Game Design & Development Weekly Progress Report/Visual Diary
This Behance will showcase my progress throughout the final term. Each week will contain the classwork I complete as well as progress for my FMP game demo. There will be explanations and reflection on all of my work and feedback to improve on my future work.
Week 1
26/02/24
At the beginning of this new term, we were tasked to create a mind map where we wrote down what we understood about the brief and key information which will help us in progressing through this term with confidence and understanding of what we will encounter and what we are expected to produce.
I created this mind map in Adobe Express and will be used as a way for me to quickly attain information about what I will be doing for the weeks approaching.
There is not much more improvements I can provide for this mindmap as most information is used elsewhere.
_______________________________________________________________________
Secondly I created an idea mind map to capture what I wanted to do for my final project of this term. This served as a quick way to capture ideas and write them down without the relative slowness of a computer. Immediately putting your ideas onto paper with pencil is an excellent way of retaining and improving upon information which I deem relevant to my final major project.
Thanks to this activity, I was able to explore different aesthetics and ideas which will greatly improve the vision of my game demo. Next time I would like to improve upon the design of my ideas so it is presentable to people other than myself.
_______________________________________________________________________
Following the last tasks feedback, I decided to recreate this mind map with a plethora of new information, as well as an overhaul for its aesthetic design. Each section talks about relevant aspects to the game which I deem important to the overall project. This improvement will also help in me figuring out whether my work is reaching the standards for the grade.
Week 2
4/3/24
This week we were to create a project portfolio which includes a rationale, project concept, evaluation, bibliography and a project plan/timetable.
The rationale is used as an overview of my strengths and skills I have obtained and improved upon throughout the course.
The project concept outlies the idea of my game. This contains an explanation of the story, theme, how the game will be made, when it will be made, the tools required, characters within the game and ethical/environmental considerations for the creation process of the FMP.
The evaluation stands as a quick overview of the process of me making the game, as well as other important information retaining to how I will track my progress with this Behance page and my goal for this term.
The bibliography is used to hold all the Harvard references for the information I have gotten for my research, the project plan/timetable is simply used as a guide to what work I will be doing during the course, this information was obtained by using the previously mentioned assignment brief mind map.
This project proposal was created using a template provided by Harlow College and filled out using Microsoft Word.
_______________________________________________________________________
After careful consideration, I selected my chosen protected characteristics: Sex/Gender and Gender Reassignment. This allowed me to create my research journal. This journal is to contain all my research related to protected characteristics, though mainly containing the two I chose. The headers in this Padlet include: Creative practitioners, Art movements and non-art research, secondary research, primary research, specialism research, protected characteristics research and a bibliography. Below are examples of my overall protected characteristics research and what games/characters/shows I feel represent them best.
_______________________________________________________________________
Below is the link to my research journal. This padlet will continuously be updated during this terms duration. I will put updates of this research journal throughout this Behance as I progress through, especially primary research. The information in here will be extremely useful in understanding my chosen protected characteristic and making the best version of my final major project possible.
_______________________________________________________________________
To begin my research journal, I've looked into historical creative practitioners and their contributions towards gender/sex and sex reassignment within their art. The artists I chose were: Claude Cahun, Lili Elbe, Frida Kahlo and Hannah "Gluck" Gluckstein. All four of these individuals have one way or another greatly contributed to the representation towards sex reassignment and gender/sex as a whole.
I formatted my work by beginning with an introduction to them. I include name and year of birth as they are important to the historical aspect of the research. I then provided an example of their work which I believe was very influential to the development of their/others gender identity. I researched into what struggles they faced with their expression and how they overcame it, and finally what impact they left on the world as a whole after their passing.
If I were to do this research again, I would like to try to emulate their art and convey a similar message as to what they did, I believe this will help me get a deeper understanding of how I can convey messages through drawings.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Research Journal)
Week 3
11/3/24
This week we created another Padlet page which holds the purpose to perform research onto specific areas within the game design field. These areas are: Games, Artists, Animators, Films/TV and Apps. We were tasked to put down atleast 3 examples of research in each of these areas, and also perform 2 examples of primary research overall. I'll be using this page to experiment and discover different ways to improve my work for my game demo, as well as putting examples of primary research I've performed which relates to one of the fields mentioned.
Why did you choose this source of information?
How does it link to the theme of the project?
How does it link to your idea for the project?
How will you use this information for you own project outcome?
This information will help me greatly into understanding what happens within the industry and the practices which are used to design and develop video games. Though my focus is programming and pixel art, examples retaining to film and animations will be extremely beneficial to my journey of understanding
Similar to my characteristics research journal, I will be adding information as the weeks go by, gradually completing it before the end of my project.
_______________________________________________________________________
As an example of my characteristics research, I decided to tackle the topic of stereotypes within gender expression and what overlaps may occur. I done this simply with pen and pencil as to quickly note down ideas and put them into the Venn diagram.
Stereotypes play a big part within media as they are easier to understand and create, which can be negative towards the groups of people they are trying to represent. Me recognising these faults and seeing which attributes I should avoid will greatly benefit me in correctly portraying the goal of my chosen protected characteristic, gender reassignment.
As stated, this is a rough sketch and was done hastily for the sole purpose of information. This information I've attained will be used elsewhere in my work in a more refined format.
_______________________________________________________________________
As part of my primary research for my industry research journal, I decided to create a survey using Google Docs which I provided to family/friends to answer. These questions were made to grasp the general opinion of around 17 people and hopefully get an objective view of the opinions at hand.
I begun this survey with a quick introduction and overview as to what I intend to gather from these results, firstly I asked questions relating to the respondents themselves. These questions included "how old are you?", "how often do you play games?" and "what is your favourite game?" these were asked to act as a way to define the preferences of the respondents as the enjoyment of games are subjective.
Secondly I asked questions related to gaming as a whole, examples of this include questions related to genre preference, platforms used, game discovery, importance of certain aspects and desired difficulty. My focus group had a larger majority of teenager who are more used to gaming, so a lot of the questions were skewed in favour of more experienced gamers (who tend to play harder games such as platformers, fighting and strategy).
Finally, I asked a question about the persons personal opinion on the under/over-representation of the protected characteristics provided by the brief. Ultimately Gender/Sex was viewed as being the most represented, while inversely Gender/Sex Reassignment was viewed as the least represented.
With these answers, I put them on my padlet wall and gave more in-depth views and opinions on the results, as well as an overview as to what I felt was expected and what surprised me. This survey turned out to be extremely valuable in my primary research and has definitely helped me define what I wish my FMP to be.
The pictures provided for this survey are low quality and may be difficult to read, for a more clear and readable version of these, please check out the Industry Research Journal (https://harlowcollege2.padlet.org/11237186/remake-of-research-journal-fmp-g8prdczpkmhk82zv)
_______________________________________________________________________
Continuing my research journal created last week, I researched 4 contemporary creative practitioners. The 4 I've chosen are Nicola Tyson, Del LaGrace Volcano, Loren Rex Cameron and Marie-Lisette Cropp. All 4 of these creative practitioners use their own expression of art to display themes related to my protected characteristic of gender/sex, gender identity and gender reassignment.
I researched into each of them and explored what struggles they faced in life and how they relate to the topics they are representing. My favourite example of this was Del LaGrace Volcanos experience with being intersex and how they transformed their isolation and neglection from society into photography and what issues people like them face.
All of these follow of a similar format where I talk about their name, age, pronouns and art which they have created and what impacts they have done to both art and society as a whole. If I were to do this again, I would like to collect more quotes and anecdotes from these individuals to more accurately portray their experiences with their unique and somewhat controversial identity in a world where they are forgotten by the greater public eye.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Research Journal)
Week 4
18/3/24
This week had a focus on practical development and experimenting with different tools within the college. Though before I begun any of those activities, I decided to recreate my assignment brief mind map onto a padlet page as I felt that is more accessible and readable which I think is important due to it holding the most important and relevant information for my course.
Within is mind map, I contained information from the previous one such as deadlines for the work/project, themes for the project (protected characteristics and hero's journey), FMP ideas which include my mind maps, strengths and weakness for what I am comfortable/uncomfortable with and my specialism which is pixel art and programming.
_______________________________________________________________________
After completing the assignment brief mindmap on Padlet, I thought it would be a a good decisions to experiment with alternative forms of art. I mostly done my art digitally with pixel art programmes and neglected trying other forms such as oil, charcoal, paint, pencils, fineliner etc. These forms of art have been explored for hundreds of years and can provide valuable insight to the fundamentals of compositions, colouring and lineart, as well as other more complicated and in-depth sections of art I have yet to improve by my standard approach.
For my first piece of artistic research, I decided to try out water paints as I've once explored this area of art a few years ago and found it very enjoyable. I begun by simply painting objects such as the moon in the centre and the ground without using any water to assist, though I gradually felt more comfortable and applied water to colour in and create shapes such as the clouds in the sky. I used a mixture of blue, red and black to create a landscape resembling an apocalyptic scenario with contrasting colours below and above. Water painting taught me the importance of usage for the materials provided as I regularly applied too little/too much water which made it difficult to clean and adapt to. If I could try this again, I would like to focus more on the water aspect and create more complicated shapes rather than circles and a tree.
Secondly I tried out charcoal drawings which was my favourite out of the two due to its simplicity and comfort. Charcoal is most commonly a singular colour, more focusing on the shapes and shading of the black charcoal provided. I decided to begin with basic shapes layed onto of each over like semi-circles and rectangles and eventually saw the potential to create an object similar to a slot machine. My process for charcoal drawings was to hold the charcoal parallel to the paper and glide it across, repeating until I get the desired darkness of the shape. After this I used my fingers to smudge the colours together and eraser to balance out the composition of the colours. After I've completed a shape, I used the charcoal like a pencil to create an outline around the shape to make it stand out and fit the theme I was aiming for. If I could do this again, I would like to try to draw the same thing but pay more attention to detail and utilize my eraser more than I did.
Trying out these alternatives forms of art has made me realize how liminal my perspective of art is and that digital is very forgiving and somewhat restricting with its creativity as mistakes can be easily covered up, instead of adapted to like the forms I attempted.
_______________________________________________________________________
I had extra time after completing the practical examples shown above, I decided to continue on with my research journal and focused on Secondary Research. Secondary research is defined as a research method using data collected by other people. As these characters in games already exist and their identity have already been formed, this counts towards the definition.
First I began with outlining some baselines for what research I will perform. My protected characteristics is gender/sex and gender reassignment, so in accordance with that I collected information on the definitions of non-binary, transgender and androgyny. This information is valuable as a reminder of what my main goal of this research is.
A large part of my secondary research was analysis on games which include characters which align with my protected characteristics. I ultimately found 5 games which I deem inclusive and well represented. These games are Deltarune, Undertale, Apex Legends, Guilty Gear and Borderlands 3. For each of these games, I investigated what characters I felt best represented gender reassignment and how they impact the story and their own story.
