During the easter holiday, I finished up the death sprites for the player character.
During week 5, a few of the members began to get worried about the progress of the game. Our original plan for the formation of the team (2 maining blueprint, 2 maining art, 1 doing both) had fallen apart and the one member of the team who was supposed to help out both groups had ended up doing all of the blueprinting up until this point. We had not heard much from the two who were intended to help with the blueprinting apart from being given a level layout from one member during the third week, which we were told needed revamping at the start of the fifth week.
This made it quite difficult for the other team members as we now had an issue with the level layout which should have been sorted out quite early needing redoing quite late into the project, and since we had a difficult time contacting the other members I decided to pick up this job and make a draft layout that other members could add to to help speed things up. This also included the concept of a 'sprint zone' before the endpoint, where the player would have to run away from advancing corruption, though this idea was later scrapped.
Since the member we had assigned the job of finding audio had not done this since the start of the project by this point, I also found some audio and sound effects on free-use music sites such as maoudamashii and presence of music, and put them in the group's dropbox so that people could give feedback on which audio they liked and which they didn't.
However my actions here were not really welcome and I was scolded by the members whose jobs these originally were for taking over their jobs. Although I agree that it would have been better for me to have talked to them more before working on things that had originally been assigned to them, these were short tasks that we'd had negative feedback on for not being complete, and neither of the members who these tasks were originally assigned to were at the meeting we scheduled in the media labs during this session. Since it had taken so long to get them organised in the first place I agreed with the present members that it would be easier to get them out of the way while we had time together to discuss, though I left them open for feedback so the other members could adjust and change them as necessary.
Despite this, the level layout draft was mostly disregarded and the member whose job it originally was created a new level layout without using the draft.
I also created simple idle sprites for the player character during this week. This is just a simple loop of the cat's ears twitching and coat moving so they are not completely still while the player is not moving.
I also created a fake BSOD background to be used as a screen that flashed in during the player's low stamina time in order to warn them that they were approaching a loss. I tried to make this resemble an actual blue screen of death in order to panic the player a little.
After sharing this with the other members, it was suggested by Marisa who was in charge of most of the blueprinting that we split the level into two and have one above ground and one under ground to avoid cluttering up the level to the point it may lag. After confirming that this was plausible within the time limit, I readjusted the layouts to create two levels, one above ground which is more about learning to utilise jumps and platforms with lower risk, and one underground which contains more drops and difficult platforming.
The last two weeks also meant creating a lot of in-game assets to drop into the game for me. I created static effects utilising the blue screen of death I had created the week before to use for a low stamina warning. These were made up of multiple frames which flicker on-screen, and fade in at higher opacity the lower your in-game stamina is.
Despite the organisation issues, I am mostly happy with the actual outcome of this project, and I think the game works and looks good and fits with our initial sell sheet decently well. Given more time and better organisation I would have liked to look at how to improve my sprite animation, as I found it very difficult and it took a lot more time than I was expecting it to despite the simple design and low frame count. I am happy with the character’s design itself, and it was fun to work on simple designs considering my usual tendency to lean to complex or high fantasy designs.
This made it quite difficult for the other team members as we now had an issue with the level layout which should have been sorted out quite early needing redoing quite late into the project, and since we had a difficult time contacting the other members I decided to pick up this job and make a draft layout that other members could add to to help speed things up. This also included the concept of a 'sprint zone' before the endpoint, where the player would have to run away from advancing corruption, though this idea was later scrapped.
Since the member we had assigned the job of finding audio had not done this since the start of the project by this point, I also found some audio and sound effects on free-use music sites such as maoudamashii and presence of music, and put them in the group's dropbox so that people could give feedback on which audio they liked and which they didn't.
However my actions here were not really welcome and I was scolded by the members whose jobs these originally were for taking over their jobs. Although I agree that it would have been better for me to have talked to them more before working on things that had originally been assigned to them, these were short tasks that we'd had negative feedback on for not being complete, and neither of the members who these tasks were originally assigned to were at the meeting we scheduled in the media labs during this session. Since it had taken so long to get them organised in the first place I agreed with the present members that it would be easier to get them out of the way while we had time together to discuss, though I left them open for feedback so the other members could adjust and change them as necessary.
Despite this, the level layout draft was mostly disregarded and the member whose job it originally was created a new level layout without using the draft.
I also created simple idle sprites for the player character during this week. This is just a simple loop of the cat's ears twitching and coat moving so they are not completely still while the player is not moving.
I also created a fake BSOD background to be used as a screen that flashed in during the player's low stamina time in order to warn them that they were approaching a loss. I tried to make this resemble an actual blue screen of death in order to panic the player a little.
I also created a idea for the endpoint which looked like a save icon floppy disk extended to look like a door, and contained a little bit of the default Windows desktop pattern.
By week 6, we had gotten a new level layout from the original member this task was assigned to, however this was not what the rest of the members had envisioned and introduced too many new mechanics for the member doing most of the blueprinting (still) to implement at this point. After getting messages of concern from all of the other members, we talked to the person doing the level layout on the Tuesday of week 6 and explained that it did not fit with the 'escape' concept of the game, as it was difficult to navigate and seemed more about exploration than running away from something.
After talking directly with this team member it became apparent that they wouldn't have time to do a new level layout do to other commitments, and they agreed to give the role of designing the level layout to myself and Jojo. The two of us got together and talked through adjusting the draft I had made the week before, coming up with an updated layout between the two of us that incorporated underground space (an idea that the previous level designer wanted implemented) and more difficult platforming.
The last two weeks also meant creating a lot of in-game assets to drop into the game for me. I created static effects utilising the blue screen of death I had created the week before to use for a low stamina warning. These were made up of multiple frames which flicker on-screen, and fade in at higher opacity the lower your in-game stamina is.
Additionally, I added a couple more sprites to the character animation since I noticed it was a little hard to tell when the player was getting hit, and thought it would help to have a short visual indication. As such I tried to make a short animation of the character getting hit and turning away/stepping back slightly, though I have to admit I'm not entirely sure this is successful as it looks a little bit off-model compared to the other sprites.
I also created a simple start screen for the game featuring some of the in-game backdrop and logo, as well as backgrounds for the in-game pause menu, level complete screen and game over screen.
Overall, I am not entirely sure how successful this project was. It’s not really that I am disappointed with my own work as I feel it was a really interesting project for me, and I also got to dabble in level layout in the end, which is not something I usually do but I enjoyed trying to figure out how the player could learn to jump and how to increase the difficulty in the second level, and I think this was mostly successful although the fact that I had to do it so late into the project meant that I couldn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on it. I also felt that the team was not as organised as it should have been, especially since some members did not update the Trello board (https://trello.com/b/UDDQsZ1m/uninstall) as often as others, which made it difficult to tell who was doing which job, especially since we had trouble getting in contact with some members as it was. I also feel like we would have benefited from more meetings with all five of us, but most of our organised meetings fell down to only three or four members of the team. This was also frustrating as the original plans for the team roles did not happen at all and almost all of the blueprinting ended up falling on one team member, with almost all of the design, assets, and other jobs coming to myself and one other member, and there seemed to be a big rush in the late stages of the project.
Despite the organisation issues, I am mostly happy with the actual outcome of this project, and I think the game works and looks good and fits with our initial sell sheet decently well. Given more time and better organisation I would have liked to look at how to improve my sprite animation, as I found it very difficult and it took a lot more time than I was expecting it to despite the simple design and low frame count. I am happy with the character’s design itself, and it was fun to work on simple designs considering my usual tendency to lean to complex or high fantasy designs.
