Bring the Beat

Well I've found a kickass potential soundtrack for our game;
https://soundcloud.com/achmadfauzisahri1/logaritmo-war-drums-phunk
Something like this has the pacing as well as tribal war drums we envisioned with some awesome techno thrown in there as well.
I've also managed to embed a couple of images into the stained glass aesthetic since Chris was able to put up some environment art.

It will be cool to see some of this stuff implemented in Stencyl.

A Proposal I Suppose

I intend to interview my high school friend Rosie Remmerswaal who studies design at Toi Whakaari. She is a very creative person and I find the work that she produces and the lifestyle she leads to be very interesting. He studies at Toi Whakaari have given her some unique experience and the communities she is part of help build a creative world around her.

The style of the interview would be like a video diary with the occasional studio based sequence. I will employ a lot of on-site shooting and make no attempts to hide the presence of the camera. I may even go so far as to allow my voice to be heard asking questions to get dynamic real-time reactions from Rosie. As the interview is a peek into her life as a Design Student and a resident of Wellington I want to employ close-ups and focus pulls to emphasise this. Most of the shots will take place during the day but the last shots would be either near dusk or at night. I will use After Effects to alter some shots (specifically the credits and any introductory screens/shots I choose to employ). I also intend on utilizing stop motion for some B-roll sequences from design models she has made.

Its video diary style would mean that there is no definitive end for the interview’s narrative. Instead the structure would be as follows; exposition of the threads I want to interview Rosie about, the development of these threads, followed by the staggered conclusions. I hope to be able to weave these threads together throughout the interview but if this seems too sporadic I’ll make sure to have back-up footage that links the threads through interview questions.

My Wrist is Trying to Tell Me Something

It keeps clicking. An injury I sustained in the weekend has prevented me from accomplishing as much as I'd hoped I would by today so I only have some refined hole obstacle sprites to show tonight.

These were originally just black trapeziums but I went around their edges with some smoky photoshop brushes to give them this 'ink-well' look that is universal enough that they could be used in any of the levels. Chris and I also discussed today the potential to drop the engine/gas level from the game entirely (cutting it down to four levels) and bringing the electricity level to the sky in a storm cloud. We want the game to be polished and looking good so shaving of bits from the game, although disappointing, seems like a necessary step if we are going to complete this in the time we have.

I Can See a Rainbow

Skittles are the best...

Sounds Good to Me

Here is the list of Sound Effects we hope to have, courtesy of Mark Lindsay's ability to type:
-Menu Soundtrack
- Option select effect
- Back to menu effect


-Per level Soundtrack- Level start effect- Level completed effect- Each obstacle effect (sawblade, logs, glass etc)
-Mask Soundtrack- Soul collection effect- Mask creation effect- Mask collection effect- Mask leaving effect (Aku-Aku "OH MY GOLLY GOSH!!!")
-Boss Fight Soundtrack- Boss sound effects
Character Sound Effects:-Jump-Land-Step-Lane Slide-Character collision

Clear Aesthetics

In today's place after the progress check the team discussed general progress. We looked at sound design and made an extensive list of the sound effects we needed. We also researched music for the boss battles, drawing inspiration from games like Shatter and Intrusion 2. Chris and I also reconsidered our aesthetic for the game. So far he's been pushing this idea of stained glass mosaics as a visual theme, and I feel this has a lot of potential. In all honesty I hadn't put much thought into the game's visual style beyond "it needs to be abstracted from literal tunnels" and having a distinctive and consistent aesthetic will bring an overall quality to the game that it otherwise would have been lacking.
What this means in terms of character and object sprites is we will use far more flat colour and posterise everything. Detail will be sacrificed but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If the sprites are able to be produced faster then I can focus on making the motion fluid and believable.
The other thing this aesthetic focus will bring to the game is give a kind of fable-like quality, as if the game was a story told to small children to make them recycle or something... Anyway, I recently did a render of the water power-up mask which conveniently fit the style (huzzah!).

This kind of singular undertones and highlights will make shading everything so much easier. I've also had plenty of practice with it in the past as it was the style in which I presented my first 243 project. How cute.

Good Thing We Didn't Do a Corporate Boss

"Request Resume" would have been a lame attack. What I do have for the interwebs this morning is some delicious boss refinements. These sketches are based off the feedback the rest of the team gave on my original concepts so once we crank out some levels that work and feel we could get away with adding two or three then all we have to do is pick up from here.

As much fun as these have been to design I have more pressing matters to attend to. Like cutting virtual logs in half with more buzzsaws :)