Gameplay and Interactivity: Momentum Reflections

With the submission coming to an end, it is time to reflect on the project as a whole.

The group was fantastic to work with. All the members were chosen based on their given specific talents. We had a very strong coder and strong 2D artists. I took the charge with leading the main character designs and key animation cycles. We certainly could have managed time more efficiently as part of the team seemed to lose the fantastic momentum we had built up in the run up to the Easter, costing us bug testing time.



This combined with an over ambitious mindset has left us with a product that I'm not overly proud of, as it isn't quite as polished or well executed as I would have liked. Our initial concept of combining the characters momentum with a health and point system was never achieved. The game ended up ridden with bugs that couldn't be fixed and I generally feel that the 2D art team provided all that was necessary to have a successful game with the time given.


 We had to compromise with an alternative point system that works, albeit not living up to the expectations we set for ourselves. Still, a score system is in its place.



I'm happy with the art I contributed to the team - I was a driving force behind the overall aesthetic and developed the looks and animations for the main character and backgrounds. Again, with more time I would have loved to have seen all my work implemented effectively in game. There are countless character sprites and animations that ended up on the cutting room floor because of time mismanagement.


 Not to pretend that my work was perfect. There is a level of polish to certain background elements and animation cycles that if given the chance again, I would execute to a higher level. 2D Sprites are not to be scoffed at. My strengths are in 2D but that didn't stop me doing my part with the scripting and I'd love to be more involved in this next time around, especially to help keep things on track.

Overall, the team worked effectively at the beginning of the project but towards the end time keeping issues impacted the final product. We set out to make a game that is easy to pick up and play and wonderful to look at and I feel that all being said, we partially achieved that. Just a shame that bugs really impact the user experience.


It was an extremely tough, yet enjoyable experience and I have learnt a lot both that I will take into the next challenge.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Bonus Environment!

With the deadline looming, it looked like I had a chance to create another background environment for the game. We were knee deep in bug testing but felt optimistic that we could get everything up and running to the extent that we could justify having a second environment for the player to enjoy.

Early on I generated small thumbnail concepts with Dan and it was pretty unanimous that the Jungle environment I painted was the one to go to full production. It provided a rich, vibrant colour palette that was a world away from the snowy mountains in level one. 

I had to generate this art under tight deadlines, so whilst I would have loved to have brushed up the leaves on the trees a little bit more and generally push the consistency further, it still looks pretty good when running at 1080p ( our target resolution for the game). It would have been wonderful to add some dynamic lighting if the framerate allowed it, but for the sake of time, this just had to be a static piece with no interactive elements. Next time!

Gameplay and Interactivity: Finishing My Sprites

Sprites, sprites, sprites. Whilst wonderful to create and watch come to life, I was happy to finish my contribution to the team.

I took the lead on 2 of the main villains of the piece - The red headed tattooed gent and the sportswear fiend.

I created the idle and fighting animations for the red headed character. This was a lesson in patience as what can seem like a quick job can change very quickly when playing through frames. It was difficult to get the right body posture when crafting his punch attacks. It was imperative that I created a sense of speed and to achieve this I used the classic animation techniques of speed lines. Streets of Rage was also a huge inspiration. Reflecting on this, I would have LOVED to have gotten a real arc of movement through his spine. Ewan brought to my attention a book devoted to classic animators techniques and this was very helpful.

Up next was the final villain in our demo game, our take on the sneaker head that queues outside Supreme stores when a new clothing range drops. At this point we were unsure whether or not he would make it into the final game demo, so I went for an idle and death animation. At the very least he can stand there and die in a cool way.

The death animation was probably the most fun I've had so far on this project. Coming up with grotesque ways of destroying a character was an absolute joy and I really wanted to push the gore level to compete with the fantastic animations George came up with. Intestines sliding out of his stomach should do the trick. This got a big laugh when the team saw it for the first time so I'd consider it a success.

Next on the agenda is getting some playable environments drawn up to test our mechanics!

Gameplay and Interactivity: Sprite Animation

Continuing with the Lead Character Sprite, the team debated as to whether we needed a walking animation or not. In the end we decided to have her navigate solely using the grappling hook and by riding on her sword. This was subject to change, but we felt strongly about this at the time.

