Pixel Tree GIF

Pixel Art!! :D

Woots! I did quite a bit for today's CPD :D

Well... lets seeeeee. 

Firstly I thought we should start on animation! So i decided to do an animation for our pixel tree (which the player will harvest throughout the course of the game~) 

It seems pretty cool (I'll post it up after this post so read the rest first!)

Hmm then I went on to design enemies! They would be the hostile creatures that the player will encounter and fight. For now I decided to create boss looking enemies so maybe these enemies will be placed at the end of the island instead of spawning randomly throughout the island (there will be smaller enemies for those) well for now I have three such drafts for our "mini-bosses"! :D

Here they are...

WHALEY-WHALE!!!!

So yup! This is the first mini boss I designed~ I wanted today's theme to be underwater/aquatic (basically anything involving the ocean) enemies so.. The first is actually a whale kind of creature XD

Since this mini boss will be encountered on land, I decided to give it legs to let it move about (hope the animation won't be too tedious! *faints*) but yeah! Here it is in color...

I gave it a blue back because I think it looks sleek on the monster and I can imagine this creature swiftly darting through the ocean (if it's in the ocean that is) and gulping food with it's wide mouth.

Speaking of wide mouth, Here comes 

FLOUNDERING-ANGLERFISH!!!

Yup it's a fish on land so it's floundering (geddit XD) and yup! It's an angler fish so it has the cute lil lantern on it's head :D (i'm pretty sure it's not a lantern but yeah D:)

I thought my whaley was a little too dull D: soooooo, I gave this a more vibrant color :D And check out it's hugeeeeee mouth and weird teeth :X

Well lastly, I decided to do something more menacing and dangerous so... I decided to use a hammerhead shark as reference! 

SNAKEY-LAT-something-DA!!! (yes I can't spell it)

Well, as you can see, the hammer head looks kind of derpy in my opinion. D: but yeah I wanted a hammerhead shark fused with a sea snake :D so yeah I went to research on sea snakes D: 

SEA SNAKES CANNOT GO ON LAND (fully aquatic) but good news issssss,

LATICAUDA :D (nailed it!)

Apparently this type of snake

Can actually move on land and it is less adapted for the aquatic life unlike any other sea snake :D

So yeah! I looked through it and it seems like they are closer to land(umm..) snakes and will mainly stay on land or shallow water. sooooooo yeap! I decided to go for it!

As you can see I kinda lied about the hammerhead. I realized, after like a billion times of trying, I cannot get a hammerhead shark's head right D: sooooo I gave up and went for a full sea snake :D But I kept the fins for it so it still looks badass XD

Well for me I'm glad went for the sea snake completely because I love Snakey the most hehe. It just feels cuddly~

Welll! I'm sorry for rambling but omg I've got a few more to talk about. (stay with me D:)

So next! I decided to do another creature for my GLD which can be used for this CPD/FYP too so yeap! here it is!

Heh, it's a... Weird skull like creature with a long tongue and some flowy paper on its back XD 

Yeah I haven't got a name for it but for now I'll call it Skully. Seems legit :D

And yup! I'm hoping to integrate this into both my games! (my One button game and LEGASEA) 

Moving on!!

SO yap here is the landscape I did (this canvas size is... 1600x900... I think) 

Yeah I kinda like the clouds even though some passing remarks was that it... doesn't look like clouds. :(

But it's ok! I'll work harder and make sure it looks better XD 

But this isn't the main point.. It's what's coming next!

PIXEL ART

YUP! from that environment I did, I created a pixel art version of it :D I hope we can use this in our Legasea (with improvements of course) and yeah ignore that purple thingy on the bottom left... it's supposed to be the northern lights... :( yeah I suck. I know D:

But well! I'll try my best the next time!

oh right! I asked my sensei (michael) for opinions regarding the game logo I designed.

He told me that the sunset was wrong because the lighter shades of orange should be closer to the sun instead of further (duh, omg I can't believe I missed that) and also I could add some clouds (I did not add this because I... kind of forgot. hahahaha) but no worries! I'll add them soon! Here it is for now, (fixed the sunset)

PHEW! This has got to be one of my longest posts! that's it for now! 

