FMP – Art Direction Finalised

What have I done

I have finally found the design direction that I want to go with for this project. I am planning to make the environments  look like paper/card origami from the character, environment and even the sky. I am planning to make the origami style to refer to what normal within the environment, enemies and “evil” objects will be perceived as non-paper/card origami, such as toys and large more realistic objects. This design choice is to show the user what is bad and what is good. An example of this will be fire that will look realistic and will burn and damage the paper environment.

Below is two concept pieces for the project:

I am planning to do one final concept piece for this art direction, along side a few other design directions, then choose the best suited. Though I do feel that this art direction is the best, as it has allows me to create a basic but powerful story for the game, and also be visually pleasing and very friendly to children. After this, I will start to plan out the first level, which will be focusing on the basic mechanics of the game, which are moving and jumping, so I will not need to create special objects or use complex BluePrints to create the level. Then create it within Unreal Engine 4.

What are my influences?

The idea is  influenced by many sources, from other games to films. The influence for the art direction is based on many games, but the main one being “Grow Home“. I will show an image of game play below:

Link to image here.

Another major influence for the design direction is  “Yoshi’s Woolly World” which is also a side scrolling platformer, but uses a material as the main style, which is wool/ yarn. Image of the game is below:

Link to image here.

 

 

How Things Work: Visual Explanation using 3D

What is the idea?

This is a new project that I will be starting from today to build up my 3D modeling experience, and my ability to collect information from others to create something visual.

There will be two different directions I will be able to go with this project, the first being creating just a 3D visual image of the subject that I am explaining, which could be how a door lock works, to the different in size between the planets. The other direction I could go, and will be the main focus of this project will be video and basic animation. This could be done by creating a voiced over video explaining how these things work along side a animated visual representation of what I am explaining.

How will I approach this idea?

I am planning on listing out a bunch of different things I can visualise and explain to people well and easily. I will collect information about any subject areas I will use for this project from good sources (NOT WIKIPEDIA), and use them to back up any claims I make within my visual representations. This includes videos and images.

Why this project?

I enjoy learning about new things, so using this I will be able to use what I learn as a way to showcase my skill sets.

What do I plan to achieve from this?

I plan that it will help me learn more skill sets to help improve my work and my work flow. It will also allow me to showcase my skill sets to people, and has the potential of being pieces that could be within my portfolio. I also hope that people are able to learn from the content that I will make.

FMP – Animation and Animatics: Plan

I am planning to start working on the animations and animatics early for this project. I am not planning to create any character animations within 3DS Max or any other 3D program for a while though. What I am planning to do is to learn the fundamentals of motion for animations by doing 2D based animations first.

First thing that I am going to do is create very simple animations, such as a rotating cube using the animation feature which is in Photoshop. I will also create a rotating cube within 3DS Max and render it out as a reference for the creation. What I am planning to do with these animations is to work out how the major points of an object move, such as an example with the cube, how each of the corners will move within a 3D space using 2D animation methods. The reason for doing this is so when I get to the more complicated animations and animatics, I will be able to work out how the object or character will move, by the major points of the object.

After I have created a few basic animations, I will start doing character based animations within 2D, which I will be starting of by recreating fight scenes from films and cartoons (using as a reference) to learn how to make the motion look more realistic. These will be done by creating stick-man animations which will be fast to produce and if done right, can have great motion which can teach me how to make more realistic motion within objects and characters.

next step is to start creating animatics for possible movements to be used within my game. The way that I am currently planning to do this is to record myself doing these movements to the best of my ability, or using an object to recreate the motion that I am after, placing the video in the background, and draw out points on each of the major movements within the video, and draw lines and circles to draw out a mannequin like character. This will be done for side and front views of the movement. The plan is that I will be able to use these animatics to create the motion within 3D animation using 3D animation software which will look professional and fun to watch. I do plan to edit the final movements slightly to make them look more powerful and fluid if need be.

I am planning to complete all of this within 4 weeks.

GrowGuu – Idea Generation: Visual and sound design

I have thought of a few directions that I can do with the creation of the visual look of the game and the sound and music that could be used with it.

I have thought of a design idea which is to make sound and design of the game work together. This means that with the simplistic visual design of the game, there will also be a simple music and sound library that will be used. This would be pretty simple to program into the game as all that needs to be created would be the music for the game, and basic code which allows the music to player and to be muted if the player wishes.

