Author: Ryan Jordan Simpson

Recently Dylan and I have tested Unity to see how it would fit in with our project. We found it to be rather difficult and we felt it was quite out of our reach for our timeframe, and thus decided it wasn’t to be the software we will be using.

Unity goes over our heads at this stage as we are completely new to game development so we have set it aside for now but we aim to progress to work with Unity in the future. Maybe if we came up with this idea at the beginning of the year we may have had more time to spend and learn the software but for now we can’t spend too much time learning Unity when we can go for a much simpler approach with similar outcome.

We are going to explore Construct 2 and Canvas for HTML5 to create a more fitting and more optimised 2D game.

– Ryan

Today I stumbled across an article written by Gustavo Monforte, lead developer at Fat Panda Games which talked about the 5 lessons he learned while developing their first game – Flat Kingdom.

I think this article can be of some use to us while creating our game. We will be able to see points where professionals went wrong and avoid those mistakes. We will also be able to pick up many tips from the industry. Even if just as a reference guide I think this will be useful.

To view the article, click here.

– Ryan

This morning I have been working on designing the in-game pick up… The R.A.M.

I searched on Google for R.A.M to get an idea of how I wanted it to look and I also looked at cartoon style drawings. I initially begun by designing a 3D-looking image before deciding that our game will be 2D so it would look out of place.

Here is my first complete design. I will be having a discussion with Dylan about how he feels, whether he likes it or can suggest any improvements before developing further if need be.

I am happy with how it looks and I’m confident that it will be clear to see and understand what it is while in-game and in the world we create. I think that even if the player has never seen a stick of R.A.M before they will easily be able to identify this as a computer component or something of the sort.

Personally after having looked at the design, I think it could potentially benefit from being thinner, and maybe longer. It looks a little tall and chunky, whereas R.A.M is typically fairly thin and long.

– Ryan

Today Dylan and I decided to theme the player character after a robot with the base idea that robots run off code. With that in mind here are the current designs (and developments).

Here we have a basic, brightly coloured, friendly-looking robot. The colours are like this in order to appeal to a young demographic. We didn’t think however that the robot was good enough so we developed the idea further now that we had a starting point.

As you can see I have removed the black outline from all elements of the image so make it seem less harsh and in a way, more friendly. I changed the mouth colour from grey which I think makes the image look better. For more contrast I have changed the arm colour to a light grey so it compliments the other colours well. For the next change I want to focus on the head shape because I feel like it doesn’t do the character many favours or look overly appealing.

I like the new head shape but feel as though it is lacking definition and contrast with the other aspects of the face. Dylan suggested I add the secondary colour to the face to get that contrast back and I agree with him so for the next development I will do that.

I have changed the style of the body/torso of the character to resemble that of a screen with code on it (not accurate code, I know – but a symbolisation of code). Dylan and I are still discussing the role of this; whether we want it to be dynamic and change as the game is played to perhaps provide hints to the user, to remain the same and stay as it is, or to be changed completely.

I like the addition to the face and feel like Dylan’s suggestion has done the character a lot of favours. It certainly looks a lot better, more real and more friendly. I am unsure on where I stand with the whole floating aspect of the character. This may be developed to see what it looks like with legs, or developed to have variations of floating. I find though that by the character not having legs it is then easier for us to give it movement in the game because it would have less to do, and less could go wrong, whereas with legs we would have to create multiple ‘moves’ as it were which would be time consuming, and not necessary for the core of the game. This is something Dylan and I will discuss in the days to come.

– Ryan

We have established that we have competitors that cover almost everything coding-game related, but we have also established that these competitors could do certain things better, like layouts of some of their games for example.

We’re not trying to become a huge brand, we’re not trying to take anyone’s place; we are just simply trying to add a new, more educational game to the current market in the hopes that it can be of help to people trying to learn code.