UI

Week Twenty-three

(or Work, Work)

Violent Traversal has been hard at work developing AIM< over the past couple weeks. As I talked about in my last post, we recently established a concrete mission statement for the game. We also prepared for and conducted another play-test, specifically addressing player movement, controls, and moving platforms. All of the recent developments paved the way for me to start developing a more robust UI (user interface).

I discovered through research and analyzing other games, that UI design and control schemes are closely tied to one another. Both systems allow players to interact with a game and receive feedback, essentially forming the connection between the players physical presence and digital avatar. Often, controls and UI are integral to the way a game "feels", significantly influencing a player's decision to interact. So it's only natural that as controls and movement were addressed, I was better able to continue designing the UI.

Many games feature a UI design referred to as a HUD (heads up display), which displays heuristics to players on an invisible border between the audience and the digital game space. It's a fairly intuitive method for giving players the information they need to see without any obstructions. Clarity is key for the audience successfully interacting with a game.


The traditional HUD-style approach has been used since early arcade games and is still pretty common in many modern games. Part of the reason the design has been used so long is due to the immediacy of the information provided by the design.

Another UI type is "diegetic". The term "diegetic" is borrowed from film and other entertainment design and refers to sound that exists within the space a narrative is taking place. Like music played by the jukebox in a bar scene, for example. When used referring to a game's UI, the term applies to elements that are present in the environment for both the characters in the game and the player experiencing the game as a part of an audience. When implemented well, this design provides information clearly in an immersive manner, which allows the audience to stay connected to a games narrative. The design tells the player what they need to know to play without breaking the "fourth wall".

What does all of this mean for AIM<? Well, I came to the conclusion that a blend of different UI designs would be appropriate for our game. I designed some elements as diegetic; like the resources a player currently has stored and mech damage. Information on currently deployed drones and their durability or "health", is conveyed to the audience in a more traditional HUD fashion.

Even though I chose to design certain aspects of the UI  as a traditional HUD, I borrowed design language from other games that might not immediately suggest "HUD". When AIM< players select ammo or look to see what drones are already deployed, the interface looks like a card from a TCG (trading card game). The elements are arranged to communicate a unit's (the drone or shell) resource cost and reflect the current state of a deployed drone. I appreciate the way cards from TCGs communicate heuristics to players immediately and concisely. I wanted to bring some of that beautiful design and efficiency into AIM<.

The most important function of a UI is communication. If the player's needs aren't met by the UI, a beautiful or technically impressive game will be crippled and unplayable. Players quickly stop playing when frustrated by a lack of feedback and/or poor controls. Games don't exist without players, so designing a solid interface and controls is imperative.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading and check back for more soon!

AIM< UI Concept by Aram Wahler

AIM< UI Concept Revision by Aram Wahler

Goals

Week Twenty

(or Again, You Aren't Missing Something)

It's now the second week of the semester and I'm hard at work on AIM< along with the rest of Violent Traversal. So far the past couple weeks have been a flurry of catching up on what everyone's been working on and plotting out a tentative roadmap for the next 12-ish weeks of development until we publicly demo AIM< gameplay at SGX17.We are planning to have playtest events, which will be detailed on the AIM< Facebook page.

Over break I worked on some concepts for the cannon's (now a "mech") leg design as well as design document odds and ends. See the gallery below for a look at the mech art.

The past couple weeks have included work on textures, models, mechanics, gameplay, and level design. On Monday we will be presenting the current state of AIM< to our producer and adjusting elements based on his feedback.

In my first blog post, "Initial Game Design and Ideation", I talked about the nature of AIM< as a capstone game design project at UW Stout. Fall semester can be summarized as a lot of ideation and pivots. Spring semester heralds the second "half" of the course and a bit of a shift in focus. AIM< now has a set mission statement, which will be used as the goal by which further decisions are made. I'll be trying to focus my blog posts more on the reasons behind the game design decisions I'm involved in and how matches up with the mission statement. Ideation still continues but there won't be anymore pivots since the endgame is set.

