Author: Dylan Mowforth

We asked our target audience about potential game names as we want our audience to feel as though they are part of the production of the game, just as we are! Whilst doing the game testing with the audience we asked them if they could think of a fitting name, this is what they came up with:

1. Laboratory Disaster

2. Coding Simulator

3. Robot Escape

4. Code Escape

Ryan and I have decided to follow on with ‘Code Escape’ because it is what we feel best fits in with the game. The fact that the main narrative objective of the game is to escape the lab using code goes hand in hand with the name and will help any visitors who don’t know anything about the game can associate what the game might be about.

On Wednesday the 22nd of March myself and Ryan gathered some audience feedback from our target audience. This week we managed to get 8 of the children to play our coding game and we will hopefully get some more this coming Wednesday, this time playing the second level if we can complete it in time!

We both took turns in explaining the game to the children and after that, we left them to play the game, some understood the game pretty well; whereas some required a little more guidance. This helped us a lot in making sure that we are precise with our explanation on how the game works etc (instruction screen perhaps). The first child understood that the “door.locked = True” meant the door was locked and to change that they needed to make the “True” section “False” and to do that he used the drag and drop feature which they were familiar with when using Scratch. Follow on from the drag and drop feature, when asked one of them said they were happy with the drag and drop which is what they have been learning and from this we gathered that if we inputted a typing feature they may struggle and they usually have all the code in front of them rather then writing/typing it.

– Dylan

James has requested that myself and Ryan split up the workload so it will make the process smoother and quicker. We wanted to break the work up evenly so one of us wasn’t doing a substantial amount more than the other, we also tried to split it up so we could both work to the best of our abilities. Ryan will be focusing mainly on the character designs/animations and the game itself whereas I will be responsible for level designs, game assets and making the game a coding game!

– Dylan

Just a quick small update, at first we have been struggling to bring our character to life, however after doing some research we may have found out the solution on how to do it which is simply just making more graphics which change the characters position (arms, body etc.) and adding them in different layers in the animation sections and then also adding the animation layers into the event sheet once a button (W, A, S, D) has been pressed.

After doing further research in trying to add interactive text (so the player can type their answer in) and coming up short after not finding any information on how to do we have had a chat and decided if still nothing can be found on how to do it then we will have to change how the answer is inputted into the game. Our first choice is for the player to type the answer in but with further research into our target audience we may find out that they would much prefer a multiple choice output. This is something we will have to figure out and soon, we do have backup plans which Ryan posted yesterday so we will have no trouble finding the best working outcome.

– Dylan

Ryan and I have a had a few ideas on how the game will flow and how the levels will connect. Firstly failing everything we could put the individual levels embedded onto the website with the interactive text underneath the game level and instruct the player how to play all through the website with hints etc.

However we will try and work through Construct 2, we have done a little bit of research in using a tool called master event sheet which is one of the tools we must use in order to link the levels and save a lot of time but we will need to play around in Construct 2 first and figure out if we can easily link levels together to keep the game flowing. Once we have figured out how to link all the levels together through the software then we will implement our ideas on how the game will flow. For example, our main idea is to keep the game flowing as best as we can such as once the first level has been finished, the character will speak and be used as the driving force of the narrative so once he has finished speaking it will continue onto the next level.

Together we have decided that we will make the levels harder as the player progresses such as an easy, medium and hard level but the level before will help them to finish the next level by using what they learned in the last lesson. There isn’t going to necessarily be a story behind the narrative of the game but the basic outline of the game is that there is a break down in a lab and the robot needs the players help, for example picking up the ram will trigger the robot to remember some tips and hints on the level and how to pass it. All the players will have the same endings and everyone of that age and group will play the same levels.

– Dylan