Overview of the start of the project Sep 2013-December 2013.
When the module started it was unclear what client we would
be working for, and we spent the first couple of weeks looking at small browser
based games as this was probably the scale of the game we were going to be
working on.
Devon and Cornwall fire service approached the college
through Re-Mode games, as they wanted a mobile based game that would teach fire
safety to children aged 6-10.
BRIEF
The brief was sent to us by the Fire Service:
A Safety Learning Game
Our aim is to establish a bespoke, interactive, Safety Learning Game (SLG). This will provide access to “virtual” scenarios where safety education, skills can be learnt and practised at different levels of difficulty, though a game that is fun, educational with key educational messages and links to the curriculum.
There is substantial evidence that children and young people will be more effective in recognising and managing risky situations if they are provided with opportunities to learn and practise relevant skills in an interactive way. A key target group for the SLG will be Year 6 pupils, (about to make the transition from Primary to Secondary school) enabling them to prepare for situations they may face as they become more independent. Children with little or no understanding of community safety will be able to use the SLG to learn, those who have already experienced community safety education will be able to develop and practice skills. It is hoped that ultimately the SLG will be suitable for a range of age groups.
The SLG will utilise “virtual” technology to create realistic scenarios, e.g. a house, railway line, beach, river, road, where safety issues will be created in a lifelike way. Young people will be able to choose avatars that move and respond quickly to complete safety challenges. Our research has been unable to identify any similar game, those that exist are simplistic with characters that move slowly and are not engaging. In a modern society where many children have access to sophisticated computer games utilising “virtual” technology and game playing scenarios, it will be vital for the SLG to use realistic scenarios / avatars that move and respond quickly or to be a game that is very engaging. We are aware of problems that could be caused by developing a system that is too “cutting edge” which we cannot afford to update on a regular basis. The system will need to be able to be accessed from a variety of mediums e.g. computers, mobile phones and tablets.
We believe that the development of the SLG would bring significant benefits to children and the wider society. Children and young people will benefit through being safer, their parents will benefit from the knowledge that their children will be able to better identify and deal with risky situation and there will be educational benefits for schools. The wider society will receive benefits and in particular there will be benefits and cost savings to A&E Departments, Doctors, the emergency services, police /courts and to Social Services.
At this stage, we do not have firm views as to how the SLG might be developed and we are very open to suggestions regarding this. We envisage that the SLG might be initially developed with a reduced number of scenarios, with teacher / school involvement in the development process and then tested among schools in Devon and Somerset. This would be with a view to full development i.e. increased number of scenarios aimed at different age groups and a national rollout possibly through other Fire and Rescue Services.
Delivery:
This will be a partnership project between Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service (DSFRS) and the new charity, Safe South West established to work with DSFRS, to facilitate greater community engagement, generate new resources and deliver innovative projects. Staff from DSFRS and Safe South West will be able to provide expertise on key safety issues and messages, educational elements and likely scenarios. The SLG would operate via the soon to be established Safe South West website."
Progress Diary:
Term One
The class was divided up into different teams and roles,
I was designated producer.
My role was to coordinate the production of the demo game
that will be presented to the client along with a finished Game Design Document
to show an overview of the game concept as a whole.
The class was also split into three separate groups to
start coming up with different concepts for the game.
The
first term was very disorganised and not much was achieved due to lack of focus
and drive in the lessons. However, as my role was a coordinator, I took it upon
myself to try and get things moving. I spoke to the tutor about various issues which
were raised by others, I got a contact list together so we could all
communicate efficiently and I started a Facebook group.
To
get us to think about different ideas we were asked to create a pitch in a
group to present what we came up with. I was away for the final pitch due to
personal reasons so could not take part in the presentations, however, I heard
that they did not go that well.
Nevertheless
a final pitch was chosen, displayed below.
Although
the pitch was presented in different groups, the game is to be made by a whole
class team.
Term Two
At the beginning of this term our previous tutor had left
the college. Our new tutor soon realised that not much had been achieved with
this module so he allowed us to start the module from scratch.
Week beginning 6/1/14
As Producer I divided the group with the help of the tutor into
roles for making the game:
2 Programmers
6 Artists
2 Animators
4 Audio
1 Assistant producer/Narrative
1 Assistant producer/Head of Art
I then started to set weekly tasks for each role. I also
split up the groups into various roles such as the artists into background,
room assets, character concepts. I asked the programmers to study different
tutorials and to learn game maker studio to make the demo. I asked the
animators to look at making fire sprite sheets, and to start to experiment with
animating characters. I asked the character artists to start creating character
concepts, the assets creators to start to create assets and the background
artists to experiment with different backgrounds. I split the audio team into
four, one was asked to look at creating a soundtrack, one to get together a
royalty free sound effects library and the other two were to record sound
effects for the language we had constructed. I also asked for the audio team to
be inducted into the recording studio so they could record their voices for the
language etc.
