[Baja ACG21]Game Group Student Potential Award “Aeruta” team interview: Good morning, hello, I still need to work today, “Aeruta”-Bahamut
Home » Tech » [Baja ACG21]Game Group Student Potential Award “Aeruta” team interview: Good morning, hello, I still need to work today, “Aeruta”-Bahamut
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The “Bahamut 2021 ACG Creation Contest” organized by Bahamut has announced the list of winners in all categories. This year has entered its 10th year. The original 8/14 is scheduled for this competition. The prize presentation and exchange tea party held by the prize works, because the local epidemic is still at risk, for the sake of the health of all participants, it will be announced online. In order to encourage the winners and contestants, this time GNN also interviewed the top three winners in each category in this competition, letting them share their creation process and mood this time. In this article, we interviewed the winners of the Student Potential Award in the “Game Group”, and the production team of “Aeruta” picked up.
Link to the work page: https://prj.gamer.com.tw/acgaward/2021/demo.php?t=3&sn=30
“Aluta” is a pixel-style 2D side-scrolling action game. The protagonist Chaya can use the magic crystal “Ring” to drive a variety of objects, and he can also use the “Ring” to carry out different types of attacks. This game emphasizes the player’s attack fluency and sense of strike. Through the continuous attack and drive mechanism, the player can control the enemy’s actions and reach the battle cycle, thereby obtaining a compact and refreshing experience.
According to the review of this work, “Aluta” is a work that will not be suspicious even if it is developed by a Japanese team. The graphics are exquisite and the gameplay is very smooth. It definitely has the ability to challenge the top three. The development of the student team is even more surprising. I look forward to the survival of the team in the future and officially put this work on the market.
“Aluta” was built by Shi Xiao, a small independent game team composed of five students. The team was assembled with the dream of creating a good game experience for players, with the words “Good morning and hello, I still need to work for ten children today.” For the team spirit slogan, the members worked together in the middle of the night until sunrise.
Shi Xiao’s predecessor was actually the “MMW” team that was founded in the Zhidian Educational Game Talent Cultivation Room four years ago. Even though they tried game development at that time, it was only because of motivation, to meet the needs of competitions or projects. As a result, but also because of such an opportunity, they strengthened their idea of continuing to try game development.
Then, after members withdrew and new members joined, MMW gradually disappeared and replaced by a team named “Lao Jiao Xiong Ji”. Laogai Xiongji gathered a group of people who really like games. At this stage, the team tried to develop larger projects than before. For example, the casual mobile game “Textile Story” and the small multiplayer online game “Ailem ~ Sacred Tank Civilization~” were placed, and the tower defense game “Don’t Go Into That Hole” was developed through cooperation with others. Even if these projects are in the embryonic stage in the end, they have laid the foundation stone for the establishment of the game.
Finally, Laogai Xiong Ji joined a new partner and changed his name to “Shi Xiao”, and developed the award-winning work “Aluta”. In terms of mood, he changed from just for graduation to a state where he wanted to try game development. Xiaoxiao Games is also making continuous efforts to this end.
A group photo of the members of Shi Xiao in the previous self-made game
Talking about the production of the game, Shi Xiao said that “Aluta” is the school’s graduation topic. It took about 9 to 10 months from the summer vacation of the senior year to the school exhibition in April this year. Make. The original idea of ”Aluta” was to use prayer beads to launch an attack of moving clouds and flowing water, similar to the fluid body dynamics of “Availability”, plus some seemingly non-existent threads to connect the beads. Weapons to attack or explore.
The team was not very optimistic about this idea, but unexpectedly many people liked it. Regrettably, the concept of bead fights was slowly modified into the current “rib” due to many practical considerations such as implementation and design, and the original shadow is almost invisible. However, the concept of “bead fights” is still The members felt a knowing smile.
In fact, in the early version, the “drive” concept of the edge originally only existed in battle, and the player could only drive the enemy or drive himself, and it was not applied to exploration. But in the process of communicating with the predecessors, I found that this design made the core of “drive” very unobvious. Combat and exploration are more like two completely different games, which also makes the existence of the edge dispensable. In order to improve this part, the team decided to integrate the design of “edge” and “drive” into the exploration link, and make the “drive” element in the battle more obvious. That’s why the use of drive platform to attack BOSS or drive to snatch BOSS weapons the design of. Although this design takes a lot of time and effort, it also makes the core of the game more obvious and adds a lot of features to the BOSS battle.
With the exception of Avatar, the game has different reference objects in all aspects in the development process. For example, in terms of character movement, I hope to achieve an instant but flexible operating experience like “CELESTE”; and in terms of boss battle design, there are references to “Legend of Zelda”, “Titan Soul”, “Rebellious Mechanic” Lieutenant General’s game mechanics are integrated with combat action puzzle design; in art, he hopes to create the multi-color sense of “The Land of the Wind”; in addition, the works of Ukrainian pixel artist Yes I Do also give Shi Xiao a further improvement in pixel performance. know.
