Ross Loynd evaluated his work on the game Contrast. While his individual game lacked complexity due to a focus on simple gameplay, he emphasized artistic elements. The full game ran into issues combining all parts on time. Feedback noted the game captured the target audience aesthetically but could improve controls and story cohesion. Overall Ross felt he contributed effectively but would improve on planning and group coordination for future projects.

1. Ross Loynd
Evaluation of FMP “Contrast”

2. Technical Quality
With my portion of the game
Contrast, I feel like my game didn’t
stray too far from that what we
already knew, but because I focused
more on simple gameplay I didn’t
have as a complete game, though I
focused making my game have more
of an artistic feel to it with storyline,
usage of Photoshop for the creation
of the logo, transition screens and
isometric art.
What we found when we were in
production of the game, is that we
give ourselves a lot more than we
were able to handle, so there’s many
elements in our game which we’d
missed, such as sound design.

3. Technical Quality -2
When it came to layout, I feel as a
whole, our game clashed very well
and made sense, the character
starting in a small castle in their bed
to move into a sequence of levels to
a boss, to then run into a portal that
would take the character from one
game into a complete different game
style, hence the name “Contrast” as
this was our initial idea.
With the game varying in play styles,
I feel like we were still able to thread
the game in a way which made
sense with the transition of terrain
and style of each area.

4. Technical Quality -3
When it came down to the end of
the unit and we were starting to
record our in-game footage and all
our personal contributions with the
full play-through of the game, the
recording showed well that our
games worked, they didn’t have
much in terms of bugs and errors,
the game ran smoothly and our
footage taken of it well justifies the
games quality and amount of effort
we each put into it.

5. Production Skills
Initially using Gamemaker I wasn’t so certain on many things, such as how
to create a well made sprite, how to code basic things like systems and
how to work with the software as a whole.
When it came to using Gamemaker I was entirely unsure on the creation of
a transition or anything that seemed relatively easy but with tutorials which
I’d found online I could make things I would have been incapable of using
before, this is why I was able to make screens that would create story and
an a prologue to give the player both introduction to the game as well as
purpose once they had started the game, to keep them going.
I learnt how different kinds of states worked in the game, different physics,
this includes introducing gravity into the game, falling speeds and basic
worldly physics, considering my previous efforts in game creation entailed
me creating a game which required next to no physics, it was different to
be able to work with states in-game, which meant I could make the player
be running on a different style of physics based on what events occurred,
for example being in a small invulnerability period once colliding with the
object placed in game.

6. Production Skills -2
As I was working with other people we had to come across the hurdle of
combining our games together without making too many issues, initially
when we’d done this we thought it would be as simple as exporting one
persons game, then importing it into another, to our dismay we found out
that we had to do a lot more manual work than that as we’d not gone
through the trouble in renaming our own object, sprites and backgrounds
which caused us a lot of compile errors.
Going through this state of trial and error myself, I got around to figuring
out how the software worked in and out of the GUI, as we found the
solution to our problem by taking the files of each persons game and
placing them in the main directory of the games collided, from there it was
just a case of checking through our rooms, re-ordering them and working
to get them all together in unison.
Other than the combination of games I’ve picked up, I figured out how to
go through the process of importing things into gamemaker from other
programs, such as photoshop, initially when you do this you will have white
borders around your sprites which will mess up the production of the game
as it’ll look incorrect.

7. Production Skills -3
One thing I found myself being rather useful at doing was the creation of
sprites, I found I could quickly create characters, terrain and models which
I would use in my final piece if not a different increment of the sprite I
created.
For example I worked on the player giving them a generic look for the
player to sympathise more with them, in this case giving the player basic
leather armor, brown hair and blue eyes so he isn’t very distinct in relation
to other games such as Guild wars, WoW etc with characters in hulking
armour with distinct features.