Due to the lost time in the first term I felt it was
crucial to produce a good working time plan for the rest of the module. I sat
down with the tutor to discuss this time plan and we decided that we needed to
have the art assets, programming, audio assets and the animations completed by
the week of the 17/2/14 so that the game could be tested with real assets in
the first week back from half term.
Finally, I sat down with my two assistants and sorted out
the final layout and gameplay of the demo.
Week beginning 13/1/14
I was having some slight problems with students coming to
the lessons and some were not contacting me to tell me they weren’t going to be
attending.
It was decided that the art assets would be constructed
in pixel art form. I had to find out what the proportions of the rooms etc in
the game were going to be so I could pass it on to the people who were making
the assets. This was to ensure everything fitted correctly. One of the character
artists had created some good concepts so it was decided that we would use them
in the game. The audio team were moving forward by studying what software they
needed for their different tasks. I talked to one of the programmers and he
said he was studying tutorials and using assets from the internet to begin to
code a basic walk cycle etc.
At the moment things are going well, a lot of the people
in the class are motivated and the tasks I am handing out are being completed
on time and moving the project forward.
Week beginning
20/1/14
One of the animators showed me a fire sprite sheet he had
completed and this was very good, and as he finished that task I decided to
move him on to the character creation team as one of the original members was
not turning up and not communicating, so I was unsure if he was completing the
tasks. I asked the other animator to continue working on a fire extinguisher
for the game.
I was still having difficulty with the two members of the
voice over production team as getting them inducted into the sound booths had
not been sorted out. I asked one of them to continue to research ‘gobbledegook’
language.
I talked to my art director/assistant producer and we
were both slightly worried about the lack of work from the room and asset art
teams. I spoke to my other assistant director, she was was continuing to add to
the GDD making mock ups of what the screen would look like when you played the
game.
I was starting to get a bit concerned about a fair few
people from the art team and the programmers. I spoke to them and gave out new
tasks for them for next week. I was also worried about peoples lack of
communication with each other and that people weren’t asking about what they
should be doing when they were unsure.
Week beginning
27/1/14
I was starting to become concerned that tasks were not
being completed and I sat down and talked to the module tutor who agreed that
changes needed to be implemented. We decided we were going to use google drive
for the main hub for people to put their work on to share with the it group. I
made a google drive and shared it with the class.
I rang round the students who had not shown up to the
lesson and had not contacted me, and I received no reply. Not much progress
seemed to have been made and I advised the people who had attended that we were
coming up to our first deadline on 13/2/14 as this was our last lesson before
reading week and we needed to have all the assets completed for use in the
demo.
A member of the audio team showed me his demo soundtrack
and I was very happy with it. He said he would continue it. The other member of
the audio team was creating the soundtrack ensuring that anyone who needed it
was credited. The character creation team which now consisted of one character
artisit and one animator, were finalising the character of the game and getting
ready to compile a sprite sheet. I spoke to my director/assistant producer and
the only other member of the art team who had turned up that I was starting to
get worried. I was thinking of moving him from creating specialised assets for
the demo to creating the basic assets and room assets for the demo.
My other assistant producer was doing a very good job
with the GDD. I sat down and spoke to her about how we were going start
implementing some of the extra fire safety information and she came up with
adding fire safety tips into the loading of the game. This meant that if the
gameplay wasn't completed in time it would still contain all of the information
that was required.
I texted everyone in the class saying that I wasn't
particularly happy with the attendance rate but I soon realised that I should
have said they needed to get hold of me to discuss what they needed to do if
they were unsure. Unfortunately at the time I did not know that was the case.
Week beginning
3/2/14
Unfortunately I could not make it into the university due
to transportation issues, I emailed my tutor to let him know. I contacted one
of my assistant producers and asked her to ring me at the beginning of the
lesson so I could let her know what I thought needed to be tasked that week. I
thought the room and background assets, I had not seen a lot of work being
produced by that particular group and I was getting concerned. I then contacted
her again the same day to ask her how that lesson had gone. She said that the
module tutor was unhappy with the progress so far and that the course leader
had come in and had discussed moving to a different game engine to create the
demo in and that the one programmer who was at that lesson had agreed with
that. The course leader had also tasked her and a member of the audio team to
start looking at a software called Construct 2. I contacted my art
director/assistant producer and told him I was going to create a new group for
the room and background and assets as it was the main area where there was no
progression. I gave him the 5 artists and asked him to start tasking them with
creating assets from the asset list which had been finalised in the lesson that
week. I then contacted the programmer who had been present at that lesson and
asked him why he thought this new software would be the right way to go? He
said that he was unsure what the other programmer had achieved so he thought it
was a good way to go. I could tell that the two programmers had not been
communicating with each other very much outside of the lesson so I contacted
the other programmer to tell him what had been discussed. I also said that he
needed to talk to his team mate to finalise what needed to be done. They then both
contacted me later that night to say they had both decided to stick with game
maker studio as they both new the language well enough. They had also agreed to
work for 2 days solidly on the demo together.
