GGC Aftermath - Thoughts about the Project

The GGC is over and now is the time to write the project report. The report will be turned in Monday on May 30, and seminars will take place on  June 3 and 10. I will be writing about my animation work for our previous game project, Synapse.

Several months before the Big Game Project course began, I was very nervous about my performance on it, since I haven't read much graphics courses during my second year. Luckily, I found a talanted team where I had an important role during the development of Synapse, when I was an animator drawing in-between frames for the in-game animations, until I ended up as the team's main sound designer for Spark.

I thought both of my roles have been really fun to work with, especially with the animations when the end result turned out really good. There I learned a lot about how to move proportions and draw lines in a good way, where I maked sure that my frames were in the same art style as the original key-frames and breakdown frames. My sound work was also really good, though I made a lot of revisions. I learned how to use two new sound softwares which will be put to good use in future projects.

This course has been a personal victory for me. Because this is the first time that I've put up a game at the Gotland Game Conference exhibition, since my previous Theme Park project was a huge mess and wasn't allowed to be presented at the exhibition. It was so nice to see students, teachers, GGC jury members, and kids playing our game. We got a lot of positive feedback from them, such as the graphics, animations, the combat, and comparing the game to Dark Souls. They also highlighting some apparent bugs and places in the game were they get trapped and can't get out of.

Overall, I think that our huge pivot was absolutely the right choice. We worked day and night in order to finish develop the new game, and it really paid off. Instead of doing a game which we were uncertain would even work, we made a fun combat platformer on a short scheme, thanks to our previous experiences on building platformer games. I'm sure that if we would've solved the design problems with Synapse, as well as maintaining a smoother workflow (especially for the animations), then Synapse would have been a game too.

But for now, Synapse may rest in peace. Long Live Spark!

Here are some pictures from the exhibition. The first two pictures shows testplayers of Spark, next to the game Slumber.

 See you around!

 

Building a Platformer in 11 days

For 11 days, starting from Tuesday on May 10th to saturday night on May 21st, we built a whole new game called Spark. A combat platformer where you would would play as the last spark of hope (symbolized as a female knight armed with a sword and a torch) who must defeat shadowy monsters who symbolize deppresion, anxiety and paranoia in a nightmarish world.

For this new project, I was tasked with three types of assignments: making prototype assets, create/collect/edit/implement sound effects and music, and editing a Trailer video of the game.

I made a health pick-up, which ended up in the main game.

I made a animated health-bar. This was only used briefly in the prototype version.

I made a drawing of Big Ben. This art-asset was scrapped.

I made a destructable vase. This was scrapped.

And lastly, a concept art of a potential monster sprite. This was scrapped because a member in the team already made two different monster sprites and his art style was superior to mine.

My main role in Spark was to create and collect sound effects, making me the team's Sound Designer. For the short time we builded Spark (11 days), I made a total of 33 tracks by using a web sound software called Bfxr. where you can create 16-bit sounds from 9 different waveforms and edit 30 individual filters. You can also mix different tracks into a single multilayered sound. I also used a audio editor called Audacity for further tweaking, since the editor in Bfxr. is very limited. I implemented the sound effects and music to our build on Unity, by adding tracks to the animations of the main character and the monsters. 

However, on wednesday on May 18th, we had our beta presentation of our newly built project. The new game was approved, citing a slight improvement compared to our previous project (Synapse), but they cited multiple problems. One of these was the 16-bit sound effects, which they regarded as improper comparted to the game's art style.  

So I was tasked to search for traditional sounds effects. I burrowed a external harddrive containing the school's sound library. I browsed trough the hundreds of tracks and found a total of 55 tracks. I edited some of these on Audacity to make them sound better, and implemented the new sounds to each animation on our Unity build. These where then edited by one of our programmers so that these wouldn't sound too loud in the main game.  

In order to add some kind of narrative in the game, one in my team came up with the idea to record short lines of dialogue that would be played on different locations in the game. But since we had precious little time to tweak the game before GGC, we came up with the quick solotion that I would make a 20 minute ambient music track that would replay three kinds of ambient music tracks and add 12 dialogue tracks with a 1.5 minute interval. 

And finally, I edited the trailer for Spark.

One teammate created a story board for the trailer which I used as a guideline.

I used Sony Vegas Pro 12 with the art assets from the game, along with the 16-bit sound effects that I've made. The music was composed by Mattia Cupelli. It took me two days to edit it, and I followed the story board only partially since not all the animations was ready in time when I edited the trailer. However, the team liked my trailer and we could present it to the teachers and the GGC jury-members on May 21, the first day at the GGC.

During the same day, we put up our game in the games exhibition.

The End of Synapse - Birth of Spark

So... A lot of things have happened during these last two weeks.

