22/11/2018
Research Visit to V&A
During our visit to the V&A our task was to look at different designs games went through, how developers worked through pre-production, what the biggest political issues in gaming 👾are, and how we can translate this into a a potential game🎮.
For the design task, I chose to look at The Last of Us, specifically, what designs Ellie went through. Ellie was redesigned 13 times. The Key changes of her design, were mainly inspired by ,what I believe, was the developers rethinking her personality. Her early designs were quite girly and I assume that at that time, her personality was too. I imagine that when she was designed then, she was imagined to be a bit more helpless, and more dependent on Joel. However the designs became progressively more "tomboy", as, I assume, the developers started to give her a more independent personality. However they did not go with the last, most boyish, design and instead went with design no. 10, which is the one we are familiar with today.
When it came to analysing the ordering of the pre-production, I chose to stick with The Last of Us for my first game. It was kind of hard to create a direct timeline of pre-production, because they never explicitly explained one. However from what I could gather, they started by creating a Storyboard, before moving on to the script, followed by the Concept and Environment art, after which they created a short film📽. The short film📽 was initially created to explore the behaviour of people in a survival situation, however, with the enthusiasm of the crew, became a fully fledged short film📽. With the help of it though, they were able to Animate and finish off the Project, much more realistically.
For my second game I chose to have a look at Bloodborne. Once again the information was quite unclear, however from what I could tell, they started off with he character concept art. The Character designs are very detailed and imaginative, which leads me to believe they chose to start with this step, because they were excited and full of ideas for the characters, and needed to get them on paper. They then moved on to Audio planning and after that Map planning. From what I saw they didn't seem to write a script. Their last step was to add music🎵 to the game.
6/1/2019
Sketches from the V&A
The first sketch I made at the V&A was a sketch of Ellie from The Last of Us. This is a sketch I am quite happy with, unlike the other two I drew.
😁
The second Character I sketched was a character from Splatoon. I am quite unhappy with this sketch, as it is merely a bad copy of some concept art.
👎
The third sketch I made is from the Mobile game Consume Me. Although the sketch is good, I am unhappy with it because the character was very easy to draw, and required no real effort on my part. It felt like a cheat drawing.
😐
20/12/2018
Issues in Modern Games
After watching a series of Interviews with Games designers, there were a few Issues that raised my awareness. They spoke about how there are still not enough coloured or Queer characters in modern games, and also about how most women in Games, are overly sexualised. They also talked about how the majority of games nowadays have to do with war and gun violence, and how that would affect our minds. Another issue is that Sex is portrayed falsely in video games, giving young players a wrong Idea about intercourse. Then there's the issue of censorship, and how a games message can sometimes not be brought across, because a country will not allow certain images. Last, but not least, the talked about how foreign culture is often integrated in games, but mostly used wrong, because Game studios didn't find the time o double check with someone from that culture.
As an idea for a game that would tackle one of these issues, I thought of a story about a coloured person who goes through many hardships in a day because of their race.
5/12/2018
Q&A
Before we can move on to game development, we first need to know how Q&A works. For this we tested one of Vinny's games, Street wanderer.
Using a sheet, we were supposed to write down any bugs we found in the game, which, no offence Vinny, were a lot. Some actions got you stuck in a position, walking into shops caused you to jump randomly, the money counter was broken, your hunger bar never depleted and you couldn't advance to the next stage of the game. However I did quite like the things that were there, like the art for example.
👍
Construct 2
In this Unit we had our first look at the Game Engine Construct 2. To test out the basics we learned, I created the platformer Slime Adventure in Space.
The next thing we learned about was a more in-depth use of the Event sheet. The event sheet works with Actions and Events, as in, the Event triggers the action. A simpler way of looking at this is as an If and a Then. The Event is the If and the action is the Then, for example, IF the player presses the 🠊 key, THEN the player will move forward. Looking at it like this helps to make the Event sheet seem a bit less complicated.
We also learned about global and instance variables. A global variable, is something that applies to the whole project. This means, that once you've set a global variable, it will be in effect for the rest of the game. An instance variable is only effective on a single object. This means that if you set a number valuable on the player, for example, and then add an event where one is subtracted every time you hit something, an action can be added to when the number reaches 0, for example death. Once added, only this one object will be affected by this variable.
After this lesson, I decided to experiment a bit further, and create another game from scratch. I designed a background, a character, and a floor, and soon had a simple 2D sidescroller. After creating another character, I experimented with text a bit, and soon discovered the Sprite fonts. With a bit of help from google I was able to fully understand and utilise them. I'm hoping to find a better way to utilise text soon.
12/12/18
Online Course (Udemy)
Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.udemy.com/learn-construct-2-creating-a-pixel-platformer-in-html5/learn/v4/overview [Accessed 11 Feb. 2019].
To further develop our Construct 2 abilities, we were given a Login to the tutorial-sharing website Udemy, and a course we were told to follow, on the basics of creating a 2D Platformer.
