Proof of Concept: Pirate Racing

Pirate Racing

For our second Proof of Concept out team was tasked with creating a concept that incorporated one of the following archetypes:

- Match 3

- Racing 

- Visual Novel

As a group we were pretty decisive on what we wanted to make. We chose to create a racing proof of concept due to the fact most of the group was against the other archetypes and also really wanted to attempt to create a racing game concept. 

My responsibilities for this proof of concept was team manager, UI implementation, and coding. However compared to the last proof of concept the work was broken down more evenly. This is due to us growing as a group and learning what everyone brings to the table. We also wanted to make sure no one got burnt out during this proof of concept either.

As the team manager I scheduled all of our meetings for the week so that we could get together to ask question, implement, solve/answer problem, and to make sure everyone is on track. Having these meetings is very beneficial for our group because it keeps us on track and doesn't allow us to fall behind with the work we have to do. Another task as a team manager is conducting group brainstorm sessions. This allows us to view all routes we can go with our game, code, design, etc. During the barnstorming sessions I used different techniques and methods such as mind maps, group discussions, diagrams, lists, and some different creative problem solving tools. These techniques prove very useful during our sessions because, as a group, we generate many novel and fun ideas. As the team manager I made sure that new trello board was created for our new proof of concept. The trello board proves very useful and helps the group with organisation, I think organisation is one of the keys to an effective group.

Some challenges that I was faced with as the team manager was meeting up for all the meeting that I had scheduled. This was due to personal matters, but i made sure that the meeting continued without me so that group could talk, implement and brainstorm together. The steps I took so that i wasn't left out of any details or decisions was having one of my group members relay back to me what had been said during the group meetings I was not able to attend. 

UI implementation was another one of my responsibilities for our proof of concept. The UI was pretty straight forward. The first part of the UI was the wind indicator. The wind indicator tells the player what way the wind is coming and whether or not they should put their "sails up" or "sails down". The indicators were as simple as two arrows. The green arrow represented "sails up" and the red arrow "sails down". In order to get across the up and down indicators was enabling the one arrow and disabling the other based upon the direction of the wind. I also had to create and implement the projectile count. So I did basically the same thing. All I did was disable the images when the the projectiles were fired and then enabled when the player picked them up indicating to the player how many cannonballs they had at their disposal. The last the UI element I had to create for our proof of concept was countdown phase before the race began. This was a tedious task and proved to be quite challenging. At first I tried to manipulate the GUI text in order to create a countdown but that didn't work. 

To solve my problem, I went through a few tutorials which helped me out quite a bit. Rather than manipulating the GUI text. It taught me how to use sprites and animations to get a across the countdown. It required a little coding that just checked to see if the countdown was in progress. If it was in progress, then all controls would be disabled until the countdown was done.

Coding was another one of my responsibility. All the coding was split amongst all of us so that not just one of us was bogged down doing all of it. This proved to be very helpful and time efficient for our group. My tasks within for the coding was the UI and projectiles. I enjoyed doing the projectile code because it was a lot more than instantiating an object. I had to incorporate count of the projectiles which proved to be a little difficult but with a little tweaking and playing around with code i was able to get it done and working well. The other part of the projectiles was the pick up that came with it. So basically what I did was give the player a max amount of 3 projectiles. If the player shot a projectile the count would decrease. Then if the player collected one of the pickups it would add to the projectile count and destroy the object. However if the player had 3 projectiles and decided to pick up another projectile nothing would happen and the pick up would stay in its original place for another player/AI to pick up and use if they did not have maximum projectiles. 

I did not have any serious challenges with this code. It was just a matter and tweaking certain variables and adding in constraints so that the count didn't get to high or low. 

Again, I am very happy with the turnout of the proof of concept. I think with some more work and fine tuning this game could be a popular racing game. It think it has some novel mechanics that make the game fresh. As wells as the genre of racing. Pirate ship racing is pretty cool. I know for sure if we were to continue with this game our group would make it work and create an outstanding game. 

Some changes that I would make to our concept would be to add in more wind directions. At this point in time we only have wind in the north and south direction. I think it would be worth while adding in east and west winds and seeing how it would play out and affect the overall feel of the game. 

Another change/modification to the concept is not being restricted to using mouse and keyboard. This really affected our overall design and how we went about creating this game. We wanted to have multiplayer very much. Which required us to take into account two players using a keyboard which is a bitch. This also put more restrictions on what keys we could use. And funny enough we ended up not incorporating multiplayer due to time and complications. But adding controllers would definitely be a thing we would add in to our game because it gives us more buttons to work with which means more things we can add into our game to make it more fun. 

I also believe adding in WAY more pickups would be beneficial for our game. Since its just a proof of concept and with the amount of time we had we just went with projectile because it was most fun and incorporated the slowing affect against opposing players/AI. Some of the pick ups that i would add in would be a speed up, immunity to wind, boarding (steal another persons boost/projectile), etc.

I am very happy with how our game turned out. My team did an awesome job as usual at getting work done and coming up with novel ideas for our game. Its a pleasure to work with them.