Finalising ideas

I looked at various different kinds of leaves to get an idea for the sizes, shapes and colours that I could use. I wanted to have at least four maybe five different types leaves in the game each one is worth different points and possibly one thing you had to avoid picking up as it deducted points instead. So I collected some pictures of leaves and began drawing them up on Photoshop, keeping the designs simple and bold so they are easily distinguishable and also making them differ in size.  I also drew up a character sheet for the hedgehog again keeping it quite simple. Throughout I made sure to keep and autumn based colour scheme. I found it quite easy to come up with the designs for my game, as it doesn’t involve detailed characters or concepts. Using the finished concept sheets I made up an example of what I thought the screen would look like in game and pasted it into a picture of an iPod.

While doing all this I was working on my presentation document, I have been trying to use it as a sort of manual for the game, but have included some bits about my research and mechanics of the iPod itself to explain how it would work. I decided to create the document in Microsoft PowerPoint, I did this because I could easily move text and images around, and have the ability to design the document the way I wanted with having to copy and paste the background for every page.  

Apple Application project.

First Designs

I looked round for pictures of hedgehogs to get the basic idea of what they look like and the shapes that make them up. I started doing some quick reference sketches from photos on the Internet and wildlife magazines.

Then I played around with some cartoon style drawings and adding some colour to get an idea for the colour scheme and over all look for the game.

Pencil and coloured pencils. 

Apple Application project.

My idea part 2

I found it hard to come up with a theme for my game; there were so many different options that could fit within the type of game that I wanted to produce. Inspiration hit me in the most unusual situation. I was sitting in the kitchen with my friends in Beechcroft looking out the window that looks out over the garden. There is a huge chestnut tree right in the middle, which has slowly begun to loose all its leaves, I really love the colours of autumn and all the different shapes of the leaves you find on the floor, that’s when I thought about the possibility of using it in my game somehow. I thought the leaves could be the things that had to be collected to score points. Then there was the problem of what would collect the leaves; it had to be something relevant to the autumn style of the game. When I thought about piles of leaves on the ground I thought about hedgehogs, I live in a small town near a lot of farmland and we have a lot of wild life around. It is common to find hedgehogs wondering around in your garden, and in the autumn they are quite well known to hibernate in piles of leaves, there are warnings to take care when moving leaves. So my idea was that you would control a hedgehog when it is rolled up in a ball and roll around collecting leaves with your spikes. 

Apple Application project.

My game idea.

After looking at the different games that exist for the iPod, I settled for an idea that used the tilting function on the hardware. I wanted to create something that involved having to control a rolling object and pick up objects as it went to score points. My inspiration for this idea came from the game Katamari on the Play Station 2 and Katamari forever on the PS3; this is where the idea of gathering came from. in this game you control a small character that rolls things up into a ball as you travel along, anything and everything gets picked up, if you roll over it it is picked up, simple as that. in some of the levels this can go to an extreme and you start picking up buildings an people and many other things making your ball grow to a massive size. The game is really simple to play, but incredibly fun, all accompanied by a bold and colourful art style and interesting soundtrack. 

Katamari (c) Namco Bandai 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Forever

I also looked at a Play Station network game called Super Rub 'a' Dub; in this game you use the Six Axis function in the controller to move a rubber duck around a tray of water collecting all the other ducks, while trying to avoid a toy shark that eats the ducks you are trying to collect. to control the duck you have to tilt the controller like you would if you had the tray of water in you hands and were trying to do the same thing. To jump you simply shake the controller up once as you would expect. again this game is simple, something you can just pick up and play with feeling you have to sit there for hours trying to complete it, it was designed to be fun mini game nothing particularly serious. 

Super rub 'a' dub (c) Sumo Digital

publisher (c) sony computer entertainment

 So I decided that I wanted to use the balance function from Super Rub 'a' Dub, with the style of game play from Katamari, with the idea of collecting material by rolling a ball of some sort around the screen. The next step was to decide what theme I wanted.

Apple Application project.

Researching.

During the first week I did some research into iPod applications and what was already out there. I started by going down the local apple store and testing out some of the games on the iPad. The games I played were all completely different from each other, one was a fun shooting type game where the game was on a side on view and you had to shoot zombie using plants that shot bullet like things at them. You could obtain power up for them to increase the amount of damage done to the zombies. The game used the touch screen as the controls it didn’t make use of the tilting controls at all.

Another game I played was simply a sport simulator, this one air hockey and it was exactly what you get with air hockey, and it kept to the original game and didn’t add any extra things to it. This was a two-player game so you didn’t have to control both pucks yourself; it made it more fun to have someone to compete with. Again this game used the touch screen to control the puck, you did this by holding your finger on the puck then swiping you finger in the direction that you wanted it to go in, this then catapulted the puck in that direction.

One other game that I saw was a racing game, it had realistic graphics so it was like you were in a real car in a real environment. This game was probably aimed at people used to playing race simulators on other platforms, giving them an opportunity to play them on the go. Unlike the other games with this one you controlled the car by tilting the iPad or iPod depending on the direction you want to go, like using a steering wheel.