With that in mind, I began crafting attack animations for our lead character. Firstly, the standard upwards slash. It looked a tad vanilla so after feedback from fellow course mates I decided to add a purple flame of energy emitting from the sword. This is consistent with the aesthetic we have built up until this point and adds to that feeling of momentum we have been pushing for. Depending on how this works in Unity, I may have to clean up the sheet by adding an extra frame or two.

Despite being a particularly laborious process, there really is a sense of achievement watching your character come to life. I felt strongly about taking the lead on the main character and it looks to have paid off.

Next up, the sword grind! Dan was particularly fond of this idea and it was cool imagery so why not! It is better to have a multitude of animations as insurance and at worst case it would be jettisoned if we couldn't fit it comfortably within the game.

This was a far easier process as the frames can just repeat on one another granting the illusion of movement and revert back to the idol stance very quickly without too much disruption.

Now to test in Unity and see what needs fixing!

UPDATE: After taking the sprite sheet into Unity and cutting it up, we had a lot of difficulty getting the animation cycle to work correctly in tandem with our attack button. It seems to skip a frame or two and then quickly revert back to the beginning. Frustrating as I'm brand new to this sprite business but continued bug testing will be necessary.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Pause Script

Part of the brief stated that all members of the team had to produce one piece of production art for the game and one piece of script. My main strengths are in 2D production and concept art but after my first foray into the world of scripting, I was excited to contribute to the project.

I took control of the pause script. Although relatively basic and straightforward it is integral to nearly every game produced today and I felt confident enough that I could pull it off successfully and efficiently considering my art duties.

Getting the canvas UI to work correctly was a bit of a pain because I couldn't put it straight on to the canvas. I had to create a panel to place it on underneath. It was also a slight nightmare trying to get the panel alpha to act independently of its child element. After navigating these issues though, it was easily bound to the letter 'P' using an 'Input.GetButtonDown' command ( thankfully that was a bridge I crossed on the winter assignment with a torch).

Gameplay and Interactivity: Level Design

My aim with the background design was to create something visually beautiful in the vein of Dreamworks concept art, but not have it obscure the main characters and platforms. With a game moving as swiftly as Momentum, it was imperative that the background never detracted from what the player was trying to achieve.

The plan was initially to stick to one background and keep the palette very cool in order to allow the characters to 'pop' on screen. This was a joy to paint and allowed me to push my skills in a direction I'm not normally comfortable with.  We ended up making some of the trees interactive in various builds of the game to give the illusion of depth.

Dan added snow particles into the first few builds of the game but it caused the frame rate to stutter, which flew in the face of the very concept of our game. We couldn't afford the player to suffer any lag, so although it added another element of immersion we had to drop it.

I built the levels to be modular so that we could rebuild and repurpose levels on the fly. This meant less man hours if we were to push the game further along after completion of the assignment.

It was also very easy to add ambient lighting and change levels and hue's to create alternate levels. Our initial idea was to have the seasons and colours shift as the player progressed through the game but this ended up being a tad over ambitious. Below is an example of what I had in mind.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Animating Sprites

Now came the laborious part, animating the sprite. Using the timeline feature in Photoshop, I got started on the idle animation for our character. It was incredibly challenging to get the movement feeling natural, even with a simple breathing cycle. It was all about incremental changes from frame to frame. Trying to take shortcuts became abundantly obvious in the animation cycle.


Eventually I got it to a point that I was happy with. In the interest of time, I'll leave it where it is at for now, but there are some leg movements that don't feel particularly natural.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Pixel Art and Environments

After finalizing our main characters design, it was time to put into practice the pixel art skills we were introduced to earlier in the year. We split the responsibilities amongst the team with myself leading on the main character and her attack animations.


Our background tended to consist of cooler colours so I wanted to punch up the contrast of our characters against the level. Greens complimented the red hair and the obnoxiously bright purple worked well in our tests.


It was initially trial and error, deciding on what size to work at. Working on the basis that most mainstream games are optimized at 1080p I initially went with 43x114 as the character dimensions. Obviously these could be scaled up and down depending on final visibility in engine. After running tests however on a background I designed, it seemed to work well.

Gameplay and Interactivity: 2D Decisions and Bad Guy Concepts

Following our pitch, we sat down and ironed out some important issues. Most importantly finalizing our aesthetic. We know we wanted a clean, animated look. Now we had been dissuaded from using 3D models within the game we had to decide on a 2D style as an alternative.