This research taught me the importance of avoiding over-inclusivity and keeping the characters gender situation as a part of their identity, rather than the defining factor of it.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Research Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
As previously mentioned, I had extra time this week and poured some of it into performing research onto different games which I believe are relevant and important sources of information which can heavily contribute towards my game demos improvement. These games are Terraria, Hollow Knight and Rain World.
Terraria was chosen for this research as it shares a lot of similarities with the vision of my game. The pixel art style, the game mechanics and abilities and Hero's Journey theme. I also have played Terraria before and feel comfortable with using it as a source of information.
Hollow Knight was chosen as the mechanics and general style of the game align with mine. It holds a simple colour palette of black, white and grey. As well as attacks and progression which I feel is very satisfying within games like my own.
Rain World was chosen for its difficulty and unique approach to survival within video games. It has a simple style which contrasts its complex ecosystem of monsters. As the player, you are very weak and powerless compared to the monsters, encouraging you to find alternative ways of survival like escaping.
The research performed will definitely help me find a clearer path towards my game demos completion and will be a source of inspiration for what my game could potentially look like when completed.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
Week 5
25/3/24
This week we created our evaluations for our final major projects. This outlined multiple questions which were relevant to what we will be creating by the end of the term.
In the General subheading, we talked about what our project will ultimately be and how well it has been going, we also had to acknowledge what problems we have faced and how we can improve on them, as well as what is going well and our confidence in certain areas of our work.
Research subheading comprised of us explaining what research we have been doing, whether it be secondary, primary, industry etc. and additionally information on how the research is going such as our best/worst research and where we can improve upon for the next time we have to research into creative practitioners, game designers, historical/contemporary artists and other relevant people/entities.
The Project Proposal subheading simply asked us to outline how our progress towards our proposal is going, as well as how much influence our project proposal has on our current project and how much has it deviated.
Respond to research was recapping what research we have done and what we have learnt from it. For example I talked about my primary research of water colours and charcoal where I tried to emulate artists who used similar tools. We also talked about what struggles we encountered and how we overcame these struggles and learnt from what we did.
Planning subheading asked for how we have been planning to progress through our FMP. I mentioned storyboards and mind map as I find them easy to make, read and also create with Adobe Express.
Reflection subheading talked about how we have been improving and gathering feedback for our FMP as to make sure we do not get overwhelmed with work or lose track of what our final goal is.
Overall this evaluation helped me set a checkpoint as to what I wish to make for this term and how I will get to the completed product. With this I can look back and reliably figure out how to approach problems that will arise during development.
_______________________________________________________________________
As this week was mostly comprised of doing our evaluations. This left me with extra time to further develop my research journal. This time I completed the Contextual Research; Specialism column. This column is meant to showcase your specialism being used in research related to your protected characteristic. For me that is pixel art and gender reassignment.
I started off this column with a bit of general research of the origins of pixel art and its relation to cubism, though this isn't necessary for this section, I felt the information is valuable and helps me and others understand how this unique art style was developed over decades. I also provided an example of a tool which is used to make this art, though pixel art is relatively simple and there is only 1 official and industry standard tool which is made for the sole purpose of pixel art, that being Aseprite.
For the bulk of my research for this topic I looked into 4 game characters which share both my protected characteristic and specialism. These 4 characters are: Turing, representing Read Only Memories. Madeline, representing Celeste. Frisk and Chara representing Undertale. And The Knight, representing Hollow Knight.
The first 3 characters share similar styles with the gameplay being pixel art and the occasional simple digital art for cutscenes and alternative scenes. I wish to also present my characters like this with a simple design while you play, though more detailed designs for when its needed. Hollow Knight is an exception to these 3, considering it doesn't have pixel art, though I still feel inclined to include it as the simple design and movements can easily be translated into pixel art and follow the same rules as this form of art.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Research Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
For this part of my research, I completed my task to gather information about 3 animators. These animators are Keiichiro Watanabe, Vann Oba and Hayao Miyazaki. This research will benefit me because part of my specialism, pixel art, has a heavily emphasis on animations. A common theme among all of these animators are that they work on popular Japanese animations, this is due to both my liking of their work and also the focus on action which they typically have which is related to my game idea.
I started off with Keiichiro Watanabe, a veteran animator who has worked on large shows such as "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" his work typically consists of integrating unique camera movement around fast paced animation which is created with smears, blurs and sketchy inbetweens.
I moved onto Vann Oba, an animator who is known for detailed still shots and visual flare which does not sacrifice quality unlike other animators. Colour is a large theme with Vann Oba's work, utilizing contrasting and complimenting palette to make a scene stand out and attract attention with its importance.
Hayao Miyazaki was chosen as he is one of the most famous Japanese animators currently in the industry. He is responsible for the co-creation of Studio Ghibli, an animation studio which has earned hundreds of awards both globally and nationally.
I elaborated further on these 3 animators within my research, learning valuable bits of information which relate to animation such as how to storyboard, inbetween frames and how to create an animation (which is usually done by creating "key frames" then adding "inbetween frames" to connect them). I would like to replicate their methods and make an animation of my own if I have the time, if not then I will still use the methods mentioned to create animations for my game demo such as character movement and backgrounds.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
Artists were the next column I wanted to research next. This will contribute greatly to my game demo as one of my main specialisms is pixel art. Art is ultimately subjective but I felt these 3 I selected had very aesthetically pleasing designs and would also be great to research to further improve upon my own skills. The three I chose were Paul Robertson, Aleksander Rostov and Thomas "blueeyesnorton2 Norton.
Paul Robertson has been a famous pixel artist for a while now and I've been following their work for a few years. He collaborates with companies such as adult swim to create animations and art pieces with his vibrant expressive pixel art style. A problem I've faced with researching him is his pixel art is very high detailed which contrasts with the normal canvas sizes of pixel art which are around 8x8 or 16x16. Regardless this information is still valuable to my development.
Aleksander Rostov, despite not being a pixel artist, is still a very good choice for me to study. His unique painting style, as well as his symbolism and messages make his work have a very surreal and deep meaning to them. I would like to experiment with my own style to replicate his, even though I am very uncomfortable with his style.
Thomas "blueeyesnorton" Norton is another pixel artist I look up to a lot. Thomas, like Paul, has a very high canvas size compared to most pixel art pieces, though Thomas implements methods to his drawings which are still very important within smaller pixel art pieces. He understands the lack of quality a pixel art drawing can have so instead of heavily focuses on colours and composition of the general scene. This approach works extremely well and I would like to study it further.
Despite the problems that arise from the different in canvas sizes compared to these 3 artists, I am still willing to understand their reasonings behind their drawings and implement their tactics into my own art work.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
Easter Holiday
Week 6
15/4/24
This Tuesday was a tour to the Tate Modern Gallery in London. Sadly I was unable to attend and missed out on exploring the various art works held within the gallery. Though I didn't want to waste my time and decided to begin drawing my main character for my game as we have begun creating it now.
This character is who I wish to be the player within my game demo, I created this drawing in Aseprite and took inspiration from common identifiers of androgyny and ambiguous designs to match their non-binary identity. The white, long hair has appeared multiple times while exploring non-binary characters and decided to use it with mine. The dark skin is also a common theme I found within these designs and found it visually appealing and distinct enough to fit my character. Most of the drawing was done on the spot as I've had plans for an adventurous-looking character since the start of the project and I believe this character manages to encapsulate the essence of a broader gender spectrum.
This is technically just a quick drawing and I wish to elaborate further on their design as I progress through the game creation, though I believe this design will remain consistent throughout the project.
Following the creation of my main character, I also created my Adobe Express page for practical evidence and will be using it to show only my practical work I've created for my game demo.
Practical Evidence: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/ajI6xdy4VERS2
_______________________________________________________________________
As I was unable to attend the Tate Modern Gallery, I decided to do an online virtual tour of another gallery and find different pieces of art which inspire me for different reasons. This gallery was filled with mostly Christian works of art dating back hundreds of centuries and built-in feature to view the backstory behind each piece helped me figure out which ones I resonate with and wish to further elaborate on.
The three I chose was Mary Magdalene by Girolamo Savoldo, Salvator Mundi by Andrea Previtali and Lamentation by Gerard David. All of these artists existed in a renaissance and their art reflects the popular beliefs and themes which existed back then.
Due to the difference between my art style (pixel art) and the art styles provided (mostly some variant of oil paints) I felt the amount of information I've gathered from these pieces was a bit underwhelming. Next time I would like to do a virtual tour of a more modern gallery which might include pieces which I can relate to further.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
One of the columns for my research journal was artistic and non-artistic movements. In this I aim to investigate what impacts these movements have which relate to my protected characteristic of gender reassignment. All of these chosen movements have one way or another helped the reputation and rights for transgender individuals and the rights they have struggled to obtain.
The Stonewall Riots of 1969 played a large part in not only the transgender movement, but the LGBTQ+ movement as a whole. I begun my research by investigating the cause and context of these riots and the police brutality which led to the start of these riots. After I searched for key people as well as what changes were made in response to these riots.
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, also know as "ACT UP" is an awareness campaign and movement which targets the dangers of unprotected sex within LGBTQ+ and transgender areas and the lack of medicine and care for the victims of this disease. I focused on their impact on allowing accessible healthcare for the people within the LGBTQ+ community and how they got their voices heard by a wider audience.
It Gets Better project is a project which assists LGBTQ+ and transgender individuals who are experiencing bullying and discrimination from schools, work and other communities. I researched how they reinvigorate hope and support to youths who are struggling with these issues and what actions are done to the both the bullies and the victims involved in the issues.
Transgender literature covered a wide range of different books and stories which include or are made by transgender individuals. I primarily talked about how much literature can effect real world opinions and thoughts on topics related to the issues they cover. I also mention multiple transgender authors and their works for example.
Overall the research I initiated about these artistic and non-artistic research helped me further develop my knowledge of the struggles which transgender and LGBTQ+. I have also learnt what actions I can perform to avoid accidental discrimination or unsavoury references towards my protected characteristic.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Research Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
I begun my GDevelop project, though I have nothing to add quite yet, I've now created a place to make my demo. It will be only available on desktop.
This will be the focus of my project from now one, creating this demo to finally present it as my FMP. Though I still have a small amount of classwork to complete, I will put most of my time to creating my game.
I am already comfortable with GDevelop and so experimentation will be less common, though I will still note down all the steps I take to creating my game, starting off with my main menu for next week.
Week 7
22/4/24
I started this week by creating a more detailed and refined version of my main character concept, no reference sheet was needed as the pose is simple and the character has already been created. This game me more comfort and confidence to create this character.
The purpose of this drawing is to use it in the future for a character sheet where I will define their personality, sex, age, goals etc. which will be helpful to the player understanding what their goals are.
