The first step was to undertake some research into 3d environments. This was surprisingly tricky seeing as the term is so vague... 3d environments? Doesn't that apply to every 3d game, I thought. Upon closer inspection this turned out to encompass 3d environments in games, cinema and tv, and architectural planning. Well, wonderful, that just extended the area of research even further. I found a few good articles on 3d environments in cinema/tv and architectural planning, but finidng material on 3d environments in games was ridiculous since 3d environments are in any 3d game, so I had to work from my own 3d games for the most part.
With research underway, it was time to get to work on a 3d environment of my own. I decided I didn't like the sound of making a photorealistic environment; I wanted to make something that could go in a game, but something wacky as well. My first attempt was a crazy forest, recalling the twisted lost woods in Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Unfortunately this didn't turn out as successful as hoped. I attempted it with mesh editing, with an acidic water, a material on the environment to make it forestey, and some simple platforms. But no, it looked like an absolute mess, almost as bad as the terrain in Soul Reaver 2 on ps2. This would not do, and there was little potential in the project so I decided to abandon this idea.
Looking through some old models, I found my old trains, which gave me an idea. Most racing games use cars; why not make a racetrack for racing trains? Bizarre, I know, but my mind works in strange ways sometimes. So I set to work on a train graveyard, full of hazards and crashed trains, and adapted this idea further and expanded the environment to create the train Metropolis: a bizarre city suspended in mid air, wth hazardous gaps in the floor, spikes, and several crashed trains. It started off having some lighting, but I didn't like how it obscured much of the city, and I found removing the lights that it looked fine without them, so rather than adding more I took them out altogether; this was also useful; for reducing rendering times drastically.
It started off created using basic shapes and some materials, but I added more zany features as I progressed with it. Teapots were added onto buildings, using the same material as the buildings themselves, the roads were built using planes, spikes were added in, along with a few pyramids for extra wackyness, and finally I added in a flying saucer/teapot hybrid, distinguishable in pink and yellow. I also constrained a camera to follow a line around the city for an avi fly by of it, although it looks alot worse close up in the fly by; it'd need more detail to be presentable, or would need to be all in ink and paint material. Indeed, when I rendered it as a single frame in ink and paint, it looked much better, really stylish and cartoony; however, this was an unfeasible option for rendering the whole 300-odd frame fly by. One frame alone was taking an age, so I gave up on it; superior computers or rendering software would be necessary for that.
Having finished this, I felt unsatisfied; it was zany, it was pretty cool, but it wasn't remotely realistic and it lagged the computers far too much to be edited further. I therefore set to work on my final environment: a cabin room overlooking a tropical setting. The tropical setting could simply be selected as a map for the environment, leaving me to create the cabin itself. The cabin itself is made of two walls, with hinges at the bottom, open windows with windowsills, a floor, a carpet, a table, tablecloths, and plates. A simple, cosy cabin for a crude holiday. Personally, I really like it for its simplicity. It isn't the most detailed environment in the world, the models are far from incredible, but it's neat and tidy. The windows were made using booleans, and the rest was made up of standard primitives such as boxes and cylinders, with wood and concrete materials added on to add a sense of a primitive cabin, as well as cloth materials for the carpet and tablecloths.
Looking back at it, I can see several areas where detail could be added, but I feel it'd also lose some charm. Perhaps it should have chairs added in. One thing I'm not satisfied with is the plates; I experimented with reflection materials, but could not find an adequate one so I ended up with some slightly shiny black plates. All in all, I think it does the job though.
Monday, 9 June 2008
k, so I can't print from home
so note to self, print this shit in college, biznatch, this is good research
http://www.3dallusions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=71
http://www.amt3d.com/visualisation.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_%28software%29
p.s. big girls don't cry.
http://www.3dallusions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=71
http://www.amt3d.com/visualisation.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_%28software%29
p.s. big girls don't cry.
Friday, 30 May 2008
fmp evaluation
Final Major Project: Evaluation
The direction of the project changed considerably after making the action plan, as I proceeded with my research. As I studied manga, graphic novels, and anime, I found areas of influence in all 3 but found I preferred the anime style in much of its simplistic yet effective techniques of animation, which lent themselves well to my chosen medium of flash. The graphic novel style is very nice and was influential to my character design, but I strayed away from it mostly as the gritty style of art in the novels I researched would be very tricky to emulate and successfully animate without ending up with just a succession of well drawn but unanimated panels. Manga was influential in seeing how dramatic anime shots are conveyed in single panels, so I ended up going for a similar style when I make the action freeze for button inputs.
