Game Concept and Design Document: JetFighter - Essay Example

Game Concept & Design Document JetFighter By Full Name: Aous Al-Dughaim Student ID: Unit/Semester: ICT241 - Game Software Design/Semester/Year School: Murdoch University  Game Design Document Contents Contents 1Introduction 1 2Concept Document 2 2.1Title Page 3 2.2Credit Page 4 2.3Sign-Off 5 2.4Introduction 6 2.5Game Analysis 6 2.6Game Atmosphere 8 2.7Game Play 8 2.8Selling Features 10 3Design Document 11 3.1Design Version 11 3.2Design Guidelines 11 3.3Game Design Definitions 11 3.4Player Elements 11 3.4.1Player Definition 11 3.4.2Player Properties 12 3.4.3Player Rewards (Power-ups & Pick-ups) 13 3.4.4User Interface (UI) 13 3.4.5Heads up Display (HUD) 13 3.4.6Player View 14 3.5Antagonistic Elements 14 3.5.1Antagonistic Definitions 15 3.5.2Antagonistic Properties 15 3.5.3Antagonistic List 15 3.5.4Artificial Intelligence (AI) 15 3.6Global Game Elements 16 3.7The Story 16 3.8Concept Art 16 3.9 Level Design 17 3.10 Audio & Sound F/X 17 3.11 Game Architecture 18 3.11.3How to play Copy 19 1Appendix A 20 1.1Taxonomy 20 1.2Genre 20 1.3Game Elements 21 1.4Content 21 1.5Theme 21 1.6Style 21 Appendix B 22 1 Introduction JetFighter is an action themed traditional fight arcade game, it is built in the style of older games like Pac-man, Galaxy fighter, Top Gun, Star Force and Solar Fox. The main aim of the game is for the player to move their air craft (Jet Fighter) in a fixed two dimensional space while dodging enemy elements that also fire at the player’s craft. The player has the ability to fire back at the enemy craft and destroy them. The main selling point of the game is the nostalgia factor, it is built to emulate the older games named above. This is supposed to appeal to gaming enthusiasts from the day of eight bit gaming consoles who cut their teeth on games like Pac-man, Tank and Super Mario. This game is supposed to be easy to play giving the player more time to enjoy the game and less time figuring out controls and maneuvers of the game. The game is also built so that sessions can be completed in a short time and thus make it fit in better with the schedules of our older more mature audiences and to fit in with the short attention spans of our other market segments which is younger gamers between the ages of seven and ten. For a player to win in this game he needs to have good hand eye coordination, quick reaction time and a mind for strategy. 2 Concept Document The game is set in space, with a black back ground representing the night sky with stars and planets presumably Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Uranus. The player moves front, back and sideways in the space using the arrow keys on the keyboard while dodging antagonistic elements and the projectiles they fire at the player’s fighter jet. The player scores points by shooting down and destroying enemy elements, five points are awarded for each successful kill. As the game progresses enemy elements increase in number, they become faster and start to attack from all directions making the game more challenging. The player has three lives in each turn, his health diminishes every time he is shot by the enemy or bumps into enemy elements. 2.1 Title Page JetFighter The Galaxy Defender Game Development Document Version 1.0 2.2 Credit Page Document Purpose: To explain to developers, marketers, investors and players the concept of the game JetFighter. Document Version: 1.0 Working Title: Game Design Document For JetFighter Game Concept: Aous Al-Dughaim Game Document Author: Aous Al-Dughaim 2.3 Sign-Off The undersigned members of the game development team agree with the current game design but are open to improvement of this document and the overall game concept. Game Design Sign-off CEO: Lead Designer: Lead Programmer: 2.4 Introduction JetFighter is a high paced action arcade style game built in the same style as old school 8-bit console games of the eighties and early to mid nineties. The game is built to look like it is taking place in away from the earth. The player navigates through space and is able to move any direction in the two dimensional game area destroying enemy elements and dodging the enemy’s fire. The player scores points for destroying enemy elements with five points being awarded for each enemy element destroyed. The game is made for to create a high level of physical immersion and so does away with an intricate story line and complex controls jumping straight into the action bit of the game. The theme music sound and general atmosphere of the game is made to be reminiscent of old school entertainment like GI-Joe games and old Atari arcade type games to help build the nostalgia factor that is one of the selling points of this game. 2.5 Game Analysis Game Description Genre: The genre is arcade game the sub genre is space simulation Game Elements: The game entails chasing enemy craft. Shooting at enemy fighter planes, space ships and other antagonistic elements to destroy them. Dodging enemy craft Dodging fire (projectiles from the enemy) Targeting enemy craft. Game Content: Game content is Action Theme: The theme of the game is war or alien invasion Style: Old school Game Sequence: Linear story line Player: One player game Game Reference Game Taxonomy: Play -Fictional game Player Immersion: The game is built to a large extent for physical immersion. The game environment is built in space to create that lone feeling with the sounds added to give the feeling of a high action environment. Since most of the game success comes from dodging