I created this drawing using Aseprite and stuck to the basic tools such as the pencil tool and bucket fill. Continuously drawing this character has given me a more solid grasp on their appearance, abilities and mannerism. A problem I might face in the near future is that their design is a bit too complicated and has too many colours which is usually a negative in pixel art game designs. Though I would like to keep this design the official one, I might have to simplify it for the in game sprite, this decision is not final but I will have to consider it when I start creating the game.
Finally I have also decided on a placeholder/official name for my character, their name is Asa. This may be subject to change but for now I will refer to them as such, they follow a non-binary identity. The name "Asa" is a gender-neutral name which follows the meaning "doctor" and "healer", although Asa doesn't have much related to those subjects, the point of the game is to reunite multiple fragments to rebirth an ancient god which can be seen as "healing".
_______________________________________________________________________
I felt as if the information for my game demo is jumbled and scattered around, making it harder for people trying to understand my idea. In response to that, I decided to make a Padlet wall where all of the important information regarding the story, lore, characters and locations will be held.
This Padlet wall will be regularly updated with new additions to the story, It is merely a collection of the lore which people can visit to catch up and understand the point of the game.
_______________________________________________________________________
I've always had the level progression and game idea in my head since the start of this term, though I realized I've never wrote it down and I believe it is easier to visually understand rather than writing it in a project brief.
The game will start, like all others, at a main menu. This will be the most basic of them all as its purpose is to serve as the gateway to the entire game. This level will include play, settings and quit which will redirect the player to their respective places. I have also considered renaming my game to "Unfractured" as I prefer it over my previous name of "Radiant Conquest". The background will be a floating castle which ties into the story of my game.
Upon pressing play, the player will be transported to a cathedral of sorts, this will be the main hub of the game and will redirect you to the boss rooms which will be the main content. Though I am only making a demo so 1 boss/portal will be available. In this room will also house your leader, Luxmysta (a prominent leader/figure in the game which I will create soon).
Finally, the main content of the game will be accessed from the hub and each area will be unique to the boss you are facing (e.g. the time boss will have the room with the clock, ice boss will be in the tundra etc.) upon defeating these bosses, you will return to the hub and unlock a new portal to challenge another boss.
The gameplay loop is purposefully simple and meant to be easy to pick up but hard to master. The main source of content will be its replayability and challenging mechanics.
_______________________________________________________________________
This is my first background drawing for my game and will be used as the main menu screen background. It displays The Floating Keep, an important location in my game which contains the main character, as well as the hub where all the battles will stem from.
I felt a good way to involve a sense of magic and fantasy elements was to make the main area a castle atop a floating island. I also added other elements to the castle such as it being covered with runes and there being hanging lights from the bottom of the island, representing that the owner of this island is the shard bearer of light and colour.
I would like to separate the foreground from the background so I can create a motion effect with tweens within GDevelop.
The idea of the floating keep came from a movie called Howl's Moving Castle. The director is Hayao Miyazaki, a man I researched inside of my Industry Research Journal and looked into his way of creating these scenic and impactful shots which immerse the viewer deeper into the story he is attempting to tell.
His apparent expertise in world building leaves me wanting to use him as a base for my research and creations while making the world for my game. His experience and successful projects also lead me to trusting him further when I am creating my backgrounds and building my world in my demo.
_______________________________________________________________________
Following my previous works idea, I created 2 sets of clouds for the background. The first one will be behind the castle, while the 2nd will be infront of the castle. Both will infinitely move in a direction, the far one being slower.
These were simply done by using the circle tool in Aseprite and creating vague shapes around like how real clouds look. I think added streaks of a darker colour to portray depth and shading. The far ones are darker due to how light works in the real world with closer stuff being brighter.
I discovered the action which will make the cloud scroll infinitely to the left. These work by offsetting the X position by a certain amount relative to the time passed within the game, this also means that if I somehow paused the game, the clouds would also stop.
_______________________________________________________________________
I found this text bitmap font which I felt matched my game perfectly, I created a white version of it too so I can place it on top of darker background. This font was chosen as it has a royal and grand aesthetic, while also preserving the pixel art style. A bitmap works by having an image (the two shown) and having another file linked to them which picks out a portion of the image and uses that as the text. It works similarly to stencil in real life.
_______________________________________________________________________
I compiled all of these assets together, as well as made text with the font I mentioned above. I also wanted to experiment with tweening so I made the text tween downwards at the start of the scene.
I turned the text into buttons by using the action of "___ is clicked". Pressing play will play a transition effect and then transport the user to another scene. Pressing settings will tween the camera to the right towards another set of buttons. Pressing quit will simply enact the "quit the game" action.
A problem I faced was the buttons not being very visually appealing and noticeable as something you can click. I solved this problem by making these buttons feel more interactive gaving them a special effect that, when hovered, they will get given a white outline. This change conveys to the user that this text can be interacted with.
_______________________________________________________________________
In the main menu I implemented some settings that the player could adjust to their liking. The 2 currently I have is sound and music. Sound would be volume such as attack noises, environmental etc. while music is the music that will be playing in the background of the scenes.
Each of these sliders have a value from 0-100. 0 being the lowest and 100 being the highest, this value is then put into a global variable as a number. This number is then multiplied by the volume of the music playing making the sound changeable.
_______________________________________________________________________
This is the accumulation of this weeks work, I used the sprites I made, as well as the bitmap I found and the code I created to make a main menu screen for my game. I am happy with how this turned out and believe there is a lot of life and responsiveness with this scene.
My next goal is to make the sound/music sliders work, then I'll move onto the next scene which according to my storyboard will be "the hub" of the game. This will be where all the fights stem from and the place the main character will revisit the most.
Thanks to this, I have learnt the basics of tweening and the importance of actions, events and behaviours which are found within GDevelop. Next time I would like to make a more interactive main menu, maybe implement a feature which responds to the cursor movement.
_______________________________________________________________________
To finish off this week, I continued my industry research. This column was about Shows/Films. I decided to choose The Matrix, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
The Matrix was chosen due to its innovative ideas and heavy themes frequently mentioned throughout the film. There is a lot of mentions of identity and acceptance within the film which ties nicely with my chosen protected characteristic of gender reassignment. It is also visually appealing as there is a lot of shots and takes which still hold well in film today despite how old the film now is.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was chosen for its great world building, style and attention to details with characters who fall out of the norm. Avatar is known for its inclusion of disabilities, sexualities and gender and such I felt it to be a great choice for my protected characteristic. I talked about how I felt the way the world is built by environmental shots and smaller interactions between minor characters can add up to build grand immersion for the world.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) was chosen for its introspective look on what it means to be human/alive, as well as its visual design. Blade Runner doesn't shy away from deep personal questions and in a cyberpunk dystopian, it is even a question if robots and ai's are alive. I feel this type of self reflection within the characters can relate to my topic as a big part of gender reassignment if discovering who you are. The visual design of the movie is also stunning as the heavy usage of bright neon signs which contrast with the dark, gloomy city gives it a convincing taste of a city covering its dystopian truth.
All of these movies have big impacts on my game and I wish to express what aspects they will change, sadly there is no notable pixel art movies, though this makes these movies which do stand out even more impressive to me. I would like to further investigate the ones I selected later on in my research.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
To help my stay on track and visually display what progress I have done and what is yet to be completed, I created a checklist using Checkli.com . I will add vague idea onto this and add onto them further within my diary, once I feel I've completed one of the ideas, I check them off and display the results of what I've completed at the end of my weekly entry.
Week 8
29/4/24
After the completion of the main menu scene, I decided to move onto the "hub" of the game where the player will be redirected to all the bosses and main content of the game. I intend to create a leader-like figure to sit upon the throne who has a theme of angelic presence and power. That is why I decided to design this area after cathedral/churches with large windows, brick walls, oval/circular layout and a patterned floor.
I begun this drawing by simply laying out what I intend for it to look like, as cathedrals tend to follow a symmetrical theme, I decided it was best to only do 1 half of the background and then duplicate then rotate for the other half. Like most of my drawings, I begin with basic shapes to get a general grasp of how it will look like. I decided to leave details such as lighting/shading as the last step as they tend to be reliant of the environment surrounding them. The windows have been left blank in the final drawing as I wish to make the background similar to what the main menu had with clouds and the sky.
The colour palette I went for here was a combination of red, black, white and gold. These colours are synonymous with royalty which is the feeling I want to go for as your leader/king will be sat atop the throne.
Near the end of the drawing, I felt the ground was too basic with its chess-board like pattern and decided to add a decoration similar to the moon phases. This reflects the theme of the area as the leader/king who will be on the throne will wield powers related to light.
If I were to do this again, I would like to create bigger windows as they are a staple to cathedrals, as well as attempting to implemented colour into them, though I am unsure how I would be able to keep the opacity separate as an ingame sprite.
Though not being the sole reason for making this stage, my inspiration was drawn from one of my researched games called "Blasphemous". This game has a heavy emphasis on religion and so they also have a cathedral stage in the background.
_______________________________________________________________________
This will be the main way to travel between bosses from the cathedral room. It is a portal which colour scheme represents the boss you are about to encounter. As the only boss being made in the demo is one related to time, I chose the colour palette of brown, red and orange.
In the final version of the game, I would make replicas of these portals which have different colours depending on the boss as a little hint as to what to come (e.g. an ice boss would have a blue portal)
A problem I encountered when making this portal was to create the illusion of depth, I've always struggled with perspective and the sort so I struggled to simulate that feeling of deepness. Though eventually I figured it out with the help of googling and realized that further/deeper stuff are usually darker and converge into a single point, I replicated this by making the portal get gradually smaller and darker.
_______________________________________________________________________
After a lot of consideration, I have decided to redesign my main character, Asa, for the purpose of simplicity and ease of animation within my game. The previous design will still be the "official" design and this one is only for the sprite within the game.
This design change stemmed from the problem of screen readability as there was too much colour and detail for a small pixel art sprite to contain. To overcome this problem I decided to make the players design more of a silhouette of the official design, exaggerating certain things such as the hat and cloak.
This new design is meant to contrast heavily off the light background as they will be very small relative to the scene, after many playtest I believe this is the best choice I could of chosen going forward with the overall feel of the game.
The heavy emphasis on black with bright glowing eyes represents the power which the main character holds, that of light and colour. It also brings an ambiguous look to the character which helps me expand upon my protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
I gave this character the ability to move by using the built-in behaviour in GDevelop called "platformer character". These behaviours are like blueprints to a specific set of actions, in this case that action is movement.
Additionally I created the walking animation for my character. This animation was done by lifting their top half up and down a few pixels 5 times and then drawing the legs to match that movement.
This animation was made entirely with Aseprite and not the in-app pixel editor for GDevelop for reasons I explain in the next diary entry.
