MDDN 243 - Post Handin Thoughts

So that handin was a little lacklustre... not even being able to export the game was a bit tough considering how much work everyone put into it. I'm still happy with how it turned out (I personally think it was easily one of the most visually stunning games there) but not being able to show it off at the end of it all was a bit hard.

Ah well, hopefully we'll be able to split it into exportable chunks to hand in so we can still show it to those who matter.

MDDN 243 - Project 3 Final

So things are done. The flash is animated, complete with a fade out at the end - now we just hope that the game actually decides to run for the presentation... we appear to be having RAM issues...

I have to admit, while we have had rather a lot of problems with the implementation, and in hindsight we picked a pretty difficult game to make that was a structure we had to build from scratch, I'm very happy with how the game looks. Scott's animations look gorgeous (too gorgeous for stencyl apparently), and Cat's amazing line art for the environments came out beautifully!

And hats off to the Grindwidow for looking so darn awesome!

MDDN 243 - Final Sprint

So here we are on the final stretch.

I've spent the last couple of days on the background animations and getting them integrated with the lane animation (to make it easier on stencyl, which we're having major problems with). I had to keep it under 100 frames so stencyl can actually render the poor thing, so I ditched my original idea of having them shift and zoom and fade into the background and went instead for 4 layers that fade in and out reasonably quickly.

I haven't actually seen it in motion (stencyl buggered out on me when I tried), but hopefully it looks good with everything else on top of it.

I expect the next few days are going to be pretty hectic, I'm now moving on to animating a white flash for the Spider Boss Death Sequence of Doom. Hopefully that won't take too long

MDDN 243 - Some Progress...

So things have finally started to quieten down in my flat and I've got a bit more done in the last few days. specifically the animated lanes (which I finished in class).

I originally tried to use a grassy pattern for the animation but I couldn't for the life of me get it to work properly - it just didn't look right...
I really like how this came out though, it's subtle enough to not overpower the more important visual elements (like things trying to kill you) but it still gives a good sense of motion and I really like the watery look it gives off

MDDN 243 - Somewhat Depressing

Ok so there's been a HUGE shakeup in our flat a couple of days ago, I hope this resolves itself quickly as I really don't get time to do anything at the moment. I can't say what happened as it's really personal to one of my flatmates but I really can't afford to be put out now with so much due in soon....

On a slightly lighter note I've finished the Spider stained glass art for the menu. I had it done a couple of days ago but didn't get the time to upload it until now (I am rather happy with this one)

MDDN 243 - Shifting Things

I've thrown together a mockup of what the game might look like at the new 1280x720 resolution, to be honest this is the first real progress we've made in the field of environment design for quite a while (the counter on the right counts your souls - just in case you didn't realise). the lanes are just placeholders at the moment.

given what this looks like I think I'm not going to bother rendering the third piece of line art for the background - only the first one is actually visible in colour and I actually really like the silhouetted pieces in the background

MDDN 243 - Panel 2 (finally)

Finally got the second environ frame rendered... *phew*

Don't know if I'll get around to doing a third one - especially given we may be shifting the aspect ratio of the game to give the art a little more room to move (also finally - I've been needing that, it just doesn't work at the moment).

MDDN 243 - Stained Glass!!

Here's the scanned sketch of mine - spider and all. I've done another since I scanned it and I plan to do more, one for each level/boss (maybe they could act as loading screens?). I've also discussed keeping the stained glass aesthetic for the whole game with Scott and co.

My thought process is that it would lend a greater cohesion to the game and look like it was more of a fabled tale sort of thing.

Much to my dismay I've been bogged down with flat troubles again this week... :( I'm hoping that those'll disappear soon so I can get more done, in particular I still need to finish the second environ panel...

MDDN 243 - Let the Good Ideas Roll

Yay! The first environment panel is rendered! And Cat has sketched the second one which I shall now proceed to render!

