This week I worked on getting the level design for the first level. I designed a couple levels and Sarah, one of the programmers, also designed a level. I took our ideas and combined them together to create the following.
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Next Week:
Make sure that everyone submits their art and help with building the level, attend the Saturday meeting.
This week our team worked in a "pipeline" to create a guard character. Leif drew it, Drew colored it, and I animated it. The animation took longer than I thought it would and I had to redo it several times, but finally I ended up with something that looked good! Overall, I thought the process was a success, except that there were delays during the pipeline that put us all behind and Alice didn't get to do her part because she was the last one (fortunately she worked on other tasks instead). It was a good experience and we will know how to do the pipeline better in the future.
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I learned how to create quick and easy sprite sheets using a program Leif gave me. It will save us so much time!
My Assignment
This week I helped Leif to create a demo video to show how the basic game play will look in our game. I drew four quick Japanese buildings to use as stand in concept art. Also, I drew a statue for a puzzle. I animated one scene for the demo, which was the most time consuming part of the assignment. Finally, I experimented with two styles for the shadow mode. I was able to fully complete my assignment and show the demo video today in class.
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I have been playing the game Braid as inspiration for our game. The art style is beautiful and the backgrounds have a painted look similar to what we are going for in our game. The music is stunning and puzzles are unique and creative. The main draw is the concept of time manipulation. Overall, it is one of the most pleasant puzzle games I have ever played and I recommended that everyone in our team play it this week. I really like this game. :)
Next Week:
We are going to try an experiment with working as a "pipeline" to create a guard.
My Assignment
This week I had the team collect screen shots to inspire the look of the game. I mainly focused on finding screen shots for the world and platforms to give to Drew (our environment artist.) I also set up a drop box account so we could all share the work we've done and screen shots we collected, which has proven to be very useful. Finally, I typed the story outline and put it up on google doc. I feel that I achieved my goal for the week.
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I played a lot of video games to get a sense of the art style for our game. In particular, I played Marumasa: the Demon Blade, which had a beautiful art style and was also set in Japan. The main thing that I liked was the platforms, the way that the characters run around on building roof tops. I'd like to emulate these platforms for our game.
We've run into some problems with design, particularly because no one seems to have a clear idea of how the game will work. I suggested to Russel (our team lead) that we put a few people in a design team to come up with levels and puzzles.
Next Week:
Help with demo video. Research games. Get the design team rolling.
My Assignment
Last week we completed our first sprint! I drew some concept art for the shadow monsters in our game who are going to be the "bad guys."
Quality
I completed concept art for four different monsters: a pray mantis, horse, armadillo, and dragon. I drew these in Photoshop. The quality was decent but I really want to get a more unique style. Three of the four had designs based on origami. The dragon was my personal favorite.
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Though it wasn't assigned, I also wrote up a back story for the character and started working on a storyline for the game. I emailed it to the group.
Next Week:
Continue Shadow Monster Concept Art
Finalize the Story
This week we are working on concept art to get the look and feel of the game. The assignments have been split between the four artists as four categories. The categories are backgrounds, weapons and objects, main character, and shadow monsters.
I just want to give you an update of what I've done this week. I am now the art lead, so I created an artist's backlog document on google docs that includes a list of art assets. All of our artists are now able to share our ideas online.
Now that we've all been introduced, our team is ready to get started. I was chosen to be an art lead, which means I will be in charge of the overall art style in our game. I want to try creating Japanese Ink painting style art, similar to Okami, but am not sure how to actually implement it. Over the break, I must try some experimenting.
On Thursday we had a pizza party and the professors annouced the two winning games. It was no surprise to see Heroes of Hat up there since we were told that they had by far the most votes of any game in the first round. They said the second place winner was tough to decide though because the votes were tied between two games and even the judges had been torn. The professors made the deciding vote and the second place winner was... Shadow Theif!
I knew that our game was good but was still surprised because we had six other games to compete with. It's exciting to know that I'll be able to see my idea made into a fully functional game. Not to mention that it will be park of the University of Utah's legacy of games.
After that we split into two groups to discuss our games. I'm excited to work with all of the people on my team and I know this is going to be an exellent final project!
On Tuesday, our class presented our prototypes in front of the class and a panel fo four judges from the professional gaming industry. There were some technical problems with my laptop, but luckily we were able to borrow a working laptop from a classmate at the last minute. Our presentation went smoothly and we were able to show all of the short video clips I made and the prototype. I was impressed with how professionally Ben and Garret handled the presentation. I did my share of speaking too, of course. We answered questions from the judges at the end and stumbled over a couple of hard questions, but overall things went well.
Though it was hard to concentrate on the other teams after getting the after-presentation jitters, I noticed that our class presented some nice looking prototypes. The Rag Princess team had an awesome example of how to sew together one of the evil stuffed animals in the game to tear them apart (it sounds violent but it really wasn't that bad. There was no blood after all). The Heroes of Hat team used 3d platforms for their 2d side scroller and it worked nicely.
My group worked super hard on creating a prototype to present to the class. We were down to eight game ideas, with mine still in the running. I was very impressed with what my teamates Ben and Garret managed to create. We finished our two (short) levels to show for the prototype the night before we were scheduled to present. It looked great with the 3d look we created in the background but using three different layers from a single japanese ink painting. We even had the music and sound in place! All of my worries about not getting it done in time were gone. Find out how it went int the next post!
To get ideas for the style of my game, I have been looking at both traditional Japanese ink style paintings and a video game called Okami. I really like the look of ink paintings and believe it would give a unique look to my game. Okami has successfully incorporated a look that is similar to what I want to achieve into its graphics and serves as a model for my game. I really like the way the characters have a rough black outline that makes them appear to have been painted in ink as well as the use of water colors and paper textures.
This week has been fun for the Ninja Theif group. We have been brainstorming ideas for puzzles and figuring out how the shadow-switching dynamic will work. What can a shadow do? Stealthily sneak past guards, be weightless, and walk on shadow platforms. Figuring out ways to incorporate this into the game has been a fun challenge.
Guess what? My game was chosen to go on! I pitched a game about a ninja who can change into her shadow. Out of 26 students who pitched games, mine was one of eight chosen. In two weeks we will choose the top 2-3 games and those will move on to be made by the class for our senior project! I will let you know what happens.
What have I been doing to prepare myself for game design? Playing loads of Indie games on Xbox live in hopes of getting inspired, of course. I have come up with my top three favorite games, and I'd like to post about them here.
#3 Pixel Cat
Despite the simplistic, pure pixel graphics, the cat animations were adorable! This game made me laugh and the music was enjoyable too.
#2 Along came a Spider
Who would have thought being a spider could be so much fun? This is a must play game for its creative design. You'll find yourself Bungee jumping from platforms with your webs (which rocks!) and crawling upside down on platforms. You'll never look at spiders the same way again. #1. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1
Surprisingly, this shoot-em-up zombie game turned out to be addictive and my top favorite, which was weird because I don't usually like zombie games. What made this one different? Personally, I think it was the zany song that set the playful mood of the game. Also, the simplistic gameplay was actually highly competitive, and made want to keep playing. Super fun, and highly recommended.
Hello! My name is Cristine Baggerly. I'm at an exciting point in my life where I'm about to begin my senior video game project at the University of Utah. I will use this blog to track the progress of my senior project and to post about video games in general. Here's a little about me:
Dream job: Animator
Favorite video games: Majora's Mask, Fire Emblem, Phoenix Wright, Harvest Moon