2D Game Project: 2D Horror Exploration Puzzle Game, Skeptic
Finally we were deemed ready to start our first 2D Game Project. We were grouped up and told to brainstorm Ideas for a Game we could make in 3 Weeks. I immediately brought in the idea of making a Horror game, and after Mikial brought the Idea of making a Puzzle exploration game, our game type and Target Audience was pretty much set. (Investigator/Perseverer/Lone Wolf) This meant, that the game was going to be single-player, and that it would be a bit thrilling. It also means that it would be an exploration game, set in a realistic world and that it would be easy, but requires some work. Now we just had to think of a Story. Many Ideas came to mind, including games set in a School🏫, a Forest🌲 and a small Town🏠. However after coming up with an idea for a game set in a Hospital🏥, we all agreed. that this Idea was our favourite. We assigned jobs to each other, and I was made the character designer, as well as partial environment designer. That day I got started on my first designs and since then I have made exactly 5 character designs, and 1 environment design.
The two NPC Doctors actually originated as different variations of Dr. Hunziker, however after choosing one of them, we decided to utilize the other two for NPCs.
I created 3 Enemy Mutant designs,
4 normal Patient designs,
and a redesigned version of the detective.
I also created a Patients room, for the normal Patients in the Hospital🏥. This design covered a lot of the hospital🏥 as it will be used over and over again to accommodate each of the patients. When designing this I looked at pictures of hospital rooms online, so that it would truly look believable.
And by tweaking this design a bit, I created an underground version, for the dying 💀 Mutant Patients.
Mikial also managed to finish off our GDD that I had previously started,
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6/1/2019
Sketches from the V&A
😁
👎
😐
20/12/2018
Issues in Modern Games
After watching a series of Interviews with Games designers, there were a few Issues that raised my awareness. They spoke about how there are still not enough coloured or Queer characters in modern games, and also about how most women in Games, are overly sexualised. They also talked about how the majority of games nowadays have to do with war and gun violence, and how that would affect our minds. Another issue is that Sex is portrayed falsely in video games, giving young players a wrong Idea about intercourse. Then there's the issue of censorship, and how a games message can sometimes not be brought across, because a country will not allow certain images. Last, but not least, the talked about how foreign culture is often integrated in games, but mostly used wrong, because Game studios didn't find the time o double check with someone from that culture.
As an idea for a game that would tackle one of these issues, I thought of a story about a coloured person who goes through many hardships in a day because of their race.
5/12/2018
Q&A
Before we can move on to game development, we first need to know how Q&A works. For this we tested one of Vinny's games, Street wanderer.
👍
Construct 2
In this Unit we had our first look at the Game Engine Construct 2. To test out the basics we learned, I created the platformer Slime Adventure in Space.
The top of the screen is, similar to most Windows programs, the Toolbar. It has a mechanics, however most of them can be found elsewhere as well. To the left we can see the properties bar. Initially it shows the Project properties, however when you click on an object or a layer, it changes to the respective properties of what you have selected. Here we can change the window 🗔 size for example.
I also experimented a bit independently, and discovered the effects button. These work like filters over objects or layers (or even the whole project). I, for example, added a swirl filter over a sprite made entirely out of small dots⠕. This made it look like particles swirling into a hole. By also adding the rotate behaviour, I was able to make my simple black ball look like a proper black hole. I also added this effect over other objects, to add a spacey effect. I think this worked quite well and I feel like this is something I can definitely utilise in future projects.
I did try to achieve this effect by adding in particles instead of a sprite👾, however I was not able to achieve the desired look. Particles, from what I have gathered, are more sprayed, and tended to disappear on me. I will experiment further in the future and hope to understand these a bit better.
The Top right is the layers and a list of all used Objects, layouts, event sheets, music🎵 etc. This gives us quick and organized access to things we have used before throughout the entirety of the project. Below that we have a list of all Objects just in the current layout. This is helpful to know what you've already used, and if something you don't want is hidden on the layout. It also gives you access to an objects properties, if you wish to change them, but cannot find or click the object. Below the Toolbar we can see the pages. Here we can access all our layouts and event sheets.
The first thing we looked at, was how to add in a basic object into the game, like a platform or a player. These are called sprites👾. But how do we differentiate a player sprite👾 from a platform? For this we use Behaviours and the Event sheet. By altering a Sprite's behaviour, we can set a platform to be solid, and using the event sheet, we can tell the player Sprite to move when certain keys are pressed. Or we can add the platformer behaviour,. which does this automatically.
The layout of the Event sheet is quite simple. On the left we can see the active events, and the Add event button. On the left we can see the active actions as well as the add action buttons. If a global variable is active, these can be found at the top of the page.
We also learned about global and instance variables. A global variable, is something that applies to the whole project. This means, that once you've set a global variable, it will be in effect for the rest of the game. An instance variable is only effective on a single object. This means that if you set a number valuable on the player, for example, and then add an event where one is subtracted every time you hit something, an action can be added to when the number reaches 0, for example death. Once added, only this one object will be affected by this variable.
