Week 13

Week 13

Joe and I have created a plan for completing the game artwork. By 24th of October I should have all animations and sprites done, imported and arranged in unity. We trimmed back a few features to save on time. Not sure I'm happy about it but it is what I need to do to get the assignment finished. Considering maybe just dropping William from the game for a time as it will take up a lot of my time to finish all his animations and code him and the swap character button.

Week 12

Week 12

Finished Matilda's idle animation

This took longer than I would have wanted. I guess with less movement comes less room for errors. While it isn't perfect, I can't afford to spend time nit picking small problems. It works and that is what is important. Besides, most of the little problems that irritate me probably can't be seen in game.

Should I put a wind up period in the jump to make it more clunky?

I think this is a good idea as it would make the environment feel that much more oppressing. If the character is difficult to control, everything suddenly seems a bit more threatening. I got this idea after play through the Resident Evil Remaster Remake. While the enemies are simple zombies that would just be bullet fodder in most game, the fact that Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are so clunky to control means that the zombie pose an actual threat, only made worst by the shortage of healing items.

I think this could work in my game but I need to be careful not to make it an annoying aspect of the game.

Crow animation under way.

Rachel doesn't like the naming of the sprites, not my fault. The computer tagged on the long names. Looking for a way to change them.

White lines - Tick box

I had a problem with white lines appearing around my sprites. This was due to transparent pixels being read as white pixels. While I still don't fully understand the problem, I know it has something to do with alpha channels. The problem was fixed by going into the advanced settings and ticking the box "Alpha is Transparency". All the stuff on the web about the problem was point less as it was about a long a complex system of custom plugins and hours of work.

Moral of the story: I hate tick box problems...

Week 11

Week 11

Animations

Slowly making more animations.
Rachel spotted flickering in the run cycle for Matilda, added 2 extra frames in the first section/pass to slow it down. Seems to have fixed the issue.
Making jumping, climbing and crawling animations next starting with blue to test the action. Haven't found any good references to work from, will keep looking but will probably just have to estimate like I have with the idle animation.

Background

Have been putting together the background assets. Having trouble getting it all to fit together. I'm also still missing some assets. Will have to remake some assets (such as the wall that forces the play to go into the sewer) as they simply don't fit into the environment.

Coding

Have mostly been ignoring the coding aspect (Not good, I know) as I am trying to finish most of the assets before hand. Still having a hard time remembering and processing all the stuff I need to know.

Week 8 - 10

Week 8 to 10

Continuing to make static assets as well as character animations.

Looking at old Victorian black and white photos for reference. Problem is there is a lot of detail in those old buildings so it will be very time consuming to draw.

I have had trouble finding decent animations to use as reference. A lot of the references I do find for games are from fighting games like "Street fighter", helpful for Liam but not me (seeing as I have no combat planned for the game.

Talked to Joe about coding the "together and apart" function.

Creating the sewer assets. Will start converting them into sprites for the game.

Character animations

Matilda run cycle done. Ran into a few problems.

- Flattening the image deleting some lines
- Tiny or invisible holes in the line work
- Being an idiot and animating the wrong leg in front (Fixed, took 2 hours though)

Week 7

Asset list

Objects

Environments

All

• Sky and Clouds

The Park

• Wall
• Grass
• Trees
• Bench 
• Dummy/Sir tenacity
• Broken Fence

Back Street

• Pavement
• Gate
• Booth
• Wall
• Posters
• Rubbish
• Puddles

Infected alley

• Dust/ Disease clouds
• Cart
• Corpse
• 
  

Chanel

• Water
• Pavement
• Slopes

Sewer

• Brickwork
• Pipes
• Rubbish

Trade street

• Lamps
• Pavement
• Houses
• Boxes (Non interactible)

Annding family home

• Notes
• Doors
• Table
• Hallway Kitchen
• Pictures

Interact-able objects

Boxs
Hiding spots
Gates
Levers
Notes

Animations

Matilda

• Run 
• Sneak
• Crawl (Start, Continuing and End)
• Sprint 
• Jump (Start, Continuing and End)
• Climb Ladder (Start, Continuing and End)
• Climb Box
• Talk

William

• Run 
• Sneak
• Crawl (Start, Continuing and End)
• Sprint 
• Jump (Start, Continuing and End)
• Climb Ladder (Start, Continuing and End)
• Climb Box
• Talk

Infected

• Walk
• Run 
• Attack
• Idle
• Fall

Crow

• Fly
• Idle
• Call

Week 6

Week 6

Presentations done. They seemed to go fairly well. I felt like I spent a bit to much time rumbling though. Probably should have been more to the point.

Laura suggested changing health background colour as it is hard to see the heart. I have had a play with the idea but haven't found a colour that works nearly as well. Red must be coded into my gamer brain as health.

I have started creating environment objects in Photoshop. I have to remember to actual look at the references I have.

Week 5

Week 5

Proposal work

Bit of a rush to the finish. Almost forgot the flow chart, was reminded 2-3 hours before hand in by a casual comment for my classmate Liam. Mild heart attack but I got it done in the end, along with most of what I wanted for the presentation.

Gameplay

I had a thought about my game, but I am still unsure if it is a good one. I was thinking I could give my game a perma-death aspect. What I'm hoping is that this would add a sense of dread to the game, having the player be aware that failure has a heavy consequence. However I feel like this might end up annoying the player instead.

Valiant hearts

My tutor suggested this game to me after looking at the artwork for my own game and I can see why. The art style works very well with my vision for my game, and having more artist models might help speed things up. I think think the thing I find most interesting about this game is the way it handles texture, using just a black scratch lines and two colour shading.

My biggest problem with this game is that I am yet to see any young child characters, similar to my own protagonists. So in that regard the game is a poor reference, but I think it could help with designing adults in the story.

Anti hero

Much less of a story driven game then "Valiant hearts", "AntiHero" is a turn based strategy game based around the idea of controlling a Victorian era street gang. The art style is a bit more simplestic than Valiant heart but I think is something worth using as reference as it is set in the same time period as my own game.

My own game should have an art style somewhere in between these two games. If anything there will probably be a leaning towards Valiant Hearts more than Anti hero. I still need to learn how to do the detail lines.