Another idea is due to the simplistic visual design of the game, I could use a powerful score (music) to make the game have more emotion and identity. This will require more programming as different events in the game could make the music more powerful or weaker. As an example, the music might be soft when the player is small, but the music could become more powerful as the player gets larger. The problem with this idea is that this would require a lot of sound programming to make this work well, and the creation of multiple parts of a song that gets played depending on player mass (player size).

Final idea is to make different music for different coloured backgrounds for the game. As an example, you could have a more powerful song play when the background is red, and have a calmer song play when the background is blue. This would require some more advance programming and the creation of multiple songs.

I may add to this list depending if I think of more ideas.

Before I create any of the music for this game, or decide on which direction I want to go with this idea, I want to do some research into sound design for games, so that I have a clear idea of what I need to do to make the music work well with the game, and make the user like the game with its music, or even make the music as a way of a user to remember the game.

GrowGuu – Design: Changes to design idea and current progress

Design idea changes

After looking further into what can be done with shaders within Game Maker. I have decided to step back from my original concept designs, and look at creating 3 different forms of concept art for the game.

I have learned that shaders within this game engine are very powerful, and can make a game look a lot better. Below I will show a video of what type of things can be done with the shaders:

As you can see, you can do a lot to the games visual design by using these shaders, but you will have to code them to get them to work. So what I will do once I am further with the prototypes of this game, I will add shaders as the fifth phase of the development along side improving the visual look of the game by creating animations and better looking objects to be put within the environment.

My plan for my game is to try to combine two shaders which are within the example that I showed above into a single shader, which is the water effect shader and the normal-mapping shader. If this is not possible, I will just create a water effect shader.

With the design of the players character, I will not change much, if I end up using the normal-mapping shader, I would like to use the 8th design from my previous player designs, which I will link here.

Current progress

I have currently create a player that is able to move around within a level in all directions, which is able to get bigger and smaller (re-scale) by pressing a one of two buttons on the keyboard. I have also make the character decrease in size when using the future shooting buttons, ready for the up coming mechanic. And finally, I have make it so the view of the player will zoom in and out as the character gets bigger and smaller. I will do a blog post in a week showcasing this prototype. My next step is to make the character able to grow by eating, and lose mass when damaged. I also would like to do something to the player visually to show that he has taken on damage. I am also going to do some further planning on the control layout for the game, as I am not fully sure on what will work best with this game movement wise; so during this week, I am doing to concept a view different possible control layouts for the game, and set the game up so that controller input can be used.

GrowGuu – Prototype: Plan

I have not currently started the creation of this project within the game engine at this point, but I would like to take some time to plan out how I am going to produce this game.

I am going to create multiple prototypes for this project which will be broken up into phases to ease the pressure of me programming the game mechanics.

Below I will list the phases and what will be accomplished within each phase:

Phase 1

• Create basic player movement system
• Create growing mechanic when collecting an item
• Test background and check to see if it blurs (find fix if it does)

Phase 2

• Create shrinking mechanic
• Create shooting mechanic (shoots a blob and shrinks player)
• Create danger objects which damage the player (makes player shrink)

Phase 3

• Create spawners for objects
• Create prototype level for timed mode

Phase 4

• Create time mechanic
• Create basic menu

After phase 4, I will then create the pre-alpha version of the game using all of the mechanics I have produced in the prototypes.

This method of producing the game will be used for all the following game modes.

GrowGuu – Current progress: notes and ideas – Post 1

At this current point, I have started to plan out how to make my project. I started of by breaking up everything I can think of and listing them in my sketch book. My plan is to add to them when I think of other jobs that need to be done to create  a great final product. After I created a day plan which I only done two of the three task at this current point, which are creating the gameplay mechanics for the game, which I did by listening the different mechanics for the character and for environment objects, and how they will work and effect the player. After I created a blog post which is breaking apart the ideas for the visual look of the game. I want to try and break up all of the different possible ideas, and think of all of the possible problems for each of them. Link to the blog is here.

Below I will show scans of the notes and explain them:

Page one                                        Page two

 

Page three                                     Page four

Page one is just be breaking up what I need to do throughout the entire project, so that I am able to make this game one bit at a time and plan out how I am going to make it, which I think will help me produce a great final product.

Page two and three are mainly notes about how the mechanics for the game should work, from how the play should move, to some of the in game mechanics. At this point I am not considering any of the level mode mechanics, as I want to try and get the main game-play mechanics working for the first game mode that I am going to make which is time mode.

The forth page is just talking about what design direction that I should choose. I decided to continue this page as a blog post, so I am able to showcase research more easily. Link to the post is here.