After this lesson, I decided to experiment a bit further, and create another game from scratch. I designed a background, a character, and a floor, and soon had a simple 2D sidescroller. After creating another character, I experimented with text a bit, and soon discovered the Sprite fonts. With a bit of help from google I was able to fully understand and utilise them. I'm hoping to find a better way to utilise text soon.
12/12/18
Online Course (Udemy)
Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.udemy.com/learn-construct-2-creating-a-pixel-platformer-in-html5/learn/v4/overview [Accessed 11 Feb. 2019].
To further develop our Construct 2 abilities, we were given a Login to the tutorial-sharing website Udemy, and a course we were told to follow, on the basics of creating a 2D Platformer.
The first thing we were taught, was how to use a tilemap to design levels for a game. A tilemap works a bit like a puzzle, where you are given different pieces and have to, or rather get to, put them together to create a finished piece.
With the help of a grid, we are able to select pieces of the tilemap, and place them onto the layout. However the tilemap works a bit like a separate sheet on top of the layout, meaning that if selected, the whole thing can be moved around. This makes locking that layer very important, as you wouldn't want to accidentally move you whole background or level, whilst placing and moving other things.
We were also taught about spritesheets. These are, as you can see, strips of the different animation frames for your character. By placing these into the sprite editor, selecting the desired movements, and placing each separate frame of movement into the animation frames, we can create animations, that can be used for our game.
This is not only useful for characters, but also any other object that may need an animation. Like for example this punch here. We were taught how to program an attack as well, and how to make things appear in certain spots on a sprite, using image points.
Another thing that may need an animation is an enemy. We were shown how to program an Enemy AI, that could successfully move on it's own. In the next lesson we will also learn how to make it attack.
Lastly, we were taught how to use the debugger, by showing us were to find the things we should look out for, when you've come across an error.
To make the character player move, we can easily assign the platformer behaviour and be done with it. However in this course we learned how to assign movement to the W/A/S/D keys instead, how to set animations for those movements, and also how we can alter the properties
2D Game Project: 2D Horror Exploration Puzzle Game, Skeptic
Finally we were deemed ready to start our first 2D Game Project. We were grouped up and told to brainstorm Ideas for a Game we could make in 3 Weeks. I immediately brought in the idea of making a Horror game, and after Mikial brought the Idea of making a Puzzle exploration game, our game type and Target Audience was pretty much set. (Investigator/Perseverer/Lone Wolf) This meant, that the game was going to be single-player, and that it would be a bit thrilling. It also means that it would be an exploration game, set in a realistic world and that it would be easy, but requires some work. Now we just had to think of a Story. Many Ideas came to mind, including games set in a School🏫, a Forest🌲 and a small Town🏠. However after coming up with an idea for a game set in a Hospital🏥, we all agreed. that this Idea was our favourite. We assigned jobs to each other, and I was made the character designer, as well as partial environment designer. That day I got started on my first designs and since then I have made exactly 5 character designs, and 1 environment design.
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| (Initial Sketch of Detective) |
Protagonist (Detective) Antagonist (Dr. Hunziker)
NPC Doctor 1 NPC Doctor 2
Receptionist
The two NPC Doctors actually originated as different variations of Dr. Hunziker, however after choosing one of them, we decided to utilize the other two for NPCs.
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| Reception design 1 (Final) |
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| Reception design 2 (Clean alternative) |
When designing the Backgrounds, we wanted to go with sketchy and slightly messy design, to really bring attention to the more clean characters that will be on top. To further accentuate this, we also coloured the backgrounds in solely grey-tones, so as to make the characters stick out even more.
20/12/2018
20/12/2018
Over the course of this last week, I was able to finish many more character and some background designs.
I created 3 Enemy Mutant designs,
A before and after of a mutating Patient,
4 normal Patient designs,
3 Mutant Patient designs,
and a redesigned version of the detective.
I also created a Patients room, for the normal Patients in the Hospital🏥. This design covered a lot of the hospital🏥 as it will be used over and over again to accommodate each of the patients. When designing this I looked at pictures of hospital rooms online, so that it would truly look believable.
And by tweaking this design a bit, I created an underground version, for the dying 💀 Mutant Patients.
Mikial also managed to finish off our GDD that I had previously started,
and create a schedule.
I assigned myself character design for the whole week, except for Friday, as I unfortunately cannot work then.
He also made an Audio🎧 plan.
Red 🔴 means that these sounds still need to be recorded, and green 💚 means that these have already been recorded or found online.
10/1/2019
On the last day of pre-production, I finished two more background designs.
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| Secret Lab design |
The first was the secret laboratory🔬, that the main antagonist researched their mutation experiments in.
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| Secret Office design |
The second, was the main antagonists secret office.
