Flying Fish
Abstract
Flying Fish is a funny casual game which platform is the Icaros (flying chair). Player needs to be lay on the flying chair and control the angel and the power to shoot the fish. The game goal is help the fish to get his hat because his hat is escaping randomly in the game world.
Background
Main Story:
Once upon a day, a little fish whose name is Jumpy is laying on the beach with his lovely hat. Suddenly, the wind starts blowing. Jumpy’s hat just fly away from his head. Our poor jumpy lost his favorite hat and feels sad. Now, it is your turn to help Jumpy to get his hat back. How will you help him?
Background of the world:
The idea of flying fish is come from the fish called Mudskipper. This kind of fish can jump on the ground or mud. Because we are using Flying Chair as this project’s platform. The idea is based on Mudskipper which player can control the jumping or flying of the fish in the game.
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Team Intro
This is a group project made by me and my teammates during the Build Virtual World (the course in Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center) course. Our team has 5 students. 1 sound designer, 2 artists and 2 programmers. In this course, I learned about how the teamwork project looks like and the whole pipeline in the game industry. I am the programmer and the game designer in my team. My majority job is thinking about the game features and game flow, also, I need to code the whole game world.
Platform Intro
The Icaros, as known as Flying Chair, is the platform that need players use their whole body as the input in the game. Also, normally people design a game by using Icaros is about Virtual Reality Game. However, our team design a PC game and this game is more like a "fitness game" because player needs to control the jump and direction of the fish. It is hard to control for the player who is the first time to experience our game.
Icaros demo
Our team is testing
Brianstorm
We pick the jumping fish idea from all of 3 ideas. Although, I think all these ideas are unique and impressive. But I think we need to use all the features of the flying chair. For example, bind a VIVE Tracker on the flying chair to track player’s 3d position. This can let the player feel more like the behavior of the Mudskipper when they are “jumping” in the game. Players can imagine that there are the Mudskipper during the game.
Here is our team's voting and ideas list.
Team's Brainstorm
Game Flow
Our game's flow is pretty straight forward and simple.
1. Game Goal: Help the fish to get his hat.
2. Game Rule: 1) Try not to fall into the water, otherwise the fish will explode.
2) The surface of the land and obstacles in the game will let the fish bounce.
3) When player using Icaros, do not move too much. Otherwise, player will fall down from the Icaros.
3. Main Flow: There are some islands, when player control the flying fish to get the hat at first time, the hat will move to the second island(position). Player needs to keep chasing the hat until the hat escape to the last island. Then, the fish can finally get his hat back.
Team's Game Flow Chart
Map Design
The idea of game's map is from our game's background. We design some islands and distributed evenly on the sea. However, I need to consider the sequence of the position of the hat and because of the surface of the island is low poly, I want player feel more fun and challenge. I add bouncing features to the fish. When the flying fish land on the ground it will bounce to a direction(according to the land surface). Also, this map was build by Maya.
Part of the game's map
Character Design
The idea of flying fish is from a fish called "mudskipper" which as shown below. I noticed that mudskipper can jump on the ground, thus I want the player can control the fish to jump and find the hat back. The reason we call the fish as "flying fish" is player can control the fish to jump really high and do the double jump. It just like the fish is flying in the air.
And the final model of character is also as shown below. Our artists build this fish in the Maya.
Image of Mudskipper
Game Features
Main character(fish) features:
1. Fish's movement: control by Icaros.
2. Hat's movement: set trigger to let the hat move to next position.
3. Map's feature: "Bounce" feature when the fish hit the ground.
4. Bad Condition: Player can not touch the sea. It is the only "trap" will cause the fish die.
Player will never fail the game!!!
Feature Designing MindMap
FInal Playtest & Feedbacks
After we finished the final version of the game. We presented to the professors and the rest of class. We collected these feedbacks.
Feedbacks from professors:
● First is why our fish cannot land in the sea? Our team explains to Professor Dave, the guest and the audience that it is actually I was wondering about it because it was like a frog that was trying to stay out of the ocean or something. Right. I would have because the fish doesn't like saltwater or whatever. So I got the meaning of the mudskipper thing now.
● It's funny. I was watching it and I can react. I kind of want it to help flying fish. Like we're gliding in the air but I love the fact that you all know it's a mudskipper. It's a real point. Like this is a part of building a world and knowing your world.
● And the fact that the team you know what kind of fish is says a lot about. You take a look and understand what kind of fish you are working with as part of that. And it's really great what strippers are, like, very much like these things that sort of flop on land. They don't wear hats as far as I know. Top Hats and they'd really liked them a lot and tried to get them so I'm gonna try it. It feels like the interaction is really unique. Some things like watching it in football. It felt like the escalation like visiting the hat felt like the same thing each time. And I would wonder, how could you? How could you tune that? So like the first time it happens, you know, it's going to have a surprise escalation, but it changes a little bit.
Feedbacks from class:
● It’s a fun game and you use Icaros.
● It’s a new way of using Icaros because it simulates flying, but you use it in a fish.
Future Update
● Refine some details and make it a fully fleshed out game.
● Fix some bugs.
● Add more objects and polish up our level design.
● If possible, Add some moving obstacles to enhance the difficulty of the game level.
Also, as a game designer I need always to consider the game's impact, cost and risk.