I've also come up with an idea for a final, more abstract level for the end of the game. It came from a couple of sketches I did in one of my COMP 261 lectures that were done like stained glass panels (heavily inspired by Cat's drawing), I have yet to scan them in but the idea was that the final level could be in a sort of black void with stained glass windows floating in it with abstracted visions of what the planet has lost.

MDDN 243 - Slightly Belated Progress

Here's the first environ sketch! Cat drew this up last night and now my task is to trace and render it properly in Photoshop. We're planning on having three of these frames that'll zoom past the player in the background of the game (that faint square in the middle is roughly where it'll zoom from).
Unfortunately I haven't been able to get anything done lately due to personal issues in my flat but I hope to get this one rendered ASAP from here, I need to get back on the ball.

There has been progress on a conceptual level though, the other level concepts are taking shape in the ether. The main other three are going to be:
One set at sea, with waves sweeping along the bottom and maybe a kraken or two..
One up in the sky, with swirls of storm clouds and lightning leaping across the screen.
The third is still a bit up in the air, it's electricity themed and the strongest idea so far is that of a tunnel lit by electric lamps and glowing crystals.

MDDN 243 - Discussions in Perspective

So after some pretty serious discussion we voted to keep the hexagon mechanic...
I still don't think this is a good idea, I'm finding it really hard to come up with interesting environment designs working around it. I did suggest that we could try converting the game to be more audiosurfy (ie: three lanes aligned horizontally), that would give me a lot more room to be creative but the general consensus was that the hexagon was the original concept and it needed to stay.

It's a real shame I'm having so much difficulty with the environs as the game works really well as the hexagon and ugh I just wish I could draw in perspective...

We came to a bit of a compromise though - I'm going to try doing the art from here as multiple flat planes that zoom out past the camera and fade into the distance. This'll allow me to design something more 2D as well as add more movement into the environments. My girlfriend Cat has said she'll help me with the designs, she has a really cute swirly style of drawing and if we could incorporate that I think it'd be a really good aesthetic to use.

MDDN 243 - Issues in Perspective

so this is my first concept art for the sawmill level - I know it doesn't look much like a sawmill but I felt it needed a bit of the nature in there somewhere. That and glowing roses just look cool ;)

On a more serious note, I'm finding it rather difficult to create a coherent aesthetic with the perspective view (in particular I haven't been able to translate my blue/white style from my game concept into this. And there are a few concept ideas I'm sketching that can't really be done in the perspective either...), It's actually really hard to design something interesting around a hexagon of lanes that have very little area for me to make interesting. The perspective is reaaaally killing my creative ideas here...

I've also had some feedback on the overall concept of the game and the general consensus is that the spinning world would be fine for something one-off, like a boss level, but would be too nauseating for any longer timespan - especially given the complexity of the art. Other games have done this sort of gameplay with a fixed perspective and really simple art but I'm starting to think with everything including the background moving it's going to get really hard to tell what's important/going to kill you. And that's seriously important...

Also, given a play with the mock-up people have found the controls really confusing when you're on the top half of the screen (we could potentially get past this by having the character fixed at the bottom and the screen rotate to keep him there?).

MDDN 243 - Level One

And here we have my first conceptual level design sketch. Not quite sure how I feel about this at this point, I like the style (would be damn hard to animate though) but the overall layout is pretty confusing :/

I also had a play around with the test version of the game Scott had given me. Personally, especially with the background constantly rotating the game got very confusing very quickly and I regularly lost track of the controls if I flipped vertically. Not sure what we could do about this - perhaps just have the background rotate to keep the character at the bottom of the screen? That way left always means move left etc.

I'll have to do some more art though, this wasn't based off any of the level concepts we have and I need one of those for us to start working on - should get onto that!

MDDN 243 - The Expansion

So, a few ideas. But first, I'm really liking the level concepts - particularly the electricity based one - having four set around each type of energy sounds like a pretty good number. Especially if we manage to implement any of the boss ideas. Having a mid-game and end-game boss is pretty standard and I have a feeling that would really get us points if we managed to implement a proper boss into our game!.