So what does a mission statement mean in game design? In a nutshell, the mission statement is the essential overall elements that create a game's identity. My professor here at UW Stout, Jay Little, teaches that a game's mission statement is three things; who you (the player) are, what you do, and how do you win. It should be short enough to explain what the game is as a concise pitch. The mission statement I wrote for AIM< looks like this:

"You (the player) control a mech that shoots projectiles and drones and seek to destroy an AI."

The mission statement can be expanded upon with details for the "back of the box" marketing bullet-points. My working version for AIM< so far:

"Take control of a futuristic mech able to launch drones and fire projectiles created out of recycled scrap materials. Gain the ability to create different types of drones and projectiles through power-ups.  

Experience compelling platforming gameplay where each shot fired reveals more possibilities through the planet’s dangerous terrain. Drones and projectiles are not just weapons but tools to provide solutions to challenges.  

The mech, drones, and projectiles all rely on one another. The mech creates specialized drones and fires projectiles. Drones collect resources, can be used as batteries, and explore out-of-the way places. Projectiles turn certain objects into scrap, siphon energy, and send resources back to the mech or a drone.  

Explore varied environments across the planet’s harsh surface, through claustrophobic caverns and an abandoned settlement.  

Use the mech’s resources wisely to outwit malicious technology and survive devastating environmental hazards." 

As a game designer, my goal with the mission statement and "back of the box" blurb is to give a potential audience enough info to decide whether to play the game.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

AIM< Mech Leg Ideation by Aram Wahler

PR

Week Twelve

(or POSTER! poster poster poster)

Tonight our dev team, Violent Traversal, is showing some of the progress made on developing AIM< at UW Stout's Game Expo (SGX). SGX is a place for Stout student to show games they've made in classes or as independent projects. There's a large variety of different games genres, both digital and physical, on display. The students who've made each game are usually there to demo the games, show trailers, posters, etc., and answer questions. SGX signals the end of a semester and allows us to show our work to the public.

This week our whole team was getting ready to show off AIM< at SGX.16. One of my jobs besides Lead Game Designer, concept artist, and audio, is PR. I spent the past couple days putting together an advertisement poster, process poster, and sell sheet. I also did a quick update to the cannon concept. See the gallery below for an image.

The first poster is what you'd expect. I found a visual way to talk about the most important elements of the game and create some excitement for the final product. It's been a while since I took my graphics design courses but I really enjoyed them so working on this portion of the project was a lot of fun. One of the things that stuck with me from my coursework is that posters should have some levels of information. The audience gets the most important information from far away, so that info is the biggest. They get hooked and drawn in to find out more. Contact info, release dates and so on are then the smaller elements. Take a look at one of the final versions in the gallery below!

I designed our process poster to help save time in printing out a bunch of different sheets with concept and ideation art. The audience can take a look at one poster and see a bunch of the work leading up to the current version of the game.

The last PR item I designed is a sell sheet. Basically, a sell sheet or one sheet is an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper that contains all of the most important information about a game. It has to sell the person reading the information on the idea. It's important to make sure the language is concise and creative while maintaining integrity in expressing the final product goals. Sort of a balance between technical writing, creative writing, and graphic design. I put an image for one of the final versions in the gallery below.

Finally; I updated the Facebook page banner and profile pic. The profile picture now features our team's logo. Check it all out on our AIM< page! Either tonight or tomorrow I'll have some photos of the team at SGX.16 as well.

Have a great weekend! If you're up north like us; stay warm!

AIM< Process Poster by Aram Wahler

AIM< Poster by Aram Wahler

AIM< Sell Sheet by Aram Wahler

Updated Cannon Concept by Aram Wahler

More Concepts

Week Eleven

(or Skip Week)

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Although I didn't post here, I did get some work done since the last time I wrote.

The art lead finished the drone that will be playable in AIM<. You can read about the final texturing process here on his awesome blog. I took the render images he provided and put together an orthographic to highlight the design and details. You can see the ortho here on the game's Facebook page, or in the gallery below. Be sure to check out the rest of the page and look at the other concept art there! Also, follow the page if you want to be kept up-to-date with the game's development.

