Game Name: Lari Batu Nias
Theme: Indonesian Culture
Culture Chosen: Nias
Location: Nias Island, Indian Ocean
Tradition in the game: Lompat Batu Nias
Game Type: Endless Runner
Indonesia is one of the most well known countries in the world for their various cultures throughout its archipelago. Me and my group mates, Amada and Mika, are planning to make a game inspired by one of Indonesia’s most treasured tradition; “The Nias Stone Jump”, or known as Lompat Batu Nias in Indonesian Language.
In this tradition, all male Nias citizens are required to be able jump over a large stone to be proclaimed as ‘mature’. With the player of the game as a Nias character, he is supposed to jump over as much stones as possible, with the running speed accelerating faster and faster, thus the game gets more and more challenging. If the player fails to jump over a stone, then the game is over.
The genre of the game is an endless runner, with the scoring proportional to the time the players stay in the game. Also, we plan to draw our own sprites for the game.
Final Game Project Guide
The name of the game that me and my groupmates, Mika, and Amada made is called the “Lari Batu Nias”, which translates to its unique combination of an endless runner game and the well-known Stone-Jump tradition of the Nias culture in Indonesian.
Screenshots & How To Play
1. Storyline Page
This page is shown to the user before he/she starts the game. It shows the storyline of the game; a brief introduction to the Nias Tradition, what is the role of the character in the game, and what is the objective of the player playing the game. The ‘play’ button will lead the players to the game page…
2. Game Page:
In this page, it is seen that a male character, named ‘Andy’(described in the Storyline Page) is running towards a large neatly-piled level of stones. The player in this game has to make Andy jump over as many stones(obstacles in the game) as possible. This stone is spawned on the right side of the page, and parallaxes towards Andy as he kept running, which gives a sense to us that Andy is running towards the pile of stones. To jump over the stone, the player can simply press the ‘up’ button on the keyboard. The player will continuously run at a constant speed, without any controls. The numbers on the upper left of the page determines the current and high scores respectively. Users can also pause/play the game using the left mouse/touchpad key.
3. Game Over Page
If the player fails to jump over and collides with any one the stone/s, the game will immediately stop, and the player will be taken to the game-over page. The high-score is then compared to the player’s score; if the current score is larger, then it will replace the high-score. As this is an endless runner game, the counting the scores are proportional to the time since the game had started. In our opinion, it is best to do it this way, instead of adding a certain amount score every single time we pass an obstacle, psychologically, as this will give the users a sense of ‘motivation’ to keep playing the game as the score appears to be continuously increasing at a fast rate, rather than counting very slowly.
Inputs/Outputs
The only input controls by the user is the ‘up’ keyboard button, which will make the character jump. Aside from that, users will only interact with the user interface with the left mouse/touchpad click.
Contributions of Team Members
1. Mario is assigned to do research of what game is suitable to be made with a relationship with the Indonesian tradition, ask the TA if the game approval, make sprites for the game (2 types of stones, and 3 different frames of Andy character to be used for animation, and some traditional homes), make the traditional storyline of the game, and finally collaborate/monitor the group performance and give opinions/suggestions for improvements.
2. Mika & Amada will both be building the game on Construct 2, which includes creating the endless runner movements/physics, implementing the sprites created by Mario to the game, create scoring system, bug testing as well as debugging the game.
Altogether, we did some video calls to brainstorm on the project progress so far, and share our opinions/suggestions to improve the game. We also discussed on solving the bugs/errors within the game.
Game Items We Create Ourselves
1. Character Running/Jumping Sprites (Drawing)
2. Stones Obstacles Sprite (Drawing)
3. Traditional Houses Sprite (Drawing) – Not used
Game Items We Find In the Internet
1. Background Image
Source: http://www.bradfitzpatrick.com/asian-village-adventure-game-background-design-001/
2. Grass Image
Source: https://dribbble.com/tags/tileset
Documentation of Personal Contribution
For this game project, since I am using a Mac, I am not able to download and use Construct 2. Thus, me and my team split tasks, I will be doing the tradition research, graphic design, and some of the documentations, while Mika and Amada will work together on building the game, using the resources that I have collected.
First, I did my research on finding a suitable Indonesian tradition to make a game out of, asking the TA for approval for my choice, and in this case it’s the popular Nias Stone Jump culture of the Nias Islands of Indonesia. Then, I brainstormed the idea with my group on the game name, culture/tradition to be implemented, type of game(endless runner), graphics & design of the game, how the scoring system will work, and what are the possible difficulties which may be encountered.
Then I proceed on drawing the sprites of the game, which are:
1. 3 Different Character Running/Jumping Sprites (Drawing)
2. 2 Different Stones Obstacles Sprite (Drawing)
3. 2 Different Traditional Houses Sprite (Drawing) – Not used
Then, I send these sprites over to my group members for them to implement into the game. After some progress, we met up in a video call to discuss about the current game, and I gave some suggestions and opinions to improve the game. Then, I made the traditional storyline of the game, which includes a brief introduction to the Nias Tradition, what is the role of the character in the game, and what is the objective of the player playing the game.
I continued discussing and asking for updates from my groupmates on behalf of the games for the next few weeks. However, one difficulty that I find while making the project is that due to the current COVID-19 situation, and since we are not able to meet one another for any discussion, it is often hard for us to communicate properly via online(slower responses, limited internet connectivity, and the need to pass the project files over to one another for testing/improving it personally), thus the progress becomes very inefficient.
Likewise, I learned that Construct 2 is a very simple platform to use to make a game, I learned about different Indonesian cultures after doing my research online, and that working together over the internet may cause in delay of work, progress and cause miscommunication.
Project Github Link: https://github.com/MikaMahaputra/Binus/tree/master/Game%20Projects/Construct%202