NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Going Indie (PreProduction/Game Development plan)

For the preparation of creating my Game Development project (Topdown Shooter), I needed to identify the requirements and constraints associated with each stage of my project's development.

 

This lead me to creating a Game Development plan to map out the processes for the game's development and set deadlines as to the completion of different tasks, as well as deciding what mechanics and development ideas would be achievable within the time limit of the project.

  

Before I could start planning out the eventual development of the game and time constraints, I needed to properly organise myself. Therefore, I created a GANT Chart to show the deadlines and what tasks need to be completed. The GANT Chart also allows me to see what I have completed and what set tasks are yet to be done.

GANT Chart:

Once this was completed, I had a more solid estimate as to what tasks should be completed by what time, allowing me to begin mapping out the game's development and constraints.

For the game's development, I created a Production Pipeline using flowcharts to better show the smaller processes required for each task, how they interlink and what order to do them in. This was to map out each area of the production up until the final distribution.

Production Pipeline:

Next, I created a series of Playboards to demenstrate what the game would inevitably look like. Therefore, allowing me to better plan out the UI and visuals of the game more effectively and visually represent the games appearance with annotations, to explain each part of the Playboard and their function.

PlayBoards:

Along side this I also made a list of different mechanics I wanted to add to the game. This would allow me to define what could and could not be done within the set timeframe and outline what game mechanics I have already completed through the use of experimentation in Unity.

The main Mechanics I wanted to add to the game include:

• Field of view (done)
  
• Pickups (weapons/health/ammo)
  
• Enemy types
• Opening and closing doors
  
• Conversations
• Ammo
• Health (mostly done)
  
• Main menu
• Level select
• Saving Data
  
• Moveable furniture
• Shooting (mostly done)
  
• Enemies reacting to sound
• Enemies triggering other enemies to help them
• Swap weapons
• Blood splatter
  
• Grenades (maybe)
• Allies (maybe)

These mechanics would be very good to implement into my topdown shooter game, however, if it became apparent that I did not have enough time to implement all of the mechanics before the final time limit of the project, some of these mechanics could be removed if there isn't enough time.

For example: the ability to move or push moveable furniture, or having moveable furniture, could be removed as it doesn't improve the overall gameplay aspects of the game and is not particularly important to the gamplay or type of game I am creating. Another mechanic I could remove to lesson costs and reduce time would be to remove the ability to use grenades, as coding and creating a grenade projectile may take a while and isn't particularly required.

Another way to reduce development time would be to use the Unity asset store, however, this may increase development costs as well, due to many development tools on the asset store requiring to be bought. On the other hand, the need for spending money can be avoided by only using assets from the asset store that are free.

However, by using the Unity asset store to aquire assets, it brings up the importance of the legal requirements of licensing and copyrights associated with game development.

Copyright (in essence) is used to protect artistic and literary expression and is the exclusive and assignable legal right that is given to a creator (of a form of media) for a fixed number of years so they can print, publish, perform, film or record literary, artistic or musical material. Generally, in videogames, code is often protected under copyright as literary work, while the artwork and sound are protected as audio-visual work.

However, artwork only has copyright protection to an extent. Certain artwork in videogames fall under the "doctrine of scenes a faire", which references that particular artwork and elements that are necessary to execute a particular idea are not copyrightable (the use of scoreboards, health bars, sky and ground a well as game rules and plot. etc...).

For example, in a golfing game, you would include certain design elements like holes, golf balls, golf clubs, golfers, grass, trees and water. And while you can’t copy these assets directly from another golfing game, you would have the right to include such elements in your game, simply because no one else would be able create that type of game otherwise.

However, using sites like Unity asset store you can purchase paid or free, licenced assets. These licenced assets can then be used in your videogame project. Despite this, it is important to check the licence as many free assets ask for credit or atribution, and using free assets in a game you need to pay for could breach their free licence. On the other hand, most of the licenced assets on the Unity assets store are extension assets, allowing for free use upon purchase.

Overall, I believe my game development plan is solid and has paved a clear path for the production phase of my project with the planning and preparation from my project pipeline, GANT chart and playboards. However, if I could improve on this game development plan I would change the project pipeline to better show the connections between different sections of the flowchart and that they could interconnect.