Synoptic MVP Feedback!

This week we received feedback for our Synoptic Project. Overall this past couple weeks between checks have been quite confusing due to being advised to treat the project as two separate things but then in the most recent feedback one of the main forms of criticism was: ” Try to anchor the games in the same world as the robot, as they feel like very separate experiences at the moment.” This piece of criticism confused us because of the original feedback that we should be separate. Below is the feedback that we received:

The feedback helps us understand where the project stands in the eyes of the lecturers but as a group we have decided that we are going to do as we were told at the start of the project and treat it as two separate projects. Due to us doing this it allows us to allocate more time to us doing more coding/animations instead of constantly worrying about how we are going to mash all the games, models and animations all into one for the final project. However, even though we have decided to do this now we may change our mind near the end if we have time since we all want to have a finalized product in the end instead of two separate ones.

We are now in the last stage of the project. With around 6 weeks of college time left until the deadline we are going to have one final push to get more games and animations done to not only satisfy the project but to satisfy our portfolios at the end of the college year. Both me and Jacob are looking to create 5 games each for the project by either coming up with new ideas or by recycling ideas from the previous year.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Modular Floor Tiles!

Today I finished the floor tiles for my 2D platformer game for the Synoptic Project. After I created the player and the player animations I had to think about what overall theme I would want to go for and I had to ask myself weather or not the player would match with the environment. After thinking for a while an looking at reference images I decided to match the theme that I used for the character and made the floor tiles slime themed.

As you can see below here are the three final pieces of my platformer. I was struggling to decide whether to make the underneath of the platforms concrete coloured or dirt coloured but when I made it dirt coloured I was instantly put off because of the similarities to the Minecraft dirt block so I decided to go for my initial idea of concrete.

Overall I really like the way that the platforms turned out and I look forward to putting them into a full environment in my unity scene.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

 

2D Platformer Planning – Synoptic!

Today I spent an hour or so researching different playing styles of 2D platformer and eventually I decided on what a main mechanic of my game will be. The mechanic that I decided that I wanted was click and drag blocks to complete the level. Basically the player will have full control over everything just like in a conventional 2D Platformer but as well as using WASD and SPACE to move and jump the player will be using the mouse to click and drag blocks into place in order to complete a level or a puzzle to complete a level. After coming up with this idea I headed straight over to draw.io to design how I want the game to be laid out like and to explain in the visual format to people who still didn’t quite understand fully.

Throughout the level building process I was thinking about the art style of my game and what theme it should be based around. At first I wanted to go for a kind of winter style with very dark colours with a mix of dark and light blues but I decided to keep the simplistic style of a typical arcade 2D Platformer like Mario etc. Here is the draw.io level design that I did today.

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As you can see the base design is very simple which was done deliberately since this will be the same or similar to the first level of the game which is mostly for explaining controls and game mechanics. As the game progresses I plan to make it a lot harder and more complicated to make the player have to be cautious when playing instead of rushing straight through the level. Things that will slow the player down that I am planning to add include: hidden blocks that appear when clicked, enemies and, in a few parts of the game, situations where the player has to move the block then move the player continuously until they arrive at their destination.

So far that is the furthest I am though the planning process for my 2nd game, after this the next thing that I need to research is the art style of my game because I plan to get the art done and out of the way as soon as possible so I can concentrate more on the code aspect without having to worry about getting the art done.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

1st Game Base Completed – Synoptic!

It is the end of the week and I, as I expected, have completed the main and additional making and scripting of Astrol Defence. The overall game was quite fun to make because it has been a while since I have actually sat down and created a 2D game since my last few projects that I have been involved in were all 3D ones. Even though the last projects were 3D I still learned a lot that I used to help me during this project and it made me realize how far I have come since my first couple 2D games. I say that the game is completed but by that I mean all of the coding, assets, sounds and other art are in but I need to add a basic old school main menu (I will use the same one for every game which is why I haven’t done it yet) and a few lines of script to tell the game when the UI point counter reaches a certain amount to load the next scene which will most likely be a scene of animation from Bence or Josh.

There were a few things that I created but didn’t make the cut because I didn’t see anywhere that they could have fit in. These things are the two pieces of 2D animation that I did: the explosion and the background with the flickering stars. These did not make it into this stage of the game because I didn’t like the way that they effected the player experience due to being too distracting, so to make up for removing these things I added an alternate image of each alien to make it look as if it is slightly moving, the sprite changes back and forth every 0.5 seconds.

Here is a GIF of the game at it’s current stage:

Due to me finally finishing Astrol Defence I can now start the planning process of my 2D platformer properly by picking out the following: a genre, a style, what mechanics I will want, the final goal to the game and maybe a little bit of story/dialogue.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Next Week Planning! (2nd Game Planning)

At the end of this week I plan to have Astrol Defence up and ready to go since I still need to tweak a few things here and there with certain scripts and components to make the game as smooth as possible.

