MD2Final GDD

Over the past week I have been working on some characters and background pieces that will be going into the game. I made some farm animals including a horse, donkey, chicken, hen, a sheep dog and a bulldog. I also created some housing for the animals including a chicken coop, dog house and a horse and donkey stable, I created a tractor as well that will be used for multiple games the tractors can be changed in colour and size too. It took me a good amount of time to create all these characters. I did some research into the style of artwork we liked which was leapfrog and animal crossing, in these games the characters all have a round appearance they don’t have any sharp edges or a stroke so we decided the characters should go with this style of illustration. 

My illustrations made on adobe Illustrator

I did some more research into what the levels will be like in terms of difficulty

The game levels will progressively get harder each time the player passes a level. The first level will be simple adding just to see what the learning capability is of the player and give them a feel for the game it’ll be really easy and fun it’ll make the player want to learn more

The next level will bring in subtraction, the level will be a touch harder than the first and will get the player used to adding and subtracting but in a fun and creative way.

Level 3 is going to include both adding and subtracting it will get the player used to using both of them and will be a vital stepping stone in their maths skill level.

The next levels will start adding simple multiplication and a touch of division. This will cater more to the players who want to be challenged more and become more comfortable with maths.


Over the next few weeks we will keep on working and collaborating for the project each week we will make sure to meet on the Wednesday and the Thursday to discuss our progress, we also have a group chat which is where we mostly make our decisions and talk about what work we are doing and how we are getting on. 

We will be working more on our game and how we want it to to turn out as a whole.

gdd video

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Game Design Document

For The Tiny Farm Games Design Document, I was in charge of writing and researching the target audience, Look and feel and the story.

For the target audience the game is being aimed towards a quite young demographic its a simple maths fun and Interactive E-Learning Game. The game is being targeted towards kids who enjoy video and online games but who also struggle with maths so Tiny Farm is the perfect medium for them to have fun but also learn.

For the look and feel I researched similar games that we could take some inspiration from and help base a solid outlook for our game around. The game is going to be very relaxed and interactive we took inspiration from Animal Crossing because of its use of speech bubbles that give helpful tips and its overall vibe. Leap frog was another e-learning centred brand of sorts that was a perfect it gave us guidance and showed us how a good e-elearnng game can promote positivity and fun around learning which is what we want to portray with our game.

I also wrote a bot about the story of our game. The game is centred around a farmer who needs help around his farm so that everything on the farm can be happy and healthy. The story will be lighthearted and easy to follow as we didn't want anything to complex for a game targeted towards such a young demographic.

Colour Look and Feel for our game Tiny Farm

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What I wrote for the GDD

Target Audience

The Target Audience for our game will be for children aged between four to eight.

The game will be aimed towards kids that enjoy playing games on phones and online who also want to learn and have fun at the same time.

The game will be targeted for kids as just game we want the kids to think they are just playing fun interactive game but they will be getting the added advantage of learning and improving their maths skills.

The game will be targeted towards kids who find maths a bit tricky and need a bit of extra help.

The Look and Feel

The look and feel of our game will have quite a calm and cosy vibe.

We will use bright colours so that the game is enticing to kids. We will be using a lot of greens and blues which will produce a calming mood.

The game will be based around a farm there will also be a lot of autumnal shades of colour added including yellow and oranges which will evoke optimism and happiness, because the game is targeted at kids who struggle with math we want the game to be a fun and safe space where they can learn and have fun and not feel pressured or rushed.

The game will take inspiration from games such as “animal crossing” and the popular E-Learning programme of sorts “Leap Frog”.

Animal crossing uses little speech bubbles to give tasks to the player. We would like our main character to give tasks, so we thought this would be a nice way to give the player little helpful messages and tell them how to play the game

Leap frog is a brilliant E-Learning programme that uses different platforms to teach. Leap Frog has a way of teaching but with the illusion of it just being a fun activity.

Story

The game is based around a farm the farmer is struggling to complete his daily tasks by himself and needs extra help to get them completed. The player will be helping the farmer with the simple tasks but will be learning maths along the way The tasks given out such as counting how many tractors were seen passing by counting how many pigs are in their pen and how many animals will it take to fill the barn tasks around the farm. Tasks such as these will play into the overall story and tell the player how they are getting on with the game, if a player isn’t doing too well the story wont progress and the farmer won’t get all his work done but little helpful tips will be displayed on screen to help and give the play guidance and keep their motivation going.

Multimedia Project Research

For this Module I will be a part of a small group as I wasn't too keen on the idea of being in a really big group or working on my own as I thought working those ways would lead me to have a lot of stress so I got to talking to some people that I felt I would work well with and produce a well done project with. The members of the group are Robyn Mulhall, Nhu Thai, Nicole Goodman, Esmee McPherson, Eva Gallagher and Marcin Grabicki.

We decided for this module that we would like to create a project focused on E-Learning. Its something that all of us had an interest in and agreed that it would work well for our project.

The E-Learning game will be aimed at quite young kids that want to learn but also have fun and be creative. We want kids to view the e-learnibg as more of a game so it won't feel like a chore but as a fun past-time instead of playing games online. The game will have different subjects, for each subject two people will work on one so that the work can be evenly spaced out. We have a list of subjects that could change over time but these are some of our options:

1. Science
2. English
3. Irish
4. Music
5. Art
6. Maths
7. Geography 
8. History

We will be taking inspiration from apps such as Duolingo and Study Stacks also something that I used to love as a kid was Brain Age for DS I think this is a good example of e-learning, brain age was aimed towards a slightly older demographic but I still think this is a great source of inspiration for our group project.

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