Inspiration
When designing my characters and the backgrounds for our game, I was mainly inspired by the game Sallyface.💙
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| Img.itch.io. (2019). [online] Available at: https://img.itch.io/aW1hZ2UvNzYzODAvNDQ4MzAwLmdpZg==/original/JaWRGL.gif [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019]. |
Sally face is ,game-play wise, quite similar to our game. And although the art-style may differ a bit, it is still what inspired me. SallyFace too has a somewhat sketchy style, just not quite as extreme as ours.
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| Thumbs.gfycat.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/DisguisedLightheartedLadybird-max-1mb.gif [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019]. |
And the characters also have the same kind of 3-quarter-view, slim, cartoony style.
SallyFace vs Skeptic
What differs between the games, is that in SallyFace the Character and Background Art is the same, whereas in our game, the Character Art is much cleaner, so that they would stand out much more.
( Google.co.uk. (2019). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjBybSf3JfgAhVR1uAKHXfjAh4QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2Fgallery%2Fhp2EiC5&psig=AOvVaw12OR_Ho7VtLcY188ZDFnTu&ust=1549013805265083 [Accessed 31 Jan. 2019].)
SallyFace was also the Inspiration for the more gruesome side of our game, as it also has one.
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Like for Example the Character Sally, who is shown above🠉, having been mutilated as a child. He is pictured with Bloody bandages all over his face and blood dripping down onto his clothes.
Or the Lunch lady, shown below🠋, who is drawn as a gross woman, with tumors growing all over her head, and a discoloured eye. She also has grease stains all over her clothing, and hair poking out of her hair net.
Or the Lunch lady, shown below🠋, who is drawn as a gross woman, with tumors growing all over her head, and a discoloured eye. She also has grease stains all over her clothing, and hair poking out of her hair net.
 |
(Google.co.uk. (2019). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjc1Nzf2JfgAhUjA2MBHd4fADsQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=
http%3A%2F%2Fstevegabry.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172456943225%2Flunch-lady-kim-from-sally-face-episode-three&psig=AOvVaw0u4WyIZm9RpPAYXdcIkkDj&ust=1549012866678285 [Accessed 31 Jan. 2019]..Vignette.wikia.nocookie.net. (2019). [online] Available at: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/sally-face/images/8/8a/Sal young.png/revision/latest?cb=20180715082052 [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019].)
Similar to Sally's bloody face, one of my characters (left🠈) has blood dripping from all holes in his face. He is also lying in a bed, with ragged and ripped up covers.
And just like the Lunch lady, another one of my characters (right🠊) has strange growths all over his body.
Skeptic 🠉
As far as I can tell, our trip to the V&A, has not influenced the designs of this game.
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Then, two weeks later, we had finally reached the production stage.
For this stage, my task was to create the character animations. I started off with the NPCs, as they only required minimal animations, and could be finished the quickest. I copied the design, altered it as needed, and then created a spritesheet.
These NPC Animations, were completed, as expected, quite fast and after only 2 days, I was ready to continue on to the main character Animations.
17/12/2018
This week I worked on the Character Animations for our game. I started with the simple talk and Idle Animations for our NPC's and Main characters first, because these only required two frames and could be made quite quickly. To make these, I pasted the finished character design into Photoshop, copied the image as many times as needed, and then made the small changes directly on to the layer. This created a quick and easy spritesheet.
After this I animated the Walk cycles for the Characters that would be moving. This required a bit more time, however after a few of them I think I really got the hang of it and was able to finish them much quicker. I used this picture I found online as a reference, which helped the look of my walk cycle a lot.
I also had to animate the Doctors Cycle twice, because I encountered technical difficulties on my computer, and lost her first walk cycle. However considering that walk cycle was quite bad, I am actually glad I needed to remake it. I only made half a walk cycle (5 frames) because after completing these I realised that those movements created the illusion of walking, even though technically only ever one leg moved. Except for the dog-girls🐕 cycle, which required both of her arms to move. This allowed me to save time, on an otherwise very time consuming task. And since it looks authentic when you don't look too closely, I think it works quite well. To make the walk cycle, I used the timeline feature in Photoshop.
This required about 3 layers per frame, and was a rather complicated way of animating something. However animating in Photoshop allowed me to have an animation that was consistent with the original design. I used Animate for the Receptionist Animations, 🠉 , and if you look closely, you should be able to see the quality difference, between the original image, and the changes I made. In Photoshop, each frame needs to be on a separate layer, and since I needed 3 layers to make my changes, I used a lot of layers. The first layer was where I pasted the original image. The second layer was where I sketched out the walk cycle with stick figure legs. And the third layer is where I drew out the changes.
After this I started on the up and down walk cycle. For this I first had to draw the character in these positions.
My next task will be to actually Animate these drawings.
As of right now I believe I will be able to finish my work very soon, as I am very ahead of schedule. Once this happens I might be able to help with some of the coding. I'm not entirely sure of how far along Mikial and Lorenzo are with the coding, as I have not been a part of it until now. However I do know that they have finished the Title screen and started the first part of the game. because of this I don't know whether we will be able to finish the game on time or not. However I do know that I will help get it done ASAP as much as I can.