Since by the end of this week I will have the game finished I will be moving on to another type of game for the project. This game will be a more modern style of game since this arcade machine will be played in the main arcade room and not in the storage room. The genre of game I will be going for will be a fairly simple 2D platformer game and I may be adding a sub genre like adventure for example. Below are a few reference images that I may use to help me with things like level design and style of my upcoming game:

I have picked these images due to them all having different things which I may like to add to my platformer game, for instance: the first reference has a coin counter in the top middle of the screen which I would like to include in my game, the second reference has quite a simplistic style of flooring tiles but the thing that I really liked in this was the impact that a dark set background has on the rest of the level. This made me choose this as reference because it made me think what other style of background could I have that impacts the players feelings (e.g different seasons). Finally, I chose the third reference because I really like how the multiple layered background looks when in an environment. I hope to combine what I took from the second and third reference and put it into my game by maybe having it based in winter (to give the player a cold feeling) and having multi layered snowy mountains in the background.

Anyway, to get back onto what I plan to do next week, I hope to get a decent way into the core mechanics of the platformer by maybe having the basic movement (walking and jumping), enemies that kill on collision with the player and an end goal that transitions to the next level. In total I plan to have around five levels in the game overall. If I get all of that done by the end of the week I can start on the basic and pixelated (most likely) art

In terms of art I don’t want to have a character that I will need to put much effort into animating because I want to put the majority of my focus and attention into the programming side of things so my character will most likely have one or no legs and no arms to limit the animation process as much as I possibly can.

Potential idea reference images:

I could potentially go for something like this but ideas can always change and I could get something in the end that looks nothing like these, that is the wonder of planning and the final product.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Finished Game Art!

This blog post is dedicated to showing off the assets that I have made for both Astrol Defence (My Game) and the Asteroids Style game (Jacob’s Game).

First up are the enemies that I made for my game. As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I took ideas from several different reference images and combined them to make a product. After I had finished I didn’t want to just put the images on my blog for two main reasons, one of them being the fact that the resolution of the individual aliens was 30 x 30 pixels so when exported as a PNG the images are not up to the quality to be on a blog and the other is the fact that just dragging them into my blog seemed lazy so I wanted to present them more professionally. I had to experiment with different ways to extenuate the letters and I found the outer glow option in Photoshop. At first the title(s) looked blurry and barely understandable but I realized my mistake and knew that I had to import the title that I drew in differently as well as alter the settings in the outer glow tab to make the glow a soft glow instead of a hard one. Also after sorting all the background and title I wanted to make the enemies look a little bit more appealing instead of just being there so I got an idea from a picture I saw previously to duplicate the enemies and make shadow-like objects below them. Below is the finished piece:

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Next up is all of the asteroids art. I put on the task of doing the art for the asteroids game because I wanted Jacob to focus on coding the game instead of having to do art and getting bored because I could tell that he really didn’t want to do it. I originally created a coloured version of the asteroid enemy but later, after I had finished all of the coloured asteroids, Jacob brought up a valid point that the asteroids should be white to go with the simplistic style of his game so I changed the asteroids into the plain white style that Jacob requested (which is why there are two sets of asteroids). The original base version of the game (with no art) was quite confusing to play because the player was an equilateral triangle so the player had no idea which corner of the triangle the bullet was firing from so when drawing the player I kept the simple colour style of white black and grey but I added a red tip where the bullet will fire from.

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The final piece of game artwork is the player for Astrol Defence. The ‘before’ version of the player was the first piece of artwork that I did for the synoptic project and after revisiting it last week I realized how bad it was and it was definitely not high enough quality for my game so I re-drew it. As you can see here, and from the previous blog post, I went for a jet style of player instead of the simplistic block with a turret on it from the original Space Invaders. As for the bullet I have not put it into the image because it is just going to be a simple, white bullet like object which isn’t worth putting into this piece because it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the images since it isn’t really high enough quality art.

That is all with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

 

Synoptic Team Update!

A few weeks ago I started coding the space invaders style game which will be the second game in our synoptic project, (second to Jacob’s Asteroids style game). In the project me and Jacob both agreed that it would be better if we split the tasks into two by having a core programming task which covers the basic movement of the game and enemies etc. and an additional mechanics task which covers power ups, collectibles and other things similar to that. So to put it simply the core mechanics are the bones/structure and the additional mechanics are the meat (the thing that makes it a game). In this blog post I will be covering both mine and Jacob’s games.