Our audio team finished recording, making, and mixing some new sounds as well. I made any necessary tweeks and mixed down the final versions of each sound. We now have audio for the cannon jet engines, drone jet hover engines, a low energy alarm for both drone and cannon, and a general "power-up" sound. There's a lot more audio work left to do but it's a good start. I'll go into more detail on the audio for AIM< in a later post.

Lastly, I've been working on more concepts for various parts to the game. The first one I made this week was for mine hazards that will be throughout the game. I came up with two ground variants and one airborne version. When I construct objects like the mines, I always use photographs and piece together the pieces that appeal to me. I usually come up with a sort of goal for each object as I work, often thinking about the different ways it could be used or how it will effect its environment. Pinterest is a valuable tool that I use to gather together different ideas to use for creating visual concepts. I was inspired by the mines on this board as well as sensors on this board. You can take a look at the final results in the gallery below.

I also drew up a quick concept for some monorails and started working on settlement buildings. I'll post the finished versions of the buildings and talk about the design direction more at that time.

That wraps things up for this weeks post. The team behind AIM<, Violent Traversal, will be showing a demo of the game at the Fall UW Stout Gaming Expo (SGX) on Friday, December 9th. IF you're in the area, come say "Hi" and check out the game! Be sure to follow the Facebook page for the time of the event.

Have a great weekend!

AIM< Drone Orthographic by Aram Wahler

Model and Textures by Daniel Bodunov

Mine Concepts by Aram Wahler

WIP Settlement Concepts by Aram Wahler

Elevated Rail Concept by Aram Wahler

Growth

Week Nine

(or The Week My Brain Didn't Wanna...But I Made It Work Anyway)

After I finished my blog post last week, I got to work wrapping up the narrative for AIM<. The lead artist and I had hashed out some details and written several drafts before we came to an accord on what the story should look like. I wrote an initial draft weeks ago but as a writer, I tend to go crazy creating strange places, characters, and stories. We had to find a good balance between different and relatable. The narrative will be revealed through the environment and collectibles scattered throughout the game.

After finishing the narrative, I finally started focusing on further world building and environment concept art. I panicked a bit when I realized not done a lot of world building had been done. We've done a little; like creating a cool cannon design and some drone concepts. The game design document reflects some scattered information and now we have a narrative. One of the earliest narrative drafts focused on Mars for a setting. As development progressed, though, we found Mars to be limiting for the sort of world we want to build. Beyond these steps we hadn't decided what this place we're creating looks like.

Lost.

My panic compounded when I realized a sketch wasn't going to convey all the information we'd need. Most of my experience as an artist has been heavily weighted towards characters, objects, and vehicles. I have only a little experience crafting visual environments. In the past, when I've hit an artistic roadblock, I've frozen up. This time I decided to try to find a way through right away instead of letting the roadblock get me all bound up.


 Hurdles always seem bigger if there isn't any hope. Sometimes, hope can be found by looking for inspiration. I dug around and found a couple of artists that provided some ideas for tackling the problems I was facing. There's a lot of misinformation disguised as advice or "tutorials" that only serve to make roadblocks more daunting. I've found that "tutorials" or skill demonstrations that look too good to be true, often are. None show an artist practicing. Practice is the key to skill. I realize that's obvious but when in a slump, it's hard to remember.

I learned two very important lessons this week. Finding a way through is key when dealing with roadblocks. Looking for a way around or trying to ignore them accomplishes nothing. Growth only happens by going through.

Secondly, and this is more focused on design, concept artist and teacher Feng Zhu said that there is no difference between a landscape, vehicles or a character. All are made out of the same four shapes; cylinders, squares, spheres, and cones.

I think he's absolutely right. I often find myself caught up in the "right" tool or technique and forget that good design is good design.

Thanks for reading all that! If you're reading this and want some helpful, healthy sources of inspiration and learning, check out the following links:

• Feng Zhu: Design Cinema (65! free videos - start with the first one)
• Matt Kohr: Ctrl+Paint (digital painting fundamentals - lots of free videos)
• Eddie Russel: 'Infiltrator' Production Pipeline Volume 1: Concept Design & Storyboarding (via Pluralsight)
• Lisa Liang: Conceptualizing Environments from the Imagination in Photoshop (via Pluralsight)

 Those are the best I've found so far. If I find more, I'll talk about them in a later post.

