Ocean Conservation - Creating a flashgame

Flash is certainly nice, even if I hate some things about it. Vector graphics, easy inter-OS compatibility, simple distribution... edit: These are things I do like!

I worked on a Flash game for a museum (in short: you got to see and learn about a certain museum collection and play little games with them), and learned a few things about been given a project to lead with no experience doing so.

First, the team. It's extremely important that they be given deadlines, and that everyone meets them. This wasn't the case for us, and the project suffered greatly for it! The deadlines we had were far too vague, and often they were simply too ambitious.

Be ready to find people to fill lost positions, as well. If someone is unable to finish their work, consistently performs poorly, or misses every deadline imaginable, you may not be able to keep them. As such, it's very important to have a copy of what that person is working on. You don't want to be left in the lurch with no background game art when someone is 75% through and drops out with all copies of the work safely on a computer hundreds of miles away. If you're serious enough, some sort of contract specifying that you have (at least some - non-exclusive may be fine) rights to the team members' work would be useful.

Team dynamics are important. There may be some people that don't mix, and it's your job to manage it.

Not everything can be open to debate, and what is may need to be decided by one person, anyway (likely, you): "Gee, I think this should be blue" "Really, I like it better red!" Seemingly minor issues can stack up and eat a lot of time, lead to diminished working relationships, and an altogether uncompleted game.

This is compounded by unclear communication over the internet: at best, it's inefficient, and at worst, it leads to misunderstandings, incorrect results, or again, an unfinished game. Figure out how to manage this!

As far as a timeframe... that may vary wildly on the people on your team. I expect that if they had nothing else to do and a completed and specific set of instructions in front of them, you could finish in a week or two. In reality, it could take months.

I'll see if I can think of anything else. I certainly enjoyed my experience, but know it would be much smoother a second time around.

Note: I say "you," but I really just mean whoever is in charge. But if that isn't you, then it had best be someone you can trust, and who realizes that you (and your organization) will have final say over certain elements.

Avatar God makes some excellent points on project management.

Some thoughts on the design:

I think the "click to ascend" helicopter control makes less sense when applied to fish. I'd suggest a simpler follow-the-mouse control scheme... which will also work better with my primary suggestion:

The player should control a school of fish, not a single fish.

One of these fish is the "leader" and follows the mouse. The other fish will use a flocking behavior to follow the leader, while maintaining an appropriate spacing. And, of course, they'll often end up getting hooked or netted or whatnot.

In a typical videogame, the concept of a "life" is very abstract, and really only represents another chance to play through a level. But in this design, the player's "lives" are actual fish swimming on the screen. When they die, they're gone, and the player has to keep playing without them. The resulting gradual attrition will help to reinforce the concept of overfishing, in a way that a single fish with multiple "lives" wouldn't.


I don't know if Ocean mentioned, but I'm willing to help out with some art, particularly animation. I'm not really a concept artist, but I can try faking it if you don't find one.

Quote:

Original post by Logodae Avatar God makes some excellent points on project management.

- He sure did, and I've taken them all well into account.

Original post by Logodae
Some thoughts on the design:

I think the "click to ascend" helicopter control makes less sense when applied to fish. I'd suggest a simpler follow-the-mouse control scheme... which will also work better with my primary suggestion:

- Well you see, that would kinda ruin the challenge in it. If you've tried that heli-game, you've noticed that you really have to time your ascents/descents really well in order to avoid the blocks. I'm looking to achieve the same kind of mechanics here, as it would fit very well with the obstacles we have planned, as well as a jump, that will let the fish swim up to the surface and leap up, like a flyingfish.

Quote:

Original post by Logodae The player should control a school of fish, not a single fish. One of these fish is the "leader" and follows the mouse. The other fish will use a flocking behavior to follow the leader, while maintaining an appropriate spacing. And, of course, they'll often end up getting hooked or netted or whatnot. In a typical videogame, the concept of a "life" is very abstract, and really only represents another chance to play through a level. But in this design, the player's "lives" are actual fish swimming on the screen. When they die, they're gone, and the player has to keep playing without them. The resulting gradual attrition will help to reinforce the concept of overfishing, in a way that a single fish with multiple "lives" wouldn't.

- Yes, I've actually thought of this already myself. However, with the current design this is not very suitable. We're keeping it simple, i.e. we're sticking with one fish for starters. I think that with what is created for the first game, we could quickly create a sequel with similar objectives but different kind of gameplay, and I already have many ideas in mind for a steam-of-fish kind of game. But well, I shouldn't start talking about sequels at this point, hehe. We've barely started making this first game.

Quote:

Original post by Logodae I don't know if Ocean mentioned, but I'm willing to help out with some art, particularly animation. I'm not really a concept artist, but I can try faking it if you don't find one.

