Beta Aftermath - Refinement work before Final Release

Well, my hopes came true. The Beta-presentation went terrific. The teachers and the crowd liked the music that I chose, as it fitted the mood for the game. They came up with ideas and drafts on how to change some of the graphics, particularly the backgrounds, but nothing for my mole sprite (and the animations for it), which I think is a good sign. It seems like everyone likes my mole design; they think he's a cutiepie who you easily can relate to. I think my work with the mole is as good as done.

I haven't done much work for this week, since we've now finished most of our graphics for the game. It's actually been more work for the programmers, since they must implement the rest of the graphics, as well as looking for potential bugs and other problems. The things that I have done this week is a spawn animation for the sponge (the powerup for our game) and looking for a fiting menu track.


This is the spritesheet for the sponge animation. I made three frames where the spawning part begins, that is I made these partially transparent. Then I made five frames with five bubbles, with each of them moving slightly for each frame. First I draw one bubble, then copied it five times and changed their sizes with the free transform-tool. For the two last of the five bubble-frames, I made so that the bubbles look transparent, in order for them to disappear completely in the final frame. This final frame will then be replaced by the actual object, which the mole can pick up.   

This is the result.

It didn't took that much time to find the menu music than what it did for the background music. I revisited the royalty free music sites, and in one of these I found these two tracks: Run Amok and Hidden Agenda. I think the latter would fit perfectly, since Run Amok is too upbeat that it would rather fit for a level in the game. Also, the Hidden Agenda track sounds very good when you loop it.


My main priority for this week, and especially for next, is to write the project report, because it's absolutely vital in order to pass this course. I began writing it on sunday last week, and it must be turned in next friday. Also in friday we will have the final release for the game, that is: submit our game to our tutor and have a gigantic play test where we play each team's game one final time, before we'll start the theme park course, the week after the play testing.

Our two month long game project will soon reach its end, and that's very sad.  This has been an really fun, engaging and learning time for me, just like in last year's projects. Even though we've had a huge setback with the exchange between isometric to top-down perspective, we've managed to overcome that by working 200% each day (well, at least during the first weeks after the alpha presentation) and then perform an awesome beta presentation.

We have come this far, and it's really fun to know that our hard work for the past weeks after the frightful alpha presentation is finally paying off. The alpha version was a huge mess, but now; the game is nearly complete.    

 

Preparation for Beta-presentation

In this week, I made some miscellaneous stuff before the beta-presentation tomorrow morning. We also had a artwork presentation for our game in wednesday, during the 2D-course where the class and the 2D-teachers watched every teams' works of arts. The teachers asked if any team needed art-support and extra tutoring.

The teachers liked our work, especially the mole, which they found very cute. They also appreciated the mole animations, though we did not show all of them, just the death- and the walking animation (which the Game Designer made, not me).

During the beginning of the week, I made an another death animation for the mole, when he drowns in the water. This, however, will not be implemented in time before the presentation, but maybe later. I used the same sprites like in the original animation, but I turned them horizontal. Then I draw three additional sprites when the mole gets water inside his mouth. I used free-transforming to get his paws to hold against his mouth, and some extre coloring for his eyes, mouth and tongue. I colored it blue to make it look wet.  

This is how he turned out.

Later, I also made a tutorial screen for the game, presenting the controls, the player and the enemy character, and the objects that the player must collect. This was done quite quickly. I began with taking a wooden background pic from Google, changed some of its colors and turned it horizontal. Then I pasted much of our artwork, using two GUI-pics to add some grass. Then I took a pic of a black keyboard from Google and cut out some of its keys, such as the arrow keys, enter, shift and space.

This is the result

Now that I'm completely done with the mole and its animations, I have virtually nothing to do in the graphics department, at least before the beta presentation. Except for polishing some of the animation frames, or maybe add additional frames to speed up their flow.

However, the team gave me the task of finding a suitable background music for the game, which must be licensed free. So I spent two days with finding various tracks, and found one that was quite good. I uploaded it to our Drive, and I hope the team will implement it before the presentation.

The presentation will be just like the alpha-presentation back in February, though it will focus more on the game-presentation rather than the PowerPoint-presentation. The representative for the team will talk about three good and three bad things that the team experienced thoughout the production, After that, he will present the game and talk about various things that has been changed and implemented after the alpha-version. The crowd and the teachers will then ask questions, tell their impressions and come up with useful suggestions on how to improve the game.

I think that this presentation will go much, MUCH, better than the alpha, because we didn't implement any artwork whatsoever because the progammers failed to implement isometric graphics. So we were as good as butchered by every single person except of Team 13. But now, me and the team are stronger and more confident than ever before. Most of the Top-Down artwork has been successfully implemented, and the game now has a scoring system, a death screen and animations. However, it does not have sound or a projectile yet, but I hope that the programmers will have them coded and implemented just before the presentation.  