8. Product Expectations and
Outcome
When we started the initial thinking through of this game, we thought that It
would be relatively simple as we’re working in pixels, though we did what
we could to create a game which was relative to what we’d imagined with
new Ideas that had been added on in the end of the planning phase,
initially we wanted a game that was showcasing out skills in making games
as well as showing that we can create games based around the themes
and genres we enjoy playing, which I found we all portrayed pretty well in
the final game, we all managed to create a game which was different to
others in our party, myself creating a fast paced game which required quick
time thinking and hand eye co-ordination to get through, where other
people in my team worked on different genres, Ben working on that of a
platformer with different obstacles, Elliot working on a stealth based game
that required moving out of the line of sight from mobs and Callum working
to create a game that required speed and precision, pressing the space
bar fast enough for the player to get through to the end of the game.

9. Product Expectations and Outcome
2
Though at an overall basis we didn’t manage to make the complete game
we planned, when it came down to it there was a lot of errors which came
with working as a group, we found ourselves scrambling for time and
cancelling out on things that we’d planned, which even had us completing
our games when they’d only just begun production, so they were very
basic compared to what we could have made given more time and more of
an Idea on what we were doing.
I personally feel I could have done a lot more with my game, making it
more than just a mini-game and giving it different levels, more high
intensity and speed as the player progresses rather than the single basic
level as filler for the character to continue their expedition, though I feel
accomplished in what I did as I find myself lesser known to the coding side
of game maker, so I couldn’t make something incredibly intricate with the
knowledge I have.

10. Production Expectations and
Outcome
3
Though we didn’t achieve all we wanted in the project, we did show what
we could do in terms of difference in ideas and knowledge, we stuck to the
majority of our proposal with our downfall being that our game isn’t what
we had anticipated in terms of length and quality despite us achieving our
goal.
Other goals we found ourselves achieving was the theme, we wanted the
game to loosely match that of a Legend of Zelda game, as that was the top
of its game when it was created and it’s easy to make something that’s
similar looking with game maker, which we did, our character was simple in
terms of art but it looked close of that to Link but not looking like it’s been
copied.

11. Time Management
I feel that even when we weren’t making much progress in the completion
of the game we managed to make something that we were happy with,
within the time that we had to create it, though when it came down to the
last hurdle of the creation of the game we had a lot to work on, as many
things weren’t working together and the realisation that we were running
out of time was getting to us, making us want to finish the game sooner so
we could wrap things up.
When it came to our schedule there was a lot we had to change as can be
seen in the production schedule as initially we had 3 weeks that weren’t
allocated to anything as we thought we would have had the time to edit the
game, but when it came to producing the game, we found a lot more
difficulties that were time consuming, making us take this time to finish up
our game.

12. Target Audience
The target audience that we aimed for was Male and Female teens to
young adults based on the in-between of those generations were players
of Legend of Zelda games, which is what we wanted the aesthetics of our
game to be based around with the change in sidescroller to top-down
game.
When it came down to our feedback we asked people around teenagers
what was good and bad about our game, it was nice to know everyone
was pleased in the look of the game and how it was cartoon looking in
simplicity without too much detail, but enough for the game to look like an
old classic.
With our feedback there were bad responses too but they were more small
hints and little things to improve the playability of our games, one
mentioning the controls weren’t very clear in parts of our game which
stumped the playability a bit, making the player guess what it was they’d
have to do.
They’d also stated the story was a bit mis-matched, though we initially
wanted a story of the protagonist saving their sister but when it came to the
merging of our games it was difficult to keep the storyline intact.

13. Summary
Overall I feel like I made worthy contribution into the game as a whole, not
with just my own work but making it possible for other peoples games to
look good and make sense, giving people ideas in how to make their
games work, taking my role as project leader, though some did work than
less we still have a game that works and has a playstyle entirely different
than that of any other game.
We planned more than we could handle when it came to the creation of the
game, as we thought we could handle it with us all being there, but we
found we were relying on each other far too much in the games production
so it was difficult to know who was getting anything done and who was
waiting on someone else.
If I could get around to doing this project again I would work In a group of
people I can guarantee will work with me in unison as well as take more
time to work on the ideas generation so I had a clear idea of what it was I
wanted to do.
To improve the game strongly I would’ve worked more into the story or
made it more scarce, I feel the way we used it in our game was very
lacking in any detail or backing to it, it was just placeholder for reason in