Shapeman

1. Documentation
Game Sketch
I was given a task to make a Pacman style game called Shapeman, the game was not really supposed to have any characters with personalities- it could have just been shapes. But I thought it would be more like Pacman if I gave the shapes faces. The shapeman game was supposed to have shapes that would change into other shapes, so I had an idea that the character you play is a shape shifter, and has a sinister personality. So I thought about making a circle shape which has it's eyes covered by a comical highway robbers mask.

With the other shapes in the game I wanted to represent different emotional personalties, for example a red square with an angry face, or a star shape with cool sunglasses on; I figured this would make the game more appealing, and look more fun.  

Here is my initial game sketch for shapeman it was was made in a word document using the shape tool.

Here is an image showing the Gamemaker studio sprite editor, the sprite shown is Shapeman, and the size of the sprite is 32x32- so it's pretty small.

Objects

Here is the object for Shapeman, this box shows all the functions Shapeman(the player) has. This is the object with the most functions, it has the functions for changing sprites, the functions and code for colliding with an enemy. 

Here is the controller object for my game, it has many purposes, but the code I am showing here is what makes the enemies change sprite in a good amount of time, basically it counts down from 100 and then randomly changes the sprite out of the 4 sprites available.

The two boxes above are used in the title screen, the top one being the start button, and the bottom one being the exit button. The start button starts the game and the exit button closes the game. Both buttons highlight when the mouse is put over them, I did this by creating a two images in the sprite, one of the images is brighter than the other, so all I did was change to sub image when the mouse is put over it.

The Screenshot above shows the functions and code for the enemies in my game (obj_monster), this object has the code which changes the sprites of the enemies. The code might have a few problems though, as when the player collides with the enemy the player is not killed. 

Rooms

Here is a screenshot of the first room in my game, it is a title screen. You might notice that the Shapeman sprite is outside the screen, this is because it's an object I created for the title screen, it's set to a path which comes down to the middle of the screen, so it's like Shapeman is falling into the screen- while this happens I set a sound to play, the sound is similar to early 8 bit sounds which indicate falling. All the shapes on the screen are all object too, they are the same object found in game, they move around so I surrounded them with walls of the same colour of the background- so it looks like they're just jumping about; I did this because it seems more fun then just some sprites, I also want to introduce the player to the shapes they will encounter.

Here is the first level-or room- of my game, on the top right of the screen is the lives counter- it does not have a sprite but it shows the amount of lives when the game has started. On the top left is the score counter, it also does not have a sprite, but in game is displays the score. The shapes are spread out across the room, I created the room first, so some of the shapes are located in odd places- this was a small mistake, it doesn't really affect gameplay. The player starts at the bottom left of the screen, if the player moves up to the top left of the screen and collides with the red square, the player will change in to this shape and then be able to destroy the enemies who have this same shape; the enemies in the screen shot are shown as a blue circle, but they change into one of the four different shapes when the game has started. You might notice another yellow shape in the middle of the screen, this object is used to turn the player back into their original form.
You might not the blue jewel shaped objects located around the screen, these jewels are how the player scores points- like the pellets in PacMan- they are shaped like jewels because of the Shapeman's "shape shifter" theme I gave the character; so he's like a robber stealing jewels, and changing into disguises of the other shapes. There is a big problem with these jewels though, they block enemies from moving so I had to delete a lot of them, I couldn't really solve the problem with messing up the whole function of the game, however I might organise them into more of a pattern, this would mean moving them so the enemies could get by.
In the middle of the room is a controller, this does many functions, during gameplay it shows what the next shape is going to be. 

Gameplay Video- Sorry for bad quality

Bugs and Glitches
If you have watched the video you will have seen some pretty bad glitches and bugs, one of them was when an enemy turned into the sprite used for the walls of the game. I couldn't figure out how to solve it without causing issues elsewhere so I left it in.

After watching the video myself I realised that the sprite in the middle of the screen is incorrect about which shape is coming next, I thought this function work properly when I tested it before, but by coincidence the function must have shown the correct shape, so I thought it worked. I should have paid more attention to what it was actually doing, I will try not to make this mistake in the future.


Feedback
I let my younger brother have a go on the game I made, here is some of the feedback he gave me:
Good Points

• Good Music and Sound Effects
• Nice Colours
• Good characters- more than just a shape
• A good idea

Bad Points

• Objective of the game is not clear
• Hard to distinguish player from other characters
• Game cannot be completed- as it does not work properly
• Barely any difference between sprite changing shapes and enemy shapes

User Manual

I created a user manual for my game, my game is pretty basic so I had to add a bit of story to it. Years ago when games could not really spend much time explaining the story- due to technological restrictions- the game's user manual was all the player had to understand the story and learn the names of the characters of the game. The era of gaming I am talking about is the NES years, where games like Super Mario and the Legend of Zelda would just start as soon as you pressed a button- no back story, just go. I wanted my game to have a "Retro" vibe to it, and the way I have created the game manual supports the style of game I set out to create.

Evaluation 
I will tell what I think of my own game, and I assure you I will not be bias, as I think the game is quite bad. I will also evaluate my knowledge of games design.

The biggest problem within my game is that the main objective- which is to destroy the changing shapes- does not actually work. When you change into the shape which all the enemies have became you are supposed to destroy them, but when the player collides with them nothing happens. Also when you are not the correct shape the player should be destroyed, but this does not happen. The player used to get destroyed but this would happen even when the player was the correct shape-so I made some changes- I thought it would be better to have a shape that doesn't kill you, because the player would keep dying and there would be nothing they could do about this; and I think that's quite cruel as it stresses the player out- it definitively made me stressed while testing it.

I don't think my game was all bad though, I thought the idea to give the shapes faces, was a good idea as it gave personality to the shapes, and this is good because I was told to make a PacMan variant, and giving personality to some shapes is what PacMan did years ago- PacMan was the first computer game to have a characters, for example the ghosts in PacMan has names and faces.

I think it was my lack of knowledge in coding that let me down, as I used tutorials off the internet to help, but I didn't completely understand, so when their was a problem I didn't really know how to fix it. In the future I will try and put more time into studying code- and do slightly understand the GML code used in GameMaker. I also need to put more time into testing the game, because there were some flaws in my game which could have been solved in time, but I only noticed them days before the assignment deadline; testing is very important in the gaming industry, and there are games which do not get tested enough before release, and these games are usually very bad.
 The idea of the shapes having faces was quite good, but it did cause a lot of problems whilst making the game. I think I used too many shapes, four shapes would have been enough, but I wanted to make the Circle the main character, so there are 5 shapes, one being a star- which was badly drawn; I would said this made the game a little harder than it should have been, I will try not to over complicate things in the future, as I am still at a basic level of game design.