_______________________________________________________________________
I had to give my character movement within the game and I had 2 options to select. One was manually entering the code for each input (e.g. when "A" is pressed, apply a negative X force (move left)) or I could use a built-in behaviour in the engine called "Platformerobject".
I settled on using the latter due to its simplicity and ease of editing the values provided. Most of the values shown have been adjusted after multiple tests and seeing which one feels natural enough. The exception to this is "deceleration" as this is what gives the character friction, my game has a heavily emphasis on movement and random friction feels like it would make the game a bit more harder with no real reason. I set it to an extremely high value so the character will stop movement whenever the user wants them to.
I also needed to add controls for my character, I used a sub-behaviour for Platformerobject called "RemapForPlatformer" and this grants me the ability to change which keys determine which direction and movement the user wants to perform.
_______________________________________________________________________
I encountered a problem/bug within the pixel art editor of GDevelop. Upon saving, all the animations get replaced by the first one, this would result in just the first frame being shown in something like a walk cycle (left image). I identified this problem to only occur within the built-in pixel editor by directly importing other images and not creating them within the editor.
With the information I gathered as to why the bug occurred, the only fix I could think of was to make ALL my pixel art outside of the editor. My original plan was to create all my drawings within Aseprite, then import them over and add the animations inside of the editor (right image). Though this problem has made me realize that will be risky with this problem and I decided to make ALL my drawings, animations and assets inside of a 3rd party drawing programme.
This is a minor setback and I am happy I caught it early for a piece of art which didn't take me that long to make. I will also be sure to share this problem with other people within my class who use GDevelop to make sure no one loses their work like how I did.
_______________________________________________________________________
As planned, I decide to create Luxmysta, the leader of the faction your game character resides in and also the person you will meet in the cathedral. This character plays a big lore importance as the person who gives you missions to hunt down shard bearers (the bad guys).
The main theme I was going for in this character design was an angelic look as he sports wings and multiple halos. This was done purposefully to convey his righteousness as a good guy of the story, as well as aligning with his powers of light. His main colour palette is white, represented in his wings and halos, as well as a contrasting black/grey represented in his hair and bottoms.
The name "Luxmysta" came from the word "Lux" which is latin for light. As well as "mysta" coming from the word "mystic" which is someone who follows mysticism which is defined as "becoming one with God or the Absolute". This directly links to Luxmysta as he himself is a shard bearer and his ultimate goal is to reunite all the shards to rebirth an ancient god.
Here is my sketches and creation of Luxmysta. My reference sheet is quite simple this time, which reflects Luxmysta's design as a whole.
_______________________________________________________________________
As a way to convey your mission and other important information regarding the game, I created dialogue boxes for my character. The idea behind these dialogue boxes is to have unique designs to distinguish them so you are easily able to tell who is talking. I added a portrait of the character too to also help tell apart.
Asa's dialogue box will also have their portrait on the left. This is to immediately recognise that you, the main character, are speaking. Asa will also be the only character with a black background dialogue box and white text for the same reason of recognisability.
Luxmysta's box, as well as anyone who is not the main character will have their portrait on the right, as well as having non-main characters text being black.
As a bit of side info, I plan on giving a bit of symbolism for the borders of the dialogue boxes which relate to the character, for example Asa is a combatant and thus has spikes in the corner of their dialogue box, while Luxmysta is a lot more sentinel and a strong pillar to rely on so he has a lot of squares in his dialogue box. This also relates to shape theory and how triangles usually mean danger while squares can mean strength and protection.
These dialogue boxes were mainly inspired by one of my researched games called "Omori". This game has a heavy emphasis on dialogue so I believe their approach to it is credible and effective. Their dialogue boxes consist of a blank area for the text to appear in a type-writer like fashion (my game will also have this with the type-writer behaviour in GDevelop). Most notably, Omori's dialogue boxes also have a portrait of the character which shows their emotion, though this would be nice to have, I believe my game doesn't have a big focus on emotion and would also consume a lot of my time for a part of the game which is not the core focus.
_______________________________________________________________________
A problem I faced when creating dialogue system is figuring out the way to make the text box and text disappear, then re-appear as different text. I originally implemented a system like this, where the text and box would spawn and disappear upon clicking, then a second later it spawned another box/text. Though this felt extremely unresponsive and choppy so I decided to attempt to improve upon in.
Before improving I set a few goals, one being a type-writer like effect for the text to make it look better, second was to add a feature that upon clicking, the text would finish all of its text immediately, and when click when completed, it would move onto the next dialogue box.
After continuous testing, I found a way which would work how I want it to. This code works by spawning in the 2 objects (text box and text) and using a GDevelop tween to make the textbox grow immediately upon creation. Another behaviour was used for the text to create the typewriter effect. When left mouse button is pressed and the text is NOT completely typed out, it skips to the end of the typewriter effect. When left moues button is pressed and the text IS completed, it will delete the textbox and text and allow me to restart this whole sequence with another textbox and text.
This improvement and problem fixing allows the text to feel more interactive and smoother to watch. This dialogue repeats as much as I want by copying the text under the group of "1 > 2".
_______________________________________________________________________
I compiled all the assets I created this week and finished The Cathedral level for my game demo. I am very happy with how this turned out as I believe it portrays a sense of great importance, whether that be the addition of throne or the high roofs which make you feel a lot more smaller within the scene.
For the windows I decided to delete the "glass" and put the clouds and sky from the main menu scene as the background. This scene does take place in the floating castle you see in the main menu so it seems only natural that you will see a similar sight outside. This was also done as the previous idea of bright yellow windows made the scene feel very lazy and "fake".
The cutscene between Asa and Luxmysta starts with the player touching an invisible sprite which disables your movement, zooms the camera in and spawns in the dialogue boxes I made. Luxmysta has the majority of dialogue in this scene as he is the leader and, like real life, has a "speak only when spoken to" mentality.
I have yet to add the actual text and rather threw in placeholders so I can replace them later with relevant information.
After all the text is completed, your controls and re-enabled and you are able to walk into the portal to enter the boss fight which will be the main source of content for this game demo.
Other than occasional bug fixes and small changes, these 2 scenes I completed are mostly finished and will not be touched that much as I wish to focus on the next and final scene.
_______________________________________________________________________
I finished my industry journal after completing the level for my game. This section is about apps/programmes which I will be using within my project. The three I chose are Aseprite (my main drawing app), GDevelop (the game engine I will be using) and GarageBand (the sounds/music I will be attempting to create).
Aseprite was chosen as I've had months of experience with it thanks to my interest in pixel art being developed since the start of year 2. Aseprite is also the main industry standard pixel art animation/drawing software as there is not much to expand upon. Overall I believe this is one of the most important apps I will be using as my specialism with pixel art requires it to be expressed fully.
GDevelop was chosen due to its streamlined approach to game development. I was originally concerned that I would not have enough time to develop my game with traditional programmes such as Unity or Unreal Engine. Though thanks to GDevelop and my experimentation of it in previous terms, I have grown comfortable in the fact I will be able to create a functional demo using it.
GarageBand is my weakest app as I have little experience in anything related to sound and audio. I do wish to make my own music and sounds for my game though if the time constraints and my confidence dwindle, I have alternative options with copyright free music and sounds.
This whole industry journal has taught me a lot about not only things I am comfortable with, but other aspects of game design, art, animation etc. which I've yet to explore fully. I will attempt to use all this information I have gathered to improve my game and make it the best my demo can possibly be.
(These images are examples of the works completion and only show a small portion of the greater research I performed, to see the whole work, please visit the Industry Journal)
_______________________________________________________________________
As preparation for the exhibition day, I created a poster for my game. The creative process of this poster came from research into other posters which typically have their main character, as well as the title of their game within the poster.
Due to my game being called "Unfractured" and having a core story focus on shattered fragments of an ancient deity. I thought a broken glass effect would be a perfect fit for my poster, this was done by just quickly slashing lines across the screen in white and then multiplying them and putting them next to eachover for more width. I then made every other section of the shattered pieces on different layers and made half of them darker/less saturated then lowered the opacity. When I put my main character drawing behind it, they carried on this lower brightness + lower saturation and made a cool effect.
For the title I used the Crang font as I felt it was chaotic enough to fit the background of shattered glass, while also being bold and strong enough to stand out and bring attention to the poster itself, I also dimmed the "un" part of the title as a nod to how, despite the game being called "Unfractured" there is a lot of emphasis on the games plot point of "fractured shards".
This poster design was vaguely inspired by the movie Split, I liked the usage of a cracked screen and felt it represented my game a lot with its symbolism of the fractured ancient deity in the story.
_______________________________________________________________________
As I plan on creating my boss next week, I wanted to create a place where I can create ideas and quickly note them down. I done this by simply using Paint 3d and drawing mini sketches of what I plan the attack to do, as well as a short description. This is the "stick till it lands" approach and hopefully I can pick out some of these and refine them into formidable attacks within the game.
_______________________________________________________________________
I managed to complete all of my ideas for The Cathedral Scene, as well as 2 of my "Other" goals, that being the poster and official design of the boss. I will now move onto my third and final scene which will contain the majority of the games content.
Week 9
6/5/24
To begin this week and new scene, I decided the best way to fully grasp the concept of my level will be to start off with the boss. I've always felt it was easier to base the scenery and background around a character, rather than vice versa.
The character will serve as the boss for the game demo and will reflect how a full game would look like. Her name is Evelyn, the shard bearer of Time. She is a trans-woman (FTM) and goes by she/they pronouns. The name "Evelyn" was chosen due to its exclusively feminine origin, this was done intentionally as a lot of games like to make transgender characters more androgynous and a mixture of masculinity and femininity to remind the character they are trans. I want to avoid this and present Evelyn as a woman who has fully accepted her identity.
For this character, I was aiming for a unique idea of making them an over-worked officer worker who has gained god-like powers due to their desire for more time. I showcased this in her design by equipping her with basic clothes commonly found within white-collar jobs such as a white button-up and a brown/black jacket. Her necklace holds the shard of time, this is what gives her the power which the player will be forced to face. Finally her hair is a dark red which compliments well with her brown jacket and the overall colour palette.
The colour palette of brown, red and black was chosen due to its synergy with the steampunk aesthetic. Time and steampunk are commonly associated with each over due to the inclusion of clocks, cogs and gears. The stage will also include these objects to further sell the idea and importance of "time" within the fight.
_______________________________________________________________________
As per the theme of steampunk/time, I decided that the background will follow a common mixture between the two, that being clocks, cogs and gears. I felt to sell this aesthetic, the centrepiece of a grand father clock will convey to the player what theme I was aiming for.
As most of my drawings go, I started off with a quick sketch of basic colours to grasp a simple idea of what the finished product will be. I originally intended to only do half of the grandfather clock and the copy + rotate for the other side like I do with most of my symmetrical backgrounds, though during the creation of this drawing I felt it looked weird and hard to understand the idea I was going for when only half was present. Due to this each time I completed a line, colour-in or any overall progress to the drawing, I copied it to the other side to make it feel more whole.