My next step for this project is to start creating some of the concept pieces to showcase how the game could look, I will do multiple versions and designs of the visual look, showcasing how it looks zoomed in and out. Before I do that though, I want to try and think up a few more design directions that I can go.

GrowGuu Project – Visual look and design: Research – Post one

I am currently creating and designing a project called GrowGuu, which is going to be a game based around eating and growing in size.

Design Direction

At this point, I am looking at how the game could look, and what is the best direction for this project visually and mechanically. One of the problems that I have ran into whilst planning out this project is how the game will look when the player is very small. When the player grows and shrinks, the camera will also zoom in and out to that the user will always be able to see the character and the surrounding environment easily.

I have created one possible fix for this problem which is to make up the game level environment made up of only horizontal and vertical lines, no diagonal or curved lines, as when zoomed in, they can show up pixels which can make the game look strange and cheap.

Other option that I could use is to make the game look pixelly by nature, making it a fundamental design choice for the game, but the issue which I get with this direction, is how to make objects stay looking pixelly when the player grows to a massive size.

Below I will show an example of what the problem is:

The image to the left is the corner zoomed out (scale 512 x 512), and the image to the right is zoomed in (scale 32 x 32).

Colour Scheme Direction

The next step is to choose a colour scheme for the game that looks nice and pretty, but also is very simple in design.

Below I am going to show a colour wheel

Link to image is here.

With the creation of objects within the environment and the background, I need to make sure that environment objects do not blend into the background (making it hard for the user to see items within a level)

One of the directions I would like to go in is to make the background be able to change colour every time the level is open to make the game feel different each time a user plays it. I am not planning to make a pretty picture for the background, but just a solid colour, maybe with some basic particle effects to make it more interesting to look at.

With foreground objects such as the player and objects within the environment, I am planning to be just as colourful, but the problem with the idea of making the background change colour, is that like I said before, it could make some items within the game hard to see when certain background colours show up. So my first idea is to make the player and the walls to the level black, which should make the player and walls stand out without being too bright. and then designing objects within the environment to be certain colours which the background wont use, and also change the tone of the colours slightly compared to the background. The second idea is to only make the walls black, but also make the player colourful, but with all of the objects and the player to have a black line that goes around the edge to separate the background and foreground with a visual line.

Last point I like to add to this is, looking into the Game Maker Engine, I have found out that you are able to make custom shaders, which I could use to make the game have interesting lighting, giving objects more of a gradient. But at this point this is a very early idea, and I would personally like to make a working game before I plan on playing around with the shaders within the engine.

Learning and Research – Unreal Engine 4 : Post 3 – Current progress and plan

Current Progress

Over the last day, I have finally been able to get morph targets to work within Unreal Engine 4 by creating it within 3DS Max. I figured out the problem being was that I had to set the FBX file to 2014 within the setting before the export as the default 2011 FBX type, for some reason does not support morph targets. The result is having the morph within the game editor, and being able to change the shape of the object; but I still have not worked out how to get the morph targets to work within a running game.

I have also started to learn BluePrints, I have decided to try and find tutorials that will aid me when creating my Final Major Project game. Within the tutorial that I found, it taught me how to make a object move from one point to another  using the BluePrints system. This will help me when creating my game as I will want to have moving platforms, doors, gates and etc. throughout my game.

What I need to work on and learn

The next tutorial that I want to find is how to make an object move around using the direction keys on the keyboard, as I feel like I learn better from making something or doing something from stratch.  After, I will have to try and learn how to make the object jump. At this point, these are the most important goals as without them, I will not be able to make this game. Once I have learned how to do these task, I will then create the first early version of the level, as these will be the only mechanics that I will need at this point.

Learning and Research – Unreal Engine 4 : Post 2 – Ideas

I have had a look at the example 3D side scroller that is included within Unreal Engine 4 (4.9.2); and the first thing I think I need to change a lot compared to this example is how the camera is used. Within the example, the camera is very static and it feels like that it is too close to the character, making it hard to see the environment around, especially when jumping. So one of my major goals over the next few weeks is to learn and create a camera system that is less static to the character, is able to move back and forth, and also able to rotate pointing towards the character.

With the character movements within the example, I feel that what is given is a great start for what I want to produce in my final version of the game, all I will need to change is how quickly the character can move and maybe try to add a double jump mechanic within the game.

Finally, after looking at what I be working with, I think that it will take a few weeks or maybe just over a month to get a very basic version of the first introduction level (which will be teaching the user how to move the character around). I feel once I have made this though, the production of the levels will be developed a lot faster.