Besides my in-between animation work for the past five weeks, I've been tasked to search for sound effects for the game, both from YouTube and from the "sound library" extended hard drive from school. I found a total of 12 sounds, as well as potential background music from composer Kevin Macleod.

We had a huge playtesting on May 6th. But during the six weeks we've developed Synapse, it seems that we have been grounded to a halt in terms of actual gameplay in the game. Our conceived puzzle mechanics couldn't work, our Unity-build crashed a bunch of times, and we were unable to implement our animations and other art-assets in time for both the Alpha presentation and the Big Playtest. 

So the odds was against us for a long time. But then one of our old teachers came by our office and proposed that, in order to make a game worthy of being played at the Gotland Game Conference (GGC - 21-23 May), we should do a huge pivot. 

And so we did.

We scrapped everything that we've been doing for the past six weeks. Every art-asset, all animations, sound effects, codes. Our scrum. Everything. The team-leader proposed that we should make a game that everyone is confortable to work with, as long as everyone is prepared to work for longer hours and produce multiple daily results.

We all agreed. And for the next 11 days, being finished at the night before GGC, we created a whole new game.

Rest in Piece, Synapse

A educational game with puzzle elements.

Long Live Spark!
A combat platformer.

In-between Animations for Two Weeks

For the past two weeks in the project, I've been working on animations for the female character in Synapse. These animations, which are tradional 2D frame animation, will be played out when the player cleared a task. For now, we plan on having eleven different tasks. We will also be doing fail- and idle-animations.

Two members in our team work on the concepts and the creation of the animations, by doing key-frames and breakdown-frames, while I'm responsible on making in-between frames for these animations, along with two other members in the team. In-between frames are the ones that plays between the key- and breakdown frames. Once the in-between frames are done, each frame in the animation will be colored and timed by one of the members, until they're finally implemented in our Unity Project.

The following gifs are the ones that I've made in-between frames for, marked with a "T".



Here is the animation for Task 11. I made 10 tweens on this one. The girl gets hit on her cheek by a basketball. He cleanes her sheek and returns to her normal pose.

Here is the animation for Task 1. I made 6 tweens on this one. The girl hears a sound off-screen, but shrugs it of and returns to her normal pose.

This is one of two fail-animations. I made 12 tweens on this one. She trips on the ground but manages to stand up and return to her normal pose.

This is one of three idle-animations. I only made two tweens here, since this is a short animation. She shrugs both her shoulders.

I will be doing a couple of more in-between animations during the last two weeks in this project. But for now, I will be focusing on more important tasks, such as finding and editing sound effects and music, and help on doing special effects on Unity. 

Second Post - Fever and Animation Training

The week before, I was having a fever and a cold, so I haven't had much time on doing much else. On the remaining two days of that week, I spent the time on doing some animation training.


Here is a anticipation animation, with a guy throwing a huge punch.

Here is a squash and stretch animation of a head.

Synapse – A Big Game Project – First Post

Well then, I'm back to my old blog again. I will be doing posts every week from this day forward, to the end of May. 

I'm now reading the last course of the second year of Game Design in Campus Gotland, the Big Game Project. This is the examination course of this year, where teams of between 5-9 members will be working on a two-month game project, similar to the previous year's course during the same period, Theme Park. 

At the end of the project, all teams will present their games at the Gotland Game Conference where students, teachers, children and aduls can go and play these. My previous year's project was not a success, and my team where the only one who were not permitted on puting up our game for the exhibition. 

Laft week, I joined a team of seven members (six artists and one programmer) and we will be making a game called "Synapse". This game will be focusing on the following subjects, according to our current Game Design Document.

"Synapse is a game for the hands on brain scientist in training, where you learn how the brain functions, what parts the brain consist of, and what these parts do."

This is done by performing tasks, where you guide a signal through nerve pathways to a part of the brain corresponding to the task asked of the player to carry out, and seeing what happens to the player avatar performing the action, in the form of an oft-humorous animation. There are several nerve pathways you can move the signal through, with only one of them leading to the correct part."

I assume the role as a graphics artist and animator; I will be doing animations for these tasks, collaborating with the other five artists in the team, as well as graphical objects needed for the upcoming alpha/beta-presentations.

Here are some simple brain nerve paths art that I quickly made. These might not end up in the finished product, but maybe in the alpha version. 

I made the synapse signal that might also end up in the alhpa version. Here I used a glowing effect in Photshop, using this tutorial video from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMObiT7C-U

I started making a storyboard for a couple suggestions for Idle-animations the character would make in the game, possibly in the Sandbox/tutorial level.

And finaly, here is a short ball animation that I made to fresh up my animation skills.

Well that is all. I should also mention that during half of this week I've been having a high fever, so I've had not much time on doing stuff for this week. But as soon as I leave the sickbed, I'll be starting on creating idle character animations.

Hopefully, this year's project will be a huge success. Or at least better than my previous project during Theme Park.

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.