Throughout the drawing I done my technique of completing the simple drawing first, then adding detail after. This can be seen with the 3rd image being an extremely simplified version and then the 6th image which, despite being the same shape, contains a lot more detail on the texture and colours.
The way I created the grandfather clock was mostly assisted with my reference sheet, I've never drawn a complex shape like this before and combining elements which I find best for the game and using them as help for when I'm stuck made this drawing possible.
I would like to make the clock hands and pendulum move during the game, though I have yet to find a proper way to implement that, I will attempt to make it work as my research has shown the smaller and simpler details can usually be the biggest impacts to a persons immersion within a game.
To fully complete the background for this stage, I had to create a few cogs and gears to fit in with the steampunk aesthetic. I used the colours of bronze and copper as they were common materials used within these contraptions.
I first created a large gear which will serve as "the foreground of the background" and tower over the player as they pass it multiple times during the fight, this was done by creating a large, hollow circle then adjusting the rim size to the desired width. I then adding supports connecting to a smaller ring in the middle and stubs on the end.
For the 2 smaller cogs, I made a basic design which follows 2 common cog types. These, along with the larger cog and the general colour theme manages to convey the exact feeling I want from the background of this stage.
Next time I would like to create a larger selection of these cogs and gears to add more variety to the background, as well as making them connect and possibly move within the game itself.
As I expected, the background in game did feel a little static and boring. To make the scene feel a lot more alive, I made constantly moving parts to the grandfather clock in the centre.
The first 3 events move the clock hands slowly clockwise. These clock hands move in real time and gets randomized each time upon loading the scene. This will also let me adjust them in the future so I can make them go faster/slower depending on the intensity of the fight.
The next 3 events move the pendulum on the body of the grandfather clock. I encountered a problem when creating the swaying motion for the pendulum. The problem is that there is no event inside of GDevelop which does a swaying motion, only a rotate which uses the middle of the sprite as the pivot. To get around this problem, I mirrored the pendulum to where it is 2x it's intended height and made the mirrored part invisible, this basically makes the pivot point of the pendulum at the top of the visual part, rather than the middle. I then used the rotate events to give the illusion that it is swinging side to side. Additionally I added 2 invisible boxes where the pendulum would change directions upon contact, this is what makes it "sway side to side".
_______________________________________________________________________
Unlike the cathedral level. This stage will be much larger and will require assets for the roof, floor and walls. I did this by creating a "tile map (first image)", a tile map is defined as "a map in which each region is represented by a single tile of the same shape and size".
My tile map can be evenly divided into 9 parts, each able to fit into each over and be used as separate sprites. This is how I created the walls, floor, roof and the corners connecting all these pieces. The general theme I went for was a dark brown to reflect the backgrounds usage of brown as well as the dungeon-y feel.
Secondly I created a sprite for the platforms which will be present in the stage. My game heavily revolves around movement and will have the player moving vertically as well as horizontally. The platforms serve as a floor to use as a way to avoid attacks more easily and also refresh your flight (a mechanic I am going to create).
The main purpose of me creating these sprites and using them as tiles is to make it easier and more efficient to place long lines within the stage, the design is also integral to be continuous and seamlessly transition between each tile. If I were to do this again, I would like to experiment with alternative tile maps to add stuff like cracks and alternative textures to the ground for more variety.
_______________________________________________________________________
I tried my best to replicate Evelyn's design into an in-game sprite. I believe I was able to copy it pretty well as her design beforehand was relatively simple.
I purposefully made her design a little more vibrant and brighter compared to the background so she is able to stand out and be easily noticeable within the stage.
A neutral standing stance like this reflects her character well as she realistically has no form of combat training due to her story being that she is nothing more than a regular office worker who has obtained unbelievable power.
As the boss is going to be fighting the player, it is only natural that she should always face the player to aim her attacks and avoid the players. This was done quite simply by checking if the player's X coordinate is above or below hers. Both of these correspond to the boss either flipping her model or remaining still.
_______________________________________________________________________
Like the other 2 character, I had to make a dialogue box for Evelyn as she needs a way to express her desires, ideals and intent as to why you will need to fight her. I felt her stoic and cold personality is best represented in her dialogue box with the usages of boxes and squares. As previously mentioned, everyone other than the player will have their portrait on the right side of the dialogue box and Evelyn is no exception.
The colour chosen for this text box was originally going to be a dark brown, though I remembered that the text used above it will be black, and so I went with a light brown/red theme to it.
The usage of boxes/rectangles contrasts against the common theme of circles within the arena in the form of cogs, gears and clocks. This was meant to mean that the power of time is merely an extension of her and that her true feelings and thoughts remain the same as she was before she gained these powers.
_______________________________________________________________________
This will serve as the bosses health bar and I plan on putting it on either the top middle or bottom middle of the screen. This is for immediate clarity and the player being able to quickly glance and see their progress in the fight. Within the game, the white part of the health bar will be red, and upon losing health, the red will shrink to the left and more of the white will be revealed.
The design of the health bar is mostly consistent with the overall theme of the boss, having a grey/brown-ish colour palette with cogs at the end of the bar and a curved centre which is common with the circular shapes of steampunk (cogs, clocks and gears)
I plan on giving the boss 10,000 Health, this number does not mean much as I have yet to properly define how much damage my attacks would take, though the ideal amount of attacks this boss should take before it dies should be around 50-100 considering the main form of damage that the player can deal will be quick yet weak projectiles.
I achieved the decreasing HP effect by creating a separate sprite which fills out the boss bar in red, this sprite has the exacts same length as the white empty part. This length is then adjusted to the current HP of the boss by using the formula "SpriteLength/BossMaxHP*BossCurrentHP"
_______________________________________________________________________
This will serve as the players HP. The black part will be filled up with red to represent the health the player has and will decrease/show more black the lower HP the player gets. I will achieve this by using the formula from the boss health bar, but instead I will change the length to the correct one which this sprite is.
Below the empty bar is a semi-rectangular box. This box will contain the text equivalent of your health. I believe it is more important for the player to know their health to properly play around the boss and such this will contain the text "100/100" if the player is full health, and "0/100" if they have no health.
This is the code I used to achieve this. The formula is the same with different numbers to correspond with the length, as well as the "HPCount" addition which is the numerical value which will display your health. I chose 100 HP as the characters maximum as any lower would seem to weak and unmanageable, but any higher would feel too strong and minimize the value of health.
My researched game Terraria had a similar health system which I drew inspiration from. It quickly tell the player how much health is remaining in both text and visual form. I like this due to its easy readability and recognition of low HP.
_______________________________________________________________________
I've always intended that the player's main attack will be a small yet effective projectile which can be used at any distance. This attack is suppose to resemble a star. This aligns with the powers the character uses of light. The design is simple as I want to use the effects within the game engine to give it more power (such as an outline or a trail).
The projectile spawns with left click, originating from the centre of the players body. This then gets given a force towards your cursor which allows them to aim. This bullet is then put on a cooldown of around 0.5 seconds.
To make the projectile feel more powerful and visually appealing, I gave it a spin which will work well with other effects that I will apply to it. A problem I faced was with the build-up of projectiles getting too much and causing the game to slow down and sometimes even crash. I solved this by making it so the projectile gets deleted after 3 seconds which ensure there is not a build-up of bullets which will cause lag.
This is the code that is used to deal damage to the boss. It checks whether the projectile is in collision with the boss. If it is, the projectile is deleted and damage is dealt.
The projectiles were sometimes hard to hit due to the constant movement you will have to do within the fight, that is why I gave it a bit of an improvement and homes in on the boss when it is 100 pixels away from the boss.
_______________________________________________________________________
The game was always meant to be based around movement, and the choice to dodge and weave through the enemies attacks. Basic movement covers the horizontal aspect of this, though I wanted to extend that approach to vertical and gave the player wings to avoid incoming attacks.
Wings were chosen as Luxmysta, the leader of your faction, canonically has wings to. As Luxmysta is lending a portion of his power to you, it is only natural that you will be able to gain the wings that he uses.
These wings will serve the purpose to dodge vertically, though unlike basic horizontal movement, there will be restrictions to this. These restrictions will most likely come from you unable to use them for an extended period of time (in this case, I would estimate the maximum amount of time would be around 5 seconds).
Here is the code for how I created the flight system, in short, when "FlightDuration" variable is above 0, the player is able to hold space bar and fly upwards. This is done by applying a force and changing the gravity along with the animation. While the player is flying, the FlightDuration variable rapidly decreases until it hits 0, once it is 0 it will slowly lower the player if the space bar is still held. Both flying and floating can be stopped by letting go of space bar. Once the player has touched the ground, the FlightDuration variable is immediately reset to 5, allowing you to have a full flight once again.
I would like to add a visual indicator of this variable decreasing in the form of a bar similar to how the health for boss and player works.
_______________________________________________________________________
As per my previous diary entry, I made a visual indicator for the flight duration in the form of a bar. This bar is typically blue when it has full flight duration within it. The design here follows the same colour scheme as most UI elements within my game relating to the player, that being white, grey and black.
The code here states "HeightOfFlybar (192)/5*FlightDuration". This means that the bar will decrease in size as FlightDuration decreases, this gives the effect of the bar depleting and once it hits 0, the player is no longer able to fly.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
I had a little extra time after completing the stage and decided to try attempt an attack the boss will perform. This attack initially begins with the variable of "IsSlashing" to be true, this is a placeholder and will be changes as more attacks get added to the game.
This attack starts off with the boss teleporting to the middle of stage, this was done as a visual indicator of the boss about to attack and the player will learn that. After that the boss then summon a sprite which is just a bunch of red lines. This sprite's opacity is set to 100 and acts as a warning for an oncoming attack. After 1.2 seconds the opacity is changed to 255 (fully opaque) and gets given a glow effect. This glow effect indicates when damage is being dealt and should be avoided within the game.
This attack has 4 variants which all represent different directions. The first one is the lines going up and down, the second is the lines going top left to top right, the third one is the lines going top right to bottom left and the fourth one is the lines going left to right. This is randomly decided with the action "RandomInRange(1,4)". 1 of 4 of these are randomly chosen 4 times to bring variety to the attacks and make them more unpredictable. After each attack, the variable of "SliceAttacks" Increase by 1, when this hits 4 it stops the attacks, this is how I made it only attack 4 times.
After all four of the attacks end, the code disables the slashing attacks and resets the count and all other variables involved in this attack. This then makes it so I can enable the attack again without any lasting effects from the previous turn.
Here is me showcasing the new attack for the boss, as well as its steep damage. The damage is high doing a quarter of the players entire health as this attack is slow and easy to avoid. This will be a common theme among all of my attacks with slow ones being harder hitting while quicker ones being less punishing. I believe this is the best way to implement attacks as the pace of attacks changing can throw people off their game and make them get hit.
