the start, it was a few students working on a small prototype that suddenly held popularity from the internet, and as Vogelsap was created, so was their three core design goals for the game.
- Immersive game
- A scary/tense game
- Unconventional game
This was key to follow, and in retrospect is actually a good way to note down key priority’s in a games production. They had also done three for their own company, as it began to grow as they hired more members. The three were:
- [Be] Loud, unconventional people
- [Be] Inspired/interest in things other than games
- Thrilling things
With this, production began on the game and in 2013 a teaser trailer was revealed. However, one thing back then they had failed to mention was that the game actually had a certain amount of “Lives” the in game enemies had, meaning that when all lives were gone, no one could play the game again. It would add up with multiplayer online too, meaning everyone contributed to it whenever they would play. This was received with negative thoughts, and many believed that it was a terrible idea for both the public and for the company itself, as they would no longer get buyers for the game if no one could play it. It was, however, a cool concept. Limited lives was a high risk however, which meant either higher rewards…or higher failures. People were critical of this, and with the offical trailer released, 75% of people acted negativly- and fast. Someone was even quoted to say:
This is hard for a game developer to read, and even for a normal person. For someone to bash both you and your work, just because of something new is heartbreaking, and I personally would have took it out due to the reviews. Despite this, Vogelsap kept on with it’s journey all the way to launch day. But even that, did not go as well as they had hoped. They had added multiple new things into the game weeks before launch, and many things went wrong on launch day such as bugs and even more negative views. With only 3000 copies bought, it had twenty negative reviews in an hour, and at the end of it, was rated “Mostly negative” by steams ranking system. Meta critic also gave the game a 33, which is almost un-heard off.
Though this is sad, this is a lot to learn from this, especially from a game developer stand of view, this is even made apparent by Van Hasselt, as he goes on to talk about how after a small slump after the devastating launch, they went on to make a list on what needed to be added in order for it to actually go well. Yes, the games industry is about making money and money is important in order to survive, but you need to make something you are actually proud of than only making something to sell out. Van was quoted “Embrace your corporate culture”, and that’s what he did. He made a list and Vogelsap began working on it more to get it’s potential to what why had first thought of it to be.
They realised a mistake later on, with their game being shown off at an event, and there they were bombarded with positive views and attitude towards the game. As he says himself, he was confused. Why now? Where was this at launch? It was appear to him that they had based audience views and what they had “Liked” and “Disliked” about the game, from game events, where people would only play for roughly under an hour. This is not vital to getting a proper response, and impossible to shape a game off people’s views after one hour.
Though this game did not do as well as they had hoped and things had went wrong in the weeks leading up to the release and even after, I believe this could have been sorted if a few precautions were taken. For example, if they had done more research into peoples reactions to playing it repeatedly. They had only 3 maps and one game mode, and asking for £17 is going to get nowhere with what is on offer. I personally find the concept of the game interesting, and for what the trailer showed off it did infact look fun to play with my friends and other online players, but i’m afraid that will be impossible as they’re is no players actively online.
(Van Hasselt, 2015)
Van Hasselt, J. (2015). 33 on Metacritic: Why My Game Failed – Control Conference 2015. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbqMjCPmaa8
[Accessed 13 Jan. 2020]
Flock, T. (2015). The Flock on Steam. [online] Store.steampowered.com. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/290490/The_Flock/ [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020]
Ship Game
- Size of tiles on the map = ( 32, 32 )
- Size of the ship = ( 134, 54 )
- Size of the layout = ( 3000, 480 )
- Speed of the scrolling = ( 75 )
- Speed of the ship = ( +5 )
- Length of time it takes to scroll through the level = ( 34 seconds )
We had created a small level where a small ship was to fly to the end of a block, whilst dodging the infrastructure. We had used techniques we had only learnt today, and knowledge we weren’t aware of previously. One, being “Parallax Backgrounds” Where a background is moving whilst the player is moving normally, it gives it a feel as if the player is actually moving in game and is a clever trick and I used it with the three mountains. Another, was “Tile maps” where it was an already pre existing blocks of background that we could take and build a level out of, instead of creating various different types. It is a good technique, both of them are and I will definitely be using them in my shoot em up game.