As to the game mechanics themselves though, I thought maybe we could have soul collection as the method of progression. The "indicating bar of death" would be a measure of the current speed of the level. 
As you collect consecutive souls the level would speed up and any souls that you miss would cause it to slow again. You'd need to get to a certain speed to pass the level (ie: there'd be a certain "speed threshold" you had to pass in order to progress through to the next level). If you get hit while holding souls you drop a certain percentage of them which fall into the furnace and cause the bar to drop further (ie: the further you have progressed, the more you have to lose), resetting your progress and making you have to work up the bar again.

This would also deal with the death mechanic as you would only 'die' and have to restart if you got hit without any souls - other times your progression in the level would just drop. This would make the game much more forgiving, and given the target audience is children that's probably a good thing. It also means there's less of a sense of failure, again a good thing.
It would mean that the levels could potentially be infinite if you don't have the skill to proceed. In that vein a skilled player could potentially complete each level very quickly (we could maybe add time as a method of scoring - if we add scoring at all, not sure how that would fit in)

MDDN 243 - A Quick Note

So, a quick concept for the power-ups: I know that the little black silhouette for the prototype was just a placeholder, but if we keep that aesthetic and use his mask to define him as a character we could also use that to indicate the power-ups.

Each power could be represented by a different mask that the character would pick up and swap with his default mask. Once he's put it on there can be some other visual effect to accentuate it if needed and each mask could break once it's out of time/power.

I think this would be a really strong design visually to represent them as masks - hopefully we can get them working interestingly with the bosses too (Scotts designs are looking pretty sweet)

MDDN 243 - Final Musings

Just a few final thoughts before the hand-in.

Firstly, the controls for my demo:
Left/Right Arrow Keys: Move
Down Arrow Key: Drop/Slide
Z: Jump/Air Jump
X: Run (Hold this while moving to accelerate)


Secondly, a few extra ideas that I want to include in the game if it makes it through:
As well as the setting trees on fire mode I wanted to have a game mode where you aren't on fire but get your power from the trees, there'd be an energy bar that refills whenever you touch a plant/tree and you use it to boost yourself forward or perform special manouvers. This way I can imagine the player skimming along the tops of the trees trying to keep up as much speed as possible.
Another idea I had was multiple, differently styled environments that progress through different technological levels and objectives - maybe one where you have to navigate a collapsing city or keep up enough speed to jump giant pools of lava.

MDDN 243 - Last Night Progress

Whew, last night was a busy one... Finished the animations for the trees, added some background music, made the stars twinkle a little and generally tweaked this to make it as good as possible.

As for the tree animations I've gone with an extremely stylized look that was roughly inspired by a certain Dangan Ronpa execution:

I really like that style in motion, so much so in that once I'd animated the fire I wanted to re-style the entire concept around that aesthetic... Unfortunately, the night before the hand in is not the time to be thinking such thoughts, so I put them in the back of my mind to hopefully be used in whatever game I end up making for the third project.

Other tweaks include fiddling with the physics and the addition of a slight twinkling animation on the stars. It was only a quick photoshop job and I would have liked to spend more time on it but overall it's not that important and to be honest I'll be surprised if anyone notices the animation at all... especially on the projectors...

For that matter I really hope my concept shows up properly... Lots of darker colours generally don't look as brilliant as they could do on those walls...

MDDN 243 - Pre Hand-in Musings

So the hand-in is in a couple of days now. And now that I'm in EXTREME LAST MINUTE mode I'm having a lot of ideas and making a lot of progress and wishing I had more time for this...

First off - I fixed the problem with my code. The trees now catch on fire on collision with the character and I'm working on properly animating that (hopefully I'll have that done in time).

