Unit 8

Asset list

• Cars – Different colours
• Avoiding objects
• Background
• Collectibles

 

Secondary research

I decided to look at popular family films, animations and games that feature cars to understand how the cars are represented to appeal to a young audience.

Herbie 

Herbie is a 1968 American comedy film.

Herbie (The Love Bug) is a fictional character with human characteristics, who has featured in several Walt Disney motion pictures.

The films Herbie has been a part of are:

The Love Bug (1968)

Herbie Rides Out (1974)

Herbie Goes To Monte Carlos (1977)

Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

The Love Bug (1997)

Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)

Herbie is a 1963 Volkswagen Beatle who is capable of driving himself, and is a big contender in auto racing competitions.

According to the filmmakers of Herbie, Herbies number 53 came from one of the Disney director or producer, that was a big fan of retired baseball pitching star, Don Drysdale of Los Angeles Dodgers, 53 was Don Drysdale’s Uniform number.

H.E.R.B.I.E (Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-Type, Integrated Electronics) which is a fictional robot and an ally of the fantastic Four appearing In American Comic book which are published by Marvel.

Herbie is a German name usually given to German kids by their parents and also means Illustrious warrior, Army and bright.

Herbie communicates to people in the film by rattling himself and making different noises to tell people different thing and you can also compare him to R2-D2 from star Wars how does the same when trying to communicate to other people in the film.

 

Herbie’s personality is cheerful, energetic, he also has a sense of humor and likes to play practical jokes on people.

 

Brum

Brum is a British Children’s television series about the adventures of a small artificially intelligent, self-driven car. Brum was set in Birmingham, England and produced by Ragdoll Productions.

Brum was first broadcasted in 1991 and the last live action was broadcasted in 2002. Brum was broadcasted on BBC One, Cbeebies and Discovery Kids+.

The first every episode was 26th September 1991 and the last ever episode was 4th November 2002.

 

In Brum he communicates to people in the TV Series by bibbing his horn, making noises and warming up his car.

 

Brum’s Personality is that he is quite loud when traveling around the place and makes sure he is heard.

Cars

Cars has three animated films that has no people involved so it’s just about cars and there a many characters in these films and each one has a different personalities some are nice and some are not so nice so it’s a mixture of personalities which work perfectly for my game because i have made 8 different cars with 8 different personalities.

The first cars film was released on 28th July 2006 by John Lasseter. This film was quite a big film when it came out and kids loved it. The film was watched a lot all over the world. Cars was about a red car called Lighting McQueen who was the main character and was lost after falling out of a trailer during his journey down town to a place called Radiator Springs. While there he slowly befriends the town’s odd residents, including Sally who was played by Bonnie Hunt, Doc Hudson played by Paul Newman and Mater who was played by Larry the Cable Guy and when it came time for him to leave the championship was not his top priority.

The second cars film was 22nd July 2011 and the third one was released on 14th July 2017.

The red car I am going to make this car making noises to communicate during the game.

The Blue car is going to have fast moving when switching lanes in my game.

The Green car is going to have slow when moving to each of the lane in my game.

The Purple car is going to be very fast and sometimes going to control it’s self.

The Pink car is going to be the one that gives you bad luck in my game.

The Yellow car is going to be the one in my game that never crashes unless your controlling it.

The Orange car is the nice guy in my game that tries to help you complete the whole game.

The Grey car is going to be the bad guy of the game that tries to stop you from completing the game.

These examples gave the cars a personality which helps the audience to connect with the films  i will use this when designing my game sprites to help the audience understand the different car personalities and what is going to stop you from finishing the game or helping you finish the game.

In my game there are going to be 8 cars you can play as and each of them are going to have a different ability for example one could be faster than the others, one might be better as switching lanes, one might be nicer than the others or one could be the nasty car of the game.

Hot Wheels

Hot Wheels is a brand of die-cast toy cars introduced by American toy maker Mattel in 1968.

These are the top ten most expensive Hot Wheels cars:

1971 Purple Olds 442,

1968 Custom Volkswagen Without Sunroof,

1968 White Enamel Camaro,

1970 Red Baron With White Interior,

1995 Collector Number 271 Funny Car,

1970 Ed Shaver Custom AMX,

1970 “Mad Maverick” Base Mighty Maverick,

1974 Blue Rodger dodger,

1968 “Cheetah” Baes Python (Hong Kong Base) and

1969 Pink Rear-Loading Volkswagen Beach Bomb.

“Here was this car you always dreamed about, and you can buy it for just a dollar” says Larry Wood, who began designing Hot Wheels toys in 1969.

There has been 4 billion Hot Wheels models made since the first was casted in 1968.

The first ever Hot Wheels car to be produced was the Dark Blue Custom Camaro which was made in 1968 which makes that at least 50 years old.