- He only mentioned that a few artist had shown interest already. Glad to hear you're willing to help. I'll have a recruiting thread ready soon, where I'll be asking for one, possibly two visual artists. That's all we need to get this game rolling, as we already have the other essentials (Phyxx will be programming).

Quote:

Original post by Sadr Well you see, that would kinda ruin the challenge in it. If you've tried that heli-game, you've noticed that you really have to time your ascents/descents really well in order to avoid the blocks.

Yeah, I noticed. I got sick of it after about thirty seconds (and a half-dozen tries), which is the other reason I suggested a different control scheme.

I think your game would have much broader appeal with more intuitive controls, and a more forgiving "loss" mechanism (i.e., losing one of your fish v. losing your entire progress). The essential challenge of avoiding obstacles would remain -- especially since you'd be trying to keep multiple fish out of harm's way.

Also... I assume the "Game Over" screen is when you're making your "save the fish, sign the petition!" pitch? If so, I really don't think you want a game that kills the average player ten times in the first minute. Some people react to that kind of frustration by playing the game compulsively. Most people find something else to do.

Give them five minutes of less-frustrating gameplay, and they'll be more likely to give five minutes of their time to your petition. Especially if they've been trying to "save the fish" throughout those five minutes, and actually watched their little school of fish dwindle.

Quote:

I think that with what is created for the first game, we could quickly create a sequel with similar objectives but different kind of gameplay, and I already have many ideas in mind for a steam-of-fish kind of game. But well, I shouldn't start talking about sequels at this point, hehe. We've barely started making this first game.

I think you should be talking about it -- in fact, I think you should skip straight to the sequel. Why clone a game with limited appeal, which doesn't particularly reinforce the point you're trying to make, when you could spend just a little more time to create something that's more original, more playable, and more on-point?

I'm all for keeping designs "affordable," even when you're measuring the cost in volunteer hours. Depending on the programmer's experience and interest, flocking might be out of reach. It might be a bit tricky to design suitable obstacles for it, too. A "stream of fish," though, really isn't much harder to code than one fish, and leads to some interesting gameplay possibilities...

Tell you what. A prototype is worth a thousand words, and Flash is nothing if not amenable to prototyping. I'll throw something together, and you can decide if it has any potential.

I agree that the helicopter game is too hard, where the whale game is gradual and a beginner can last a while. The whale game, and several Flash fish games on Google games seem to use the same approach to movement. As a concept, I like the logic behind using a school of fish. However, from a campaign perspective I think one fish getting bigger and avoiding more and more fishing gear best conveys the idea of overfishing, and drives the player's experience directly toward signing the petition. One thought was to have the school come later as a result of success, and of course that would make the game even harder. I'm working with Sadr and we appreciate your comments and advice.

Quote:

Original post by Logodae Avatar God makes some excellent points on project management. Some thoughts on the design: I think the "click to ascend" helicopter control makes less sense when applied to fish. I'd suggest a simpler follow-the-mouse control scheme... which will also work better with my primary suggestion: The player should control a school of fish, not a single fish. One of these fish is the "leader" and follows the mouse. The other fish will use a flocking behavior to follow the leader, while maintaining an appropriate spacing. And, of course, they'll often end up getting hooked or netted or whatnot. In a typical videogame, the concept of a "life" is very abstract, and really only represents another chance to play through a level. But in this design, the player's "lives" are actual fish swimming on the screen. When they die, they're gone, and the player has to keep playing without them. The resulting gradual attrition will help to reinforce the concept of overfishing, in a way that a single fish with multiple "lives" wouldn't. I don't know if Ocean mentioned, but I'm willing to help out with some art, particularly animation. I'm not really a concept artist, but I can try faking it if you don't find one.

Lemmings? Just kidding, I like the idea, its more realistic view rather than just 'one' fish. :)

I know I'm new to the boards and all, but I work with 2-d, 3-d art, graphics, and animation, and could use the experience while I'm in school.

Ocean: Okay, I'll stop trying to play designer. ;) Just let me know what/when you need for art. Though if you're curious, you can see what little I got done on my prototype here. (Don't be alarmed by the graphics quality; the fish is just a quick placeholder.)

Sephyx: Welcome to Gamedev. I'm glad to see another artist taking an interest in this project.

Re. Sephyx & Logodae: As any other interested artists, I invite you to our newly created recruiting-thread. You can either reply there (would be nice with a bump, hrhr) or you can send me a PM on this forum as I check in regularly. Looking forward to get in touch with you all!

Oh and Logodae, I did try your prototype and it didn't look bad at all. I already know that that kind of concept has potencial as both a fun game and an excellent way of spreading the message, I just don't feel it would fit well into the concept we've already started on. Maybe some time we could get together and further build upon the concept, but at the time being that's not a possibility.

Oh btw, and this goes for everyone, we never really discussed a suitable name for this game, so I just put something in there quite at random really. It will probably do if nothing else comes up, but suggestions for a name on the game would be greatly appreciated.