I Saw What You Did There

Tehe

I apologise for the smaller posts recently but since we made the facebook group for our team I post things on that and this simultaneously so they guys have access to everything as soon as it's ready. Anyway, buzz-saw sprites. The originals had no blur on them but Chris pointed out they would look far less pasted on if they were less crisp.

Cute

Soul sprites

Cool.

MDDN211 Experience Final Submission

My final video for Anxiety.

Go Team

Today's session brought with it an intense discussion on the direction we were taking Soul Furnace as a group. Chris had received some excellent feedback regarding the demo I produced for the last assignment. Pretty much what he'd come across is that the gimmick of having the screen rotate as you played was too overpowering and became nauseating for players who wanted to play the game for a long time. They also found that the rotation of the world made controls confusing when the character had moved to the opposite side of the circle. We considered making the game a side-scroller for the sake of programming and art ease but this form lost a lot of the original game's charm. We settled for maintaining the circle aesthetic but removed the automatic rotation of the world as well as took a more abstracted approach to the environments.
Having made a final decision on what we want to change we now know how to approach each of the different aspects of the game. Our goal by this coming Thursday is to have a tweaked demo that displays an obstacle/collectable colliding with the player (code provided by Andrew, sprites by myself), as well as have a new alternative environment design (Chris) and the beginnings of a menu set-up (Mark).
Additionally I intend to produce refined boss concepts for each of the levels, based of the responses the team made to the concepts I showed them today. More on that as I get it done...

Like a Cliche

Although the Boss encounters in our game are at the priority stage of 'could be,' there is little I can do for our game until we get the basic code down for collisions so I didn't want my weekend to go to waste. I drew up some conceptual sketches for boss characters for each of the resource focussed levels, trying to stick as much as possible to the theme each level carries. So far what I have are these;

These may very well never surface again but if we find ourselves with enough time to implement them then at least we have a good place to start.

Aku-Akus and Ooga-Boogas

Depending on what you called them when you were a kid. Personally it got to me when people would refer to wumpa fruit as "apples". Anyway, here are some mask concepts I've drawn for the different power-ups:

There is a level of simplicity that needs to come with the designs as the size of Voodude doesn't allow for too much detail. I feel we can afford to make the masks large by comparison so they are distinctive enough, also making it clear when the player has one on. Before I develop any further I want to see what the others come up with and we can take the best features from them to make some bastard offspring that looks awesome. In the meantime I'll be working on some boss/character concepts so that by Monday we can collaborate and decide what to start making and animating in photoshop.

There is No "I" in "Team", or "Management" For That Matter

So today was our big post-holiday pow-wow. As our group was only able to keep in contact over the holidays via online updates it was good to see the guys again in person where we could discuss and plan efficiently. A progress overview to date shows that everything we plan on doing is still highly conceptual. The movement controls and core concepts at the moment are locked down, which is comforting to know. Having a solid base to build on makes things seem more stable. There is still lots to do of course, which can be generally labelled as such: obstacles/collectables/power-ups (all summed up delightfully by "colliding stuff"), boss battles, level design, sound design, menu screens, cutscenes, unlockables. These are all features. It goes without saying that testing and debugging will also consume a lot of time but that will be a consistent process opposed to a slot in the pipeline.
In our meeting today I wanted to widen the production pipeline as much as possible by divvying out individual and manageable tasks for everyone to have done by Monday. The most important task is under Andrew's care in solving the code for a collision with an obstacle and the player. With this code working we can essentially build the entire obstacle/soul/power-up features on top of it.
The rest of the team is more art focussed which suits the stage we are at at the moment. The three of us have until Monday to get as many conceptual sketches of characters, obstacles, bosses and environments as we can. Ideally, with a huge range of imagery to choose from we will be able to pick the best concepts and begin implementing them within photoshop to produce sprites for Stencyl to work with.
We also sorted out a lot of things that were originally rather vague, such as how tough the game was going to be on the player; whether they would have only one life and have to be highly reactive like in Super Hexagon, or if it will be more life-focussed where the player has a number of chances/opportunities to beat each level. Pretty much what we decided on after an excellent idea by Chris is that the player would be collecting souls so the level's fuel gauge decreases. Based on certain percentages the gauge has left the difficulty of the game changes e.g. the less the gauge has left the more chaotic things are for the player. Difficulty in Soul Furnace would be determined by how rapidly the screen is rotating, how fast obstacles are being spawned, how restrictive these obstacles ore of the player's movement, and how difficultly the souls are placed apart from one another. The less fuel the level has left, the higher percentage there is for more difficult obstacle combos to appear. Getting hit by an obstacle reduces the amount of souls you have, knocking them into the furnace and refuelling the level. This will cause everything to slow down again and become easier but costs the player progress. The only way for a player to die is to collide with an obstacle while holding no souls, which could end in a game over.
Another thing we settled in today's meeting was the method by which power-ups are made. If a player collects a fixed number of souls consecutively then the power-up appears and they are able to reap the benefits as long as they continuously collect souls. These power-ups would manifest as masks that the player's avatar puts on. Each mask would visually represent the power-up it provides. So far the power-ups are looking to be as follows;
- Forest level exclusive: Player channels the power of Earth to provide themselves with a shield that blocks one obstacle (player much recharge from beginning once expended)
- Oil refinery level exclusive: Player channels the power of Water to thin the level's fuel and deplete the gauge at an increased rate
- Engine level exclusive: Player channels the power of Air to keep himself afloat for an increased amount of time when jumping
- Power grid level exclusive: Player channels the power of Electricity to detect oncoming obstacles before they arrive, giving themselves plenty of warning before they are put in danger
The final level would contain each of these power-ups generated semi-randomly.
We set a deadline for our group to have a completed game to show for the critical interim. This gives us two weeks of "faffing about" where we can add all the bonus stuff we've been thinking of as well as give what we have some extra polish. It also means we have set deadlines to meet which will make work more consistent.