I'll post the GIF(my pixel tree) above this post! check it out!

CIAO!

Been awhile! (again)

Woots it's been awhile.

I'm quite occupied with other modules D: soo... I didn't do a lot of stuff! but here it is~

I tried out a first draft for our game logo!

Here it is...

so I created a canvas (160x90 pixels) and did the font out for our game :D

I felt it's kind of empty so I decided to add something below!

SO yeah there it is~~ Then I thought about how to add color and stuff to make it look cool :D

I thought maybe I could show a simple setting for our game embedded onto the font so.. it goes something like this~

Well this is just a draft tho. First draft XD so there'll be changes (obviously~)

But i'm feeling pretty good about it. 

Oh and I decided to do pixel art for my GLD one button game so I can use the art assets for our FYP game :D (two birds with one stone!)

And yeah I decided to create a few characters (well two actually) for the game and it can also be used for our fyp so yeah :D

Some sort of one legged scorpion dude :D (well I haven't added any weapons for it tho, same for the guy below XD)

Yeah and this is the second one! I think they might fit into certain worlds that we will create for our game :D And yeah it's looking pretty good to me~

Ah well! I'll try more characters since I have to create wayyy moreee characters for my GLD game anyway~

Well that's it! I hope I can update more in the future!

CIAO~

Oh just a sneak peek~ I'm trying out environment art for our game too! so here it is (just clouds for now~)

Cheers~

Falling in Love~

gosh i'm falling in love with pixel art :D

I spent my day helping nic with Pixel art (he's still trying to get the correct size for environment before getting down onto painting~)

soooooo... I did some character designs! :D it was fun! I have never created pixel art before till this past week and omg, i'm falling in love with it ~~

so here is my pixel art for the main character (Ray)

So we wanted Ray to look really simple and the way he would stand out was that no other creatures he meet will have his simplicity. Thus every other creature will look very different and also very vibrant as compared to Ray. (ironic XD)

But nic thought it was too simple so he wanted a sort of medal that was slung across his neck. I added the chains and also put on glow efx for the small medal to make it look coooooool :D

I thought it was still too plain so I added a scarf. I realised that the scarf did not make any sense and was not mentioned in my plot so I might not use it in the final art.

Then we move on to his pet! Kel!

Kel is a huge ass wolf/dog (looks a little like a cat. dammit) kind of creature :D It's really huge (slightly larger than Ray in terms of volume. But Ray would be taller *unless Kel stands on two legs*) I wanted Kel to share the same fate as Ray. (monochrome) but the eyes would change according to its mood. Blue = calm. Red = anger. so on and so forth. :D

I thought of doing the angry variation of Kel but I guess I should do at least one other creature that the player would meet. So... 

MEET SQUIDDY

I took one of the quick draft nic drew on his drafting session and turned it into pixel art :D (edited parts of it along the way) I added two extra limbs so it looks 20% cooler :D

The main idea Nic was going for when he drew the draft was that he wanted a merman kind of creature. I added my own take to it and made it more of a Squid-man kind of creature :D 

My main goal is to create one island/continent that only inhibits man+animal creatures, so I thought it would be a cool idea :D Obviously merman is also a man+animal creature but I thought the squid head looks kinda cool ~

Then i thought of inventory which means that all characters can wield weapons or sorts. I gave him 4 katanas at first but nic suggested two shorter daggers for his shorter limbs so he could handle close combats too. I thought that was pretty neat so I changed the two inner weapon to daggers :D I added blood to make it look more menacing and dangerous XD

After that I took a squid photo from google and stole some of its colors and splashed them onto a layer~ after experimenting and asking for advice, I was informed that the colors are too equal in terms of tone so I exaggerated some of the colors and made it more saturated. :D

So this is one of the drafts for my Squiddy :D I will try out more color tests in the future but for now I'm kinda happy with what I've done today :D (Oh btw I removed 2 eyes so it looks more "cute" IMO) I think I still need improvements for this art tho D: Buttttt, i'm tired so I'll take a break!

Gosh I'm really starting to like pixel art :D I'm gonna start creating more in the future! 

CIAO~

WHEW I'M BEAT.

So I got back at around 12midnight. andddddd. I decided to do some GUI pixel art :D

here we goooo:

HEHE, so i did a simple template for all the GUI stuff and put them together! so it will look something like this.

yup! so that's it for today! I'm dead tired. 

Ciao~

BTW

By the wayyyy, I realised the PDF powerpoint slide thingy I posted a week or so ago was kinda screwing up the blog. So I will remove it from here and post both the powerpoint slides on our team wiki!

Cheers~

Been awhile!

Whew! It's been awhile since I last blogged.

Lets see... we had a "presentation" on thursday which was a mock pitch kind of presentation. so... I decided to design our pitch slides :D

Ikr. I think it looks awesome XD

Sooooo yeahh after designing the slide template, I organized everything on the slides. Told Nic to compile his artworks and give me those he wanted to display. And also I went to look up steam games and looked at how they displayed their Game Features. 

After a little research, I finished up the slides. (Game features, game mechanics, concept art, sound, project pipeline, game design doc) Whew.

I also updated the game design doc :D It was kinda hectic because we did like. FREAKING LOTS OF CHANGES. like omg.

Our initial idea was that since we were supposed to create a casual game, we thought we could include a few mini games for the player to enjoy while he goes through the game. So it becomes more of a... "Pick up whenever you want" kind of game. 

But after crazy thorough discussions and from the presentation we did, we realised that the game we envisioned doesn't seem to be that fun. 

SOOOOOO, as of friday(today), we totally revamped our mini games system. Instead we went back to our roots and initial idea which was the exploration of a new world. So we went back to the drawing board and started brainstorming.

Initially, we all thought we could focus most of our gameplay on the combat systems. SO we spent about an hour talking about how we can make it fun. Using grids to show enemies, utilizing arrow keys to create combos and also revolving most of our stuff around the combat. 

We kind of ended up with this game whereby the player sends out a crew and they would battle against oncoming threats. And for the crew to use any action, they had to press a certain order of arrow keys (heavily inspired by patapon) before "casting" the action. 

Then puvan came up with the idea of just using the arrow keys as different ammunitions for our attack which was just simple clicks on the enemy. I thought that was kinda okay but there were a few technical problems such as the clicking becoming too tedious and also difficult to track. 

So it was 4:30pm. we were so freaking braindead and we were stoning and looking at our almost filled with doodled ideas board. 

I finally decided that since it was a exploration game, the combat system should not be the core gameplay. (I'm not sure if this is a reliable source but Nic told us to read it and it seems kinda cool, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132022/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php?print=1) But according to the source, it seems that fewer mechanics would result in a less cluttered game and also a more cohesive game experience for the player. So I thought back to how we wanted the game during the very early idea phase. Exploration. 

I drew what came to my mind and happened next was kinda awesome, everything fell into place. 

I decided that hey if its an exploration game, why not make every island an expedition? So instead of  just focusing on battle alone, I looked at the larger picture and explained everything to my team. What I wanted was that the player gets to choose an amount of crew members to send on an expedition and also give them an amount of food supplies. The crew would make their way through the island, stopping after a certain distance is covered. Actions would then be displayed for the player to choose from. From Searching for more food to resting for the day, the player would have to choose out those actions for the crew. The crew would then follow orders and occasionally, encounter enemies which would be more epic in size. I want the battles to be such that all battles are kind of epic (Kind of likeeeee Dark Souls) so most of the enemies would be larger in size as compared to the crew. This would give the player a sort of "exploring a new world" sort of feel when playing the game.

After telling them about my idea, they seemed pretty on board and we added a few more mechanics to it. Puvan will talk more about that in his blog. :D 

As for the producer side of things, I think I'm lacking in the research area and will get cracking on it tomorrow :D

As for the art/story side! I decided to help nic on pixel art and also update on my story for the game! So... here are some of my stupid pixel art (it's crappy since IT'S MY FIRST TIME DOING PIXEL ART)

my first ever pixel art!

Created this weird ship with legs

Andddd our first ever raft for the game! (massively helped by Michael my sensei)

So that's it for this week folks! Ciao~

Storyline and GUI(HUD?)

Yeaaaaaah today was ok I guess.