I've also added a function to the down arrow key that makes you accelerate rapidly downwards Tiny Wings style. This lets you get speed boosts from any downward slope you land on and ultimately jump further and faster (It's getting really addictive to just sit there and play with it - a good sign).

I've also done a couple of concept images of how I think different aspects of the game could work and to showcase some of my other ideas with the project.

Firstly, illustrating the potential level-jumping mechanic:

I'm not actually certain how this would work, especially given the speeds you would be moving at...

Secondly, illustrating potential environment changes and maybe even boss levels where you have to outrun some kind of marauding creature:

I know it's looking a little silly here but that's meant to be a flaming arm. It's also meant to show the fire animation I've settled on, which is highly stylized and looks really cool on the one tree I have it working for so far.

MDDN 243 - Ideas are bouncing

Rethink time!
So the narrative has remained the same, although the character has changed to a white wolf (this may or may not have been influenced by my recent viewing of  Princess Mononoke), and I have expanded my mechanics in Stencyl.

I've added a slowly accelerating run function and once you get up to speed I'm really liking the swooping jumping motion of the character (similar to Tiny Wings) and I'm hoping I can expand on this.

I've been having trouble with the coding in Stencyl and this has been preventing me from making the trees explode into flames - which is a little problematic given the environment changes are rather fundamental to the concept. Heres hoping I can sort that out - it really should not be this hard...

MDDN 243 - Progress Report!

So I got a little distracted by working in Stencyl on my prototype, in the meantime I've finalized both my narrative and the gameplay to go with my little flaming dude.
To begin with, my character has gone from being a little maniacal ball of flaming death to a rather peaceful forest spirit who accidentally sets himself on fire. He then has to traverse his forest to a lake where he can extinguish himself. In the process he has to try and set fire to as little of the forest as possible.

In terms of mechanics this would involve a game based heavily on speed and reflexes (something roughly along the lines of Canabalt/Robot Unicorn Attack), except where the obstacles (trees) do not slow you down but simply damage your "health" (ie: the overall health of the forest - which is affected as you burn it down).

My idea for the character so far is a little, whimsical, tree-shaped dude with an afro made of leaves who gets struck by lightning and frantically bumbles his way to the lake.

MDDN 243 - And now for something completely related

My first idea for this project was very physics-based. The idea was that you played a firefighter/water elemental/forest spirit etc in a burning forest. Your job would be to extinguish the fires and regrow the forest as quickly as possible, points would be awarded not relative to how much of the forest you save but relative to how quickly you do it - prompting fast action and quick combos.

You would be able to extinguish fires by using a jet of water. The interesting bit comes when the jet of water is also your only means of moving and navigating the forest - to move in one direction you must fire your jet in the opposite direction. You would also be able to 'jump' by aiming your jet downwards. One technique would be to build up some speed by jetting along the ground then launch yourself up in the air and spin at everything that's on fire before you slow down.

My main problem with this idea is that although I have a good idea of the mechanic and how it would work I don't have a solid character design or an aesthetic for the game, and since I want to make something as visually strong as possible this was a real hurdle for the idea.

My second game idea sprouted in completely reverse order. I latched onto an aesthetic I'd come up with a couple of years ago for a random Photoshop project: a landscape in varying shades of blue with glowing white trees/foliage. The aesthetic already highlights nature and I think it would be really effective and strongly visually unique as a way of presenting a game.

My initial problem with this idea was that although I had the aesthetic I had no idea of what the actual mechanics would be. Since at this point I had one idea with a mechanic and one with an aesthetic it would seem obvious to try and combine the two but the feeling I got from my first idea clashed very strongly with the aesthetic so I decided to work on mechanics for the second.

The mechanic I came up with was a relatively simple one, you play a fire demon who ignites everything he touches. While this mechanic would lend itself very easily to wanton destruction I wanted to make the game a little more than that, so I thought what you might have to do is get to the end of each level while destroying as little as possible. This would be accomplished by speeding through the landscape as quickly as possible and chaining jumps so you were touching the ground for a very small amount of time. You would have to avoid touching trees or any foliage as they would ignite everything around them.