The core inspiration for this attack came from my research journal of Terraria, more specifically a popular mod called "Calamity: Wrath of the Gods". Within this mod is a boss called "Nameless Deity" who share a similar attack of a grid-like stage wide attack which gives a pre-emptive warning before shooting projectiles where the lines were displayed.
I find this attack to be extremely well-designed as it promotes a mixture of movement and stillness which is fun to learn, as well as visually appealing.
_______________________________________________________________________
Due to the previous attack feature, I decided that natural health regeneration would be fitting for this game. Although I do want it to be challenging, I feel the permanent punishment of damage is an artificial and careless way to obtain that.
I found that +1 hp every 2 seconds feels both rewarding for your survival and dodging, while also being small enough to make you not rely on it.
_______________________________________________________________________
The boss was sometimes hard to see as you travel around the arena, to fix this I decided I should add an indicator which points towards the location of the boss.
To make the pointer only appear when the player is far away from the boss, I made it so the opacity is 0 (invisible) within 800 pixels. When above 800 pixels away, the opacity is set to 255 (fully visible). The boss pointer is put around the player and has its rotation set to follow the boss at all times.
_______________________________________________________________________
As my specialisms are pixel art and programming, that leaves a few gaps within my capabilities of making a game. A notable one is sound/audio, I decided it is best for me not to dedicate so much time attempting to learn it and stick what I am already comfortable with.
The solution I found for this problem was to ask a musician for the rights to use their music/sound within my game. I looked for games which I enjoy the soundtrack of and eventually found an artist called KeyAfterKey/Eggo, I believe his range of up-beat and chill music can fit my game perfectly.
I was originally going to send an Email to him, though his only active social was Discord so I created an account and asked him directly, laying out the purpose of my message, how his music will be used and that I will provide credit.
This is his confirmation that I am allowed to use his songs within my game, I will follow his request of linking his YouTube channel and each song name which is used.
_______________________________________________________________________
As part of my reflection and improvement I asked 2 of my classmates, Tina and Tugce, for feedback. I sent them a demo link of my game and asked them for improvements and things they enjoyed.
First reply was Tina, the main information I gathered from her feedback was the suggestion of adding a control panel to display the controls for the game, a way to skip dialogue and to increase the size of the arrow which appears when you are too far from the boss. I believe this feedback is correct and I plan on adding a way of understanding the controls within The Cathedral before the boss fight, as well as implementing the rest.
Tugce's feedback was mostly positive and reassured me what I was doing is correct and achieves the feeling I was going for within the game. I will continue to make animations within the scene to add fluidity and not make it feel stiff.
_______________________________________________________________________
I completed most of the design for this weeks checklist and will now move onto the core of the game, that being the attacks which the boss will perform. I completed 1 this week and will continue to add up to 6.
Week 10
13/05/24
Similar to the previous scene, I wanted to add a bit of dialogue to have a bit of downtime before the fight as well as an opportunity to flesh out the characters motives and feelings. This cutscene is a continuation of the previous one of you entering the portal at The Cathedral. Now within The Time Palace, you are to face Evelyn who will serve as the boss for this game demo.
The dialogue code was copied over from the previous dialogue with Luxmysta as there is no reason to recreate it when it will serve the same purpose. The UI layer is hidden during this cutscene as I felt it would clutter the screen when all I want to show is dialogue, though after this cutscene is complete the UI layer is revealed again.
The Asa you are "playing" as at the start of the cutscene is just a sprite with the same animations and the camera following, there is no movements or any variables attached to them, it is only after the dialogue ends that the real Asa gets replaced with this one and then you are able to fight.
_______________________________________________________________________
As I am approaching the end of my project, I would like to add a few attacks for the boss so the fighting is constantly unique and poses multiple challenges. As my previous attack was a stage-wide slow ranged attack, this time I would like this one to be close-ranged fast melee attack. I felt the best way to do this was to give Evelyn a sword and have her lunge at the character relentlessly.
The sword will be red, indicating that it is made of her own magic power as most of her attacks will also have a hint of red. The plan was to have her approach the character and slash downwards, dealing heavy damage if it contacts. This attack will punish stillness and will require the player to quickly evade by either teleporting, flying or falling.
(First animation is Evelyn preparing the strike, she stays in the upwards holding pose until she gets close to the player)
This is the 2nd part to the animation, this will play when she is next to the player and will be the source of damage. I tried to create an effect commonly used in animations to indicate fast movement. (The animation is reversed, the line smear effect comes first and then then lowered-sword pose after)
_______________________________________________________________________
I felt the game was still too punishing and would be more enjoyable with abilities which can help you survive longer, my solution for this was to implement 2 abilities which would help with survival, 1 would be damage negation while the other will be damage avoidance.
The 2 ideas I came up with was a heal and a teleport. These will hopefully further assist the player in surviving and bring in a new level of skill which is learnt by testing out these abilities against different moves from the boss.
I wanted to make icons for these abilities while retaining the same colour scheme/theme as the player (black and white) for consistency and recognition. The first one I decided to try is the teleport as I believe that will be the hardest of the two. The design of the icon is inspired by the Sandevistan from Cyberpunk as within the show and game, it is displayed to be an ability where you speed yourself up so much that to an outside it looks like you effectively teleport.
This is the code for the teleport ability, it first checks if q is pressed, cooldown is at 0 and the cursor is within the bounds of the background (so they can't teleport outside of the map). If all of these are true, then it will change the position of the player to the cursors position and create a particle effect when it is done, a cooldown is then also applied. This cooldown is set at around 7 seconds, though I will need feedback and testing to see if this is too short/long for a game based around movement and dodging. There is also an overlay above the icon which is like a white window that lowers at the same pace as the cooldown, this is the visual indicator for when you can do it again and I believe it is much better than simple text.
Secondly I created the healing icon, this shares the same border as teleport for a sense of consistency as they are both supportive abilities which have cooldowns and will contribute to your survival. I wanted to follow the same design as the teleport and so I created a similar effect within the heart to simulate an echo (like a heartbeat).
This is the code for the healing ability. It starts off the same as the teleport with it checking if the cooldown is at 0 and the player has pressed E. If both are correct, it adds 35hp to the player and sets the cooldown to 45 seconds (this is a placeholder and will most likely get lowered). It then does another effect like the teleport. There is also an event which checks if your HP goes above 100, if it does it then resets it back to 100, this is done to prevent people from healing above it and having health too high.
Here I showcase the 2 abilities I added. As previously mentioned, I would like to gather feedback from players to see if the cooldowns need adjustments. I also added Q and E text next to the icons so the players will know what to press. (In the video I hover over my character when I healed, this was a coincidence as is NOT needed to activate the healing ability.)
_______________________________________________________________________
The game seemed a little too fast and so I created a pause menu to allow the player to both navigate and also take a break from the action. This pause menu, unlike how I do other different screens, is not a new scene, rather its a collection of different sprites getting spawned in and then deleted when they are gone. The key to open up this pause menu will be the escape key as it is tradition in most games.
A problem I realised when initially thinking of the idea of a pause screen is the fact that the music and sound sliders are only present at the start of the game on the main menu. This would require the player to go back to the main menu, change the settings, go through The Cathedral and its dialogue, do the dialogue in The Time Palace and only then will be able to re-engage in the fight. The simple solution I came up with was simply putting the sliders on the pause menu screen.
For the pause screen I would like to include the essential pieces of information which people would want within a pause screen like settings, restart and return. I also find this as a great opportunity to credit the songs I am using.
The sound/music use the same code as before when it refers to and changes the global variable of volume. The other buttons use the same behaviour as before about buttons and enacting an event when clicked.
When escape is pressed, it toggles the global boolean variable of "Paused". When "Paused" is true, it spawns in the objects and sets the time scale to 0 (to freeze the game). When the boolean is toggled again to false, it deletes the objects and sets the time scale back to 1 (default).
_______________________________________________________________________
Following the feedback my classmate, Tina, gave me. I decided to create skip button for the starter cutscene as the purpose of my game is to attempt the fight multiple times, and having to go through a cutscene each time will add up time and create a gap of boredom between each fight.
I created this skip mechanic by making a new variable where, if it is true, it will speed up the game by 10x and instantly skip to the end of all the text. A problem I ran into though was that the player has to left click to go to the next dialogue under normal circumstances and GDevelop doesn't have a "simulate left click" action. To overcome this issue, I put the same variable check the dialogue boxes from before and used the "Or" condition to allow it to skip. In a nutshell, the dialogue code now checks for if the player left clicks OR if the variable is active.
_______________________________________________________________________
A lot of my game is now close to completion, the main thing I have to do now is the attacks for the bosses. I plan on having 6 and currently have 3 created. I will dedicate a big portion of this week to creating these attacks and refining any other bits of the game which I believe can be worked on.
As I have created a map-wide area attack and a melee attack for the boss, I now think its appropriate to try my hand at a range attack. Range attacks were the primary idea for how Evelyn will deal damage to the player and so I think doing it this late into the project may of been sub-optimal at best.
This attack is consists of 8 balls of energy which spawn around Evelyn like a shield, then promptly get sent your way converging in the position that you were when they were first created. This will repeat multiple times as a barrage of sorts, contrasting the previous attacks which were more singular and powerful.
This video showcases the attack. Its relentless onslaught is meant to remind the player that they are facing an enemy with an immense amount of power and that none of their attacks should be taken lightly. This will require the player to back up and dodge from a distance rather than the previous 2 attacks being able to be dodged at any distance.
A big reason for this type of attack was to punish people who would simply move backwards to avoid damage as 1. the orbs will chase you till the end of the map and 2. the orbs will space themselves out the further they travel, casting a net of sorts to catch the player.
The code for this attack is quite simple and consists of these orbs being spawned around the boss in an octagon shape, waiting .2 seconds, moving the orbs towards the player and then repeating that 10 times. These orbs also get destroyed upon contact with the walls as to not cause lag which is a problem I have faced multiple times during this project.
_______________________________________________________________________
My previous projectile attack ended very successfully and I felt confident in making a more elaborate one which poses more of a challenge. This one is meant to be a variant of the previous orb attack, though this time it is in the shape of an arrow and hunts down the players position constantly. It speed and challenge to dodge will be greatly increased, though because of that the damage will also falter.
This attack retains the same colour palette as the previous projectile as I feel it is best for the colours to be consistent with each over.
A singular arrow may be hard to spot and not feel as threatening as my other attacks, that's why I want to make this attack consist of multiple arrows. My current idea is 7 though I will change it depending on how strong/weak it feels.
The arrow in game chasing the player. It was given a glow effect as the arrow is quite small and blends in to the background. This glow effect is brighter within the video for reasons I do not know, though in game it is still distinguishable as an arrow.