After a look at a few examples of anime, I concentrated solely on Bleach and the characters Ichigo, Ichigo’s dark alter ego Hogichi, Zaraki Kenpachi, and Grimmjow Jeagerjacques when choosing influences for my work. A number of fight scenes also had some very nice shots, for example Ichigo running at high speed and creating several afterimages, and Zaraki recklessly taking a slash to the face to create an opening in battle. I also noted the over the top style in which blood splatters everywhere when critical hits are dealt and decided to use a similar style for hits in my interactive cut scene.
Researching games, I looked at Shenmue first since it’s the godfather of quick time event gameplay, making use of them in the majority of cut scenes, in particular fight scenes. In these events you must press the button combinations indicated to take action. What I liked best was the inclusion of second chances when you fail some QTEs, where failure leads to another animation and another QTE making for multiple paths through some sequences, so I included a couple of such sequences in my flash to make it more interesting and replayable.
Resident Evil 4 was next on my list of games to research. While the style of it would have been a more useful influence had I taken the graphic novel route, it still nonetheless was worthy of research thanks to its gruesome death scenes, often triggered by failing a QTE. Most worthy of note were the throat slitting and impaling sequences.
Kingdom Hearts 2 turned out to be a perfect choice, as the anime design of characters, while in some cases childish and cartoony, is still in cases very cool; particularly for the protagonist Sora’s ‘anti-form’ and the design of his best friend Riku, who both became crucial influences for my main character Sieg. The simple use of only one button (triangle) for QTEs while concentrating on the timing of such sequences was also something I liked, so I made all the QTE button clicks while concentrating on logical yet challenging places to position the buttons on screen. I also really liked the over the top sequences in the game that are triggered by said button prompts, and made some sequences appropriately excessive with special effects, for example the nova explosion on scene 2 and the ‘grinding solar flare’ in the final scene. No More Heroes was the last game I looked at, and influences turned out to be essentially more of the same, only while concentrating on a certain limit mode.
Researching the Actionscript did not take long, as I opted for positioning of buttons on-screen rather than assigning buttons to the keyboard; following this method of gameplay, the rest of the coding could be done with quite simple GoToAndPlay actions, as hitting buttons would skip death scenes and on multiple paths reaching a certain frame would skip to another in the timeline so they would all follow the same essential narrative. The downside to animating in this style was that the music often noticeably skipped at times when QTEs were hit, so I edited the volume to ensure sound effects took priority, making changes in background music less noticeable. Following different paths meant I had to be extra cautious with continuity, and so far in retrospect I’ve only found one error: a scar reappearing on the villain’s nose near the end of scene 3. Aside from that it all seems perfect.
For the narrative, I admittedly followed a lot of clichés, but I wanted to make the storyline easy to get into without having to explain alot of backstory for the two characters, so I made it a typical anime narrative of two brothers fighting each other to make it flow easier. It also fit in with my chosen style of visuals.
I felt it would be too biased to judge my work by myself, so as I finished with some time to spare, I submitted it to www.newgrounds.com (the url for the flash is http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/439705 ) to receive criticism from strangers over the internet. Flash animations and games on the site are generally judged for their sound, interactivity, visuals, and often the originality and quality of the narrative; most of the ways I aimed to judge the work myself. The standard of flash animation on newgrounds, it should be noted, is quite high, especially since authors like Adam Phillips (renowned for Prowlies at the river, and rumoured to be an ex-disney animator) startedshowcasing their work on it. Poor quality flashes are generally 'blammed' (deleted) from the site by users when they enter the portal if their score is below an average of approximately 1.6/5. Fortunately for me, Prelude to Chaos received a very favourable response overall, and at the time of writing has a score of 3.67/5 and a review average of 8.21/10.
Personally, if I were to score my efforts, I would probably also go with 8/10. It goes without saying I worked very hard on it, but flaws remain that keep it from gaining a perfect score. I'm very pleased with it graphically, in terms of the artwork, animation, and special effects, although I must say it turned much more anime style towards the end. That said, the characters' design was taken from both graphic novel and anime influences. I think the art could have done with a little more work in places in retrospect, and perhaps in a sequel I'll brave including detailed backgrounds; although these were cut to place an emphasis on the characters and reduce lag, hence why there are many anime-style backdrops of moving lines.