and shooting, quick reflexes and good hand eye coordination put together will help create the physical immersion the game creator aimed to build while developing this game. Reference: Jet Fighter is built on the same concept as Atari’s Solar Fox and Old scrolling shooter games like Nintendo’s Gradius and the Top Gun franchise available on Nintendo, Sega and the little known Ending Man Terminator II console. It aims at providing the same excitement and physical immersion that have kept PyGame’s Solar Wolf built as a clone for Atari’s Solar Fox popular to date with over 250,000 downloads from SourceForge. Nintendo’s Gradius http://www.nintendo8.com/game/35/gradius/ Solar Wolf www.pygame.org/projects/20/44/ Nintendo’s Top Gun romhustler.net/rom/nintendo/top-gun Game Technical Technical From: 2D graphics View: Arcade style game using only third person view Platform: Game Maker 8.1 Device: PC Game Sales Consumer Group: The target audience is older, more mature gamers who enjoy the physical immersion of the game and want to get straight to the action skipping story lines that add no physical immersion. Enthusiasts (your typical computer nerd) who are collectors of this kind of games. New gamers, children who find other games difficult to master and play and the story line too complex or the game play too graphic for their age group. Payment: This game will be distributed first as a package built to look like the old Atari, Nintendo or Sega ROM cartridge so that it plays deeper into the nostalgia sales pitch and makes it more of a collectors item for the computer nerd target group. This package can be distributed and sold through regular retail mechanisms like super markets and computer shops and paid for in cash and other point of sale payment methods or ordered from catalogues or over the internet. Sold online for those who do not want or cannot access the first package and paid for using online payment methods, credit cards or PayPal and Google Wallet. Estimated Price: $8 Device Support List PC 2.6 Game Atmosphere The game is built to be simple. The old school sound effects help to create a feeling of being in the past playing old console or arcade games, this builds the three selling points of the game. The back ground is black representing the dark sky with stars dotting the back ground to help build a spaced out feeling that further enhances the physical immersion. It is also reminiscent of old school cartoons based in space like Silver Hawks, Galaxy defender and Start Trek. The game has two main sounds, the first being the back ground music, this was made intentionally to sound like video games from the eighties or sound tracks for the old GI Joe Rambo cartoon. It is high paced to build the excitement level of the player. The second is the explosion sounds, on for when the player destroys antagonistic elements and the second for when the player’s craft is destroyed. These explosion sounds punctuating the back ground sound track make for more game immersion. The player has three lives, he has a health bar representing his health level for each of the lives, if an enemy craft or other enemy element bumps into him he looses quarter of his health, if an enemy projectile hits his craft the life reduces by a fifteenth. This gives the player longevity and sufficient time to get the hang of the game before it gets more and more difficult. 2.7 Game Play The game starts with the player having three, there are no antagonistic elements in the game space, the first few antagonistic elements are easy to destroy and do not fire on the player’s jet. The player uses the arrow keys to navigate the two dimensional game space and the space bar to fire at the antagonistic elements. The projectiles fired by the player move in a trajectory parallel to the vertical axis of the game so aiming has to be done by positioning the player’s jet correctly on the horizontal axis. Antagonistic elements move from all possible directions and while some move from the top of the screen and go down vertically others also move horizontally making them more of a challenge to duck and their lines of fire harder to predict, this builds into the game an element of strategy that more mature gamers will appreciate. The player’s looses his health status progressively by taking fire from the enemy and bumping into the enemy elements. He looses less life by taking fire as compared to bumping into the enemy elements further deepening the strategy element of the game since the player may need to make a choice between taking fire and bumping into an enemy. The game ends if a player looses all his lives, if he has made a top ten score a heads up display pops up and offers the player an opportunity to add his name into the top scorer’s list. This is done so that the player will always try to beat the previous high score and keep the player interested in the same game for a long time in the same way Solar Wolf does and has stayed simple yet highly popular for years. Key Features The key features are a list of game elements that are attractive to the player are: Easy to play game without too many controls Short games that can be played during breaks and in the middle of other work Simple story line without too many intricacies that do not add the immersion Game is small and does not take too much memory to play Look and feel of eighties and nineties games that plays deeper into the nostalgia sales pitch. 