Edit: New idea. I could make this an auto-scroller where hitting a tree causes you to burn out.

MDDN 243 - Project 1 Final

Let the hand-in commence, I decided to use a cohesive visual style over all the slides instead of using individual styles for each game. For my environmental implementation of the mechanic I was more than a little inspired by a recent rendition of Monty Python's Lumberjack song.

MDDN 243 - Momentous Occasion

So I've decided to focus my efforts on the use of momentum as a mechanic and the games that utilise it. Although most (if not all) racing/vehicle games us it as a major mechanic I thought it would be more interesting if I concentrated on games in other genres that revolved around momentum.

Mechanic: Momentum

Games: Attack on Titan Flash Game
            Sonic Generations
            Mirror's Edge
            Portal

Side Mention: Just Cause 2 (Grapple/Parachute)
                      inMomentum

Possible Environmental Implementations:
     Race the oncoming tide of global warming?
     'Flower'-esque game for collecting waste paper - paper dart floats to create air currents (Paperman style)
     My personal favourite: Running, climbing and swinging between trees to kill demonic lumberjacks!

MDDN 243 - Final Mechanics

And secondly, the final three I have selected to focus on for the project:

Attack On Titan Flash Game - Grappling/Momentum System
An innovative little flash game based on the anime of the same name, the game's single mechanic is entirely based around momentum and movement, specifically using twin grappling hooks to swing around and between buildings. Keep swinging to build up momentum. The game does not hold your hand in any way, instead leaving it entirely up to you to figure out how to best utilise the grappling hooks to defeat the giant 'Titans' that inhabit the terrain.

Minecraft - Creation and Destruction of Terrain
Minecraft is built around a singular mechanic, destroying and rebuilding the terrain of a randomly generated world. The complexity and expansion of the mechanic comes from all the different types of blocks that make up the world, and a crafting mechanic that allows the combination of blocks into various tools and items. Minecraft spawned an entire genre of its own that revolves around the creation and destruction of terrain.

Shadow Of The Colossus - Movement & Climbing
A game often referred to as an example of art, Shadow of the Colossus' underlying mechanic is simple movement - running and jumping and climbing - to the extent that this is all you do in the game. I'm not joking, aside from menu navigation the only other thing you do is ride a horse to get between jumping and climbing segments. As to extensions to the mechanic there is a dwindling grip meter that becomes very central to the game, providing a great sense of urgency when you're clinging to the back of a giant flying snake monster.

MDDN 243 - Mechanics Revisited

So here is a list of all the mechanics I considered studying/working off for Project 1. Firstly, the mechanics that didn't make the cut:


Pokemon Series - Monster Catching
Spawning an entire genre of monster catching games, the Pokemon games are based entirely around the one mechanic of simply trying to catch every creature in the game. Oddly addictive and an extreme time waster, the reason this wasn't picked as one of the final three was mostly due to my insistence on finding less-known mechanics to use.


Persona Series - Social Link System
The most touted mechanic of the series, and one that inevitably consumes most of the play time, the Social Link system involved forming relationships with characters outside the dungeon crawling side of the game. These sections are simply lots of dialogue interspersed with the occasional multi-choice dialogue option. It's this simplicity that made me choose not to use this as a mechanic.


Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep - Command Fusing
Aside from the basic hack n slash combat, the gameplay of Birth By Sleep revolves around levelling and fusing combat commands. Once a command reaches a certain level it can be fused with another to create a more powerful command. Different combinations of commands create different outcomes. I didn't end up using this mechanic due to the lack of potential creativity or real innovation, each combination of commands creates a definite, predetermined outcome.