I spent a long time working on making the interactive buttons plausible to hit on a first playthrough while at the same time challenging, so people don't miss out on particularly pleasing death scenes. I also wanted to make scenes feel involving rather than just viewing a static movie, hence why I included the part where you light up the sword (with a hint that appears if you're stuck on it for too long) and the part where you click to release power from your eyes. I think the result was good overall, and thankfully criticism of the interactive element is largely positive, which is a relief; it's difficult to gauge difficulty and such when you know everything that's gonna happen in your own game. Suggestions of multiple action scenarios are elements I considered but didn't include because I was already worried about how many possible directions the timeline could take; however, I plan to make a sequel in my free time which will make use of such scenarios. On the subject of code, also note that there are no bugs whatsoever thanks to the relative simplicity of the Actionscript
In terms of sound, there were criticisms that I could have used some more diversity, with the laughter being the only clips I'd recorded personally, and there were some suggestions for voice acting on the lines. I aimed to make the sound as minimal as possible, to keep some elements of a graphic novel present and to reduce the file size, so I completely disagree about including voice acting. I actually quite like having to read the lines and picture my own voices. However, I do agree that I should have used more sound effects, perhaps grunts and different explosions and blood splatter effects. It was also tricky making the backing tracks subtle as QTEs hit changed them, and streaming the music rather than using a 'play' approach was necessary to keep the file size manageable. I think sound is the area that could use most improvement, but I also received praise in this area for using music that suited the mood the mood of each scene, so it's far from being totally negative. Indeed, I put much thought into starting with a slow track for the opening, sad battle of two brothers, then a more dramatic track as all love is lost and arcanum transforms, then finally a techno track that builds in pace as the actions peeds up for the final confrontation. All sound effects used are also in perfect position relative to the action too.
In the end, despite all flaws, I think the project is a success; I'm certainly going to continue working in this style for my independent flash work outside of college, as I find the interactive cut scene genre very interesting and fun to experiment with. I personally play half my games to enjoy the plot, but in cases the cut scenes can be a chore, particularly on replays: something I feel is remedied by interactivity rather than simply making cut-scenes skippable (although this is now essential to all static cut scenes, in my opinion). I'm also going to work on refining my art style in the graphic novel/anime blend I've tried for this project.
The direction of the project changed considerably after making the action plan, as I proceeded with my research. As I studied manga, graphic novels, and anime, I found areas of influence in all 3 but found I preferred the anime style in much of its simplistic yet effective techniques of animation, which lent themselves well to my chosen medium of flash. The graphic novel style is very nice and was influential to my character design, but I strayed away from it mostly as the gritty style of art in the novels I researched would be very tricky to emulate and successfully animate without ending up with just a succession of well drawn but unanimated panels. Manga was influential in seeing how dramatic anime shots are conveyed in single panels, so I ended up going for a similar style when I make the action freeze for button inputs.
After a look at a few examples of anime, I concentrated solely on Bleach and the characters Ichigo, Ichigo’s dark alter ego Hogichi, Zaraki Kenpachi, and Grimmjow Jeagerjacques when choosing influences for my work. A number of fight scenes also had some very nice shots, for example Ichigo running at high speed and creating several afterimages, and Zaraki recklessly taking a slash to the face to create an opening in battle. I also noted the over the top style in which blood splatters everywhere when critical hits are dealt and decided to use a similar style for hits in my interactive cut scene.
Researching games, I looked at Shenmue first since it’s the godfather of quick time event gameplay, making use of them in the majority of cut scenes, in particular fight scenes. In these events you must press the button combinations indicated to take action. What I liked best was the inclusion of second chances when you fail some QTEs, where failure leads to another animation and another QTE making for multiple paths through some sequences, so I included a couple of such sequences in my flash to make it more interesting and replayable.
Resident Evil 4 was next on my list of games to research. While the style of it would have been a more useful influence had I taken the graphic novel route, it still nonetheless was worthy of research thanks to its gruesome death scenes, often triggered by failing a QTE. Most worthy of note were the throat slitting and impaling sequences.
Kingdom Hearts 2 turned out to be a perfect choice, as the anime design of characters, while in some cases childish and cartoony, is still in cases very cool; particularly for the protagonist Sora’s ‘anti-form’ and the design of his best friend Riku, who both became crucial influences for my main character Sieg. The simple use of only one button (triangle) for QTEs while concentrating on the timing of such sequences was also something I liked, so I made all the QTE button clicks while concentrating on logical yet challenging places to position the buttons on screen. I also really liked the over the top sequences in the game that are triggered by said button prompts, and made some sequences appropriately excessive with special effects, for example the nova explosion on scene 2 and the ‘grinding solar flare’ in the final scene. No More Heroes was the last game I looked at, and influences turned out to be essentially more of the same, only while concentrating on a certain limit mode.
