AF Group Progress cont.

    Had another meeting with my group today where we started to address some of the real grey areas of our game before we got too far in. Our main issue at the moment is the objective aspect of our game. The problem we're having is that the main focus of the game is to match the right animals to their environments, however we decided that simply dragging animals onto a background for six levels may get repetitive so we are currently trying to implement different objectives per level. This is only an aesthetic issue of our game however trying to create objectives that don't dilute the main purpose of the game was proving tricky.
    The idea that we've been running with throughout the concept stages is the 'Igloo' example, for our Antarctica level we are thinking about using the objective 'Help build the igloo' and the player would still have to select from the eight possible animals the three correct animals that go with the environment. However there's a problem with that...now the player may be confused as to whether they are picking animals that belong in the Antarctica or whether they're choosing animals that may be best at building. So at current our best solution is to really emphasise the former, by having instructions at the beginning of the game and also perhaps a quick reminder from Mickey/Mandy at the beginning of the level saying "Remember to pick animals that can cope in this environment!". Again this is only an issue that effects aesthetics although if it begins to jeapordise the whole purpose of the game it could become a problem.
    Our other nemesis in having a stress free and smooth design process is what happens when the player places the animals on screen?
    This is a pretty graphics heavy project so any chances to reduce work regarding vectorising and animating that don't detract too heavily from the game experience we are taking. We've got twenty-six different animals to design and vectorise, as well as environments, layouts, Mickey and Mandy, the bonus level as well as things like pre-level stills giving information etc. Players drag animals out of the animal library and place them on the environment. However this evokes certain questions like: What happens if the animal is the right/wrong choice? Do they run off screen? Or just vanish? Are they going to be animated or static? Are they going to be designed to fit around the level objective? For example will the penguin be holding an igloo block when he is dropped on screen or will he just be 'there'?...
    All these contribute towards the amount of vectorising/animating that we are going to have to do, which is a fair bit anyway. Steve solved the 'What happens if the animal is the wrong choice?' dilemma fairly simply earlier by having Mickey's net/bag being thrown over the animal after being placed on screen followed by a remark telling the player to try again. The bag would cover the animal and then get pulled off screen, like a magicians trick covering the penny with the handkerchief sort of thing... This way we can just have one animation which can be applied to any wrong answer as a template, which will save us a lot of time having to animate every animal if they are the wrong choice.
   We are still addressing the 'right animation' issue at the moment but it's early days so I'm not pulling my hair out quite yet. Today's session was really beneficial just because we started to actually sort out any potential problems, I think sometimes the temptation is to brush them off under the carpet so today was pretty constructive.