2.8 Selling Features The main selling pitch of the game is the physical immersion of the game play, using quick reflexes to dodge, duck and fire back at the element with the action paced sound track in the back ground helping to build the physical immersion. The simplicity of the games control make it appealing to audiences from children below ten to older gamers. Game’s have shorter durations compared to newer games so can fit into a busy schedule can be played during a coffee break, while waiting for a fax to come in, at a restaurant waiting for some one who is a few minutes late and so on. This makes it easy to fit into the time schedule of the more mature market segment. The look and feel of an eighties arcade game is the final sales pitch making it sell to a more mature audience who have no qualms paying a slightly higher price for the game as opposed to younger audience who have less disposable income. 3 Design Document JetFighter has only one back ground of the night sky with planets in the back ground studded with distant stars. Antagonistic elements move in all two dimensional directions, some antagonistic elements can fire at the player and the player needs to duck the barrage of enemy fire. The player’s craft can move in any direction in the two dimensional space, the enemy can use the space bar to fire on enemy elements. Every time he hits an enemy element it explodes and is destroyed. 3.1 Design Version This is JetFighterer 1.0 build for Microsoft Windows 7 using Game Maker 8.1 later and versions. 3.2 Design Guidelines This game is built for simplicity, it is needs to remain simple, keep it’s old school look. Games need to end in a short time in line with the packed schedules of our more mature target audience and short attention spans of younger audiences and future developments need to stay true to these design element. 3.3 Game Design Definitions The game starts with a slash screen introducing the game and with credit to the game developer, the player presses any key to start the game play. The player’s objective is to destroy as many enemy elements as possible, the game will go on until the player runs out of lives. The game has only one level but it gets progressively harder to a point when the player can no longer keep pace with the game and it ends. 3.4 Player Elements The player has at his disposal the his air craft armed with the capability to fire at antagonistic elements and he can control the aircraft in any direction in the game space. 3.4.1 Player Definition At the beginning of the game the payer starts at the center bottom of the screen the player craft can be moved in any direction in the game space using the arrow keys. The player has three lives and a life bar to show his health status during game play. The game is designed so that the player does not need a heads up display to tell them how to play but rather just get straight to playing and enjoying the game. The player keeps navigating the game space dodging, ducking and firing at the enemy elements until all his lives are over had he has to re-start the game. 3.4.2 Player Properties The player elements for JetFighter 1.0 are: The players Fighter plane armed with the ability to shoot down enemy elements. Three lives per turn. The ability to move in all four directions. 3.4.3 Player Rewards (Power-ups & Pick-ups) There are no traditional player power ups, the player however scores five points for each enemy element destroyed. The ultimate player reward is to be listed in the top ten scorer’s list which shows at the end of every game. The general idea is to keep the player coming back to play again and attempt to beat the previous high score. 3.4.4 User Interface (UI) The user interface is simple the star studded night sky with planets help to add to the immersion by creating a spaced out feeling while keeping the player focused on the game play. The controls are the arrow keys to navigate and the space bar to fire 3.4.5 Heads up Display (HUD) There are three heads up displays in the game. The first is the splash screen to introduce the game. Figure 1 JetFighter Splash Screen The second HUD show when the player presses F1 and it is a help screen, help is kept short to keep in line with the simplicity of the game. Figure 2Help screen The final HUD is the top scorers list showing at the end of every game. Figure 3 The Top scorers list 3.4.6 Player View The game is played entirely in third person view with no opportunities to switch views. Figure 4 Player view The back ground scrolls to create the illusion of the running through space and the camera moving to maintain the player’s relative position on the game space. 3.5 Antagonistic Elements Enemy aircraft. They move in one direction, downward parallel to the vertical axis and have the capability to fire at the player. Element Properties Enemy Drone Enemy fighter Enemy destroyer Enemy projectile (Bullets) 3.5.1 Antagonistic Definitions The first element, enemy drones only fly in one direction from up to down parallel to the vertical axis, they attack in droves and have no ability to fire or change their flight trajectory but will kamikaze into the player’s jet. The enemy destroyer moves in a pattern similar to that of the enemy drone but have firing capabilities and will both fire on a player and kamikaze into the player. The last last element the enemy fighter has some pseudo intelligence. They attack from behind the player that is from the bottom to the top of the screen and returning to the bottom. They follow curved flight paths and will fire and kamikaze into the player. 3.5.2 Antagonistic Properties The antagonistic properties are described in the part above. 