24/1/2019
This weeks task for me was to finish animating the up and down walk cycles for the detective, and the down walk cycle for Dr. Hunziker.
I completed these quite quickly and without any trouble.
Finally all the animations were completed and I could now move on to coding, and some voice acting for Audio🎧.
Coding
I started to program the NPC Dialogue in The Hospital rooms and at first everything was going great.(apart from the fact that I had to comb through the messy movement code to even get it to work.) However when I got to the second Hospital room things started to go wrong. I had duplicated the layout of the first room, so that I could quickly program the second room by making some minor changes. I then Copy+Pasted the events on to the new event sheet and switched out the NPC it would respond to in the code. Then I replaced the dialogue and should have been done. However what I didn't realise was that when you duplicate a layout, it is attached to the event sheet of the original layout. No-one, not even Vinny, could figure out why it wasn't working, and once we did, we had wasted a lot of time and felt like idiots. However since then the Hospital room work has been going quickly and easily.
Audio
Now it was time for us to record our Audio. As the only girl in the group, all the female 👧 voices naturally fell to me. However the male 👦 voices, which were the majority, had to be split up between the other two.
It was a fun session and I think we were really able to record Audio🎧 that captured the Characters quite well. The microphone we used was the shotgun mic🎤, however it was set up on a bigger stand, suitable for voice acting🗣. This was because it is a directional mic🎤 and therefore meant for picking up audio from just the direction it is pointed in🎧, and nowhere else.
Had we picked an omnidirectional mic🎤,like for example a Røde mic, it would've picked up other sounds far too much, as it is meant to record around as well as in the direction it is pointed, making it unsuitable for Recording dialogue🗣.
It is planned that Mikial will be editing the Audio🎧 as needed and I'm hoping we will be able to add it in to the game🎮 soon.😁
31/1/2019
It is now the last day of production and the final steps toward completion are now being taken. The game is now playable up to the first hallway, but as the rest will not take long to add, we will probably be able to completely finish off the game very soon. Hopefully today.
I have finished all the above- and underground hospital rooms, as well as the end game, antagonist confrontation, with the run scene. I have also coded the dialogue for the two NPC doctors standing in the first hallway.
As far as I know, what still needs doing is:
I'm not sure we will be able to finish all of these today, however we do still have tomorrow, Friday, where we can come in for extra work. And I definitely think we can finish it then.
Looking back on the game I can see a few things that could have been done better. The walk cycles could have been better, as I was trying to save time on them. The detectives walk cycle, in particular, is significantly worse than the others. Since he is the main character, this is quite troublesome. The Background Art is not always consistent, as there are a few that Mikial designed. The Character Sprite PNGs for the first designs I made are not very clean. With what I have learned since then I could have done better.😐
4/2/2019
After finishing the Hospital rooms, I continued by coding The Npcs in the Upstairs Hallway. Being fairly similar to the Hospital rooms, this task didn't take all too long. However I did have to switch out all the Instance Variables had given the Hallway and Hospital room NPCs, to Global Variables, as I hadn't accounted for the fact that the Protagonist would be switching between rooms, and should not be able to repeat dialogue when returning to one.
But after this i moved on to one of the last parts of the game. It is a scene where the Protagonist talks to the Antagonist and is then chased out of the Underground by the Enemy Mutants. This was quite simple to code, however I encountered a problem where I couldn't get the Enemies to move. The first time this was solved by setting the controls to be off by default, which they weren't before. But when it happened again, I was once again clueless. It turned out it was an issue with the collision boxes, what exactly it was, I still don't know. However with a few workarounds I was able to get it to work and that is all that matters in the end.
First QA
Last Wednesday we had our first round of QA, where we tested out other groups games so far. During testing we were asked to fill out a sheet, regarding visual, audio and coding errors. There we mentioned any glitches or problems we encountered, and also what we personally think could be better. Two groups made a top down shooter, and on group made a 2D platformer. I was quite surprised by how fleshed out their games were, considering that ours is still quite unfinished.😮
Some of the feedback we received was, that the art style was nice but that some sprites were missing, and that some rooms had no collision boxes. People also said that we had fitting music, that set the right mood for he game, but that we were missing the voice acting. They also found, that sometimes pressing enter during dialogue, didn't progress the text. However generally, they were pleased with our narrative, which is the main appeal of our game, so I am quite pleased with the feedback.😁
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After this first QA session, I started adding in the Audio for the game instead of Mikial. I tried to add the Footsteps👣, however I encountered some problems with that. There was a constant clicking in the background, and new one when you moved. After some messing around, I found that the background clicking was due to the save screen, where there was a command to play the sound when a certain variable was 0. However I don't think that the coder realized that this applied to always, and that the game would start off with this clicking because of it. Instead of the clicking happening when the animation played, I changed it so that it would play when an arrow key 🠝🠟 was pressed. This solved the problem. The Footstep👣 problem was solved by adding the condition, that this sound would only trigger once, and now it works fine.👍
I encountered the same problem when adding in the dialogue, however now that I knew what it was, it was an easy fix.😊
Before adding Audio into the game, it had to be edited. For most Dialogue the original recording was fine, and all I needed to do was cut out the empty silences.