Astrol Defence

I will start with my game which at the minute is going well with no current problems. So far I have the core programming done: Player movement, bullet firing and enemy movement (Needs fixing). I am working on getting particle effects in which will, hopefully, cover the enemies dying/the player dying and the bullet firing. On the additional programming side of things there aren’t many things you can do with a game as plain as Space Invaders but we came up with a few ideas which I will be experimenting before the additional programming deadline of the 8th of March. This is what the game currently looks like at the time of this blog post going up:

[GIF Needed]

Asteroids Style Game

Over the week I was working on my game so was Jacob and he also has his core programming done. He has the player movement, player shooting, enemy movement and enemy ‘dying’. I believe that he is going to be adding pickups/power ups to make the game more modernized like the games today instead of just having a carbon copy of the old asteroids. At the current time of this blog going up this is the most up to date version of Jacob’s game that I have:

I am happy with the overall progress that me and Jacob have made with the development of our games and we look forward to moving on to the production of both of our second games

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Away from the game development side of things two other members are working on the animation/modelling side of the project since we were told to treat the project as two separate projects (an animated short and a game) because mine and Bence’s ideas were combined together. Over the past couple of weeks Bence has been rigging and skinning the robot character that Josh modeled a week or so before. Bence has also been modelling little miscellaneous items to go into the storage room like tools etc. Here are some of them below:

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While Bence is rigging and skinning the robot character Josh is modelling different things to go into the starting room (Storage Room) since he can’t do any animation until the character is rigged and skinned. He has been doing a little bit of main modelling and some miscellaneous items that will be scattered around the storage room to fill the place up a bit. Obviously the robot character is one main model but the other model(s) that he has done is the Arcade Machine(s). Below are a few examples of what he has done so far.

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The work that Bence and Josh have been doing is making me really hopeful for how the overall project is going to look like outside of the games that me and Jacob are making, I am looking forward to expanding the project to the actual Arcade Room as well as the storage room.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum 4 – Synoptic

Overall

Most of the group has made progress but it has been slower than normal due to having a week off and needing to get into the rhythm of college and work again. The group has taken its time to get back into it and has completed a couple of tasks each, next week we will be focused again and start catching up for last week hoping we can get closer to reaching the MVP goal by the end of March/Beginning of April.

Issues

During the half term most did not do any work during it however we have talked and discussed that we should start working in our spare time to make sure we do not lose our attitude during periods of time when we are not at college and have a continued attitude and focus towards it.

Currently Working On

Matty – Finalizing the Additional Mechanics for Astrol Defence.

Jacob –  Finishing adding power ups and starting to add additional enemies to the asteroid styled game (still need a name).

Josh – Creating 3D assets for the arcade room (vending machine and lights)

Bence – Experimenting with lighting in the storage room.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

2D Assets (1st Game) – Synoptic

Today I started to draw up the assets for the space invaders style game for the synoptic project. I started with the ship because it is the most important part of the game since it is the thing that is actually being controlled by the player. Research wise I decided to go along the lines of a fighter jet instead of a spaceship because I wanted to have the sharp tip on the end of the character to symbolize an arrow which shows the player where to fire (even if it is pretty self explanatory). Below are a few images that I used for reference:

 

When I was drawing the ship, obviously, I didn’t want to just copy off of an already existing model/drawing so I took away and added to the drawing, taking pieces from the 1st ship (RIGHT) and putting it on the 2nd ship (MIDDLE). Below is the finalized ship that I ended up with:

After that I went for the enemy sprites (the aliens in space invaders). I looked for space invader style enemies since the art for my game is going to be entirely pixel art. Below is what I managed to gather to help me with the enemies in my game.

Just like what I did for the spaceship I took inspiration from both images and compiled them together to make my own sprites. I took the colourized sprite idea from the 1st image (LEFT) and I took the similar shape of the sprites from the 2nd (RIGHT). In the end these are the finalized sprites that I got:

After that I began working on the background because I didn’t want to go with the normal plain black style of the original space invaders so I decided to do an animated background with stars flashing, I plan to do this using the unity animator. Below is the reference image: i am writing his nwithoit lookimg

I saw this and instantly wanted to incorporate it into the game but in a pixel format. In Photoshop I created two frames of animation, one with normal stars and one where the stars have flashed. In the end I think it worked out fairly well but I think it might be a little bit too distracting so this may change in the near future. Here it is below:

[GIF]

The following pieces are art that I need in order to complete the art for this game: The bullet, ship firing particle effect, ship exploding particle effect and destroyed ship.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

My Synoptic Team and Role!

As I mentioned in my last blog I was put in a group with Bence, Josh and Jacob in a part Animation part Game project. This blog post is to reflect on how I feel about the project and my general thoughts on everything.

Overall I am happy that I get to work on what I actually wanted to work on and with a team that I can actually work and communicate with since being in a team in which I couldn’t communicate was my biggest fear during the team selection. In this project I will be working as the Project Manager as well as a programmer and level designer for all of the games in the Arcade. Josh and Bence will be animators/modelers/artists for the project and Jacob will be programming games alongside me.

Overall I am still happy with the project even though it is not fully my idea but I am exited to start working with animations in unity and more things that I wouldn’t have ended up doing if I was working on my pitch.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!