Which us good luck, and tare piano!

The Animation Week - Bringing the mole to life... and death

For this week, I spent the time with doing various animations for the mole, using key frame animation.

So let's go with the digging animation. In friday last week, I got some useful drafts from one of the members on how to make it. The animation would be superfast and consist of at least four frames. When I asked how to approach with the Dig up-animation, I got the response that it would not be needed for now, but maybe later. For this week, I would focus on the dig down-animation, since that's the most important of the two.

I made a total of five frames. One when the mole stands forward, one when he starts to dive down the erupted hole, one when half of his body is under the ground, one when only his tail is visible, and the last one when only the hole is left.

 

Like this.

After I finished the digging-animation, I immediately started with the death-animation. Me and the team agreed that the animation would not be brutal and bloody, since this game is aimed at a young audience.

My interpretation of it would be that when the mole gets the killing blow (by the gardener or the water), his eyes would pop out (almost like he's getting really stoned) and his whiskers starts twirling. After that, he rolls to the side with his mouth open wide and stretches out his tongue. And then he lies dead on his back, still with his mouth open.   

My first version of it consisted of only three keyframes. One where he gets the killing blow, one when he rolls to the side and one when he lies dead on his back.

Like this.

But then I thought that it was to fast, and the rolling keyframe needed to be changed. So I tweeked it and made two additional keyframes when he rolls.

And now, I think this is much better.

The final animation for this week is the idle-aniamtion, when the mole stands still. So I wanted to breath, but it didn't turn on so well.

Now he looks like a balloon-animal. :/

So I really need to tweak this one, a lot. One of the members gave me the idea that the mole would crawl up like a dog of some sorts, when he doesn't move, Maybe I'll consider it, but I still want the mole to breath so that he does not look like a statue.

New Artsyle = New Mole = New Animations

We are now six weeks in the development of Mole Munch, and we have encountered an absolutely (!) terrible (!!) problem.

During the first of development, me and the team had a vote between two distinctive artstyles/viewpoints for the game: Isometric or Top-Down. I voted for top-down because it's much easier to draw characters and props from a single viewpoint: from above. In a isometric viewpoint, at least in our interpretation of the Mole Munch draft, you need to draw all the characters and stuff to make them look 3Dish, and you need to draw the characters in eight directions. I have drawn the mole in all eight directions, as well as started the digging animation for the mole.

However, as the mole and all artwork for the game was about to be implemented, the programmers ran into a huge problem in doing the collishon department, preventing them to make the entire game isometric. This means that all isometric artwork that both me and the rest of the team artists have made for the past five weeks cannot be implemented into the game. This happened during the same week for the alpha-presentation, so we were completely unprepared for a proper visual presentation of the game. The programmers were forced to do two nights of crunching in order to produce as much gameplay mechanics and key features as possible before the presentation. It was still a lousy presentation, but at least the team's still undissolved.

For now on, the game will be played in a Top-Down Perspective. Me and the artists need to redo most of the isometric artwork and try to find some that can be reused. I found one of my old isometric moles that actually looks Top-Downish. 

 

So I used it as an inspirational image to do the new mole. I built the skeleton for it in eclipses, using it to sketch the mole.

And this is how he turned out.

Now when the mole sprite is done, I immediately started to do a top-down digging-animation for it. But now it's here that I myself ran into some problems.

I previously visioned that the mole would jump up in the air, fall into the ground and dig it; all in a short animation.  The team was prevously open for that idea, but because of the change to the Top-Down viewpoint, and the limited programming resources to make a detailed animation, I needed to simplify the animation, using as few as three/four keyframes for it.  

I used the head of the first Top-Down Mole Sprite to do one of the keyframes for the digging animation. Here he prepares for his majestic leap. The idea for the jumping part, however, was scrapped.

So I got the idea that as soon as the player press the dig button, the mole immediatly spawn an earth hole under it.

                  This is the mole when he digs out of the ground.              

And this is when he digs into it.

But now I don't know what to do next, I need to keep in mind about are limited resources in the animation department. As soon as the mole digs, do I need to get his paws to move before he disappears into ground, or do I simply need to do a brown smoke effect of some sorts to conseal the mole, and when the smoke settles the mole sprite disappears and only the brown hole remains?

I need to consult about it with the team during the friday meeting and come to a mutual decision, because we all have a different interpretation of the digging animation, and now especially for our newly elected art-perspective. 

Mole-directions and digging-animation

In the fifth week of development, me and the team prepare ourselves for the alpha presentation on friday.

During friday last week, I was finaly done with the mole sprite ones and for all. Here's his final look.