Researching the Actionscript did not take long, as I opted for positioning of buttons on-screen rather than assigning buttons to the keyboard; following this method of gameplay, the rest of the coding could be done with quite simple GoToAndPlay actions, as hitting buttons would skip death scenes and on multiple paths reaching a certain frame would skip to another in the timeline so they would all follow the same essential narrative. The downside to animating in this style was that the music often noticeably skipped at times when QTEs were hit, so I edited the volume to ensure sound effects took priority, making changes in background music less noticeable. Following different paths meant I had to be extra cautious with continuity, and so far in retrospect I’ve only found one error: a scar reappearing on the villain’s nose near the end of scene 3. Aside from that it all seems perfect.
For the narrative, I admittedly followed a lot of clichés, but I wanted to make the storyline easy to get into without having to explain alot of backstory for the two characters, so I made it a typical anime narrative of two brothers fighting each other to make it flow easier. It also fit in with my chosen style of visuals.
I felt it would be too biased to judge my work by myself, so as I finished with some time to spare, I submitted it to www.newgrounds.com (the url for the flash is http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/439705 ) to receive criticism from strangers over the internet. Flash animations and games on the site are generally judged for their sound, interactivity, visuals, and often the originality and quality of the narrative; most of the ways I aimed to judge the work myself. The standard of flash animation on newgrounds, it should be noted, is quite high, especially since authors like Adam Phillips (renowned for Prowlies at the river, and rumoured to be an ex-disney animator) startedshowcasing their work on it. Poor quality flashes are generally 'blammed' (deleted) from the site by users when they enter the portal if their score is below an average of approximately 1.6/5. Fortunately for me, Prelude to Chaos received a very favourable response overall, and at the time of writing has a score of 3.67/5 and a review average of 8.21/10.
Personally, if I were to score my efforts, I would probably also go with 8/10. It goes without saying I worked very hard on it, but flaws remain that keep it from gaining a perfect score. I'm very pleased with it graphically, in terms of the artwork, animation, and special effects, although I must say it turned much more anime style towards the end. That said, the characters' design was taken from both graphic novel and anime influences. I think the art could have done with a little more work in places in retrospect, and perhaps in a sequel I'll brave including detailed backgrounds; although these were cut to place an emphasis on the characters and reduce lag, hence why there are many anime-style backdrops of moving lines.
I spent a long time working on making the interactive buttons plausible to hit on a first playthrough while at the same time challenging, so people don't miss out on particularly pleasing death scenes. I also wanted to make scenes feel involving rather than just viewing a static movie, hence why I included the part where you light up the sword (with a hint that appears if you're stuck on it for too long) and the part where you click to release power from your eyes. I think the result was good overall, and thankfully criticism of the interactive element is largely positive, which is a relief; it's difficult to gauge difficulty and such when you know everything that's gonna happen in your own game. Suggestions of multiple action scenarios are elements I considered but didn't include because I was already worried about how many possible directions the timeline could take; however, I plan to make a sequel in my free time which will make use of such scenarios. On the subject of code, also note that there are no bugs whatsoever thanks to the relative simplicity of the Actionscript
In terms of sound, there were criticisms that I could have used some more diversity, with the laughter being the only clips I'd recorded personally, and there were some suggestions for voice acting on the lines. I aimed to make the sound as minimal as possible, to keep some elements of a graphic novel present and to reduce the file size, so I completely disagree about including voice acting. I actually quite like having to read the lines and picture my own voices. However, I do agree that I should have used more sound effects, perhaps grunts and different explosions and blood splatter effects. It was also tricky making the backing tracks subtle as QTEs hit changed them, and streaming the music rather than using a 'play' approach was necessary to keep the file size manageable. I think sound is the area that could use most improvement, but I also received praise in this area for using music that suited the mood the mood of each scene, so it's far from being totally negative. Indeed, I put much thought into starting with a slow track for the opening, sad battle of two brothers, then a more dramatic track as all love is lost and arcanum transforms, then finally a techno track that builds in pace as the actions peeds up for the final confrontation. All sound effects used are also in perfect position relative to the action too.
In the end, despite all flaws, I think the project is a success; I'm certainly going to continue working in this style for my independent flash work outside of college, as I find the interactive cut scene genre very interesting and fun to experiment with. I personally play half my games to enjoy the plot, but in cases the cut scenes can be a chore, particularly on replays: something I feel is remedied by interactivity rather than simply making cut-scenes skippable (although this is now essential to all static cut scenes, in my opinion). I'm also going to work on refining my art style in the graphic novel/anime blend I've tried for this project.
Monday, 10 March 2008
pro brief evaluation
For this project, the first step after reading the brief was to look at the recommended competitions in microsoft's imagine cup. The theme around all the competitions was a 'sustainable environment', so I took this into account when studying all the possible options. None of the imagine cup options appealed to me, however... they seemed overly complicated or simply unfeasible with the available equipment. With the possibility of using an alternative competition that links to games design, I set out to find one; after some unimpressive results, I found the jayisgames.com competition: create a flash game with the theme of an 'upgrade'.
With the competition approved, initially I was unsure of whether I needed to continue to incorporate the 'sustainable environment' theme alongside the 'upgrade' one, so I planned both themes into the game roughly; however it emerged I'd only need the 'upgrade' theme, which saved me time putting the sustainable environment into an opening cut scene (as I'd planned to). The constraint of using an advertising logo from the site was negotiated and deemed unnecessary, as this is solely for advertising purposes rather than for the game itself. Limiting the stage size to less than 800 pixels wide was an easy constraint to follow, with my game being 550 by 450.
My idea was to create an action platform game based around 'Benio', champion cat fighter. I designed him similarly to Wario as he is also an anti-hero, and I wanted an anti hero that homages Wario whose games have similar gameplay to what I aimed for. He fights evil cats that are polluting the environment; at least that was the original plan for linking it to a sustainable environment, however as it is there is no opening cinematic and no time to create a satisfactory one. The upgrades I planned were tougher cats on each level, and stronger attacks unlockable to take them down. To justify the comedy cat-beating theme further, I looked for evidence of comical cat abuse and found cat juggling in Steve Martin comedy 'The Jerk'.
First, planning had to be done though. I shall explain my plan of action and how the plan had to be changed in some cases:
1. Research 2d side scrolling or 2d beat em up games: I looked at Viewtiful Joe/Viewtiful joe2, Super Smash Bros Melee, Streetfighter Alpha Anthology, and Warioland 2. This part did not take long, and therefore went according to plan.
2. Finish sketching rough outlines of the levels. This was successful, except problems with code forced me to change the designs quite radically. However, once I knew what I could do, the results were actually more dynamic than what I'd planned. A glitch where you could move through the floor was incorporated into the gameplay by putting holes in the floor and adding enemies in there.
3. Design characters and backgrounds to work with. This was mainly done as planned before commencing the game itself, but I did design the desert stage later into development so the plan was changed slightly here. The second level design was far too similar to the first, so I merged the two and made the second level completely different.
4. Research Actionscript necessary to complete the work (may overlap with further work). I'm glad I added that statement in brackets, because it was inevitable. Code problems sprang up quite regularly, some were fixed and some lead to me rethinking aspects of the game. Moving through levels vertically as well as horizontally turned out to be limited due to the camera not following the character upwards, so I rethought this and instead added in some invisible bonus areas out of camera shot. One problem that still stands is that when you die, you don't return to the title screen; when I tried to add in a 'retry' button here, it simply looped the dying animation, so as it is the whole game has to be closed and reopened to the title screen. In the final confrontation, the actionscript works perfectly for retrying and progressing though; this is most likely because I coded that part from scratch rather than following a tutorial.
5. Make character animations and put backgrounds together for the first level. This was easily done to plan, although I came back to make small adjustments later on.
6. Make the first level interactive using Actionscript. This ended up overlapping with 4 more, as I found I needed more code than planned or different code. The biggest problem was trying to line things up on the stage to be in good camera shot for the next scene; it's complicated to explain, but I found that when moving onto the next scene the camera would stay in the same place as it was before in relation to the centre of the stage. In other words, the next scene would start you off out of camera shot, ready for imminent death. Since I could not find actionscrip to reset the camera, I instead made a chase scene in the first level to return to the starting point.
7. (optional) If all the above have been covered, design/code more levels into the game. The first level, complete with cut scenes and boss fight, was completed well within deadline, but I could not add in every level I'd designed. I initially thought up the city level, a ruined city level, a hectic fighting level at benio's house, a level in france with a first person shooter-style mini-game, and a level in space with a lion as the last boss. Instead, I ended up with a semi-ruined city level, and a 'mad mexico' desert level with a boss confrontation in another dimension, inspired by Pokemon gameplay and resident evil 4/shenmue cut scene prompts. The music is appropriately mexican, but I added in pyramids as a joke.. it isn't mexico, after all, it's mad mexico. These pyramids would be explained in the last level as the cat base.
