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.