Week beginning
10/2/14
On Monday 10th I could not make it into the
university due to transportation issues though this was not the day in the week
which we had our official team brief lesson. I rang my assistant producer to
find out what had happened that day in general and she informed me that the
course leader had come in to show everyone construct 2. He had also insisted
that everyone should use it, she told him I had preferred game maker studio for
my team and he said that he would contact me to let me know why it was the
right way to go. I also talked to my art director/assistant producer, he
assured me that he had contacted all the members of the art team about the work
they were supposed to be producing. I was getting very concerned as there was
no evidence of the work being completed. I met with the 2 programmers in the
week and they showed me their progress with the demo. I was pleased to see a decent
amount of progress. Unfortunately I had become extremely frustrated with the
lack of the momentum in this project and I sent out an email to the course
leader, module tutor and everyone in the class stating my displeasure. I
realised very quickly that this was not the best course of action. On Thursday
13th I went into University and I was asked to have a meeting with
the course leader and the module tutor. They were extremely displeased with my
unprofessional approach with the email I had sent and I was told by the course
leader that several students had lodged complaints about my behaviour. It was
decided that I would remain producer for this project but that my attitude
would need to change. I also sat down
with the art asset group and apologised to them for my unprofessional ism and
then discussed what that group needed to do in the up and coming weeks. What I
realised was that there had been a breakdown in communication and that
students were unsure who contact if they were unsure about what to do.
Week beginning
17/2/14
This week was a university reading week therefore we did
not have to attend a lesson. I emailed every group individually and gave them
all specific tasks to be completed by Thursday 20th. The only group
who did not have a task to complete were the voice over team as I was sorting
out how they were going to record their work as it had been made clear to me
that the induction into the sound booths at the university was not going to
happen. I moved the sound effects student to their group after speaking to him
about what we could do to complete the task. I directed him towards Audacity, a
free piece of audio software, as I knew this was easy to use. I was seeing work
going up on google drives from all of the groups and was very happy with this.
Finally I spoke to the programmers that they were taking
these new assets and progressing with the demo and I reiterated that I needed
to see something solid by Thursday 27th when we returned to the university.
Week beginning 24/2/14
Most of the art asset team had progressed over reading
week and completed the tasks set them, unfortunately a couple of them had not.
So I spoke to my art director/assistant producer and he organised a new to do
list and spoke to the members of the art team who had not completed their tasks
and told them we could not give them less to do so their tasks would beginning to
stack up.
Character team was working well and beginning to finish off
the walk cycles for the main character.
I spoke to the sound effects team member and talked to
him about working with the character voice team about recording as he had been
inducted into the recording studio. Unfortunately me not knowing this was my
mistake as this would have sorted out the earlier problems with using this
facility.
My other assistant producer was continuing work with the
GDD and had produce a list of fire safety tips that would load in the loading
screen.
The programmers had continued working and one of them had
completed a randomisation code allowing the game ro randomise the layout and
the assets.
Unfortunately a few team members were not present
including the theme music audio who I needed to speak to about the theme music
for the loading screen. Also a couple of the art team were not present.
Week beginning 3/3/14
The character voice team unfortunately lost a member as
one of them was unhappy working on audio and wanted to move onto the art team
so I sat down with my art director/assistant producer and he organised what
tasks they would have in the art team. The remaining character voice team and
the sound effects team member went to the recording studio to practice
recording character voices. This went well and I was assured that next week
that they would be recording voices and the editing team member would begin to
edit them for the finished game.
The art team were coming along well and one of the
members who had not been showing up turned up. I sat down with her and discussed
what she had done, unfortunately due to her not communicating with the rest of
the group and the art director she had been working on assets for a basement room
that we were no longer going to have in the game. Unfortunately she did not
have any of the finished assets with her as she said she had left her memory
stick at home, she said she was going to get them sent to her. I walked her
through saving files as a TIFF with a transparent background so they could be
used by the programmers. As far as I know she never received an email with her
assets and she left so I could not speak to her and because I never saw her
finished assets I could not give her any feedback on her work. I handed this
over to the tutor as it was more of an attendance issue than a project issue.
Week beginning
10/3/14
On the 11th March I received a phone call from
my tutor informing me that he had received an email from the client and that it
contained some issues that had not been conveyed to us. He forwarded me the email from the client and read through the
attachment with their feedback as shown below:
Fire Away
Positive
aspects
I really
like the basic concept of the game and various aspects:-
·
the
setting of the game
·
the
use of 3 actions – ‘use’, ‘find’
‘escape’
·
the
random generation of environments to ensure interest is maintained
Main
Issue
·
the
game uses objects that we would not wish children of the intended age group to
be using
·
Ways
forward
The best way
to bring this project back on track would be to re-focus on the message ‘Get
out, stay out, call 999’
·
The
actions could be amended to the following:
Use – glasses to……
Find – doors…….
