Team Summary:
For this week, we tried to tackle multiple components of our game to properly start our Alpha Code. We were in a Facebook call at first to discuss the art style and what to talk about when we meet for level designing, then we met as a group in person to level design. In the call, we finalized our art style, which is Averi’s simplified version but higher fidelity environment of the first playable. Eventually, we began level designing. However, we wanted to focus on the entire narrative arc of the game to see and split the levels evenly across all the settings/places in the game world. For the narrative arc, we have only finalized Solis’ new location for his home, a forest area, an underground cavern area, and the beach side area that will lead to the factory. We also tried clarifying collectibles and the reward operation for the game, however we ended up focusing more on the overall narrative of the game instead.
My Contribution:
When we were deciding our art style, my sketchy art style from last week was initially the chosen theme because it was the fastest art to create which fit well into our time constraint; therefore, I tried showcasing how long it would take me to recreate the level in the first playable in the sketchy art style. It took me longer and I realized that adding the same amount of details as the first playable, which is the expected quality for the final game, forced me to take a longer time to create the same environment. As well as, personally I thought my art style was too childish and it didn’t fit the quality of a final finished game. This outcome can be seen in the crumpled-paper-textured image. (The paper texture I used is the same paper texture from last week: http://www.psdgraphics.com/textures/crumpled-paper-texture/)
For the level design, I contributed to the meeting, stating my opinions and insight on some of the game content. I suggested to focus more on the overall narrative arc of the entire game to evenly split all the levels across the entire game world. This would help us determine how large the first level will be for the Alpha Code. This will also help us see the entire game and have a more solid narrative. Moreover, I also suggested to inspire from Maplestory’s maps for the forest scenes. I also sketched the new landscape and possibly how the factory encounter would look visually in the map.
For individual work, I started practicing animating assets, like Solis’ idle animation. For this process, I created a Photoshop file and I repeatedly drew a low-fidelity version of Solis frame-by-frame, this can be see in the GIF where Solis’ eyes, candle and hair are moving. However, I also tried a new software called Spriter by BrashMonkey, which is a software that specialized in asset animation. A few weeks ago, this software was suggested by Jarielle Lim to animate the assets, however I only recently had time to try this program. I watched some tutorials on how to do some basics such as adding the assets to Spriter, animating the assets and exporting and then importing to Unity. This can be seen in the GIF where Solis’ eyes is moving and the candle glow is scaling up and down. The reason why I’m trying this software is because I find that animating by drawing frame-by-frame might take too long and it has obvious large gaps between each frame therefore the animation is not very smooth. There is also a screenshot image of the software UI.
My Reflection:
Overall the team was quite productive. Although we did not finish the entire narrative arc, we at least know the map from Solis’ home to the factory. One of the issues that arise are the conflicting and miscommunicated ideas. One specific conflict was deciding the reward operation and the purpose of collectibles. Another conflict was deciding whether each map should be a continuous flow or be segregated into distinct areas such as a forest area, and an underground area, and whether each map should be considered a level or a part of a level. The second conflict was solved only after a specific detail was clarified, such as that the forest is large enough to be a level of itself and a continuous map might not be sensible anymore. To solve the first conflict, is that once the level design is finished we must focus on the collectibles and the rewards, especially for the first level. To solve the second issue, we should focus on explaining ideas clearly. Communication and patience is key.
