MAKING THE GAME
Since the due date for the assignment was soon approaching, I thought it was time that I finally thought of an idea for my game. After a lot of thinking and additional investigation, I had finally concluded what I wanted to do with my game.
I had planned to establish a game in which my sprite one ( main character = cat) had to basically go through a series of rooms ( backgrounds) in order to create the perfect gift for her friends birthday. e.g. clothing, jewellery, shoes etc.
However to increase the difficulty I thought I would put in extra things that my sprite could choose from, but wouldnt be that suitable for a gift. e.g muddy shirt, snails, rocks, cactus plant etc. Consequently making the game start all over again. In addition to increase difficulty if the player is unable to complete the game within the time limit of 80 seconds the game would start over.
6/9/2012
After my last discussion of my ideas, I had already made some progress. Previously I mentioned my ideas and here is a screenshot of those ideas put into action in my actual game.
As you can see I have multiple backgrounds in place to not only provide a variety for the player, but to also enhance the quality of the game and of course to allow the user to find the various pieces for the gift.
As you can see from this screenshot, there are multiple things which the user has to collect in order to create a gift for her friend, the cats friend. A this point I have created a variable in which the user can chose a name for their friend and the cat actually recites this name back to the user. Below is a snapshot of the algorithim used to produce this variable.
You will notice, in order to make this game more complex and entertaining, I have made an additional algorithim so that when the cat actually touches these things to collect them a message pops up to congratulate them on finding the right thing. Below is yet another screenshot of what algorithim I wrote to accomplish this, as well as some of the things that are said :
ALGORITHIM
ALGORITHIM
ALGORITHIM TO CREATE VARIABLE IN WHICH THE NAME IS RECORDED
OBJECTS ADDED TO INCREASE DIFFICULTY
Choosing a cactus
as a birthday gift, is not such a great choice. If the player selects this as an
option then they will be forced to start the game from begginning.
Water- which can
cause the player to trip over, forcing them to start the game again.
These objects ( as seen above) have been added to increase the difficulty of a user as they try and gather the pieces. Also for more inclusion of the user, a message pops up when the cat comes into contact with these objects. Below is a screenshot of the message you will recieve and the algoritihim wirtten to trigger this, if a cat comes into contact with the snail :
ALGORITHIM FOR THIS
This is just a mere example of the kind of messages that would be recieved. For your information if this does happen, you will have to start the game again and during this process the timer will be 'refreshed'.
7/9/2012
Already experiencing difficulties!
SPRITES APPEARING IN THE WRONG PLACE
After I had finished writing my algrotithims for the first two backgrounds, I already began experiencing some issues. The most troubling thing was that when I went onto the previous background the shirt and cactus plant sprite I had created for my second background would appear. Although this was not a major difficulty I still felt it was worth blogging since it was something that took me a while to resolve. I was able to resolve this problem, and below is a screenshot of the algorithim I created to resolute this problem: .
CONFUSING ALGORITHIMS
In addition another difficulty I faced was with my algorithims. Although after I added each algoritihim, I went back and checked whether it was working efficiently my sprites still went all "funny". What I mean by this is that, a lot of my sprites began to behave differrently to the way in which I had programmed them. However nothing is impossible and by putting this saying into action I was able to find a solution. My solution was that I deleted all the algorithims from where things started to go all "funny" for me. In addition when I was fixing this up I discovered I had a lot of excess algorithims. By this is I mean I had lots of broadcast this and broadcast that, but intially all these broadcasts required the sprites to do the something at the exact same time. So while reforming my game I figured out, that for all my sprites I could just have 'when I recieve this' , they would do what they needed to do at the exact moment since I wanted them to react at the same time when a certain thing happened. Due to my explanation sounding a bit confusing below are a few pictures, which explain this concept a bit better:
1. So this algorithim demonstrates that if sprite one touches sprite 20 then this is to be broadcasted.
2. Once this is
broadcasted the following things happen:
( causes some
sprites to hide)
As you can see by making one algorithim of broadcast, I could make my sprites all react at the same time. This was a real advantage because it not only reduced the amount of algorithims I had written but also lessened the confusion of following what all the algorithims were actually written to do.
SAVING IN THE RIGHT PLACE
Surprisingly this was my greatest difficulty. During the making of my assignment it was not actually until the day before the assignment was due, I realised that in order to save the assignment onto my USB I actually had to go into my desktop and then E drive. Instead of saving it in here, I was actually saving it on my documents. Consequently this became a limitation for me as I couldn't really work on my game while at school, I had to do it at home due to my stupidity. The credit for this solution definitly goes to Xiara, who taught me how to save it on my USB.
DIFFICULTY WITH ROOM 3
As mentioned previously my greatest difficulty in this room was to make certain sprites disappear and new sprites appear when the player made their way through from room 2 to room 3. However I was simply able to resolve this by inserting the following algorithims:
* insert algorithims which show that the dress is to disappear when touching certain colour
* show algorithim which shows that the boots, jewellery snail etc appear when the certain colour touches. ( due to the broadcast aspect that is released when contact is made)
7/9/2012
Today I began to edit my third slide, during this process in order to create my sprites I thought I would use some off the internet. How did I do this? Simply saved my picture as, and then imported it as a new sprite. In additin to this I also had to use the rubber to erase the excess paint around the pictures. After realising that this method was taking too long I also hand draw some of the sprites. As seen below, these are an example of sprites that have been hand drawn:
8/9/2012
Today I began to edit my second last background ( bedroom 1) during the making of this background I did not experience many difficulties. I experienced the usual troubles of making certain objects appear and disappear which was now getting pretty easy due to the fact I had already made this algorithim multiple times.
However as I progressed with the creation of this background, I began to find making one of my particular sprites ( as seen below) move in a particular direction of side to side motion.
This algorithim ( as seen below) however allowed me to conquer this predicament and create a 'villian' which would increase the difficulty of the game.
8/9/2012
Although this was very last minute I had finally decided the perfect name for my game, which was "SHOP UNTIL YOU DROP", although the user is not literally shopping the concept is correlated to the idea of shopping. Hence the decision of imposing this name.
In addition I
thought it was a great idea to include some famous musical themes such as james
bond, mission impossible and bee gees to provide the player with a greater level
of entertainment.
