Week 1
- Game Pitch
Week one of our game studio required us to each come up with a unique game pitch that we would share with the studio. This pitch included a number of topics we needed to cover ranging from our game's concept to the overall scope of the project.
- My Concept
My game's concept was a tower defense title with RPG elements. Players would play a variety of levels consisting of a path leading to an end state, defended with towers and traps placed along the track's route. Atop this, players would control a "hero" character, able to freely make their way through the map acting as the player's means of interacting with all the tower and trap features.
This hero would feature a unique set of abilities tailored to a specific playstyle, ranging from close quarters tank to high damage marksman. I've sought inspiration from a range of similar titles including the Orcs Must Die series, Dungeon Defenders, and more importantly, Death Trap: World of Van Helsing, being the game that sparked my love for the genre.
Together, these elements work in tandem to create a strategic defense experience with the engaging playstyle of an action adventure. This genre has appealed to me for some time, and I wanted to use this opportunity to express my desire to make one of my own.
- Scope
Scope is a new idea for me and required that I consider the potential time, resources, and manpower needed to create a finished prototype or final product. The game is intended to make use of a 3D environment and fully modelled characters.
- Unique Selling Point
As I've already mentioned in this journal, this pitch aimed to sell the idea of a fusion between tower defense and action RPG. Titles of this genre appear to be few and far between and I used this opportunity to propose we add to this underutilized concept.
- Platform
My game's platform of choice would be PC with a potential release on consoles once the game had received a majority of its content and updates.
- Publishing Details
The game
itself should be making use of fully original assets and some purchased tools, potentially adding the game's selling price. Being a new
studio however it would be likely that the game would instead be showcased on Ich.io as was proposed by other pitches on the day. Both Steam and Epic Games could also be considered with Epic games being the likelier of the two now that the University is considered a partner of Unreal, an extension of Epic.
Week 2
- Game Pitch
Week 3
- Job Applications
I prepared a simple resume by hand and covered aspects such as experience learned through schooling and personal projects I had worked on. I ultimately expressed my interest in working as a 2D artist but remained open to the idea of working as an animator or 3D artist.
The Interview overall was successful; however, I should present a professional portfolio showcasing my work and bring all documentation in the event they misplaced their copy. In terms of speech I could better sell myself with more confidence and better framing of my skillsets
Week 4
- Response To Brief
In week five of our first trimester, my group presented a pitch for a Metroid-Vania title based off the prompts we received before the break. During this break, my team and I brainstormed and went into great detail about our potential pitch and what exactly we were working with.
Our prompts included the use of silhouettes/shadow puppets, and a focus on lighting and scene presentation. This meant a focus on the environments not looking flat but vibrant with plenty of depth to present a unique and beautiful visual. With these prompts, we needed to come up with a story and gameplay focus.
At first, we worked with the idea of an interactive story where the player's decisions would grant them different forms reflecting their actions. These transformations would allow them to solve certain puzzles while limiting some routes of gameplay.
Later, we worked with the idea of stories about light and dark as it suited the visual well, and expanding on this we decided on the use of fairy tales that gave us plenty of material to work with. I had presented a potential story and adjustments to the mechanics we had decided on with more of a focus on the fairy tales and action, as opposed to the player transformations and choices. By this time however, we were moving on with a new direction and setting.
We ultimately decided to focus on the concept of transformations and what we could do with it. We turned to Ancient Greece and found a plethora of inspiration and material to work with from mythical beasts (in particular, the chimera), and pottery painted with its unique use of black pigment to tell stories.
As one of the artists of the team I suggested the use of two distinct animation techniques to give a unique feel to the game. I proposed the use of sprite sheets for our main and supporting characters to give them a responsive and familiar feel, while on the other hand, using bones to make our monsters appear unnatural and as if they were being fully retold through story. These monsters would better resemble the original shadow puppet aesthetic design we were given and, in my opinion, create a unique visual feel for our players.
Week 5
- Redesign Pitch
After presenting our new pitch, we received feedback and later sat down for a more in-depth look at how our team was performing so far.
The feedback right after our presentation suggested that we better define our cultural goals and make certain of our source material. Again, we were encouraged to put great emphasis on the visuals of our project and work to make a prototype that captures the proper aesthetic.
With the pitches concluded, all groups received an interview checking in on our progress and relationship as a team. Our team seems to get along easily and was suggested to perhaps organize outings so we might better understand our project. This included the potential of organizing a bonfire and shadow puppets to get hands on experience with our aesthetic goals.
