Facebook Connect = Hard mode

I thought there might of been an easy way to get Facebook connect working for our game, but it seems it's gonna be a lot harder then I thought. I managed to build my first application in Flex and with it I managed to get my name from Facebook although I could of got a wide variety of details from my date of birth to my favourite activities. I'm not too sure how to get this from flex to flash though, and I really don't want to spend too much time over something so minor. If I can't get this working by tomorrow then I'll probably replace it for a Fakebook connect login screen so Joel can at least see what we were hoping to achieve.

Anyway, here's what I managed to achieve today, although the pictures aren't much to look at.

Some updates

 *Fast show voice* "This week, I r mostly been working on my FMP", so I haven't done as much with the group project as I had originally planned.

Ok, so first off I've put the game mechanics into an easy to read structure guide. This will also go in the design doc for easy reference to the reader.

Second, I redid some of the main screens. I changed a few of the fonts etc and added some more colour differentiating.

I'm still not quite sure what to put in the old chat field. I'm thinking of achievements at the moment, but I'm not 100 sure.

Lastly I redid the old chat screen. This is now bigger and easier to use. It's sort of a cross between IRC and Twitter, with chat rooms, groups and even instant messaging. The player will also be able to link things in chat, such as items, achievements, jobs etc.

Symbols - Distinguishing between good and bad

I've gone a way and had a think about how to distinguish say between the rubbish mic at the beginning of the game to the brilliant mic you'd get after playing a long time. The first thought was colour, but there aren't "good" and "bad" colours it's subjective or linked with emotions. So I've decided to try out a star system, it's something everyone is familiar with and easily understandable.

I wasn't sure where to add the stars, so I've experimented with two ways. The symbols here and in previous posts are jpegs and on white back ground but my finished ones don't have backgrounds so in this case the stars in type 1 would "float" below the symbol.

The stars have a glossy look like the symbols them selves

Star Type 1




Star Type 2

Symbols again

Same as the previous post but with strokes.

Symbols

Just a thought that we could maybe have the images as white instead but I don't reckon it would work as well. Here it is anyway, a black example and white example.

Symbols

I've had a go at all the symbols for the game, so far I've done the symbols for the items (most of them). Ill have a think about how to differentiate between a rubbish mic and a very good one, colour is the obvious choice.

Chris kindly uploaded my sound files that basecamp wouldn't allow me to do for some reason.

the symbols are from left to right;

Vinyl / Yacht / Super Bike / Cassette / Van
party clothes / Party Plane / MP3 download / Limo / Mic
signed dizzee poster / Bling / Estate car / Concept car / expensive clothes
luxury car sedan private jet helicopter Humvee
second hand car / sports car

Damn you Basecamp!!!!!!!!!

I cant upload my sound files, basecamp isn't having it for some reason so going to try again tommorrow.........

Music and Sound

Thinking about what Chris was saying (we've over looked sound)and we should each go away and find some sounds to include in the game.

Music
I wondered if for background music just loops of Dizzee's tracks would suffice, a variation of this is just to have an instrumental version looping, just one song or several, one leading to the other. The rap may interfere too much so taking the voice away would be less distracting but still Dizzee. Would need to include the option to turn it off. If not his songs then maybe just something with a beat, some drums etc to set the scene of the game.

Sounds
I may have just wasted my day but I've gone through a few of his songs both normal and instrumental and also interviews with Dizzee and cut out, sounds, odd bits of rap, words and phrases from Dizzee. I thought these could be used for a sound effect here and there, buttons or just sounds that are activated when something happens in the game. Some are a bit roughly cut but after you've heard the same bit of rap for the 20th time you lose the will to live. I thought having Dizzee's voice in the game would make it a bit more personal, I don't think we should stray too far from it been a game about Dizzee.

As Chris said we don't want sounds over-load that gets on your nerves, but some here and here should work. For example the "meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" loop in Bonkers (I've cut this out) could be used when one of your scores increases as the loop gets higher, the numbers speed up as the sound does then stops. It's hard to explain in text, but I've tried to include a variety of sounds, none of which may be usable I don't know.

I've included some sfx like mobile phone rings and beeps for when you click the phone, cash register for your money etc and I was wondering instead of guitar symbol maybe have a turntable, might be a bit more "rappy" (I've found a scratching effect for when you click this).

I've put what I've got so far on basecamp, in there are sound effects, instrumentals of his songs, acutal dizzee sounds of himself and just anything sound wise I got so far. The files are a mix of .WAV and MP3 due to the software I was using but all can be easily converted to MP3. The sound levels aren't always great due to source and software but again this can easily be corrected, I've put everything in folders so it's easy to trace back where each sound is from. Because of space I've had to take out the instrumentals of his songs, songs in general and the full interviews I've found (I've left in the sound clips from those interviews that I made). To see what the instrumentals are like heres one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg37MeGu0XY



I don't think we should worry too much about copyright it is at the end of the day a university project, and it's hard to do a game about Dizzee with out any audio from Dizzee or his music.

