Second Last Week

This is the week before our gold code is completed for the showcase. We are focusing on finishing the last level of the game as well as the rest of our features and cut scenes that we were not able to include in our alpha and beta codes. We have a lot of focus on the visual aspect of our game so hopefully I am able to meet everyone’s expectations for the visual part of this project. Through this whole process, I realized that creating visuals for a game is not exactly a one man job and I may have bitten off more than I could handle by handling all the visuals by myself. Ideally it would have been better and less stressful if there was at least one more visual artist on our team. Programming is also a lot of testing and stressing so I am glad that we got another member for our team so that our game overall runs properly and smoothly. The learning process in the course has been interesting, fun and stressful. This was also the first time I have done so much animation, background drawing and tile mapping. It was really helpful in that aspect because I got a lot of practice and trial and error, especially on the tile maps. Here are some tile maps that I have finished for our final level and is currently still working and improving past tile maps so that they look more dynamic and less tile like.

Beta final week

This week we had to finish up our beta levels and demo it in lab. We also had a new member join our team so we had to brief him on what we were doing in our game. David and Jonathan, our newest member, each worked on a level for the beta. Steven worked on the main base which includes the recruitment page and such. I worked on getting the visuals out and also wrote the play testing report. To start, our game as it has been said during the critique and play testing, is a bit lacking in the fun and challenge side. We need to improve and ramp up the level challenges by the end for the showcase which is happening in 2 weeks. For me, I will be mainly focusing on getting all the cut scenes and animations ready which is quite a bit considering that I am the only visual artist on the team with 3 programmers. I don’t mind this formation because it will be more consistent visually and the burden of coding is spread out.

During this last week, I have been mainly focusing on the monsters and backgrounds. I decided to prioritize the animations for the two bosses because they were important for each level. The time it took to draw out each frame was also extremely time consuming, which is why during the beta, they were the most complete feature of the demo.

Here are some of the visuals I worked on in the last couple of days until the beta.

Beta Part 2

This week I ran into some technical difficulties and my computer stopped working so I was unable to get as much done as I had intended. In the following week I will have to catch up on the visuals and get a lot of the animations and map tiles ready for the beta demo. We also added a new member to our group to help with programming and level design. I hope with this addition, our progress will be a lot smoother going towards the showcase. At the moment we our currently working on the next two levels of our game which is the level that is centered around water and and a level that is centered around mountainous terrain. For challenges I plan on creating monsters that have flight capabilities that allow them to attack the rear for the mountainous level. For the water area, I plan on creating monsters that are more resistant to melee attacks because of their water attribute and constitution. As for the bosses, they will inflict status demerits such as charm and silence.

This is one of the water attributed monsters that will have a resistance to melee attacks which will force the players to rely on mage and support skills to defeat them.

In the next couple of days, we will have to do a play test so hopefully everything goes smoothly until then.

Beta Week one

After receiving critique for our Alpha code we were told that we should push the art of our game to better setup the mood of our game as well as work on the animation and sound effects. We were also told that we should build on our setup using our archtypes and ramp up the challenges. There was also a suggestion to deepen the structure of our food mechanic. For now in our alpha, we only have loot chests to help replenish the player’s food supply and depletes while moving. We will probably look into how we can improve this mechanic for next time to make it more interactive and thoughtful.

For this week we are once again each focusing on our individual roles, David and Steven are working on the code for the next levels and I will be pushing the art like they have suggested. Last week we had started a little later then we expected and ended up not being able to fully show the potential we initially wanted to show for out alpha. For the beta I hope that through pushing more of my art, we can produce a more immersive experience for the class despite it being a thoroughly done RPG genre. At the moment I am focusing on making the environment for the game and creating multiple tile maps so that we don’t end up with a grid looking map like our alpha. So far I have drawn out a few more varieties of our grass tiles as well as some water tiles for our next level and some rocky paths for the other level.

Alpha Code

This was the week in which we had to have one entire level complete from end to end. We had a lot to do but we somehow pulled through. David and Steven were in charge of the code which they split up who did which sections of the game. I was in charge of getting all the visuals ready. David also help revise the design document and Steven did the playtest which was hosted in several locations. I had a hard time these last few days trying to get all the visuals done in time to a point where I was awake for 41 hours working on the visuals.

For this section of the game, we will include the first boss as well as some monsters that will help ramp up the challenges leading up to the boss fight. This section also includes the tutorial for battle which is the reason why there is only 2 playable characters in the beginning. We will also include some short dialogue for our narrative to guide the player.  

Milestone 2 Part 2

We are at the midpoint of our alpha code. There are a lot of things that need to be done still and there are a lot of things I personally have to get a move on this week. Next week we will be presenting our alpha during lecture and it will be important for everything to be working properly. I am as usual in charge of the visuals. I will also try my best at finding an appropriate source for sound effects and background music because the level of immersiveness may be lacking otherwise.

So far I have designs for 8 classes, 4 which the player can form a party with and the others can go into the recruitment pool which is one of the features that we should include in our alpha. Here are some designs that I have been working on:

Milestone 2 Part 1

We had a lot of bumps during the first prototype and we have a lot that we need to consider for our alpha. So far we have been working on our parts individually. David and Steven are working on getting the code settled while I am working on drawing the character action sequences. Here are a few images of a mage that I worked on.

Here is the sequence for when the mage is stationary during battle: because of the slide show display of wordpress, the action being shown is a lot slower than intended but for the sake of presenting what I have been doing, this was the best method for showing such.

 

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Milestone 1: Prototype

This week we had to start our prototype 1. For our prototype we mainly focused on the battle gameplay aspect of our game because we have mechanics that we think are unique to our game and that is not often used in regular RPG games. We decided we did not have to mee up until our playtest. David and Steven was in charge of the programming and I was in charge of the visuals and the playtest report.

Milestone 1 part 1

This week we have started working on our first prototype. Although at the moment we are still working on the programming stage but we hope to have the first prototype to be up and ready for some play testing in the next couple of days. I will be in charge of creating and animating the visuals for the prototype. I have been drafting out various monsters that the player can encounter in our game and hopefully implement on of them in our prototype. So far I have forest dwelling monsters and water monsters and one of the bosses that the player will encounter.

For our prototype, our core mechanic we plan on testing will be our battle system.

Game Design Document no.1

For this week we as a group had to somewhat finalize our ideas and concepts to create a design document. I was in charge of all the visuals for the document and provided ideas for the narrative of our game. David was in charge of the narrative and wrote most of the design doc and Steven made the functional flowboard and gave ideas for the interface and mechanics. At first we weren’t thinking of having a narrative due to the fact that it is a simulation game with rpg battle aspects embedded in it. We thought that it being a simulation, a story, protag, and antag weren’t necessary for our type of game. However, after reviewing the requirements we had to develop and main quest line for the rpg aspect and a proper narrative as well as a physical protag and antag for our game. After including all these to our game the balance between RPG and Simulation felt like it was leaning more and more towards a full rpg which wasn’t our initial intention. We will try our best to keep both sides in check.

Here is are some concept shots of our protag and Antag, Alexei: