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.