Mirror's Edge - Free Running
This mechanic was very close to being used in my final three. A personal favourite of mine, the sense of speed and fluid motion is one not found in many games. Running, jumping, sliding, climbing and swinging over and around obstacles in a chain of motion where momentum and timing are critical.


Audiosurf - Music Based Tracks
Also spawning a genre, Audiosurf analyses an audio track and generates a course populated by coloured blocks based on the music. The main attraction of the mechanic is the ability to use whatever content (music) you want to create the course. This wasn't used in the final three due to the rather rigid nature of the mechanic.


The World Ends With You - Dual Screen Combat
The singular mechanic in The World Ends With You is the use of both screens on a DS during combat. Controlling two separate characters (one with the d-pad, one with the touchscreen) is a very unique feature and one that is surprisingly difficult to get your head around. It encourages multi-tasking and uses your brain in a way that's not often used in games.


Final Fantasy VIII - Junction System
At its core, the Junction system involves attaching elemental attributes to in-game statistics. In the context of the game this affects the damage and effects attacks do to both you and your enemies. It's a very deep and highly customisable system that allows you to structure the characters any way you want. I decided not to focus on this due to the fact that it's really a secondary mechanic in the game.

MDDN 241 - An Animated Rethink

So I have to admit there's been a bit of a rethink regarding the conclusion to my animation. Given the time and effort involved in modelling and texturing an entire landscape just for a few seconds of extra footage at the end, I have reworked the story to allow it to finish properly within the world in which it begins.
This post is primarily going to be a collection of preliminary ideas relating to the rethink.
Firstly, one suggested idea was to have the sphere change colour/show a landscape inside it to reveal where it is going to send creatures that touch it. My particular hangup with this idea is that the sphere would lose a lot of what made it so mysterious and meaningful in the first place, mainly the complete mystery of exactly what it is and what is does. And it would also lose one of the main themes of the animation: the uncertain afterlife. I think a lot of what happens here is going to be affected by how much I can fit into the animation...

MDDN 241 - Turntable

My turntable animation for project 2a

MDDN 241 - Character and Environment Concepts

The character in my animation was based off the objects plasticine, a koosh ball, and a mask. The materiality came from plasticine in that the character looks mouldable and doesn’t really have a set shape, he grows arms at will. The motion of a koosh ball was incorporated by the character rolling around with his arms flailing everywhere. The mask represents identity in the animation and is a strong theme with every character either having or eventually getting a mask.
The character’s personality starts off being rather bland and lifeless, then once he sculpts the mask he starts showing emotions such as fear at the angel mask and apprehension as he moves to touch the sphere. When he materialises after touching the sphere he’s going to act completely shocked, possibly dropping the mask and breaking it.

And here we have the orthographic and movement concept images for my character. 

Also here are the concepts of the environment, beginning with a draft render and with sketches of the specifics.

MDDN 241 - Storyboard

The final storyboard for my animation.

I only give a brief outline of what shots I'm going to use as I know that's going to be heavily dictated by the movement of the models.

MDDN 241 - Mild Success

Limbs. Lots of limbs.

If this wasn't for a design project this would be seriously creepy...

No wait, it's still creepy...

Finally got the "ball o' limbs" modelled properly, and I've decided to ditch the idea of just having a silhouette to define the character - it's just too hard to see and overall I think it looks better with shading. I did play around with using a grey outline but after a few test renders I seriously prefer it without.

As a side-effect of deciding to properly shade the limbs I had to smooth the models to eliminate the jagged edges on the shading. This was also one of the reasons I had to drop the outlining on the model as the higher polygon count meant that I couldn't convert the outline into a format that mental ray would recognise due to polygon limits. 

(before and after shots of the smoothing below)

Once character modelling was done I thought I'd give the environment a shot. Creating a few simple hills took no time at all. Getting the shading and colours right, however, took some time.

After quite a bit of playing around I decided upon the following colour scheme for the animation. It's dark enough to accentuate the masks but still has enough colour to be bold and vibrant.