Example🠋
However, to avoid everyone sounding the same, I messed around with the pitch a bit on some characters.
🠉Same voice, different pitch🠋
For the Mutants I even went so far as to add Chorus or Flange, to give them a more mutated👹 sound. Ideally I wanted the first two to sound gurgled💧, however the closest I could come to that using Adobe Audition, was to make them sound a bit Alien.👽
Example🠋
6/2/2019
Evaluation
Looking back on the "finished" product, I am quite happy with what we have, but not so much with how much we have.
Since I wasn't a part of the coding in the beginning, I didn't realize this was happening, but far too much attention was being put into the first part of the game, and the rest was being a bit neglected. Mikial and Lorenzo were caught up making incredible Menu screens and saving systems, as well as Key-codes and Lines of sight, but we never actually finished the layout of the game. In my opinion we should have made sure that all areas of the game were reachable, before paying attention to those small details. Now we've ended up with a game that you can save, but not complete. This is a shame since I do think we came quite close to the end, and now some designs and scenes will not be able to be seen. However I'm not trying to shift any blame onto them, as it was just as much my fault for not speaking up when I saw this happening. The work they did was nonetheless amazing and this game would not have gotten this far without them.
I'm also a bit disappointed that I was not more involved in the coding. As happy as I am that I made the Majority of the Art assets, I didn't learn much new coding, whereas Mikial and Lorenzo coded some really cool things. Because I only really knew how to code NPCs, I only really coded those and then didn't really have anything I could do towards the end.
I am quite proud of the Art in the game, as I think it is some of the best I've done and I really like the contrast between the background and the Characters. Although I do wish I had done a cleaner, more consistent job with said Characters. I also think that the coding done for the saving and Menu screen is quite impressive and, quite honestly, more than I expected. There are a few grammar mistakes in the game that, although I had written them down for him, Mikial never corrected. The Audio I think was basically as good as it needed to be, but the Audio for 2 of the mutants doesn't sound how it should. However these can't be found in the final game, as Mikial never finished putting all my work in. I think there was a general communication problem during the production of the game, that has resulted in a lot of my work not being evidenced in the final game. For example: Mikial sometimes made changes to things without telling anybody. A lot of times they were good changes, however they often required new animations or designs, that he never told us we needed to make. They also resulted in Dialogue changes, that affected our audio recordings, which we, in the end, didn't have enough of; a lot of the Dialogue has no ADR.
I think that, even though many things have changed since the initial Idea, we were able to create a Game that accurately represented what we had envisioned. Of course its not perfect, but its a good start for a first game. If I could go back and do it all again. I would definitely make sure that the Art is a bit cleaner and that the game is fully coded, before adding any extra functions. Thinking about this makes me excited for the next project, as I have learnt a lot from this one.
Game🠋
(Note: since writing that last part, many more things have been added, and so the Game is now completeable. However the NPCs I programmed in the Hallway are still missing.)
SKETCHBOOK
18/12/2018
This week I worked on the Character Animations for our game. I started with the simple talk and Idle Animations for our NPC's and Main characters first, because these only required two frames and could be made quite quickly. To make these, I pasted the finished character design into Photoshop, copied the image as many times as needed, and then made the small changes directly on to the layer. This created a quick and easy spritesheet.
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| Google.co.uk. (2019). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi33faPjobgAhVI0RoKHU1eAzAQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=http%3A%2F%2F www.michaelspornanimation.com%2Fsplog%2F%3Fdetectqt%3Dfalse%26m%3D201010&psig=AOvVaw251ge3gbIjOpNZS9wMDDUn&ust= 1548408719931541 [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019]. |
The detectives walk cycle was all drawn out separately, but the other walk cycles were made using copy and paste. This sped up my walk cycle work immensely.
After this I started on the up and down walk cycle. For this I first had to draw the character in these positions.
As of right now I believe I will be able to finish my work very soon, as I am very ahead of schedule. Once this happens I might be able to help with some of the coding. I'm not entirely sure of how far along Mikial and Lorenzo are with the coding, as I have not been a part of it until now. However I do know that they have finished the Title screen and started the first part of the game. because of this I don't know whether we will be able to finish the game on time or not. However I do know that I will help get it done ASAP as much as I can.
24/1/2019
This weeks task for me was to finish animating the up and down walk cycles for the detective, and the down walk cycle for Dr. Hunziker.