How was the upgrade theme incorporated in the end? We should start by looking at the cat types, which get upgraded throughout the game. The regular cats walk back and forth at a reasonable speed. One touch is fatal, but they are easy to predict. Near the end of the first level are evil grey cats with scars and eyepatches though, who are bigger and move at double the normal cats' speed. The second level has magic cats: cats that move in groups and float. The regular cats move in rows; however, the evil grey cats move in a pyramid, in what is the most challenging part of the game I've made so far in my opinion. After those, new tall cactus cats appear. The upgrades to the opponents are quite clear. The second boss fight is also far more challenging than the first; the first boss is a kitten, more of a joke than a boss. But Kellyn is capable of defeating you instantly if you do not hit the 'quick time events' that appear on-screen.
So how is Benio upgraded to deal with this? This is an aspect I would have liked to improve upon. There is only one upgrade that works in the gameplay as it is, the uppercut that shoots a small shockwave forwards. I wanted to add in a second upgrade for hitting the floor and creating a huge flame pillar, but couldn't succeed in coding it in. I did show a clear upgrade at the end of the second level though, the crimson gloves. These would enable you to deliver the flame pillar blow in the next level.
I personally enjoy working on flash, and I've learned alot more about Actionscript and frame labels in particular while making this game. While I was initially put off by coding, I'm now tempted to make a whole game with similar mechanics to the final boss confrontation in my game; that is to say, more of an interactive cut scene where you must quickly hit prompts for different results. I believe I could produce something of a more professional standard in this style with more time, and without worrying about constraints such as deadline and the brief's requirements of an 'upgrade'. However to make a flash platform game of more professional standard, I would need an environment with an expert to help with the code for this, rather than just using resources from the internet and books on scripting. For this project to work within schedule and to plan, I needed to work alone at home for much of it. Being aware of the deadline was essential; even with changes of plan, the deadline had to be considered, so any setbacks meant more time spent on the project at home.
I actually found working in my room that it was a good environment for the project. A casual environment is more motivating than a formal one, so to get my work done more professionally I would not necessarily cite a different environment as a suggestion. The major constraints were time... and patience, which applies to anything on the computer.
Overall I'm happy with the final result, and this has given me an idea for my final major project: a big interactive cut scene-style game on flash. I'll think it over. Working to professional-style constraints and having to plan more is unwelcome with me though, I prefer working more freely as it is impossible to plan exactly what code will succeed and what will fail. I do recognise the need for a plan when working to deadlines in the professional world though, so this experience has taught me something in that respect.
With the competition approved, initially I was unsure of whether I needed to continue to incorporate the 'sustainable environment' theme alongside the 'upgrade' one, so I planned both themes into the game roughly; however it emerged I'd only need the 'upgrade' theme, which saved me time putting the sustainable environment into an opening cut scene (as I'd planned to). The constraint of using an advertising logo from the site was negotiated and deemed unnecessary, as this is solely for advertising purposes rather than for the game itself. Limiting the stage size to less than 800 pixels wide was an easy constraint to follow, with my game being 550 by 450.
My idea was to create an action platform game based around 'Benio', champion cat fighter. I designed him similarly to Wario as he is also an anti-hero, and I wanted an anti hero that homages Wario whose games have similar gameplay to what I aimed for. He fights evil cats that are polluting the environment; at least that was the original plan for linking it to a sustainable environment, however as it is there is no opening cinematic and no time to create a satisfactory one. The upgrades I planned were tougher cats on each level, and stronger attacks unlockable to take them down. To justify the comedy cat-beating theme further, I looked for evidence of comical cat abuse and found cat juggling in Steve Martin comedy 'The Jerk'.
First, planning had to be done though. I shall explain my plan of action and how the plan had to be changed in some cases:
1. Research 2d side scrolling or 2d beat em up games: I looked at Viewtiful Joe/Viewtiful joe2, Super Smash Bros Melee, Streetfighter Alpha Anthology, and Warioland 2. This part did not take long, and therefore went according to plan.
2. Finish sketching rough outlines of the levels. This was successful, except problems with code forced me to change the designs quite radically. However, once I knew what I could do, the results were actually more dynamic than what I'd planned. A glitch where you could move through the floor was incorporated into the gameplay by putting holes in the floor and adding enemies in there.
3. Design characters and backgrounds to work with. This was mainly done as planned before commencing the game itself, but I did design the desert stage later into development so the plan was changed slightly here. The second level design was far too similar to the first, so I merged the two and made the second level completely different.
4. Research Actionscript necessary to complete the work (may overlap with further work). I'm glad I added that statement in brackets, because it was inevitable. Code problems sprang up quite regularly, some were fixed and some lead to me rethinking aspects of the game. Moving through levels vertically as well as horizontally turned out to be limited due to the camera not following the character upwards, so I rethought this and instead added in some invisible bonus areas out of camera shot. One problem that still stands is that when you die, you don't return to the title screen; when I tried to add in a 'retry' button here, it simply looped the dying animation, so as it is the whole game has to be closed and reopened to the title screen. In the final confrontation, the actionscript works perfectly for retrying and progressing though; this is most likely because I coded that part from scratch rather than following a tutorial.