Graphics
Main Character
Location
Enemies
Colours
Graphics
Main Character
For the main/playable character, I had an image in my head for a gas mask character. Most stereotypical, deadly situations have people needing to wear gas masks in order to breathe healthy. In the game “Rainbow Six Siege”, the player “Smoke” has the ability to create toxic gas and with that he wears a gas mask in order to keep him self from breathing in the toxic gas. This works well, and gives the character Smoke an interesting design and builds him up to be well fit to survive. I believe having my main character be someone in a gas mask could give them a mysterious but well fit-to-survive aspect that has more believability than someone simply wearing nothing.
Building on this, having the character be built to survive the apocalypse they seem to be in is key in order to have some form of believability. Now, a gas mask is a good inclusion, but i can build on that and have the character in a full suit and mask. I believe that this is an improvement and builds more of a strong character for us to play. I believe that the series “Fallout” have the inclusion of a mech suit and use it correctly and have the player being strong enough to be believed to survive in the wasteland. I would like this thought with my character, that’s why I used more reference material based upon masks and suits.
Again, building upon the mask and the suit graphics, I also included that of a jetpack. As my character is human, and has no supernatural ability, I had to think of some way that they could travel through the air whilst it still being possible and realistic for a apocalypse game. I had the idea of a jetpack, built into the suit for the character. This would give the player the ability to travel up and down the screen, and tie into the suit itself. However, jet packs primarily are known for being bit and bulky, which I didn’t want for the character, as i’d wanted them to be a slim build but with the mech around them. I thought to the series “Star Wars”, where the Clone Troopers have jet packs built onto their backs. I believe having the jetpack small and compact to look best and i’m positive will show through when I design the look of it. The image below is a great example of how big I would like the jetpack to be, and which is why I picked it as an image.
Location
I want the location to be based in a small town, but have it be designed to have a lot of structures and buildings. The enemies need to have a place to shoot from, so I thought that large structures/buildings would be a good fit. I thought that a city not too big would be a good fit, where I thought of the town South Park from the show “South Park”. It is a small town, but has a lot of buildings and establishments. I believe this setting is ideal and I had gathered images based upon that. I also would rather have the design of the town to be destroyed as it is in an apocalyptic land, so I included an image recognised from the game Fallout 4. I believe this image strongly resides with my game, and most sums it up.
Audio Research
A game that has audio I would like to have my game have a similar sound to is “Cuphead: Don’t deal with the devil”. Cuphead is a shoot em up with the same 2D, cartoon form of aesthetic I would like to complete in my own game.
Cuphead’s world is much like mine, where it is much bigger / more to explore than a normal shooter type. Cuphead features sound that Is supposed to based in an earlier time period, as too keep the aesthetic of the art of the game being based upon 1950 cartoons.
The music in this game is very inciting and it’s rhythm can really drag the player into the game. I would like my music to have some feeling to it, and feel as if it was realistic but still with a cartoonish aspect to it.
Folious noises
Folious noise is where noise and audio is created by different forms of objects that can be used for music. This can be anything
Audio I would make myself would be a few minor noises, for example; I would like to create the noise of the Acid that is spat by the shooter enemies. I would create this by having a water bottle and pouring a minor amount out with an increased speed, to create a sound that sounds kind of gross and as if it came from someone’s actual mouth.
Another way I plan to make sounds for my game, is to create the sound of the enemies running. As The Horde are quite clumsy and show off a childish stature, I think having an almost “Silly” walk would be most appropriate. I believe that if I were to recreate a walk that would be on a wet surface, it could give it the feeling of a silly walk. I believe if I were just to walk on it myself with shoes on, that would create the noise I’m thinking of.
MORGAN'S BLOG 