We spent like first 2 hours fixing our gameplay (mainly battle system and also foraging system)

Will be updating the document after this post :D

Nic also suggested a few random ideas to the storyline and we decided to implement some of them!

One of them was the fact that there would be a kind of "world(in this case continent) tree" thing where the player will get bonus resources if he chooses to harvest it or if he does not, the tree might help him in the final fight against the final boss. Something along those lines :D

Another is a crazy spoiler for the plot so I'll not mention anything here XD not until I finish the storyline fully!

The battle system was (IMO) improved quite a bit, from a tap one button gameplay to a strategy and timing based gameplay. I'm quite proud of it TBH but the coding might take awhile because it was quite confusing (in terms of coding of course) Nic also designed another important character (the builder *placeholder*) and well it was kinda awesome XD

THE PLOT FOR OUR STORY IS SO AWESOME. #wtfbbqawesome

I really can't wait to finish the story :D but then again I have to work on production pipeline/timeline or something. Game design document too .___.

Oh right! I decided to just do a quick placement of the GUI(GWEE) and designed the template for all the different screens (inventory, main menu, options, credits, actions, crew, upgrade, etc.) in very simple layouts so we can get the general feel of the game!

Main Menu

Credits Page

Options Screen

Crew List

In Game GUI

 Actions

Well that's it for today! 

Ciao~

Game design Doc D:

After looking at other groups and their progress we realised that most of them have already decided on the game they wanted to do. D:

We spent so much time trying to create a little bit of prototype and design for each of our ideas that I realise we are a little slower than the rest D: 

SOOOOO,

I told Puvan to focus on Legasea's mini games and the traveling system.

Nic started on environments today and I have to say it was looking pretty good (wonder how it looks in pixel tho!)

I myself started on a legit Game design doc for Legasea. Well, since it's a doc I'mma put it in the team wiki documents page! (be sure to check it out!) We are still finalizing stuff here and there thus I still have a few missing information and all of the pictures(still getting to that) for the game design doc D:

I think we did pretty well today! Puvan got down to coding and did quite abit of it. Nic was somewhat distracted but hey, he got his work done and did it well. (who's to complain?) 

I personally thought I was doing well during the morning period. After 3p.m. I kinda lost all my concentration but I still managed to get some work done!

I rearranged the slides for our presentation(it's tomorrow! D:) and fixed some information that were outdated before settling on the distribution of slides among us. :D hope we do well tomorrow! *fingers crossed*

Performance today: Acceptable

Ciao!~

quiet monday

Well! today was kinda okay.

We were still contemplating on the 4th idea i thought of and whether we should include it in our presentation D:

We also had to change quite abit of things for Legasea... so we discussed it for awhile (to no avail) before I gave our team members the task for the day.

I decided to start on writing more detailed game documents for the team (starting with legasea) and Puvan had to work on the basic prototypes for the other ideas.

Nic got started on character design for Legasea and we starting thinking about how we would go about changing the plot and characters for Legasea. After quite a bit of discussion we settled on the characters and story and got started on work.

I wanna draw a bit of story board too! to show the opening scene for legasea which is pretty cool :D ah well, till next time!

Ciao~

Music/BGM/Sound

Well today was pretty freaking fun! :D After our really quick scrum I decided to focus on creating background music (BGM) for our games.

After looking around online, I followed a guide on how to use loops in GarageBand to make cool music! It was pretty awesome! (Will upload those songs onto the team wiki after this post!)

However the game we were focusing on (Legasea) was a pixel game thus Nic told me I should find 8 bit music creator. And back to google I go. After few minutes I found this program called "MilkyTracker". I read online guides on how to use it and after several tries, I came to a conclusion. I DON'T KNOW CRAP ABOUT MILKYTRACKER. it was so confusing! >:(

I tried dragging a random music I made into it. At first it appeared to have worked (I pressed certain keys and the music changed) but soon I realised I didn't know how to do anything about the changed music so I gave up and decided to just create a few more tracks that would give me the feel and mood of the game we are going to do.

Quite happy with my progress today! :D Glad my team is a little more focused as compared to last friday! (can't stress that enough *total disaster*)

Ciao~