I then decided to download tow car games on my phone the first game was called Car Driving In Crazy Town which is a game where you get to pick different characters to drive a car to different locations and on the was you are earning coin so that you can upgrade you’re car and also getting to unlock different characters. This game is made from a lot of Blocks, it’s really colourful and its also a fast paced game but it is pretty fun.

The other game I played was called Roof Jumping and this game is in my opinion a more techniquical game than Car Driving In Crazy Town because there is an actual steering wheel that you use in the game, it had more of a brighter feels to it but is was less colourful than Car Driving In Crazy Town.

I am mainly looking at pixel art styles because my game is going to mainly be pixel based. I have looked at a pixel based car game called Smacky Cars. This game  is an avoiding game where you have to move your car side to side and try not to crash into other cars otherwise you have to start over.

I have used the mechanics of this game as inspiration and i will be making my game  it an avoiding and collecting game. You will have to collect stars and avoid wooden boxes and oil patches. I have picked these items because stars are child friendly, oil stains are to do with cars and you will have to avoid it and the wooden box because they are also going to be something you have to avoid.

           

I am picking pixel art from my game because I can make it as colourful as I want, it looks really nice if you have done the picture your creating properly and so it looks like what its supposed to be and it’s simple but effective art.

Primary research

I have made a questionnaire that i am going to had out to family members and friends so I can see what others think of my idea and asking them of anything i can add to make my game as good as possible.

I gave out questionnaire to a couple of people and this is their response.

I got some very good feedback from my questionnaire I gave out. everyone who answered it loved my idea and wanted to to add a couple of things to make my idea even better. A lot of people said make it an avoiding game and a lot of people said make it a collecting game so I have chose to make it an avoiding and collecting game, everyone said to make it a brightly coloured game.

For my research I also went out one day and got this picture. It’s Yellow which is a bright colour and i am going to have bright colours in my game.

Logo idea and design

I looked at quite a few car logos for my logo and in the end I choose to use the GTR logo as my inspiration so i went and started designing a logo and these are a couple  I designed.

So I went into power point to start designing my logo and then I took them into adobe illustrator to make them look a bit better DT stands for Down Town and then I just added Racing to the end so it’s now Down Town Racing because my game is about racing and i have decided I am going to choose the bottom left one with the checkered flag background and the graffiti lettering.

 

I have started the productions of my game by putting the assets into Flash and have coded the assets to make them buttons.

This is the start screen with the logo of the game and a button to start the game.

Once you click the start button it will take you to this screen and you will have the option to pick which ever car you want.

Once you have picked the car of your choice you will be taken to a screen like this with the colour car that you picked and all the screens will have a different layout.

 

 

This is the code I used so that once you clicked your choice of car it will go to the correct screen and to make sure all the game works.

 

I have made one background for a phone app store for my game but one has the boxes and one doesn’t have the boxes, I think I’m going for the one without the little boxes but I’m not sure yet. I also got my logo in the corner and the cars I made which I grouped together.

 

Today I have made  a app store picture as if my game was actually in the app store, for this I looked up the app store and went for a very similar style to the normal way the app store present their games and others apps.

 

Today I was wondering how I was going to make my cars move so I opened up another Adobe Animate page and had a bit of a mess around trying to get it to work and then within 10 minutes I had the car moving forwards backwards and side to side it looks pretty good and now I know how to get the car to move I am not going to forget so I can use the skills I have learnt today in my main project.

 

Today i have been make buttons to go into my game and to do this i got pictures off of the internet and copied over them in Adobe Illustrate and then put the colour I wanted inside of each letter.

 

Today I have sorted the little problem I had in my game which was when I pressed for it to play it was going crazy and not letting me play, so what I did was I just deleted it because it wasn’t important and I have also added to my buttons by making a start button.

I thought I would make colourful buttons and game over because it make the game look better and not so bland.

I have made another title in Adobe Illustrate and this is what it looks like.

 

I’m having a problem with my game I have made one level for my game but when I try to make another level the code is getting it’s self confused because I am using the same objects in each level and it doesn’t know what level I want to play, so I am going to keep trying to figure it out and see if I can solve this problem.

This is what is coming up when I try and play my game.

 

I have started a Illustrator drawing of cars the movie and this is how it’s going.

 

I have done some more work towards my my drawing of Lighting McQueen for my research I did on cars 1, 2 and 3.

It’s coming along nicely and it’s getting easier and easier to draw new things in Illustrator as I’m getting use to the software and after being shown how to use it a couple of times, I am really enjoying using Illustrator it’s fun and makes great pictures if you know how to use the software.

