Retro Platformer (January - May 2014)
One of the core modules for my Masters was Innovation and Professional development, which sets the task of doing research into an area of study that's of importance to the video games industry. While I love doing projects that challenge me technically, I wanted to take the opportunity to look into another aspect of games that is of interest to me: gameplay and game controls. Unfortunately, this was a topic that was much too large for me to take on alongside all the other work I would be doing throughout the year. So I looked at what would provide a small slice of the over arching area but that could still allow me to look into the research subject. I decided to go with looking retro games, and to create an accompanying demo that could be used to aid research into the subject.
I chose retro games because of their simplicity with regards to controls; as games have become capable of doing more, they've done just that. Taking it back to the games that helped boost the popularity of games not only provides games with simpler controls to look at but also provides more understood games, as there's been time for research to be done into this subject using said games.
Using retro games also opened up the possibility of looking at the nostalgic aspect of retro games, seeing as they've recently become a popular genre for game developers, especially amongst the indie community. "Retro games" is still a large subject to tackle, so I decided to look specifically at platformer games. Not only would this make the demo easier to create, but they're also very iconic (who doesn't know this wee face?).
Because of my work load, I wasn't able to dedicate as much time to this project as I had hoped. What I did manage to do however was observe some of the games that defined the platformer genre. I wanted to look at how they controlled which included looking at what mechanics they had, how the camera moved, how responsive the controls were and also the speed of gameplay. I then tried to incorporate these qualities into my demo in the hope of installing a sense of nostalgia for players. I also added an accompanying chiptune to set the tone back to the 8-bit / 16-bit era. I also used pixel art for the assets but didn't have time to better refine it to something I was pleased with.
I made it so that the controls are mapped dynamically, when the players press a key. It assigns a key based on what action it expects the user wanted, for example if they initially press the right arrow key, the character will move right. It also notes when keys that haven't been assigned are pressed as well as how many times they are pressed. The time before they provide input is also recorded along with how long they stay in every section of the level. All this information is then collated into a report that's generated once the player has finished playing. The idea is that all this information could be used to help get an idea of how that player played through the level and what keys they intuitively went for as well as whether they then pressed other keys expecting them to do something. For example, they may press the key they expect to be an action but then accidentally press the key they would intuitively have picked.
The report also provides information for the game stats, namely how long they took in total, how many coins they collected and how many deaths they had. From that is also reports where the player died as well as anywhere that they got damaged (where they would have died if they didn't have coins).
I tried to design the level in such a way that the movement and jump mechanics were slowly introduced but due to time constraints it ended up shorter than I would like. I also couldn't help but put in things that as a completionist gamer I'd want in, for example, there are a couple of coins in secret areas which hold barely any research value but just make it that bit more challenging as a game. Here's a video of the game in play.
I chose retro games because of their simplicity with regards to controls; as games have become capable of doing more, they've done just that. Taking it back to the games that helped boost the popularity of games not only provides games with simpler controls to look at but also provides more understood games, as there's been time for research to be done into this subject using said games.
Using retro games also opened up the possibility of looking at the nostalgic aspect of retro games, seeing as they've recently become a popular genre for game developers, especially amongst the indie community. "Retro games" is still a large subject to tackle, so I decided to look specifically at platformer games. Not only would this make the demo easier to create, but they're also very iconic (who doesn't know this wee face?).
Because of my work load, I wasn't able to dedicate as much time to this project as I had hoped. What I did manage to do however was observe some of the games that defined the platformer genre. I wanted to look at how they controlled which included looking at what mechanics they had, how the camera moved, how responsive the controls were and also the speed of gameplay. I then tried to incorporate these qualities into my demo in the hope of installing a sense of nostalgia for players. I also added an accompanying chiptune to set the tone back to the 8-bit / 16-bit era. I also used pixel art for the assets but didn't have time to better refine it to something I was pleased with.
I made it so that the controls are mapped dynamically, when the players press a key. It assigns a key based on what action it expects the user wanted, for example if they initially press the right arrow key, the character will move right. It also notes when keys that haven't been assigned are pressed as well as how many times they are pressed. The time before they provide input is also recorded along with how long they stay in every section of the level. All this information is then collated into a report that's generated once the player has finished playing. The idea is that all this information could be used to help get an idea of how that player played through the level and what keys they intuitively went for as well as whether they then pressed other keys expecting them to do something. For example, they may press the key they expect to be an action but then accidentally press the key they would intuitively have picked.
The report also provides information for the game stats, namely how long they took in total, how many coins they collected and how many deaths they had. From that is also reports where the player died as well as anywhere that they got damaged (where they would have died if they didn't have coins).
I tried to design the level in such a way that the movement and jump mechanics were slowly introduced but due to time constraints it ended up shorter than I would like. I also couldn't help but put in things that as a completionist gamer I'd want in, for example, there are a couple of coins in secret areas which hold barely any research value but just make it that bit more challenging as a game. Here's a video of the game in play.
What did I actually do?
I created a platforming game based on the tropes of the retro platformer mechanics and which analyses what a player did during the game. This was in line with research I was doing into the intuition for game controls, specifically into how people pick up and play a game with recognisable aesthetics.