Week 6
- Beginning Production
With last week's feedback we began working on some of our basic ideas. Firstly, I decided to draw up some potential concepts for our character. We are still discussing story direction, so I started with some further research into the origin of the Chimera and looking into simple designs ancient Greek attire. I discovered the Chimera is referred to as female, so I began looking into women's fashion at the time.
The Chiton is a basic cloth gown with shoulder clips to and a waist high belt or sash.
As with most armour, it's mostly a unisex design and focuses on covering vital parts of the body and limbs not hidden behind a shield.
Week 7
- Enemy Design
We've decided to label our game as being a Metroid-Vania title complete with upgrades, puzzles, and combat. I've started on some simple monster designs and how they scale next to the main character. I researched some ancient Greek monsters and applied simple enemy design theory to them. My thinking is that the player would start with simple enemies like a human soldier with short range and medium defence to get a feel for combat, and as they discover new abilities, they would find these enemies easier with new ways to combat them.
so far, I've thought up three potential enemies.
Human Soldier: Whether through their fear of the player character or through possession, human soldiers act as an introductory foe that serve as a semi decent threat to the newly formed Chimera. They would consist of two types of soldiers, one with a short sword and buckler/small shield, and the other 'heavy/Hoplite' type that wields a spear and tower shield.
I've been working with the impression that we might be able to work with a story focused on Orcus, god of the underworld also named Orcus. We could have a scenario where powerful monsters have escaped and our character, the fleeting soul of the Chimera reduced to human form, could regain her strength to combat these monsters before seeking her revenge on the man that killed her.
Week 8
- Character Rigging and Animation
Our redesign pitch stated we would be using two distinct animation styles where our player character would be animated using sprite sheets and our monsters would use bone rigging. We decided instead to change the character to also use bone rigging as it would allow us to more easily swap out limbs for the chimera mutations. For this we would use the Sprite libraries plugin to swap out the sprites for each affected limb.
We needed to decide on our exporting method for our character. Ideally, we would use the photoshop PSB. files as it keeps all layers of the image so we can construct our character before importing them. However, I don't use photoshop, so I've instead started to use the traditional method of importing a sprite sheet and constructing the character in engine.
This method is slower but its functional. I've constructed the skeleton for the test character and begun simple animation of a run cycle.
Week 9
We decided that the photoshop PSB. file type would be the ideal choice and discovered that by changing the file type name in the computer file explorer, we could convert regular PSD. files. GIMP, my image editor of choice, can export as PSD files easily.
We have decided to move away from combat for the moment and begin designing more traditional platforming and puzzle mechanics. I understand the need for appropriate expectations but do hope we eventually move back towards a combat focus as I believe our setting lends us allot of creative freedom with is potential for monsters and player abilities. We are still discussing story ideas and what mechanics we need to begin designing and implementing.
Week 10
Week 9 I focused on giving our character a new design and made adjustments to the skeleton to allow her new hair to be animated. With the updated sprites and skeleton, I have begun work on the final animations for our human character.
It took a couple of attempts to move the skeleton from one rig to the other as the background space determines the pasting location of the imported skeleton. I needed to do this a couple of times as I kept making mistakes with the new sprites. Ultimately, our new character design fits well in the scene.
I designed the Character to lightly resemble the lion part of her transformation, with hair that looks somewhat like a mane. I also did some of her human form evolving into a more monster like form.
Week 11
Further animation work has seen some inconsistencies as we discovered that animations don't record the entire model, so when switching states, our character's head tilts forward as well as other strange positions. This becomes a tedious ask of recording every limb and joint to ensure nothing overwrites our other animations during gameplay.
I've managed to complete the characters animations and begun work on designing our character's Chimera transformation form. This form requires its own set of animations as well as a transition animation for both skeletons when they transform.
Week 12
- Vertical Slice
Week 12's Vertical Slice presentation required us to showcase our build so far and to discuss our successes and challenges. Crunch time ultimately fell short, and our build continued to surface new bugs, and so our plans began to shrink in scope. Despite this, our group was very proactive during this faze, and together we did our best to solve problems in a timely manner. I continued to work on animation and discovered some more complications with consistency, as well as some fixes and quality of life techniques.
During this week, my focus was mainly on animations for the Chimera form. This included a full set of animations covering running and jumping, as well as a death animation among others. I was also asked to prepare both skeletons with transition animations between each other to help develop our transformation mechanic.
Running - 13 Keyframes
