Thursday, 9 November 2017
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
- Wall
- Grass
- Trees
- Bench
- Dummy/Sir tenacity
- Broken Fence
- Pavement
- Gate
- Booth
- Wall
- Posters
- Rubbish
- Puddles
- Dust/ Disease clouds
- Cart
- Corpse
- Water
- Pavement
- Slopes
- Brickwork
- Pipes
- Rubbish
- Lamps
- Pavement
- Houses
- Boxes (Non interactible)
- Notes
- Doors
- Table
- Hallway Kitchen
- Pictures
Interact-able objects
BoxsHiding 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
- Walk
- Run
- Attack
- Idle
- Fall
- 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.
Week 1: Ideas and Concept art
BSA 228: Gaming Art and Development
Video game Research
New Zealand Indie Video games
A
Fistful of Gun
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: FramerGnome (Paul Hart)
Genre: Shoot ‘em up
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Indie Games (International)
Little Nightmares
Developer: Tarsier Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Northgard
Developer: Shiro Games (French)
Genre: RTS
Evoland 1 and 2, Until dark
Triple A games
The
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Developer: CD Projekt RED
RPG,Action
BloodBorne
Developer: From Software
Action/Adventure
Lady Maria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdohtQh5B5w
Starcraft
2
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
RTS
Video game ideas
- A viking/german monster hunter tracking a creature through a snowy mountainside. RPG style gameplay.
- A glider pilot flying through a world of floating islands while trying to avoid a giant bird of prey. Action racer?
- A pair of twins try to survive a plague in Victorian era England. 2D side scroller/2D puzzle platformer.
I like the twins idea best as it has the most room for art, story and personality. While the other two ideas also have a lot of potential, I envision them being 3D and complex to code. A 2D platformer is generally very simple and can appeal to a large audience.
It'll also let me play with Victorian gothic horror, which is something I'm interested in.
Don't Starve
I like the art style from this game as it is simple yet interesting. I think that something similar for my game would be interesting. The simple art style would help keep the production time down.
Darkest Dungeon
It'll also let me play with Victorian gothic horror, which is something I'm interested in.
Art Styles
Don't Starve
I like the art style from this game as it is simple yet interesting. I think that something similar for my game would be interesting. The simple art style would help keep the production time down.
Darkest Dungeon
Week 14 to Week 17
Week 14 to Week 17
Game development: Post hand in review
Coding was pretty hard and took up a lot of our time. I think we owe Joe Simmonds a lot of praise for all the help he gave us with the coding, teaching us the basics and how a code works.I had some trouble getting my character animations to behave. Several would randomly freak out or play at the wrong time or by the wrong trigger. Not sure why this is happening.
Other issues I had were the player character giving caught on tiny ledges and corners of box colliders, triggers not always working and the built game freezing on start up when on a different computer (fixed by Pausing the game and then clicking resume). A lot these can probably be fixed with more coding knowledge and play testing.
While I am happy with what I have learned, I feel like I didn't get to put a lot of things it that I had hoped to. This might be a project I take into the summer break or even during study next year. If I were to continue this, I need to spend some more time learning coding. I also didn't have time to put a lot of the assets in that I wanted to, either because of coding, time constraints or lack of finish animations or sprites. This probably could have been solved by better time management.
Side Story: I was approached by an IT student, Liam Bargh, during the Flicks. He was looking for animator to help him with his game. Not sure what to make of it. Seems to be interested in getting people who are capable in 3D but I'm not sure if I can actual help him. I don't have the ability to render at home and I will probably be very busy next year. Will have to see just how much he wants...
Example below of the amount of coding error I was getting at some points...
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