I finished fixing his left arm and some minor parts of his body. Now he looks like a fully fletched character.

After friday, during the weekend, I spent the time in my home on the mainland and this was really lucky of me because during saturday all of Gotland had an gigantic power outage for several hours. If I would've still been on the island at that time, I would've not been able to finish all the directions in time.

A total of eight directions was needed in order to make the mole look like an isometric charcter. And here's how they turned out. 

It was much easier for me to the the directions, because now that I'm finshied with the first sprite which presents his final look, I could just free transform parts of his body to which direction I want. I can also dublicate his body and use transform to turn him horizontal. However, I still needed to do four new sprites of the mole.I got help from my mom and got some suggestions from the team to improve some of the directions. I also used a elephant souvenir from India as, I think, a perspective tool of sorts. This really helped to do the front and back of the mole (the two sprites on the top-left). I finished drawing all the directions on sunday, and everyone in the team were very pleased.


This week, I got the assignment of doing a digging animation for the mole, when he digs into the ground. The game designer in the team was assigned to paint walkcycles and do the walking-animations to the mole, while I do the digging animations.

This work required some imagination with accurate free-transforming skills. I wanted the mole to jump in the air and then fall into the ground. When he touches the ground, he starts to dig it in the air. When he does that, brown earthpieces erupts from the position he digs on, and he slowly burris deeper into ground until he finaly disappears. I haven't done that part yet, but I'm atleast done on the jumping part of the animation.

For now, I've done 10 frames for the animation. I don't know how much I'll need to do for it, but I need quite a lot for it to look good and run smoothly. I think I'll aim for... between 15-20 frames. And each frame will run on 0.01 seconds, I.e. no delay.

And this is how it turned out.

This needs some imrpovement, but I think I might avoid drawing more jumping frames, because the mole-animation will go faster than the preview-gif above. After I've finished this animation, I'll also need to do an animation whne the mole digs out of the ground. I hope I'll finish the first animation during next week. The team depends on it.

Well, I'll see you next week. 

Designing the Mole, the hero of Mole Munch

Greetings!

We are now four weeks in the development stage, and we spent the time working with our respective assignments and brainstorming our ideas. Me with the mole sketching and the others with their stuff.  For this week we need to prepare ourselves for the pre-alpha prenentation tomorrow at 10.20, and our Game Designer needs to send the Game Design Document before 13:00.
For three weeks, I have painted four different designs for the mole. I have shown my various design ideas to the three other graphics in the team and received new proposals on how to improve it and make it look like a playable character. Since I haven't drawn isometric characters before, this is quite a challenge for me, because when drawing characters for isometric games (such as Bastion and Transistor) you need to draw them so that they can walk in eight directions, compared with Sidescroller games where you only need to draw two character directions. You need to draw the characters in a square grid, using the lines to build up the character and make him face towards all eight angles.

As soon as I've painted the eight directions of the mole, I also need to animate the mole when he walks in those directions.  Furthermore, as one of our core mechanics for the game is the mole's ability to go under ground, I have to make an animation when the mole digs into the ground, and another one when it digs out of the ground. This will take a lot of work, and I'm not even done with the first mole sprite.                                     

I took inspiration from Team 8:s mole design, at least for the head. Me and the team want a mole to look cute.

And not like this one.

Anyways, here are my own mole designs.

When I began with the first design (below), I colored it in three different colors. The left one looks pretty blurry and the center one looks weird. The right one looks better (I used it in the latest design). I used a bluish grey color for the first three.

The biggest error with the first design is that his body looks completely flat, and crawls in a wrong angle.

For the second design, I made him look bigger and hairier, using a new head design. The hairy part looks weird, as if he came out of the dryer or something. Also his left leg looks quite curved.




For the third mole-design, I got a lot of help from my mom to make it look more rounder and not like a animal carpet or a doll. I also added fur with lighter grey colors. It's a more refined version than the second design, but I think the mole still looks like a small teddybear rather than an mole.

This is my latest picture of the mole, using the color from the right mole in the top pic. He now looks thinner and more mole-like, which the teammates like. I still need to finish some parts of it, especially his left arm.

I really hope that the mole will turn out fine and be properly implemented into the game. Our Alpha presentation will take place in friday next week (February, 20), in front of the entire class. We'll present the core mechanics, the first level and the mole. The enemy character, multiple levels, new props and other stuff will be presented in the Bete presentation on Marsh, 13.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you guys next time. Take care!

Winter and early spring in Visby

I take a couple of walks now and then here in Visby, as long as the weather is alright.

Here are some pictures taken on January 24, showing the snow-covered walls and buildings.

Here is a photo-collection taken during February 8, showing Visby in all its splendor.