5. Make character animations and put backgrounds together for the first level. This was easily done to plan, although I came back to make small adjustments later on.
6. Make the first level interactive using Actionscript. This ended up overlapping with 4 more, as I found I needed more code than planned or different code. The biggest problem was trying to line things up on the stage to be in good camera shot for the next scene; it's complicated to explain, but I found that when moving onto the next scene the camera would stay in the same place as it was before in relation to the centre of the stage. In other words, the next scene would start you off out of camera shot, ready for imminent death. Since I could not find actionscrip to reset the camera, I instead made a chase scene in the first level to return to the starting point.
7. (optional) If all the above have been covered, design/code more levels into the game. The first level, complete with cut scenes and boss fight, was completed well within deadline, but I could not add in every level I'd designed. I initially thought up the city level, a ruined city level, a hectic fighting level at benio's house, a level in france with a first person shooter-style mini-game, and a level in space with a lion as the last boss. Instead, I ended up with a semi-ruined city level, and a 'mad mexico' desert level with a boss confrontation in another dimension, inspired by Pokemon gameplay and resident evil 4/shenmue cut scene prompts. The music is appropriately mexican, but I added in pyramids as a joke.. it isn't mexico, after all, it's mad mexico. These pyramids would be explained in the last level as the cat base.
How was the upgrade theme incorporated in the end? We should start by looking at the cat types, which get upgraded throughout the game. The regular cats walk back and forth at a reasonable speed. One touch is fatal, but they are easy to predict. Near the end of the first level are evil grey cats with scars and eyepatches though, who are bigger and move at double the normal cats' speed. The second level has magic cats: cats that move in groups and float. The regular cats move in rows; however, the evil grey cats move in a pyramid, in what is the most challenging part of the game I've made so far in my opinion. After those, new tall cactus cats appear. The upgrades to the opponents are quite clear. The second boss fight is also far more challenging than the first; the first boss is a kitten, more of a joke than a boss. But Kellyn is capable of defeating you instantly if you do not hit the 'quick time events' that appear on-screen.
So how is Benio upgraded to deal with this? This is an aspect I would have liked to improve upon. There is only one upgrade that works in the gameplay as it is, the uppercut that shoots a small shockwave forwards. I wanted to add in a second upgrade for hitting the floor and creating a huge flame pillar, but couldn't succeed in coding it in. I did show a clear upgrade at the end of the second level though, the crimson gloves. These would enable you to deliver the flame pillar blow in the next level.
I personally enjoy working on flash, and I've learned alot more about Actionscript and frame labels in particular while making this game. While I was initially put off by coding, I'm now tempted to make a whole game with similar mechanics to the final boss confrontation in my game; that is to say, more of an interactive cut scene where you must quickly hit prompts for different results. I believe I could produce something of a more professional standard in this style with more time, and without worrying about constraints such as deadline and the brief's requirements of an 'upgrade'. However to make a flash platform game of more professional standard, I would need an environment with an expert to help with the code for this, rather than just using resources from the internet and books on scripting. For this project to work within schedule and to plan, I needed to work alone at home for much of it. Being aware of the deadline was essential; even with changes of plan, the deadline had to be considered, so any setbacks meant more time spent on the project at home.
I actually found working in my room that it was a good environment for the project. A casual environment is more motivating than a formal one, so to get my work done more professionally I would not necessarily cite a different environment as a suggestion. The major constraints were time... and patience, which applies to anything on the computer.
Overall I'm happy with the final result, and this has given me an idea for my final major project: a big interactive cut scene-style game on flash. I'll think it over. Working to professional-style constraints and having to plan more is unwelcome with me though, I prefer working more freely as it is impossible to plan exactly what code will succeed and what will fail. I do recognise the need for a plan when working to deadlines in the professional world though, so this experience has taught me something in that respect.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
trailer evaluation
As I have taken Media Studies for A level, I already have a knowledge of searching for genre conventions of trailers, so ideas of what to include in my trailer came naturally; I was keen to have short bursts of action (old school pac-man eating his 3d incarnation, and facing off against gangstas), dramatic text between shots ('BUT THIS TIME'), and a one liner ('this punk be more like 2pac man!').