We had recently had a class on vector art and between the team, despite giving a clean look that would suit the style we had settled on for our game ( now titled MOMENTUM), the recent influx of games utilizing pixel art intrigued us. Games like Broforce and Hotline Miami had defined pixel art styles fused with hyper violence. Could we get the best of both worlds? Beautiful and clean backgrounds with crazy pixelated violence at the forefront? We had to do some tests to be sure.


In the mean time, we had settled on our storyline. Though the narrative was particularly unimportant in terms of enjoying the game, we wanted to create something relatively tongue in cheek to give a reason for our players to scythe down opponents. Hating the pretense of hipsters, we decided that our main character would be rallying against the importance of style over substance in her world.


Our villains had to be villainous stereotypes that inspired a little bit of loathing in the player. With that in mind, we went to work:

Ben:

Brad:

Gameplay and Interactivity: Milestone 1: Pre Production

Next up was our pitch. We presented images of our development process so far in powerpoint and a paper concept which we recorded and showed in video form.


I wasn't overly happy with our pitch as it seemed scattered compared to how solidly our team had worked up until this point. It was clear that there were some big decisions that we still had to make in terms of gameplay and aesthetic.


Ewan made some great points with regards to our main characters being rendered in 3D. Most AAA studios spend 6 weeks modeling an rigging important characters. At this point in the course we had only just begun modeling human shaped characters and hadn't touched rigging them yet. It would be borderline development suicide, to model all of our characters in 3D and then rig them, whilst coding and designing levels in parallel.


Our grappling hook idea was proven in concept by games such as Bionic Commando, but it was made apparent that this would be a very difficult element to program.


Still, despite this slightly deflating us, it did reset our expectations as to what we could achieve within the timeframe we were given.


Time to get to work!




One Sheet:

Moodboard:



Proof of Concept Photobash:

Paper Prototype:



Gameplay and Interactivity: Concept Art

In preparation for our pitch meeting with Ewan we began to work on concept art for our main character.


We wanted to root our character in our world in terms of appearance and ensure that her outfit was utilitarian and didn't sexualize her at all. Another consideration was colour palette to prevent her getting lost in the background. The colour of her hair was a big factor in this and we also considered a scarf to allude to an arc of movement.


Out of the assorted art we compiled, a decision was made to have our protagonist have long and flowing ginger hair. This will provide a colour that will stand out from the other elements on screen and an arc of movement, negating the need for a scarf.

Ben:



 

 

George:

Brad:

Gameplay and Interactivity: Main Character Design

Another solid meeting with the rest of the team today. We wanted to decide on some important game mechanics and a visual style by the days end.


First up and most importantly was the game mechanic. Understanding the value of mobile gaming and its ease of access, we wanted to create a game that would instantly empower those who picked it up but would reward those that put time and effort in to mastering it.


This meant that the control scheme had to be simple and you had to feel really powerful whilst playing it. That way the player would come back time and time. A true pick up and play title.


1) Pick up and Play
2) Easy control system
3)Empowering


When debating how to make it interesting for the player to traverse the map, a grappling hook was repeatedly brought up by members of the team. This would enable the player to look and feel really cool when moving and chain together attacks at speed. The feeling of satisfaction when chaining together a swing, kill combo would be awesome. Perfect for what we were looking to achieve.


We need to further discuss if other modes of movement will be required in the game, but for now we have a solid start.

Now for the visual style. Being heavily inspired off the back of Star Wars Episode VII we knew that we wanted the main character to be a strong female. The question really came down to art style. After throwing a few ideas around, we started to lean towards a very clean, animated style. Something along the lines of DreamWorks concept art. Rayman was also a huge inspiration - It is far more beautiful than it has any right being. It would be a lot of fun to play around with the contrasting imagery of hyper violence and child like visuals.

Before getting started on concept art, we had to work on story as that would inform most of our character designs moving forward. Another solid meeting and no arguments yet! 

Gameplay and Interactivity: The Spring Assignment Begins

For this term, we have been tasked with developing a proof of concept game demo. This meant getting together in to teams and following set development guidelines.


The main rule given was that the game must be 2D but can't be side scrolling. Side scrolling allows for poor game design so the decision makes sense. Building the team was relatively straightforward and we ended up with a strong team of 2D artists, 3D artists and coders.

Each team member had to produce one script and one piece of in game art.