Unlike the normal walk cycle, these needed all 7-8 frames, as both legs needed to move for it to look convincing. They were a lot harder to animate, than the usual, sideways walk cycle. I especially had trouble with the up walk cycle, as it took me several tries to sketch out something that actually looked like walking. however when I was done I was actually quite proud of myself for accomplishing this.
I used these pictures I found online for reference.
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| I.pinimg.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/0a/78/ac0a78d0cdad0e53d1da8356181c1c92.jpg [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019]. |
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| Cms-assets.tutsplus.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://cms-assets.tutsplus.com/uploads/users/1112/posts/25975/image/animate-walk-front-slide-14.jpg [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019]. |
Lastly I had to animate the Idle animation for the Detective, and the distracted animation for the Receptionist.
I completed these quite quickly and without any trouble.
Finally all the animations were completed and I could now move on to coding, and some voice acting for Audio🎧.
Coding
I started to program the NPC Dialogue in The Hospital rooms and at first everything was going great.(apart from the fact that I had to comb through the messy movement code to even get it to work.) However when I got to the second Hospital room things started to go wrong. I had duplicated the layout of the first room, so that I could quickly program the second room by making some minor changes. I then Copy+Pasted the events on to the new event sheet and switched out the NPC it would respond to in the code. Then I replaced the dialogue and should have been done. However what I didn't realise was that when you duplicate a layout, it is attached to the event sheet of the original layout. No-one, not even Vinny, could figure out why it wasn't working, and once we did, we had wasted a lot of time and felt like idiots. However since then the Hospital room work has been going quickly and easily.
Audio
Now it was time for us to record our Audio. As the only girl in the group, all the female 👧 voices naturally fell to me. However the male 👦 voices, which were the majority, had to be split up between the other two.
It is planned that Mikial will be editing the Audio🎧 as needed and I'm hoping we will be able to add it in to the game🎮 soon.😁
31/1/2019
It is now the last day of production and the final steps toward completion are now being taken. The game is now playable up to the first hallway, but as the rest will not take long to add, we will probably be able to completely finish off the game very soon. Hopefully today.
I have finished all the above- and underground hospital rooms, as well as the end game, antagonist confrontation, with the run scene. I have also coded the dialogue for the two NPC doctors standing in the first hallway.
As far as I know, what still needs doing is:
- coding the access arrows to the rest of the game areas
- the dialogue for when the patients are cured
- some sort of game ending
I'm not sure we will be able to finish all of these today, however we do still have tomorrow, Friday, where we can come in for extra work. And I definitely think we can finish it then.
Looking back on the game I can see a few things that could have been done better. The walk cycles could have been better, as I was trying to save time on them. The detectives walk cycle, in particular, is significantly worse than the others. Since he is the main character, this is quite troublesome. The Background Art is not always consistent, as there are a few that Mikial designed. The Character Sprite PNGs for the first designs I made are not very clean. With what I have learned since then I could have done better.😐
4/2/2019
After finishing the Hospital rooms, I continued by coding The Npcs in the Upstairs Hallway. Being fairly similar to the Hospital rooms, this task didn't take all too long. However I did have to switch out all the Instance Variables had given the Hallway and Hospital room NPCs, to Global Variables, as I hadn't accounted for the fact that the Protagonist would be switching between rooms, and should not be able to repeat dialogue when returning to one.
But after this i moved on to one of the last parts of the game. It is a scene where the Protagonist talks to the Antagonist and is then chased out of the Underground by the Enemy Mutants. This was quite simple to code, however I encountered a problem where I couldn't get the Enemies to move. The first time this was solved by setting the controls to be off by default, which they weren't before. But when it happened again, I was once again clueless. It turned out it was an issue with the collision boxes, what exactly it was, I still don't know. However with a few workarounds I was able to get it to work and that is all that matters in the end.
First QA
Last Wednesday we had our first round of QA, where we tested out other groups games so far. During testing we were asked to fill out a sheet, regarding visual, audio and coding errors. There we mentioned any glitches or problems we encountered, and also what we personally think could be better. Two groups made a top down shooter, and on group made a 2D platformer. I was quite surprised by how fleshed out their games were, considering that ours is still quite unfinished.😮
Some of the feedback we received was, that the art style was nice but that some sprites were missing, and that some rooms had no collision boxes. People also said that we had fitting music, that set the right mood for he game, but that we were missing the voice acting. They also found, that sometimes pressing enter during dialogue, didn't progress the text. However generally, they were pleased with our narrative, which is the main appeal of our game, so I am quite pleased with the feedback.😁
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After this first QA session, I started adding in the Audio for the game instead of Mikial. I tried to add the Footsteps👣, however I encountered some problems with that. There was a constant clicking in the background, and new one when you moved. After some messing around, I found that the background clicking was due to the save screen, where there was a command to play the sound when a certain variable was 0. However I don't think that the coder realized that this applied to always, and that the game would start off with this clicking because of it. Instead of the clicking happening when the animation played, I changed it so that it would play when an arrow key 🠝🠟 was pressed. This solved the problem. The Footstep👣 problem was solved by adding the condition, that this sound would only trigger once, and now it works fine.👍
I encountered the same problem when adding in the dialogue, however now that I knew what it was, it was an easy fix.😊
Before adding Audio into the game, it had to be edited. For most Dialogue the original recording was fine, and all I needed to do was cut out the empty silences.