Character

Coming back to the problems I discussed about making a man or woman for the character selection, I think maybe a wii me thing or the xbox equivalent might suffice, something simple and fun. I'll have a go....

Character Creation

I've been thinking of ideas for the character creation screen. I've done a few but Chris has beaten me to it with a superior design. I'll put mine up anyway, I found it very difficult to make a character for the player to dress, as it will have to be consistent with any of the symbols made. A realistic person wearing cartoon clothes may look odd and visa versa so I've left it as a manikin for the time being. I wouldn't use this in a final design its just as a place holder whilst I think of a character style.

The idea on all of them is, the player clicks a body part (the orange button) this opens up categories next to the button, ie if you click head, it opens sideways to reveal, sunglasses, hair, facial hair etc. Once you click one of these categories the items available and or options available appear in a box down below and you can click and drag these on to your character.

Mock up 1 is a simple design with the names going round the buttons

Mock up 2 is the same design as 1 but with the no category selected, when a cat is selected it has a glow around it and the items appear in the box as described above.

Mock up 3 is similar to the top 2 but with a reflective look and a more conservative labeling.

Mock up 4 is same layout but made to look stitched thought this was a bit different and a different way of looking at "creation" more hands on, especially as we're hopefully having it drag and drop, but that's my thoughts not the view of the group. A similar design to this is making the different items and man look like you can cut them out as suggested by Liam in last week's meeting.

Mock up 4


Mock up 3


ock up 2


Mock up 1

Some more screens

Ok, I've been working quite a lot today on different screens, there's only a couple more I have to do then we should have a layout to work from when going into flash.

So, first I refined the Home screen. Now it has a trophy score and I changed the style of name because I didn't think the other font really worked that well. As well as this I made the text smaller and left room for both prefix's and suffix's.

The second screen I worked on was the character creation UI. J will be working on the actual items for the characters so I've just set up a layout for him to work with.

 

The last screen I've worked on today is the collections mini-menu. This will appear when the user clicks on an accessory to choose.

Dizzee Screen finished

One aspect of the game we've massivly overlooked, and considering the games theme it really should have been thought about from the beginning, and that's sound. OK, we agree it's going to be Dizzee, that's a given, but we need a whole bunch of sound effects for everything in the game. I don't think every button should play a sound, that gets annoying, especially how many times you actually press buttons in a mafia wars style game. But sounds for levelling up, when an hour passes by and your money goes up, when a twitter feed is addressed to you, etc. I think we should start cutting up some sounds for next weeks meeting, or even earlier and bring them in for next Wednesday.

First Draft of Home Screen

Job Screen - Finished

OK, as far as I'm concerned the job screen layout is finished, bar a few icons which Liam is working on. Next I'll work on some more screens and then next week I think we should begin getting the work into Flash.

Character Select

Unless anyone can think of any more I'm going to have six or 7 different categories;

Head: Hat's, facial hair and glasses etc

Haircut: Different styles

Upper body: T-shirts, hoodys etc

Jackets: Coats etc

Trousers: Jeans shorts etc

Footwear: Trainers, flipflops (what ever floats yer boat)

Accessories: I'll include this for the time being but not sure if its too much detail, but it will be watches rings and bling etc.

I'll see about including skin tones and maybe hair colours.

Another draft

GIRLS! (imagine Father jack's voice)

Treading veeeeeery carefully not to be sexist here, but just a thought about girls, perhaps they could be an aspect in the game, I'm hesitant to call them an item but something similar. Rep in real life goes up if you have a hot girl on your arm, she could be a requirement for interviews etc, earns you some Rep etc. Doing this may alienate a female demographic so we could have a way of you selecting male or female character at the beginning (could be related to my post about character customization) and then in turn pick a female or male partner, so you can have a hot girl or hot boy friend to show off.

Again maybe not a game changing drastic aspect of the game but it might make it a bit more personal to you and as I mentioned earlier a little less of a numbers game, I think I heard J tell us something about been interested in mini game aspect to get the game away from a mafia wars rip?

Poor pennyless musicians!

Quick note, before it goes out my head....oh it's gone

not

About the musicians, they're practically NPC's, so maybe it would be a good idea to give them a bigger role in the game then we had originally envisioned? They can have a salery, have personal interests, problems, traits (eg Your drummer has been caught drink driving, permanent -5 something) You have these from start to end, so by the end it could be a pretty big list unless you had a time or size limit of the list. I think this'll be the first game that uses the Mafia War mechanics that didn't just focus on the player and only his/her feelings.