Very early on we decided to work on a hyper violent platformer of sorts. We had a look at various indie games that have a wonderful art style and really take advantage of the relative 'cheapness' of 2D. Initial games we looked at for various reasons were 'The Cave', 'Speed Runners', 'Fancy Pants' and 'N+'.

This was a very productive first session and we managed to nail down some important decisions early on:

• The protagonist had to be female
• The game had to be easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. Something akin to mobile games.
• It had to be a fast paced platformer
• We wanted a game device that enabled the player to feel empowered.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Final Prototype

The hand in is tomorrow!


This experience has been full of highs and lows. Coding and Script Writing began to sink in during the latter weeks and I was able to troubleshoot my own code without resorting to online resources and fellow classmates by the end. Doors actually proved to be my enemy throughout this process. That and trying to make a working flashlight!


Level design was one aspect I'd never thought of deeply before, and in hindsight I would really have spent more energy creating a map layout worthy of the players time. If the person playing your game doesn't have a clue where to go or what to do, you have failed.


It was difficult to work to a time constraint - I had to be economical with what the level contained and how long it would take for the player to get across the map. It is easy to create obstacles but you have to consider whether or not an actual off the shelf game would contain those tricks.


Modeling can certainly be improved too. My player is given a flashlight that shines direct light onto everything I've made. Any overlapping or sloppy modeling is laid bare for them to see.


Overall, I'm pretty proud with what I've come up with. Sure, there is plenty I would improve on, as with any project. However, looking back at Greybox version one and comparing it to my final hand in - they are worlds apart.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Prototype Loop 2 and Level Design

Another prototype loop came and went. This time it got me thinking about level design. Even with ambient lighting that I assumed would guide the player, some still navigated the level in ways that I didn't necessarily want them to.


The stairs were too obviously lit and tempting to the player. I had to find a reason to keep the player upstairs a little longer, prolonging the experience and exploration. Especially if I wanted to hit the 2-3 minute mark.


I am already using subtitles to push along the narrative and the player. These could definitely be utilized to goad the player into staying upstairs a little longer. Ask them to look for fellow crew members or maybe a key....

A KEY!

A key. A combination of better ambient lighting and an actual gameplay element will steer the player into spending more time upstairs. You already need a Spacesuit equipped in order to exit the airlock and head to the safety bunker on the surface. If you need a key to open the door, that will definitely aid my cause.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Overlapping

Just a quick blog post this time noticing a new issue with my modeling. That cool texture actually turned out to be overlapping vertices. This happens when model's get overlapped. I'm not entirely sure if I'll have the time to remodel these in time for the final hand in, but is yet another learning experience with Maya that will have to be considered when modeling in the future.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Prototype Loop 1

This week we had to playtest each others games in their current states and provide feedback. It was fascinating watching different classmates tackle the same game in totally different ways! Granted, there was no lighting to guide the way and no scripted elements in yet. Still, the feedback gained was invaluable and highlighted a number of bugs.

Killer Bug One

No matter what, everyone wanted to head straight into the airlocks. Due to a combination of size and mesh issues, the player would get trapped inside the mesh and be forced to restart the game. Obviously this is a huge gameplay issue as the airlocks are key to the narrative of the game and its never fun to find a game killing bug. It may be worth resizing these or rethinking how they are implemented in the game.

Bug Two

I realized far too late that Unity really dislikes planes and very thin polyshapes. Many of my objects lost their faces when playing the game and this created transparent walls and surfaces the player could just walk through. Another game breaking bug in some instances, as the player could get trapped or lost. And generally, aesthetically it was rubbish. This was easily fixed by duplicating the shape and turning it inside out. Still, the feedback gathered consisted a lot with mentioning this. It created a very 'Unfinished' look.

Positives

There were positives to come out of this prototype loop, that indicate I'm moving in the right direction. The art direction was mentioned in a positive light - there were quite a few comments stating that the level was immersive and created a certain feel. Others said that it seemed like an interesting environment to walk around in and explore. It's just a huge shame that many of the key elements caused game breaking bugs.

Reflections

All in all I'd call it a successful day. I had a few important bugs discovered and got some reassuring feedback in terms of art direction. The structure of the map needs changing for sure - A lot of players got tempted into areas that I wouldn't necessarily of liked them to head in to. Its also worth considering expanding the play area on to Mars' surface. This would give another unique visual experience to the player. A lot to think about and a lot to do.