This attack was loosely based of a collection of homing arrow/dagger/sword attacks within the game Elden Ring. The most related one to my attack though is called the "Glintstone Stars" which summon 3 projectiles which follow the target and deal damage upon contact.
The code for the homing arrow starts off with creating 5 of the arrows spaced 10 pixels apart on the Y axis to create a wall of sorts. After the creation of these, they are rotated to face the player. While this is all happening, these arrows have a constant force of 1600 pixels applied to them pushing them forward, though this is countered by -1600 force so they remain still. Once I stop the movement of the -1600 force, they shoot off like real world arrows towards the player and continue to hunt the player down. This lasts for 5 seconds and deals 10 damage per arrow.
_______________________________________________________________________
This next attack is not a traditional one and wont count towards my 6 planned ones. This one is meant to act almost like a 2nd enemy which is ever-present and remains a threat as the fight goes on.
A lot of memorable fights within gaming usually consist of multiple phases, though I do not have the time for that, I will still like the boss to get harder as she gets closer to death as a way to create tension. My idea for this was based of Terraria Calamity Mod's Brimstone Monsters. These monsters appear later within the final boss of the game and act as invincible, slow moving yet high damaging enemies which the player is forced to play around while other attacks occur. I replicated this by making a ball of energy which slowly approaches the player when the boss reaches 75% health and every 25% health milestone, the ball gets larger and faster. The purpose of these are similar to my inspiration and that is to add difficulty by separating the players attention between the boss and their attacks, as well as this approaching threat.
The design I want to go for follows the same colour scheme of red, gold and orange like most of the boss attacks, I also like the idea of the attack "pulsating" which draws the users attention to it, making it appear as an even bigger threat.
On the right is the code I used to make this attack. I used the "move towards object" event to make the ball follow the player at a speed of 100 pixels. At each 25% interval, another 100 pixels of speed is added on and the scale of the attack is doubled. This is meant to be easy to avoid but extremely punishing if it does land, dealing 1 damage per frame which can kill the player in under 2 seconds.
To the right is the Brimstone Monster which I've based the idea of this attack around, it follows the same appearance of a menacing orb which tracks down the player, though my one is less humanoid.
_______________________________________________________________________
I liked the multiple stage-wide slash attack I made and so I wanted to create another variant of this, this time it will be a laser of sorts which chases down the player. The concept of this attack simple a clock hand which turns around the stage, though I felt that was too easy to avoid and would only provide a pause in the fight which is not fun.
This attack was in response to me realising how a lot of the attacks in the game can be avoided by going far away from the boss and dodging from there. This attack counters that as it rotates itself to always face the player, and as a rotating object moves faster at its edge rather than its centre, this forces the player to get close to the boss to escape the unavoidable laser.
I showcase the safety of the laser when you are up close, as well as the danger of the laser when you are afar. In this video, I have it so I do not take damage, though the damage I would receive would be 1 damage per frame, most likely defeating me. This constant damage of 1 damage per frame was decided on feedback that I received from my classmate Rhys, he suggested that an attack like this which requires you to constantly evade it should have constant damage as if there is only 1 instance of damage, running through it would be viable and not as threatening.
The original idea for this attack was a ball which would curve its way to the player, though that is just a lazy fusion between my arrow attack and orb attack. I kept the name as the code was already written and it would bring unnecessary complications and bugs.
The attack starts by returning Evelyn to the centre of the stage (similar to the stage-wide slash attack) and then creating the line. This line is given a low opacity to indicate it is not yet a threat and a 4 second timer begins. Once the 4 seconds are up, the opacity is returned to 255 and a glow effect begins which indicates danger. While this line exist, it constantly rotates towards the players position at 90 deg/sec. This attack is meant to be as punishing as the ball that spawns during the boss phases and such does 1 damage per frame. After 6 seconds, the attack gets deleted.
A problem I faced during the creation of this attack was how to make the attack follow the player. I mistakenly assumed that the "angle" event would be the correct event, though I now learnt that angle is for immediately changes in rotation while rotate is meant for rotation overtime. This was a simple fix yet it will still be useful to know if I make attacks similar to this in the future.
_______________________________________________________________________
For my 6th and final attack, I liked the idea of attack "variants". The main example of this is the 3 variants of stage-wide slashes, those being the grid slash, the following line and this 3rd one which I call the multi-slash. This follows the same design concept of the similar 2 previous attacks, that being lines which appear around the stage and attack the player after a short yet readable delay. This time I would like the lines to have a more chaotic feel, contrasting the other 2 variants which consist of evenly spaced lines and constant movement speed which the player can avoid.
This attack was meant to be one of the harder ones due to its visual overstimulation and wide scale attack where the character will possibly get hit anywhere on the stage.
An improvement I would make to this attack would be bigger slashes at a smaller amount to make the animations more visible.
My biggest inspiration for this attack idea was from one of my researched artists who worked on a show called "Jujutsu Kaisen". Within the show, there is a character who has the ability of "cleave" and "dismantle" which are both attacks which cut the opponent. He has an ultimate ability which utilises both of these at a rapid pace and cause the entire surrounding area to be sliced into pieces.
These attacks are shown within the video as the black/white lines scattered around the screen.
This attack begins with setting the variable of "Cooldown" to 1 which will be useful for later. It then begins a repeat event which is an event which will repeat itself however many times you say it to. This event starts off with the object being created within the boundaries of the map, angled into a random position, opacity lowered, animation started and effect disabled.
After these actions occur, the scene variable is increased by 1. This is done to change the time between each repeat instance of the attack due to the "Wait" action. The "Wait" action's value is defined by "Variable(Cooldown)*0.025". That means that on the first instance of this event, it will have a delay of 1*0.025 (0.025 seconds) and then the next repeat of this event will be 2*0.025 (0.050 seconds) and so on until the 60th repeat of this event which will be 60*0.025 (1.5 seconds).
After these events are repeated, another event will begin. After 3 seconds (1.5 seconds due to the repeat event taking up 1.5 seconds). It will set the opacity of all the attacks to 255 and enable the effect. 0.5 seconds after that it deletes the object and readies the boss for the next attack.
When the glow effect is active, the character will receive 20 damage.
_______________________________________________________________________
As I have now created all 6 attacks, I need a way for them to occur within the game. GDevelop made this really easy with its usage of variables and random number generator. Whenever the variable of "IsAttacking" is off (to prevent multiple attacks happening at once) and "BossStart" is on (to prevent attacks during the beginning cutscene). The boss will generate a random number between 1 and 6 and then turn on "IsAttacking".
I chose this approach to the boss fight as a lot of other games include a similar RNG (random number generator) system to decide which attack will happen. It opens the door to a lot of unique boss fights with unpredictable attacks and the need to constantly adapt to the fight.
Once a number is chosen, an attack corresponding to that number is chosen. This then checks if it has a specific animation which is only given if that same attack happened previous.
This system is in place due to a problem I faced when creating this. Though I have yet to find out why this occurs, when 2 of the same attacks happen back to back, it doesn't commence the 2nd one and the boss will be frozen for the remainder of the fight. To fix this I had it so at the end of an attack a replica of the idle animation is played but by a different name and the game will not allow the boss to do an attack which shares the same animation name as the previous attack. This has the added benefit of attack variety as there will always be a different attack each time the boss attacks.
_______________________________________________________________________
Feedback I received a few weeks back from Tina was that there was no mention of controls which confused players as to how the games movement will function, to fix this I made a few sprites which show the controls in a non-intrusive and easy to understand way. These controls will be visible on the stage and within the pause menu for ease of access.
This small graphic displays the core 4 controls of the game, that being A = move left, D = move right, Space = jump/fly and left click = attack. For the cathedral, I only put D as I felt giving too much information which is not yet relevant will overwhelm and confuse the players. Jumping and attacking inside of the cathedral is also disabled so it could lead to confusion as to why a player cannot do an action. Moving left also repeats the stage infinitely and I wouldn't want the player to move left aimlessly when the intended direction is right.
_______________________________________________________________________
After further feedback from my classmates and friends, the controls I created were too minimal and didn't show enough information (the pause menu and abilities). Because of this I decided to recreate these displays of controls into much larger and digestible images.
The first image will appear at the start of scene 2 (The Cathedral) and shows only the movement and skip/continue dialogue. I did this as to now overwhelm the player and show them features which they will not be able to access yet.
The second image will appear at the start of scene 3 (The Time Palace) and this being the boss room with all the features, all the controls are displayed.
Both of these images will only disappear after being clicked, as to ensure the player will not miss it unless they purposefully get rid of it themselves, they will also fade out of opacity as to not flash the player with the light of the background.
_______________________________________________________________________
I have completed The Time Palace Scene checklist and am now extremely close to finishing my game as planned. I now only have to complete a few boxes which I am confident I will be able to complete next week as death/win scene will mostly be text and buttons, and sound/music is just playing a sound file when an action is performed.
Week 11
20/05/24
Most of my game is now complete now, currently the main goals is win/death scene, as well as adding sound and music into my game. I started off with the death scene.
The death scene, like a lot of games, will be extremely simple. The idea of the game is that death will be a common occurrence as you learn and adapt to the boss. By making a simple death screen which encourages you to try again immediately it will streamline the process of your attempts and make a generally more fun experience.
The trigger for the death scene is quite simple, it checks if the players HP is 0 or lower, if it is then it changes the scene.
_______________________________________________________________________
Next scene is the win scene which will be even simpler as I don't intend the player to play again after the defeat the boss (within a completed version of this game, they would return to The Cathedral and be sent to fight another boss.) The win scene will simply contain text announcing the players victory and that is all, due to this I wanted to make the win process more grandiose.
I created a cutscene which plays after the boss' defeat, this cutscene has the boss lay down and give a final bit of dialogue in their last breaths. Luxmysta then speaks to you to return with their crystal and then the game ends. This simple and small cutscene will heavily contrast the chaotic fight which occurred before and will give the player a chance to celebrate and calm down after what they experienced.
This code displays how the cutscene would work. It clears the UI, attacks and replaces the boss with another laying on the ground. It then uses the same sprites of the dialogue boxes as seen before to give Evelyn her last words.
_______________________________________________________________________
I felt as if the win cutscene lacked any visual flare and just consisted of text from Evelyn and Luxmysta. During the dialogue Luxmysta talks about how "Evelyn's domain is about to collapse" as the scene you are in is derived from her powers, And as she is now dead, the domain will break. In the original cutscene there was no visual indicator of this actually happening so I decided to use one of the effects in GDevelop to create a glitchy effect upon her defeat.
I applied this effect to the background and made the effect toggle upon defeat. I believe this now displays a more supernatural display of power like how the game world is intended to be like.
This is the effect I used for this. It is called "Glitch" in the GDevelop engine and has a lot of customisability. I set mine to these specific values after testing which ones seem the most visually appealing.