However, despite a growing trend towards imitating hollywood film trailers in the games industry, there remain many trailers that are old fashioned or completely off-the-wall; adding to this, my trailer was for a flash remakle of Pac-man, and therefore had to be created on flash. Therefore, a level of improvisation here was essential, especially considering a clear look and feel had not been picked out at the presentation, but rather a combination of all 3 look and feel ideas. This meant a larger degree of freedom but more thought needed to actually implement everything; as a result, the trailer has also ended up a little longer than 30 seconds. However, I believe the 30 second limit is detrimental to the aim of creating a trailer, considering most trailers I studied went on for a matter of minutes.
Creating the trailer footage on flash lead to some issues as well. Firstly, I realised after creating half of it that movie clips would not appear when it exported as an avi and had to go back and change each movie clip to frame by frame sequences, which was a very time-consuming task. To add to this, exporting as an avi rather than swf made the animation lower quality than I'd anticipated; I also had to export it another time simply because I didn't click to enable sound initially, which I'd assumed would have been something that worked by default. Everything stayed in sync and was lag-free, on the other hand, so it was not total failure.
Once imported to After Effects, the first thing to do was attempt to improve the quality in some sections; I therefore edited the opacity to improve this slightly. I also played around with positioning, enlarging, and shrinking the video for extra zoom effects and shaking effect on the eating scene. I also added a rotation spin on the end to add to the impact of the gunshot. After effects was annoying with rendering and exporting however... this could also have been due to the college computers. They continued to run out of disk space when rendering, but the movie worked when done as an export. I don't see how the changes made the file so much larger, that was unexpected as well.
Overall After Effects proved a handy tool, but I found no use in this project for its 3d capabilities. Had I been using 3ds max as well, it would have been a different story I imagine. If I were to use after effects more in the future, I would certainly look more into its 3d capabilities and other features. I'm not so keen on premiere, it seems overly fussy with files. As for my video, I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out; however, I hope the next flash fixes the problem where flashes refuse to export movie clips properly when exporting to avi format.
However, despite a growing trend towards imitating hollywood film trailers in the games industry, there remain many trailers that are old fashioned or completely off-the-wall; adding to this, my trailer was for a flash remakle of Pac-man, and therefore had to be created on flash. Therefore, a level of improvisation here was essential, especially considering a clear look and feel had not been picked out at the presentation, but rather a combination of all 3 look and feel ideas. This meant a larger degree of freedom but more thought needed to actually implement everything; as a result, the trailer has also ended up a little longer than 30 seconds. However, I believe the 30 second limit is detrimental to the aim of creating a trailer, considering most trailers I studied went on for a matter of minutes.
Creating the trailer footage on flash lead to some issues as well. Firstly, I realised after creating half of it that movie clips would not appear when it exported as an avi and had to go back and change each movie clip to frame by frame sequences, which was a very time-consuming task. To add to this, exporting as an avi rather than swf made the animation lower quality than I'd anticipated; I also had to export it another time simply because I didn't click to enable sound initially, which I'd assumed would have been something that worked by default. Everything stayed in sync and was lag-free, on the other hand, so it was not total failure.
Once imported to After Effects, the first thing to do was attempt to improve the quality in some sections; I therefore edited the opacity to improve this slightly. I also played around with positioning, enlarging, and shrinking the video for extra zoom effects and shaking effect on the eating scene. I also added a rotation spin on the end to add to the impact of the gunshot. After effects was annoying with rendering and exporting however... this could also have been due to the college computers. They continued to run out of disk space when rendering, but the movie worked when done as an export. I don't see how the changes made the file so much larger, that was unexpected as well.
Overall After Effects proved a handy tool, but I found no use in this project for its 3d capabilities. Had I been using 3ds max as well, it would have been a different story I imagine. If I were to use after effects more in the future, I would certainly look more into its 3d capabilities and other features. I'm not so keen on premiere, it seems overly fussy with files. As for my video, I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out; however, I hope the next flash fixes the problem where flashes refuse to export movie clips properly when exporting to avi format.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Jazzy Jones game log
Alot of people would disagree, but I personally think this is the most charming flash game I have ever played. The gameplay is top-notch and addictive despite being simplistic, the graphics have charm in a simplistic way, and every spelling mistake adds to the childish charm. The character design is similarly wonderful, with such legendary characters as rainbow car, bomb guy, and of course jazzy jones himself. Everything about it makes me laugh as a flash animator... the badly done backgrounds, the overuse of default radial colour fills, continuity errors, etc. The creator was either the ultimate flash noobie, or a skilled flash artist with a great sense of humour. It is a fact this game made it into the newgrounds top 50, which is testament to its popularity. I think I have to give it 9/10. I'm also considering having some references to it in my flash game.
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