Thoughts?

Tweaked AGAIN...AGAIN!

I've changed the graphics a bit to make them more musical, there are instruments now!

Tweaked Mockups AGAIN!

I've tweaked them some more. I've tried changing the stats to a blue colour, felt maybe the red was a little out of place. I've got an example from each screen (jobs and inventory) and theres an example using white font and black font.

I'M A COP YOU IDIOT!!

I was having a think over the property system we were going to implement in our game. The idea behind property is to attain money, but we also want a property system which reflects our level. So I was thinking, we could have our level property, which say, goes up every 5 levels and would be something like:

1-5 - Bedroom
6-10 - Bedsit
11-15 - Shared Flat
16-20 - Flat
21-25 - House

Etc.
This doesn't have to do anything except give the player some type of other level system, but we could also have things that will only work if you're in a house and above, for example.

The other property system we could have in the game would be similar to the one in Mafia Wars and would be the players main source of income. The player buys things like recording studios, music sets etc, and money comes in every hour from these.

Character Customization

Just a thought about customising your character ( not sure how much customising of characters we are going to include). I was thinking could either have a picture that the player uploads which I'm not that keen on or have the character creation type route. Could have a south park type representation, and you can drag a top, a hat or trainers etc on to a blank body and create your unique character, make him look like you or just a random person, or use pre-created Dizzee character that looks like Dizzee in cartoon. Also if you unlock items such as branded trainers or shirts or caps which we are thinking of doing that helps you advance through the game they could become actually available for you to wear. So for instance you need a pair of "Joe Bloggs" branded trainers as a requirement for doing a TV interview, you get that item then it's available to actually put on your character, you simply go to character creation and drag them on.

If people are able to look at your profile and your pic, then you are instantly bragging by what your wearing like the real world, you can look and think oh look he has "joe bloggs" trainers and he's done the local TV station interview. The same could go for other items and clothes. Again it makes it a bit more personal than just having a game of stats and numbers. It might make it a bit more accessible to the younger players, for one having a character customization process and two having a simple one like I describe above.

Design Description

I thought I'd write just a little bit about each part of my design GUI for the game. I've numbered them and each number is on a screen shot of my design.

1. This is the header; I felt this should stay at the top of the game throughout because the game has a lot of marketing potential. Dizzee would be most interested in having a game to promote him as a name rather than having the critical acclaim of having your own game. I felt it important to have his name at the top. It’s in big letters and reflects the poster I made, which I have uploaded. I wanted it so you can’t forget what game your playing and it could be exchanged for advertisements for his latest albums and tours etc. I’ve included help button here but there would be more options there, such as signing out etc.

2. Here is where your stats as a player would be displayed, like the header of the game this will appear over every screen you’re on, so you can always see what your stats are. It will have your name and your picture which is number 3. There will be a few more stats I haven’t included and a progress bar till your next level.


3. Here will be a display picture of your character; this will be unique to you especially if we have character customisation with clothes etc. It will stay attached in this position over the different screens; it is also sitting at the top of the chat. In the chat is a speech bubble coming from your character's picture. I think this gives you a personal touch to the chat and is well positioned to serve two purposes at once. It feels more like you are talking in the online community. I designed the picture to be like a badge, so it’s like a badge/image of yourself, maybe something that a more fun less serious rapper would wear like Dizzee.

4. This is the chat box; this too would stay on each screen so you always have access to it. I made it blue to tie in with the scheme and also slightly see through so the colours of each page will come through too, the text has different colours, anything said is in black and names are deep blue etc. Anything written by dizzee would be a special colour (an idea suggested by Chris and used on his design). I’ve made it so it kind of latches on to the picture above so you feel connected.


5. This is the nav bar like on a website, you press these buttons to navigate from screen to screen, I’m still experimenting with the look of the buttons, stroke etc, I have two main different ones. One is transparent and so lets the colours of the screen your on through and the other is each button reflects the colours that screen, colour is important on my designs and reflects in my decision making.

6. This is the background of each screen. Each screen reflects the colours of one of Dizzee’s albums again promoting his image. Another good reason for this is the, colour is a big part of his look so by choosing colours you know he likes it makes the game a bit more personal to him, so you feel more a part of Dizzee rather just playing a game with Dizzee’s name on it. I have yellow for inventory and purple for jobs etc.