Example🠋
However, to avoid everyone sounding the same, I messed around with the pitch a bit on some characters.
🠉Same voice, different pitch🠋
For the Mutants I even went so far as to add Chorus or Flange, to give them a more mutated👹 sound. Ideally I wanted the first two to sound gurgled💧, however the closest I could come to that using Adobe Audition, was to make them sound a bit Alien.👽
Example🠋
6/2/2019
Evaluation
Looking back on the "finished" product, I am quite happy with what we have, but not so much with how much we have.
Since I wasn't a part of the coding in the beginning, I didn't realize this was happening, but far too much attention was being put into the first part of the game, and the rest was being a bit neglected. Mikial and Lorenzo were caught up making incredible Menu screens and saving systems, as well as Key-codes and Lines of sight, but we never actually finished the layout of the game. In my opinion we should have made sure that all areas of the game were reachable, before paying attention to those small details. Now we've ended up with a game that you can save, but not complete. This is a shame since I do think we came quite close to the end, and now some designs and scenes will not be able to be seen. However I'm not trying to shift any blame onto them, as it was just as much my fault for not speaking up when I saw this happening. The work they did was nonetheless amazing and this game would not have gotten this far without them.
I'm also a bit disappointed that I was not more involved in the coding. As happy as I am that I made the Majority of the Art assets, I didn't learn much new coding, whereas Mikial and Lorenzo coded some really cool things. Because I only really knew how to code NPCs, I only really coded those and then didn't really have anything I could do towards the end.
I am quite proud of the Art in the game, as I think it is some of the best I've done and I really like the contrast between the background and the Characters. Although I do wish I had done a cleaner, more consistent job with said Characters. I also think that the coding done for the saving and Menu screen is quite impressive and, quite honestly, more than I expected. There are a few grammar mistakes in the game that, although I had written them down for him, Mikial never corrected. The Audio I think was basically as good as it needed to be, but the Audio for 2 of the mutants doesn't sound how it should. However these can't be found in the final game, as Mikial never finished putting all my work in. I think there was a general communication problem during the production of the game, that has resulted in a lot of my work not being evidenced in the final game. For example: Mikial sometimes made changes to things without telling anybody. A lot of times they were good changes, however they often required new animations or designs, that he never told us we needed to make. They also resulted in Dialogue changes, that affected our audio recordings, which we, in the end, didn't have enough of; a lot of the Dialogue has no ADR.
I think that, even though many things have changed since the initial Idea, we were able to create a Game that accurately represented what we had envisioned. Of course its not perfect, but its a good start for a first game. If I could go back and do it all again. I would definitely make sure that the Art is a bit cleaner and that the game is fully coded, before adding any extra functions. Thinking about this makes me excited for the next project, as I have learnt a lot from this one.
Game🠋
(Note: since writing that last part, many more things have been added, and so the Game is now completeable. However the NPCs I programmed in the Hallway are still missing.)
SKETCHBOOK
18/12/2018
Faces
We looked at how to draw anatomically correct faces, using geometric shapes 🔺 and lines.
My first attempt at this was not the best.😒
Then we were tasked with copying some faces from magazine covers. This was a bit more successful.👩👍
After this task, we were told to copy a face from a sheet, and then enhance it to over dramatize their expression.😱
Then we were told to use what we have learned, alter it slightly, and create an original character. This resulted in my favorite design so far.💚
Next we were tasked with drawing a face on to the shape of an object. I used a phone cover.📞🐱
6/1/2019
Bodies
After completing the character faces, we were tasked with creating a body to match. I decided to make one for Berta. Once the naked sketch was completed, I used tracing paper to design 2 outfits for her. After heavily disliking the first one, I decided to go with the second design, a short dress👗.
Zoetrope
The next task we were set, was to create a zoetrope. This is an old form of animation, where pictures are spun in a circular wheel, to create the illusion of movement. It works similar to a flipbook📘.
Before we could start however, we had to create a storyboard.
The next task was to draw out Berta, following the storyboard.
After drawing out the 9 frames for the zoetrope, I coloured it in on Photoshop, to experiment a bit with the colours I wanted to use🖌.
Then I started to colour in the drawings I made.
30/1/2019
After cutting out a big cardboard circle ⭕ and hot gluing my strip of frames on, finally, the zoetrope was finished. However this was far from the end of my problems.
When I first finished the Zoetrope, the drawings were far too light, and the spaces in between them too small. When the Zoetrope spun, it all just looked like a white blur.😒
I had to widen the cut-out strips and line the drawings with a fineliner🖊 to make them a bit more visible. This helped slightly but it still doesn't look like an animation. 😐
this sucks
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