Escape – get out, stay out, call 999
I
immediately forwarded this to my two assistant producers and phoned both of
them to let them know about the email and to have a look at it. I attempted to
contact one of the character team but I had no response, this was ok as I knew
I would see them in the session during the week. I was unsure with their
feedback about whether they were unhappy that child characters in the game were
going to be fighting fire or that they did not want the target audience, which
would be children, playing a game where you would tackle fire. As soon as the
session started I spoke to the character team and asked them whether it would
be possible to change the child characters to adult characters and it being the
easiest way possible for them to do. Luckily one of the character team had a
very good idea, he found a template for a simple but good looking pixel art
character and he said that he could create good pixel characters quite quickly
from this template. I was very happy with the work that he showed me and by the
end of the session he had already created a character with four different
customisations and had started work on a female character. He assured me that
with minimal extra work he could easily create 5-7 new character for the game
as this new template allowed for a much easier animation process unlike the
older characters that used a more difficult method called ‘warping’. In
hindsight it may have been far easier to use this character model from the
start as we could have very easily have all the characters finished.
I spoke to
the sound effects/voice editing member and he showed me and I listened to the
practice voice samples he had been editing. They were very funny and exactly what
I had been looking for the only problem was that there was a bit of echo but he
said he could work on getting that out. I spoke to my art director/assistant
producer and asked him to write up a list of finished assets from him and his
team. This is because I had a feeling that some people were working on the same
assets ie tables and chairs. I also moved one the art asset team to the
character team to help them as we had a new asset member and I thought she
would be better suited to the character team. I did ask her to finish off the
bathroom and the assets for the bathroom as she had created some very low poly
assets and had saved them all as one object in the room. Without my asking the
art director/assistant producer did this for her.
Week beginning
17/3/14
The tutor wasn't there and not a lot of the team were
there either. I had received an email from the client in response to my last
email explaining that they didn't want their target demographic that involved
putting out fire as it reinforced a negative message to children, but if it
contained a fireman instead of a child it would be ok. They liked the idea of
finding a pair of glasses and using them to see exits but they also understood
that it was not possible to make to many drastic changes. I talked to the group
members that were there and we decided that the best course of action was to
change the main character into a fireman.
I went around and talked to my two assistant producers
and helped one of the art team put his work up on google drives. I talked to
the programmers and they were organising themselves to get together and work on
the demo.
Week beginning
24/3/14
I received an email from the tutor informing me that the
client would be in on Thursday 27th March. The project was moving
along well, the programmers had finished
constructing a basic demo which showed the basis of the game play. The
character creation team was working hard on the new characters that will be
used in the final demo and the audio team was progressing with audio assets and
sound tracks. On Thursday 27th I was informed at the start of the
session that the client would not be coming in this week but would be coming next
week instead. All the teams were up to date except for the art asset team, I
had a handover with my assistant producer/art director.
Week beginning
31/3/14
The majority of the teams were struggling a little bit to
hit their deadlines as there were hand ins for other modules in the course.
This was completely understandable and I made exceptions accordingly.
The clients came in and the course tutor and I had a sit
down, meeting/presentation of the project with them. As previously recorded the
game did not exactly meet their specifications and I explained how
miscommunication from the original course tutor had caused this. I reassured
them and showed them that the changes that were possible had been made to the
demo such as changing the character models. They were happy with this and were
understanding of the situation. I then offered to answer any questions they
had, their main questions were based around what they hoped was the possible
scope for a full game for the future. I informed them that a professional game
studio would easily be able to design the aspects of the game they wanted. They
only had a few changes they wanted made which were the addition of a female
playable character focusing the game play towards escape rather than fire
fighting and refining the fire safety tips list that would appear on the
loading screen so it was up to date with fire safety regulations.
Week beginning 7/4/14
As this was the first week of the Easter break many
students informed me that they would be away and unavailable to finish tasks or
accept new ones. I took this into consideration and, working with my assistant
producer/art director focused on finalising what few final art assets needed to
be finished. He created a to do list for his team and sent it to them, the time
frame being that this was completed when we came back in two weeks time. I
asked my other assistant producer to email me the most recent version of the
GDD and the updated fire safety tips list so I could review them and make sure
they were in compliance with what the clients had specified. I spent the rest
of time assessing what tasks still needed to be finished and had the highest
priority though I had now got to the stage where I was running out of tasks to
give to team members. In an email to the course tutor I asked him for advice on
this unfortunately he did not answer my question.
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