7. On each screen will be content, I’m unsure on how to show the content with such bright colours over whelming whatever might be here, and is something I’m still looking at. On this example it shows the items in this case a microphone. I just made one symbol to represent here but there will of course be many items to display. I like Chris’ idea of having an info box pop up with a description about the item when you hover over it. The symbols for the items and jobs throughout the game I thought maybe could be like the badge look I used for the character picture, or that type of cartoon style.

Mockup's Tweaked

I've tweaked my designs slightly from before, I've tried to make them a little clearer and the chat box is less transparent so you should be able to see it on every screen.Ive also experimented with a white stroke around the nav buttons instead of black. I'm aware there may be too much colour in my designs, and perhaps I was trying to copy dizzee too much so I may have a look into dumbing them down a bit. Chris seems to have it pretty nailed and Liam's is very clear.

Draft Screen updated

We had another talk today and it seems we're all heading in the same direction in terms of both style and mechanics. On Friday we'll bring to the meeting final drafts of the style and the lists of game mechanics we have, compile them together and discuss what's good in each and then choose a final theme to go with.

After some feedback today I also changed a few of the things on mine. There's still a few things missing, but I've tried to make the text more eligible.

Mockups

We decided to each go away and come back with some designs on what the game should look like. I've done a kind of promo page, a page to show items and a page to show jobs. There isn't all the detail that would be in the finished game by any means but it gives an idea.

I have been heavily influenced by Dizzee's album art using the same bright colours and fun graphics etc that he uses. They are still in quite a raw state and would need tweaking to make the more usable, the chat for instance would be quite hard to see on some screens.

There are a few different versions, I have made one where the nav buttons are semi transparent so what ever colour page you are on will show through. I have made another with colour coded buttons, jobs for instance is purple to match it's page colour scheme and items/inventory is yellow to match it's respective scheme.

For the items/inventory page I've made a slightly different version where instead of a badge type emblem to display a item in this case it's a microphone I've recreated the wheels of Dizzee's "Bonkers" video. This may work with some changes but it might be a bit too much going on, so the simpler badge format may be better.

When I made the wheels it gave me the idea that we could have the dream truck type thing from his bonkers video at the bottom of the page as if its bouncing a long the road (animated) and behind it, it could be dragging the info ticker about your friends.

I don't currently have working internet at home which is making it difficult to upload work and means a lack of resources.

Fans?

What we haven't really talked about in the meetings we've had is the concepts of fans and fan bases. I was thinking we could have fans as a requirement for somethings and they can also add to your score. The thing it, do we have fans as other people who follow you, a bit like mafia war's 'mafia'? Or do we have as a collective type thing, every job you do you get a chance to get new fans, different jobs have different % chances of getting fans and the amount you get. Albums bring in a lot of fans and maybe even the more fans you have the more imediate money you'll get from an album or single release?

For example, you bring out an album and straight away that brings you in £10,000 an hour. We could change it so if you have more fans it will bring in a lump sum of money to begin with.
1000 fans and you get £10,000 then another £10,000 an hour
10,000 fans and you'll get £100,000 then another £10,000 an hour.

Obviously the amount an album brings in would differ as well but this is just talking about fans.

The other method, like I said, would be to have a mafia war structure friends list, using your friends as your fans. You can choose whether or not you want a limit on it, and you could require certain jobs to have a certain fan base. EG doing your first concert gig requires 2 fans (2 friends), you could also use them in rap battles to give yourself an advantage, like a morale booster etc. The other problem that arises here is the fact that you're forcing players to get other friends into your list before you can do the jobs, or people with more friends have a better chance of beating you in a rap battle. This could get extra people playing but it could also force the player away he/she can never win a fight or are restricted from a certain job.

I personally like the first idea, but I also think we need a reward for the player bringing more friends into the game because it is good marketing. Maybe a cash reward or a "unique prize" reward, which isn't game breaking or even changing, but it lets them 'brag' about it.

First Draft of game

I've done a quick draft of what the jobs screen would look like in the game. I've also incorporated the chat screen and the other options including the facebook connect info and the top stats bar. I'll try and get some more screens drawn this week and also a list of all the jobs and items which could be incorporated into the game.

Meeting

Had a good meeting today. We have pretty much sorted out the mechanics of the game now, these will just need tweaking and adding to over the course of the project. We've aimed to make them simple but still fun and addictive to play and promoting Dizzee's image at the same time.

We're now going to go away and each come up with design ideas for the look of the game, we've already done some of this but now we have some content in mind we can make a better go of it. By next Friday we need to have the mechanics finalised, which is done and also a final design of the game.

Meet n Greet

Done a draft on what the login screen could look like if the player hasn't signed up yet. It's not yet finished and it's hard to get good images without buying stock photos. The idea of the meet n greet screen would be to entice the player to play the game, show him the rewards, the gameplay and the unique features.