Download - First impact making of ‘pipeline’
First Impact - Making Of ‘Pipeline’ Ideation: From the start we wanted to do a game with a Sci-‐Fi feel to it, we weren’t decided on what genre it would be, however. (Platform, shooter, RPG, etc.) I suggested the initial idea of a small alien escaping from the FBI and trying to return to his spaceship, so with this idea only, Sam Hayman began to draw some concept designs whilst Sam McCourt and I began outlining the basic story. We agreed from the start to have a small, peaceful alien that would not be using any forms of weapons (so this ruled out the chance of making a shooter).
Early concepts for Jeremy (on the left), first design for Jeremy with two colours (on the right). Drawn by Sam H. Once we had the alien’s basic look and name decided, we focused on the genre, me and Sam M had come to the conclusion that it would be best to make a platform game, we took inspiration from games such as Super Mario Bros and Braid. Sam H’s main inspiration for the Jeremy’s look came from the character Stitch from the film Lilo & Stitch, and the character Gizmo from the film Gremlins. I suggested “First Impact” as a working title, and we decided to stick with it throughout the entire production of the game. I was appointed Project Lead, Sam H as the Art Designer, and Sam M as Lead Programmer.
Pre-Production: Before we began making the game, we began to design assets such as the laser traps, buttons, and collectables. As they were quite easy to make, Sam M and I made a lot of these whilst Sam H worked on the background for the levels, he also designed a concept layout of what level 2 may look like when it was done, we referred to this quite often when building the level.
The background design used for level 1.
Left: The concept for level 2. Right: The final version of level 2.
While Sam M and I the built the alpha version of our game so that the basic code was already written for the later versions, Sam H began designing. The first thing he designed was a ‘game in a frame’ cover the cover was as all old arcade game covers were elaborate and a completely different thing to the actual game. His game in a frame showed the FBI agents surrounding this crashed alien and his ship. Sam then started the designs for Jeremy first using aliens from films and TV programs. The design of Jeremy was done with two colour variations, yellow and blue, the blue proved to be more popular. Sam also designed various versions of the FBI with square Minecraft styles and then a hand drawn style, he then had Sam M & I pick a favourite suit colour; black, blue or grey. The collectable items were easy enough to do a file document for level one, a sheep for level two, and three shattered ship part with glowing orange energy stripes for the unused third level. There was also the designing of the laser traps used in level one, there several different designs and then Sam H had the idea to include a warning sign for those who didn’t read the rules. The warning sign was the best out of the lot and was chosen by the team for the game. Sam M stepped away from the programming for a while and designed the buttons we would use for our menus, while Sam H started designing the level backgrounds, floors, walls and ladders as well their placement in the levels of the game which Sam M and I could use if they didn’t have a better idea for our level maze.
Production: Whilst Sam Hayman continued to work on more art for the game, Sam M and I began to build level 1, level 1 was a lot more simple at the beginning and after testing the level we had decided it was too easy, and added another guard, an automatic laser trap, and increased the speed the guard fired his gun at. The process of making the game was the hardest and longest part, we spent many weeks battling frustrating bugs to get the level working (once we had these fixed, creating level 2 was a lot easier, and only took just over a week). Along the way, we added and removed many elements of the game, such as the death sound effect, after a while we decided that the noise was too annoying, so we removed it, after complaints from the Beta Testing, we also turned down the volume of the laser sound effect. At one point we also had no main menu or loading screens, so Sam H & Sam M designed a menu screen and buttons and I made a soundtrack for it.
Sam McCourt designing the main menu.
Post-Production: As we built the game, we also began to collect a variety of sound effects for the game, such as laser sounds, buttons, and gunshots. Sam H also made a few sound effects such as the noise that plays when the player obtained a collectable, and the death sound effect. I designed a soundtrack for the main menu and level 1, and Sam Hayman made the soundtrack for level 2.
Screenshot of the Garage Band file for the level 1 soundtrack. For the main menu and level one pieces, I took inspiration from composers such as Sam Hulick and Jack Wall, and their work on the Mass Effect Trilogy, the soundtrack for those games had the 80s Sci-‐Fi that I wanted to emulate in the soundtrack for the main menu and level 1 of First Impact. For level 2, we needed a very different soundtrack, as the environment it was set in was very different. Being as heavily influenced by Sci-‐Fi as I am, I knew I would not be able t make a very good soundtrack for it, so I handed the task to Sam Hayman, who created a much more up-‐beat, cheery score.
Post-mortem: While I am very proud of the work the three of us have done for this game, I do I have two regrets about the game; the first being not able to have a third level, we had planned from then start to have a three level structure, (three acts), that were to increase in difficulty. It is only due to time constraints that we had to cut level 3, it’s not as if we decided “let’s make a third level now”, we had decided from the beginning to do so, Sam had made concept art for it and designed the collectables for the level. The second regret is not having enough time to squash all the bugs, such as the glitchy ladders, this ties into my point; not having enough time. I also wish that we could of found a way to make the game slightly more innovative, and offer more replayability. We are still not entirely sure what causes the problem with the ladders, when Jeremy climbs on a ladder, if the player lets go of the W key, Jeremy will drop to the bottom of the ladder, we determined this was something to do with the gravity effect we had in place. We tried turning gravity off (this caused a variety of glitches, such as Jeremy flying off screen at one point), making exceptions when he was on the ladder, and so on, yet the problem persisted. There was also a conflict of rules about his movement when he reached the top of the ladder, so having to hold down W and either A or D to get off the ladder created animation glitches. Problems such as this could have been fixed if we had more time creating the game.