Among them, the action and screen performance during the battle are the parts that spend the most time in the project, and the action performance takes a lot of weight. Shi Xiao said that after all, “Aluta” customization is an action game. At the same time, they also believe that good action performance and operating experience are the basics of action games, so no matter if it is in the feel, animation, and special effects performance, they don’t spend much time. Less time processing and fine adjustments.
The reason why I chose to use the pixel art style to make the game is because the members in charge of the art have their own art styles and their own drawing logic. It takes a lot to get everyone to agree on the art performance. Time cost. Moreover, they did not want the cooperation model to develop toward an efficiency-oriented factory model, so they finally decided not to focus on general 2D performance, but to choose a pixel style with relatively few influencing factors. Later, the main art member even compiled the technical documents of the drawing process for other members to refer to and reduce the cost of subsequent modification time.
Protagonist Chaya Design
Queen Clara Designs
Early design drawings of Chaya
Businessman design drawing
Speaking of the biggest challenge encountered in the production process, Shi Xiao believes that it is “very fun to verify the core” and “continue to maintain development momentum.” Regarding the former, they mentioned that the team’s own game development experience is not much, so it can be said that this area has been stumbled all the way. Fortunately, there are many seniors on this road who have given the team advice and spent time, energy, and brainpower to help correct the early stage. Imperfect executable files.
Regarding the latter, the main reason is that over time and the accumulated pressure of members in the project increases, the motivation will gradually decrease, the quality of the completed project results will become worse and worse, and the overall development speed will gradually slow down. Moreover, in the 10 months of “Aluta” development, it took nearly half of the time to verify the core of the game. Many projects may have to be re-started in a week or two. This repeated process is full of problems. The deterministic future deepens the project pressure of each member. Until now, the members of Shi Xiaoxiao have not yet come to the right answer to “how to maintain development momentum”, and they still rely on the love of the game to come along the way.
BOSS room design drawing
Empty bridge area design drawing
In addition, what Shi Xiao felt most unforgettable during the production process was actually about “entrepreneurship”. In the summer vacation when the development was just started, the team’s instructor put forward the idea of ”entrepreneurship”, and the members discussed it for a long time. During that time, the members repeatedly thought, explained and fought for the family, until the moment when they decided to start a business and continue to develop the game after graduation, in addition to the basic development, Shi Xiao began to prepare for the business.
At the beginning of the business, the team had to face the problem of funding. For this reason, the team’s planning went on the road of no return to writing the plan. They wrote two or three plans in a row, and were in the loop of game design and writing plans every day. However, as a result of the hard work, only one plan was passed, and the level design and mechanism design did not spend enough time to learn design methods and improvements. “It was really miserable at that time, but it was so dangerous that there were all those Word documents in italics, so that we can live now, which is really great!” They lamented the experience at that time.
Xiaoxiao’s meeting and discussion area and a place to rest and sleep
They also shared that they received an impressive feedback after releasing the demo version on the Internet. A friend wrote more than 1,800 words in the free play area. In the feedback content, in addition to writing down his feelings and suggestions for each part of “Aluta” in detail, he also put forward a lot of ideas, even There is a video so that the team can more clearly know which part is being said.
Talking about the opportunity to participate in this creation competition, Shi Xiao said that it was originally because of the relationship between the department and the promotion, and has always been concerned about the Bahamut ACG creation competition, and before that, every time I participated in the competition, he did not come to the end. I just thought I would try it again this year. In fact, this is the third year that Shi Xiao started to participate in the competition, from the previous year’s “Magic Medicine Crazy Cloud Meeting”, last year’s “Textile Story” to this year’s “Aluta”. Since the previous year and last year were both shortlisted and not awarded, even if you think that “Aluta” of these three works is relatively complete, you are still very worried that this year will not win the award as in previous years.
They said that knowing that they were both gratified and happy when they won the prize, it felt like they finally realized their dreams. Although it is a pity that they did not win the top three, they are very fortunate that they have grown in the last three years as a student. Won the “Student Potential Award”, a very memorable award. They are also very happy to see the comments and suggestions given by the judges to “Aluta”. The comments pointed out many parts that need to be strengthened. I really appreciate the reviewers’ willingness to take the time to list these contents, and they will work hard to improve them in the future. These problems continue to move forward.
In addition, the work that impressed the members of Shi Xiao in the competition was “Anya”. They said that they really liked the special effects design of “Anya” in the Boss stage, so they followed the author’s Twitter. At the same time, they are also regretful that they could not hold a tea party due to the epidemic, and now look forward to communicating with other teams.
Regarding future development plans, they mentioned that they will continue to develop and put “Aluta” on the shelves, and try to develop a variety of different games at the same time, becoming a game team that works hard for the player’s game experience, and continues with the original intention of loving games. Until the next 3 years, 7 years, 10 years, or even 30 years, 50 years.
Finally, talking about any suggestions for creators who want to step into game development, Shi Xiao said: “Good morning, hello, I still need to work for ten hours today, and encourage each other.”
More about the award-winning report of the “Bahamut 2021 ACG Creation Contest”