_______________________________________________________________________
After multiple play tests and constant feedback from peers who also play the game. I have compiled a list of fixes to my game attacks which will make them more enjoyable and approachable and will not feel like an undeserved death.
I've failed to realise that due to my constant tinkering and testing with the game, I've naturally gotten better at it and neglected the point that the people playing will be worst than me considering it will be their first time. This ultimately led to the first few attacks being well balanced and better for new players (as I was new when I first made them) but the later ones are much more difficult as my own skill has improved.
The list of fixes I made were:
.Reduced the amount of swings for "Dash Slash" from 4 -> 3
.Reduced the amount of time each swing took for "Dash Slash" from 3 sec -> 1.5 sec
.Reduced speed of "Homing Arrows" from 2000 pixels/sec -> 1200 pixels/sec
.Reduced rotation speed of "Homing Arrows" from 270 deg/sec -> 200 deg/sec
.Reduced rotation speed of "Homing Laser Beam" from 120 deg/sec -> 60 deg/sec
."Homing Laser Beam" now immediately spawns on top of the player
.Reduced speed of "Homing Ball" from 100 pixels/sec -> 60 pixels/sec
.Increased damage of player attack from 20 damage > 30 damage
I wish this will be the last instance I will have to change the values for my FMP, though I understand the importance of feedback and will adjust whenever there are legitimate complaints.
_______________________________________________________________________
This Venn Diagram displays the different roles which each of my 7 attacks do. I created the attacks with the intention to fulfil each of these roles and leave no gaps open to the player which can let them use the same dodging method for every attack.
The best examples of these 3 main components of my attacks are Homing Laser Beam (due to its rotating mechanic which follows the same real life rule of "the closer you are to the centre of a spinning object, the slower it moves" which promotes proximity). Homing Ball (which slowly follows the player everywhere at all times, and if the player remains still it does massive amounts of damage, thus promoting distance.) and Multi-slash (which summons multiple random attacks around the stage which forces you to slow down and methodically stand in a safe space)
I believe all my attacks now fit into this Venn diagram comfortably and feel natural within the setting of the game.
_______________________________________________________________________
As previously mentioned, my specialism is pixel art and coding and such stuff related to audio is faltering. To make up for this I will be using online libraries of sounds, as well as the music from the artist Key After Key to populate my game with audio.
The main sound library I will be using is https://freesound.org This was chosen mainly due to its large variety of different sounds which are available, as well as my relative comfort using it as I did explore sound effects within my previous terms.
As my GDevelop code is already complete, importing sounds will be as easy as playing an mp3 file during an action. My game also includes sliders for music and sound, I connected these to my sound effects by setting the volume of these effects to the variable of the sliders (which span from 0-100)
Below is an example of one of the tracks being played at the volume of the slider. The music slider value is "GlobalVariable(Settings.Music)" and so by default the slider is set to the middle value (50) meaning the volume will play at 50 volume.
_______________________________________________________________________
I received more feedback from my classmate Rhys after he play tested my game, one of the main problems he noticed is that the boss is too static and doesn't move much. Although some of the attacks require the boss to be stationary (like the homing laser beam or the arrows), others are just simply forgotten about in terms of movement and I changed 2 of these said attacks.
The first (top) was my multi-slash attack. As one of my first ones, I eventually forgot to change anything about it and gave it a little addition where the boss will teleport in a random location around the map. Between teleports is a decently long down-time where the player can still get attacks in.
The second (bottom) was my multi-orb attack. This attack requires the boss to be standing still as it summon orbs around them and then fires them towards the player. Though a solution I thought to this was to add a recoil/dodging of sorts for each attack, this dodge is small enough to be noticeable but big enough to effect your aim towards the boss.
_______________________________________________________________________
I ask for continuousness feedback from my friends and classmates. This time I asked Carxel. Carxel suggested that the game is difficult and the character deals too little damage. Following this feedback I decided to slow down the rotation speed of the homing laser beam from 60 deg/sec to 40 deg/sec. The next fix was to increase the damage that the player deals from 30 to 45 (1.5x).
These small adjustments satisfied Carxel's experience and reported back that the game now feels a lot better paced and beatable as a new player.
I believe these small fixes and feedback are essential to eventually hone in on the perfect state of the game where nothing is too strong/weak or slow/fast. I believe now that the fixes the game can have are minimal and are mostly subjective, though I will still continue to ask others to play test and receive their honest thoughts on what can be improved.
_______________________________________________________________________
My game needed more research into the target audience I wish to attract, and so I decided to research into the PEGI age rating system to find out where my game lands.
Inside of this Padlet I cover all the ratings of 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18. Explaining each one and what requirements are needed for them. I then gave my explanations as to where I believe my game will land in accordance to these and an example game which has that PEGI rating, as well as an ending explanation to my final rating which is PEGI 7.
PEGI is widely used and is believed to be one of the most reputable age rating systems, though I would of liked to explore more and find out where my game lands in accordance to them. A problem I faced when using the PEGI rating system is the subjective definition of "Mild violence" and where my game sits on the scale of mild - excessive.
Ultimately I looked at an example of another PEGI 7 game, Minecraft, and deducted that Minecraft held more violence compared to mine with its decapitated heads and death/damage noises. My game has neither and led me to believe it is on the same level as Minecraft's rating.
_______________________________________________________________________
Most of my sound within my game comes from free sound libraries online, though I would still like to experiment and test out sounds which I feel require more personality and adjustments.
After multiple play testing's, I've realized the dialogue seems rather empty and artificial, I believe this is because there is a lack of noise and volume within the characters speaking. My game is pixel art and I didn't want to directly add voice acting as I felt that would be out of place with the style I am aiming for, therefore I decided to use one of my researched games, Undertale, as inspiration.
Undertale does dialogue in a unique and iconic way by having a specific 8-bit sounding noise play during the dialogue. These sounds are adjusted to fit the characters personality (e.g. deeper and slower ones usually fit more stoic and serious characters while fast and high pitched ones fit excitement and silly ones). I wanted to test this out so I used the programme "Audacity" a portion of sound until it feels appropriate.
The first dialogue sound I wanted to create was for Luxmystsa. Luxmysta is a male with a stoic and serious personality and so I felt a deeper, more clearer noise for him would be appropriate.
Below is a video of my creative process of how I created this sound, I used my own voice to create a bit of sound and then adjusted the pitch, Wahwah and volume until I believed it captured the character.
The next character I wanted to do was Evelyn. As she is a female, she will have a higher pitched and faster noise to represent her. Her character is relatively laid back and so I still went for a more quieter and tame noise.
I created this sound by lightly humming and then making the pitcher higher.
The last character I had to do was the main character, Asa. Asa is non-binary and so I initially struggled as to what pitch Asa should have. Ultimately I settled for a slightly higher pitch as typically higher pitches can be found more commonly between both masculine and feminine, opposed to lower pitches being less common in feminine. Asa's personality doesn't have to be that well represented in their voice as they are made to be the users self-insert and not stray too far into masculine/feminine territories.
I created this sound by humming once again and adjusting the pitch as I see fit.
A problem I encountered was the sound not playing sometimes and playing other times, from a quick google search I found out that GDevelop has a problem with audio's using MP3's. I used MP3 for all my audio, though AAC files are the intended type and thus I had to change all of my audio to AAC files.
This problem is minor and easy to fix, if not a bit time consuming. I simply used an online MP3 to AAC converter and replaced all my audio with these new ones.
Finally I had to implement this audio into my game. I did this by creating a variable which only activates when the type-writer text effect is playing, as well as another variable. This variable then turns off upon activation, plays a sound, waits 0.1 seconds then turns back on to repeat. This is to prevent the audio from getting played every frame and acts as a cooldown.
_______________________________________________________________________
After creating my game, I wanted to check if the Hero's Journey aligns with my game. This is based off what is experienced within the game as the story goes further and completes all the parts listed on here.
The blue ticks represent the story beats which I've attained that aligns with the Hero's Journey. In my story, there is no refusal to call which is a commonly skipped part of Hero's Journey. As my game is a demo and not the complete version, a lot of this theme cannot be met, though they would be able to be attained if the game was fully completed and realised.
_______________________________________________________________________
Looking back I would like to acknowledge a few areas where I believe can be much improved upon and, if I could do this again, would grant more attention and focus on.
The first major one is sound. I've already commented on this multiple times but I do truly believe it is the weakest part of my game. I would of liked to add more sound for much more aspects of the game such as: pause menu sounds, dialogue skipping sounds, walking and flying, teleporting and healing (ability usage), environmental sounds (wind in main menu, cogs turning in boss room) and plenty more. I would go about this the same way I got my other sounds with online libraries or (if I had the time) real life audio Foley.
The second major improvement I would make (and believe I have improved upon) is the cleanliness of my code. Later into the project, most of my code was optimised and took up as little room as needed, though early on it was a different story. The most egregious example of this is the image shown below and is the code for my stage-wide slash attack. All of these sections have the exact same code, with the exception of the angle of the image being altered. I would of improved upon this by simply creating a variable which contains the angle which I desire and then enact the same code 4 times. Each time selecting a different angle. It is important to note that this is mainly for readability as my game is very low requirements and this mess will not effect performance in the slightest, this is just a common practice which I feel I should learn so when bigger projects arise, I will avoid this potential roadblock.
The third major improvement I would like to make would be improvements to the story and lore. I was troubled with creating the story due to my game only being a demo, as well as being generally inexperienced and uncomfortable with creating a story, especially world and character building. Creative writing was never my strong suit, though I believe dedicating time to study and explore how these bits of literature craft their experiences will assist me in future endeavours relating to creativity.
_______________________________________________________________________
This is link to my final game demo, I uploaded it using GDgames as it is appears to be a rather reputable and trustworthy website. It is also fully supported by my game engine, GDevelop and should remain up and be playable.
This game is intended to be played on computer in fullscreen as the dimensions fit a traditional monitor (1920x1080) and showcases my entire FMP and all the work that I created that relates to my game.
A minor bug I encountered was the main menu music not playing randomly. This is currently a known issue in the GDevelop community and there appears to be no apparent resolution. The bug occurs as sound only begins to play once the game has been interacted with (key press/mouse click) the sound only starts at the beginning of the scene, meaning that once that event has happened, even after the user has interacted with the scene, the sound will not play.
_______________________________________________________________________
I am still relatively new to GDevelop and game development in general, so I wanted to ensure that my game will still be assessable even if the link for the game malfunctions for any particular reason. I was also generally worried that my game link would not function and so I decided to provide a playthrough of my game demo.
Below is a video of me playing through my whole game, displaying most of the mechanics such as the boss attacks, UI, pause menu, death/win scene etc.
The intended way of experiencing my game is obviously through the link and playing it yourself, though this will be used as backup if any mistakes/errors occur for the user.
(Note: the recording software I used automatically cuts off a bit of the edge of the screen, the text "CLICK TO CONTINUE" is fully visible in the playable version)
