'Acorns' Presentation Slide

So here is the slide I will present in tomorrow's class. What I'm trying to convey is the simple mechanics of the game as well as what makes it unique (or so I'd like to think). The musical prism sequence is the main idea, therefore in colour, and is what I want to spend the most time explaining. The character depicted is merely a place-holder at this point, as I want to focus on the mechanics rather than the aesthetic.
The main concepts that I've decided to settle on are as follows:

Interaction - I initially planned the game to incorporate a keyboard and mouse with the classic "WASD" for movement and the mouse controlling the character's direction of view. The mouse buttons would be perfect for hosting the "interact/select" function and that would be all that was needed. I did, however, decide that the fluidity of motion that a joystick, or as depicted - thumbstick, allows for a far more natural sense of motion from the user's input. The way I envision this prism dragon to glide through the air would need to feel as smooth to control as it looks on-screen.

Experience - the fact that the games controls can be summed up by "move" and "interact" shows that the experience I want the players to feel is less about intensity, difficulty or skill, and more a journey of curiosity, fascination and wonder. I hope to make the world in which the player inhabits seem surreal and alien. Ideally it would be interesting enough that the simple act of exploring it is a pleasure.
The collection of music prisms and the gates they are used to unlock is the 'toy play' aspect of the game. This is where the main satisfaction of playing would come from. Initially the collecting of prisms would be an incentive to start the player moving about the environment but once they start interacting with gates they are essentially given something to play with. The introduction of new prisms would allow for more complex music to be created at the gates and for harder gates that require such music to open. This would encourage players to explore more, find more prisms and experiment more at the gates.
The musical sequences don't have to be locked down to just "gates" either. There could be other musical challenges set up to reward players with bonus prisms or other upgrades so that there are more opportunities to make music.

Conceptual Aesthetic - the current aesthetic I have in mind is conveyed in terms of colour by the slide image. I want to use colour throughout the game as a mode of highlighting what is important. Most aspects of the environment would be grey-scale or very dull in colour so when a player sees something bright and colourful it instantly attracts attention.
I envision the world to be an ethereal realm of shapes and platforms floating in free space with no particular orientation. I feel it would add to the surrealism if the player has no concept of what way is down. I imagine that coloured crystals or artefacts of some sort illuminate the environment past its own eerie glow, throwing shades of colour onto nearby objects to help produce a mood.
I'm very tempted to make the creature the player controls made up of a similar material to the prisms it's collecting so it is almost like some kind of crystalline golem or something. If that means the players question whether or not it is alive or mechanical or whatever they can come up with, then all the better. The focus of the game is the experience of the journey, not on how much sense this world and its inhabitants make.

Third Time's the Charm

Here we are in my third year of study. Straight into the good stuff too - our game pitch is due on the 13th so I've spent the past week conceptualizing and sketching. This is what I've come up with so far:

While there is plenty of room to play with character concepts the main play aspect of the game is decided (after many iterations). I drew my inspiration from eclectic music videos such as the following:

I like the idea that someone without musical training but a good sense of rhythm can create some pretty incredible music. The way this would manifest in the game would be through gateways the player comes across in their journey. These gates would have a musical tune as a key, generated by music prisms they pick up along the way. The tune would not be specific but based on a score that the player can accumulate through an internal algorithm that awards creating regular rhythm and complimentary tones. The musical prisms themselves would be discovered by exploring the open world and by overcoming obstacles.

MDDN 243 Post-Submission Reflection

It was unfortunate we were unable to produce a fully functioning game. The bugs Stencyl kept throwing were beyond our abilities to fix without removing large portions of the game, which unfortunately left us with little to show in the end. To give a clear representation of what the game should have looked like, Mark and I created a bunch of screenshots from the assets we had created to be used;

Load screen

In-game 1

In-game 2

In-game 3

In-game 4

Pre-boss

Boss explosion

Despite the disappointment I fell that our game did not make it out the other side as we intended, I take comfort in the fact that the visuals we produced looked gorgeous and were coherent with the game narrative and metaphors we wanted to convey. The basic demo that we were able to produce lacked the complexity that I initially intended to be in it so it was hard to gauge how enthralling the interaction of the game actually was. Regardless, this whole project has been an intense learning curve for working in groups, in terms of organisation and management. I look forward to next year where I hope to take what I've learned and apply it to maximise the output of myself and whatever teams I happen to be a part of.

Final Touches

Well it is a crunchy time indeed. In an attempt to remove some a particularly nasty bug I had to go through and resize the sprites for the boss... again. As well as adjust some of the other sprites we did, I created a quick loop for Voodude when the explosion goes off behind him.

I also made us a new team logo (considering frujus are a legitimate thing, at this point in time I can't even remember how that became our team name in the first place) and title.

Boom! Now all I can do is wait...

Slice n' Dice

To exterminate a bug Stencyl was throwing us I needed to cut down our sprite maps for the boss into itty-bitty bite-sized pieces. The death animation totals over thirty individual 3x3 spreads something like this;

Also, the final part of the death animation now looks like this;

These final four frames are loop-able so he can just chill on the screen long enough for the player to feel badass, then it can fade to the endgame screen.

Extermination

So this is where I've been for the past couple of days;

Each steam cloud needed to be placed lovingly and by the end of part six I was working with an ungodly number of layers. Anyway, for Stencyl's ease the death sequence has been split into the different segments. Chris, Mark and I met up today to discuss what visuals needed to be done to be implemented into the final product. So far all that seems left to animate is parts of the background, an explosion flash (both on Chris's list of things to do), text and screen animations for the pause menu (Mark), and the last part of the death animation (your's truly).
I plan to have his arms go limp as his head will have disappeared in the flash, leaving behind a steaming hole. The whole screen can fade to black, on which the end screen can be displayed. At the moment I'm thinking all that will be necessary is a congratulatory message for the player, a final soul count and a return to main menu button. Anything more and I feel we're pushing ourselves to much for time. I also have a fair bit to do that isn't animating to get prepped for our presentation Friday morning. Work work...

POP! Goes the Forest Spirit

So here is our "hit/hurt" sequence:

It's drastic but it makes it clear that you've been hit, which is important if the game has intense pacing. The re-spawn is rapid though, allowing players to return to the action quickly. The simplified version would be for the one-off event where the player is struck for the last time with no energy left in the boss fight:

I also did a basic animation for the start game text for the main menu to test what it would look like:

I will need to see it against the actual menu to gauge whether or not it is fluctuating in opacity too rapidly.