 

Today I have made a questionnaire and had people play test my game and answer the questions so far I have had 5 people answer my questionnaire and from that I am going to add new things to my game and this will also help me with my evaluation. So far i have had some good feed back and on the question I asked what I could have done better it was all pretty much the same, they all said about adding a score and a thing to tell you how long they have been playing. I got anywhere between 5 and 10 on what people rated my game. Overall I’m happy with how my game turned out and also happy with the feedback I got from my class mates. I am hoping that more people in my class can play my game and answer my questionnaire so I can get a better view of what people think of my game.

 

 

These are the responses I have had so far. Need a couple more before I start my evaluation.

Evaluation 

Compare your finished product to your original plan?

My finished project is actually the same as my original plan I didn’t change a single thing because how I planned it was how I wanted my final project to be. I planned my game to be an avoiding game, where you play as a car of your choice and you have to avoid the oil stains and wooden boxes that come down the screen at all different speeds and if you get hit or hit one of them then you fail the game and have to start again. During the process of making the game there was no way I was changing it in any way because I like the first idea I came up with and I stuck with it. The only thing that didn’t go into my game that I planned to have was collectables but I then decided I had to make an choice either avoiding or collecting and I picked avoiding.

How has it changed? Why?

It hasn’t changed at all because I was happy with my idea and didn’t feel the need to change anything. The only thing that did change was I didn’t end up adding the star as a collectable.

How did you research helped you develop your idea?

My research really helped me with the planning of my game. When we was told what the project was from that moment I knew I wanted to make a game about cars. So I started my research on a couple of the most popular cars toys/films/TV shows and games, which was Herbie: Fully Loaded, Brum, Cars, Hot Wheels, and with the research I done this made me want to make a car game even more. I also made a questionnaire and game it out to a My brothers and a couple of their friends to see what they thought of a game about cars and what they wanted to see in my game and I got really good feedback from the questionnaire which game me more confidence about make a car game and I tried to add all the thing that they said I could try and add, I didn’t manage to get everything they said about in my game but I got a couple of things and I also didn’t want to over fill my game so it was all confusing, with this research I found out about the different personalities the cars in the Tv shows and films had and gave each one of my cars a different personality and also gave each one a different strength. The research also helped make my idea better because I was more confident about making a game all about cars.

 

Is it suitable for your intended Audience? (play test feedback)

My game that I called DT Racing was in fact suitable for the intended age range I choose to make my game for which was between 5 and 10, I got people In my class to play my game and I made a questionnaire for them to fill in after they played my game. I had some really good feedback from them. Out of 10 they rated my game an 8 which I was very happy about that, out of 5 people that filled in my questionnaire I got 100% for the question Is my game fun?. They all thought the colours I picked for the background, start screen, the main game, the 8 different coloured cars I had, the end screen and all the titles I made were really good choices and they also said that the colours would attract the age range I went for which I was also really pleased with, they all thought the age range was perfect for my game, they all thought the assets and everything I made for my game was really good and actually looked like what they were supposed to look like which I was really pleased about and I asked a question at the end which was what could I have done better and they all came up with the same idea which was about adding a timer to my game to tell the player how long they have been avoiding the oil stains and wooden boxes and I have looked into adding that to my game but I didn’t have enough time to sort out all the code for a timer but I really would have like to so my game was even better.

 

Did you stick to your timetable (gantt chart)?

I didn’t stick to my gantt chart because I knew what I had to do when I had to do it and how long to spend on each of the pieces of work I had to complete for this project. I don’t really like following timetables for projects because I don’t like being stuck to one piece of work for the lesson I like to get a couple of pieces of work started so I know that I have start the work I just need to carry on in another lesson and finish it. I didn’t feel like following a timetable I knew when the deadline was so I just planned to make a list of things that needed doing and ticketed it off when I had done that piece of work.

How did you make the most of your strengths and overcome your weaknesses?

I used the strengths I have for this project because I knew this project was the final one and I had to use every strength I have to make this project the best game and research I have ever done during my first year on level 3 to show I can make good games and I can do really strong research to support the game I have made and why I chose to make this type of game. My weaknesses were shown when it came to the coding of my game because it was quite hard coding I had to use to make the cars move side to side but once I asked for some help and I was shown what I had to do I was flying through the making of my game and managed to finish the game, the only problem was my weakness of getting angry because I could only make one level with the car moving and the avoiding objects falling down the screen because every time I tried to make a second level the code was getting confused on what level the player wanted to go to. I looked into it but I could find out or work out how to fix it so next time I make a game like this I will do more research on how to avoid that problem from happening again.

How have your skills developed?

My skills in adobe Animate have improved massively over the last two projects I have done. I have become more confident in my ability when coding for a game and my skills when researching have become stronger by looking deeper into personalities for the character and  also finding out more about my idea before starting anything to do with the production of a game I want to make and also by looking at multiple things to do with my idea so I have a really strong idea on weather i’m happy to carry on with my first idea for a game.