In the gallery below, I'll post some of what I did this week. Some of it's really rough and none is finished. All of it is a work in progress. I'll share the finished art as well in a later post so the most of the journey is visible.

Have an awesome Thanksgiving!

Elevated Train WIP by Aram Wahler

Crash Site WIP by Aram Wahler

Looming Wreck WIP by Aram Wahler

Train Wreck WIP by Aram Wahler

Talking

Week Eight

(or Do Not Panic: We are Training Professionals)

Last week I mentioned that I had to make big changes to the game design doc again following a longer pivot than expected. I spent the weekend following that post doing exactly that; adding in a handful of mechanics to help flesh out some thin areas in the games design. The most important flaw in the game's design was the heuristics.

Heuristics, when used in context of game design, is referring to how the game communicates with a player so they can learn how to play it. One of my professors, Jay Little, teaches that a good game needs "tell" the player 3 key things: who they are, what they do, how they win. So how does this apply to AIM<?

The previous AIM< build was a very bare-bones approach created with the goal of allowing the team and play testers to get a look at the key components without anything distracting from potential design flaws. Our initial approach was a solid start but I discovered via play tester feedback that the game was lacking anything that would communicate player progress. This is where heuristics come in. The AIM< prototype told the player who they were but left what they do, and how to win up to them to figure out. Letting players figure things out is a good thing but there should be a balance. Players need as much information as they need to have fun figuring out the rest of the game.

AIM< ver 0.1 - Drone Spatial Cue Issue

One example of confusion players experienced was while they were controlling a drone. Currently the placeholder drone is a simple sphere with a cylinder attached like a gun barrel. When players navigated into darker areas of the map, they had difficulty seeing the drone's orientation in the environment. Players experienced disorientation, which disconnected them from the game. It was a distracting enough issue that some play testers had difficulty looking beyond and giving feedback on other important mechanics.

A solution we are going to test is using some sort of underglow light effect that will reflect off of surfaces beneath the drone and tell the player where they are "sitting" in space. Eventually the effect will probably become the light from the drones thrusters. We will also be adding a head light mechanic that players can switch on and off at the cost of some energy.

This week wasn't all just game design document work. I mixed down a couple sounds created by our sound team. It was a nice change of pace that allowed me to focus on a different aspect of AIM< that hasn't seen much work yet. The two sounds we made were created to guide players to sources of energy and power-ups.

Lastly, I worked on a little bit more concept art. Our art lead asked for some complex pipe shapes so AIM< won't just be populated by a bunch of cylinders. I'll add the image to the gallery below. I should have some more images done this week after I brush up on my skills by watching some Pluralsight videos.

That's it for now. Have a happy, safe weekend!

Pipes by Aram Wahler

Deux

Week Seven

(or Pivot: The Sequel)

Well, we weren't quite done pivoting last week. We pivoted some more this week after meeting with a game designer that teaches at Stout. Finally, though, I feel like there aren't any large pieces missing from the design and we can go full steam on assets. I still have to update the game design doc with everything we discussed but we have a mission statement draft that will be finalized and we will be sticking to it. I'll go into specifics on some of the changes more next week once I'm finished updating everything.

One change I will mention, though, is the cannons design. The art lead and I decided to give it legs based on some of the feed-back we have received. I made a quick concept piece (see gallery below) just to get an idea of what that might look like and we will be continuing to re-design the cannon over the next week.

Last week I mentioned that audio for AIM< had begun and that some new members joined the team to work on sounds. Near the beginning of this week, I made some concept art (see gallery below) to show the sound team specific concepts that the art team had discussed. Some sounds have now been made and will be mixed this weekend for Monday.

That's all for this week. I'll right a little longer post next week and discuss some game design issues I encountered.

Have a great weekend!

Steam-Powered Gate and Generator by Aram Wahler

Power-Up Concepts by Aram Wahler

Main Cannon Re-Design by Aram Wahler