3.5.3 Antagonistic List Enemy Drone Enemy Fighter Enemy Destroyer 3.5.4 Artificial Intelligence (AI) In their normal state enemy drones and Destroyers approach from the top of the screen in and fly in a straight downward trajectory, they increase as the game progresses and attack in larger hoards. There is no way for enemy drones and destroyers to detect or seek out the player’s position Enemy Destroyers fire in the same trajectory of flight they are taking If Enemy destroyers and drones are dodged by the player they continue to move in their flight path undisturbed The above is true also for enemy fighters except the enemy fighters move both up and down in curved trajectories. If any of the antagonistic elements are shot at and hit by the player they explode and are destroyed. If the antagonistic elements collide with the gamers’ plane they are destroyed but the gamer also loses some of his health. 3.6 Global Game Elements The game space is a two dimensional space with planets to create an illusion of depth. Neutral game objects are stars and planets in the back ground. The player’s view is in third person with no possibility to toggle views. The first two antagonistic elements (drones and destroyers) move vertically downwards with no movements in the horizontal axis. The third antagonistic element (fighter planes) move horizontally and vertically creating a curved trajectory. 3.7 The Story The story behind the game is that the galaxy is under attack form an evil force, the player has been sent to intercept the attack and quash the enemy in his tracks. This is made to play to old school Television Dramas and animations like Star Trek and Silver Hawks. 3.8 Concept Art The only concept art is a fighter plane against a blue backdrop that inspired the game design. Figure 5Concept art for the Player’s fighter plane. Figure 6 concept Art for drones Figure 7 Concept art for Enemy Fighter plane. Figure 8: Concept art for enemy destroyer jets 3.9 Level Design There is only one level that gets harder as the game progresses. 3.10 Audio & Sound F/X The game has four sounds, the first is the back ground sound, a fast action paced song to help enhance the physical immersion. The second is the sound of enemy elements exploding when they are destroyed. The sound of the players craft getting destroyed. The last sound is the sound of the player shooting his guns the enemy shooting back at him. 3.11 Game Architecture No YES See Appendix B 3.11.1 3.11.2 Game Architecture Overview This game starts with a splash screen, it is displayed in the heads up display section above. There are no cut scenes as these will interrupt the player’s physical immersion and “spaced out” state. Once the game starts there can be only one interruption that is the player closing the game or the game ending because player lives are finished again this is done to maintain game immersion levels. The story line is simple and should be stated in the splash screen and get the player playing immediately. There is only one high score list, this should be clear, it should be simple and the focus should be the names on the list since the aim of the game is to beat the last high score, names and high scores should be clearly and legibly printed on this list. 3.11.3 How to play Copy The game starts with the player’s craft at the bottom middle of the screen. There will be an attack by an fleet of enemy drones, these increase in number with time. They are soon followed by enemy destroyers that come down the screen firing at the player, The idea is for you to duck and shoot. Destroying an enemy air craft earns you five points for each enemy you take down. Use the space bar to fire at the enemy and the four arrow keys to move in the game space. Should you collide with an enemy you loose some life but the enemy is destroyed and you get five points for a vanquished foe. A little into the game play enemy fighters will begin to attack from the bottom of the screen, they move in more unpredictable patterns and so you should be more watchful for them. Enemy fighters attack from the bottom this is you vulnerable side since you cant fire on them. It is important to duck and watch for their fire which just like their flight paths tends to be un predictable. 1 Appendix A In this appendix there are lists for a games Taxonomy, Genre, Elements, Contents, Theme and Style. These lists are far from complete but are useful for further examples. 1.1 Taxonomy Simulation Story Play Chance Fiction Non Fiction Story Simulation Play Chance Fiction Non Fiction Play Story Chance Simulation Fiction Non Fiction 1.2 Genre Basic Adventure Arcade (any "twitch" element) Construction & Management Puzzle Role-play Simulator Strategy More Specific Abstract (i.e., Arkanoid) Adventure Arcade (very generalised category) Beat-em-up Flight Sim/Space Sim FPS (first-person shooter) MMOG(Massive Multi-player Online) MMORPG (role playing game) MMORTS (real time strategy) MMOTBS (turn base strategy) Platform Puzzle Racing RPG (role-playing game) RTS (real-time strategy) Shoot-em-up (scrolling shooter) TBS (turn based strategy) Trading 1.3 Game Elements Alignment Catch Chase Collecting Combat Cooperation Dodging Escape Fighting Forbidden Act Hiding Jump Luck Maze Nursing Obstacles Puzzle React Resource Management Seeking Shooting Story Comprehension Target Trading Trivia Timing 1.4 Content Action Drama Erotic Horror Humor Pure Play Realism Thriller 1.5 Theme Abstract Crime Fantasy Noir Porn Sci-Fi Spy War Western 1.6 Style Abstract Cartoon Manga Old School Realism Appendix B Read More