My initial inspiration going forward with this code project was heavily based on the Nintendo game, Electroplankton. I knew from this that I wanted to create something similar that employed design based elements heavily rather than focusing more on the actual gameplay or on a predetermined goal. Because I am already creating a lot of more “traditional” games in my core studio and lab classes, I thought it would be great to be able to explore something not so traditional in the sense that the game is heavily based on visuals and the player themselves can play around with the game and decide for themselves what they get out of it. My initial idea was to create a game based on archery, a sport that I have been ver much involved in and had a passion for for many years. The game would start off with the player clicking and dragging to aim an arrow in the desired direction, and upon release of their mouse the arrow would fly, bouncing off of the surrounding objects in the forest and leaving behind trails of color along with a creation of some sort of song or melody.

I ran into many issues while attempting to bring my concept to life. It ended up being very good that my initial concept was broad and mainly visual because it allowed me to tweak my overall concept multiple times when figuring out the mechanics behind it. Though I was worried that I might not be able to achieve what I had set out to, and often considered turning my concept completely around in order to create something more plausible for someone with my skill set, I stuck with a core mechanic and pushed myself to discover other options. Although I had no previous outside coding experience and have only learned the basics of Processing and Unity this year, I wanted to explore even more rather than simply sticking with the specifics that we had learned in class and test my problem solving skills and my knowledge of the language.

As I played around with different aspects of my project after getting the core mechanic of clicking to instantiate shapes that then translated on their own, I started to branch out from my original concept in order to further incorporate audio into my primarily visual designs. I abstracted my core concept quite a bit in order the explore this new direction. I ultimately got rid of the background forest scene in favor of a more simple background in order to allow the focus to be on the actual mechanic and the movement itself. Because of this change the arrows then failed to serve a purpose in support of the overall conceptual direction and I decided to change my images to reflect a more abstract and colorful visual experience.

My initial direction steered me toward Box2D in order to create the collision affects I desired, but this approach led to many bugs and some of the main components seemed to have changed and are no longer recognized by processing, so I had to take a different approach to achieve my desired object interaction results. I still managed to be able to check collisions and make adjustments to the experience accordingly, and successfully got my shapes to generate on click and bounce around within the constraints of the canvas size, which was my main goal as it was the core mechanic that I had in mind from the beginning of the ideation process.

I created a machine that employs both visuals based on audio and audio based on visuals. At the beginning of the sketch the audio starts playing and a single fish is automatically generated and released into the system, where it bounces around the screen which results in the generation of additional sound effects. From there, the user can try their hand at the interactivity and click around the screen to general additional fish which act similarly to the first. As far as the visual aspects, the fish cycle through a series of random colors, all shades of blue and green in order to emphasize the oceanic nature of the inclusion of fish, splashing sound effects, and ukulele music. I also included code that analyzes the audio itself and puts out sound waves according to the specific song that it is listening to. The wavelengths change color, much like how the fish do as well, and so do the particle systems. All colors are randomized and between green and blue values. The particle systems appear based on the clicks of the user’s mouse, allowing them to control where they instantiate and allowing for further control of the overall image that is created.

Overall my final creation is not extremely interactive or particularly “game-like” in the sense of traditional goal oriented games. The individual parts of the project do interact with each other quite often, but the interaction stimulated by the user is fairly limited and the project runs itself for the most part. The audio is based on and interacting with the visuals when it comes to the fish specifically and their ability to collide with and back bounce from the walls and send out a splashing sound effect. The visuals are in return based on the audio in that the sound waves directly correlate to the main background song and feed off of that audio file. What I have created is more of a simple audio and visual experience in which the user in question has the choice to control certain, though somewhat minimal, aspects of their experience. Ideally if this project were to be in a professional setting it could be a large scale creation that because very immersive, perhaps with very large screens surrounding a space in which the audience can move around or simply stand and take in their surroundings. I want those who experience my project to appreciate its simplicity and, rather than trying to take control of the project itself, let the audio and visuals speak for themselves and provide a somewhat calming addition to the existing experience of listening to music.

I had my roommate Sean playtest my midterm game and wanted to answer a few questions before I finished it.

1. Are there any bugs in the game?

• The health bar needs to work and have more attention drawn to it in order to give the player a clear indication of what is good or bad and how they are doing in the game.

2. What specific mechanics need to be improved?

• The walking was very slow, to the point where it was frustrating to the player and took way too long to get around places.
• The object colliders need to be much bigger, as the player has to be much closer than is expected in order to pick up an object

3. Is the object of the game clear enough?

• There could be more indicators to let the player know the difference between right and wrong, rather than just guessing.
• Could be helpful to include a backstory involving both the player’s relationship to the creature and the subject of global warming and sustainable energy sources.

I had one of my suite mates playtest my game who had no knowledge of the concept beforehand. The main questions I wanted answered were about how well the mechanics worked and how the player felt both during and after playing my game.

Because the game was at a very early stage in creation there were not many UI elements included at the time, such as text instructions, so I did have to quickly explain some of the mechanics but made sure to step back after saying at that was needed. This prompted me to think more about the specifics of how I needed to incorporate instructions and how important it is that they are thorough enough without being invasive.

During the playtest the issues of incentive and action came up with my jellyfish scene, in which the object of the game is to avoid or destroy oncoming predators. At the time all that I had was a single predator, which brought up the need for multiple and the importance of timing. The predator was coming in too fast which didn’t allow for much exploration and understanding of the level itself before being thrown in, and because of this players are inclined to freak out and shoot very fast which makes the kill too quick as it needed only three bullets. However once the player has an understanding it is then more effective to create that sense of urgency and panic because the game becomes rather boring if there is not much to do. Because of these issues I ended up changing the rates at which turtles come into the scene and increasing how difficult it is to eliminate them.

My play tester also mentioned the possibility of some kind of incentive, which was something I had thought about before but was unsure of how I should go about implementation. She felt that some players may need a more goal oriented game and might otherwise become frustrated or bored by the lack of a real end goal or a promise of reward. Because I wanted the gameplay to be more about the environment and exploration I chose to not include incentives such as prizes, but seeing as each level did need to have a definitive end and the points made about players needing something to work toward I did decide to add in some additional elements such as a score counter, values for items and kills/survival depending on the scene.

Overall my play tester thought that the game was successful in providing a calming underwater experience as far as aesthetics and mechanics, and most of her suggestions had to do with timing or the need for additional UI elements to make the experience easier and more enjoyable.