GAME DEVELOPMENT WEEKLY BLOG POST NR6. WRAPPING THINGS UP

Last week blog post for this course has finally arrived!

This week have been about to strap things up for the final version of our game. I have done some small changes to the game that I will write a bit about.

In the last week blog post I wrote about how I made the buttons and finishing up the background for the main menu. This week I did some small changes as adding who has done our music in our game, which is Samuel Ehnberg from Team 15. Team 15 was the team who came up with the concept to the game we are making (Fancy Mansion) but we have renamed it to Trespawsser. I also remade the text of all the names in Credits. I think it looks more solid with a normal font (font name is Vani Bold) with on the names then the other font we use (this font is named Steampunk font by *hannarb Regular). By changing the font I simple mark which text I want to change and choose a different one In Photoshop.

I have also done two more buttons that will be needed in the game. The two buttons are Submit and Restart. The Submit button will be used when the player types in her nickname for the Score board. The Restart button we will use to restart the game.
I kept the same design on the buttons with some lamps just like the other buttons I made last week.

I was asked to make a cross on the boomerang marker (the boomerang marker is the mouse pointer in the game). This cross over the boomerang will show the player that she can’t use the boomerang at the moment. But today our lead programmer had a crazy idea, that we should scrap the boomerang and make a droid that the player can command instead. We want to change it to the droid because we have seen that the players who test our game dose not simple use the boomerang as much as we want them to. We do think that the players can use this droid in different ways such as clearing the way into a room that the player have not been into yet or have the droid patrolling at a specific area for maybe see where Otto are. The droid is just like the boomerang sort of, it can’t attack nor hurt Otto. It is just to be able to see a bit further in the dark. We have not made this droid yet but it will be in our final version.

We hope this crazy idea will go as we have plan it should go and that the players will have fun with this different kind of “weapon”
Thanks for reading!

/Kim

GAME DEVELOPMENT WEEKLY BLOG POST NR5. MAIN MENU CONTINUE

I started this week work where I left it the other week. So this mean I continue on the main menu and the background. I want it to be as clean as possible for our beta deadline which is this Friday this week.

The background from last week was pretty much done except the colors and some shading. I am working with Photoshop and there for I am using a lot of layers. I will try to explain what a layer in Photoshop are since I have got some feedback from some readers that ask me to explain which program I am using and explain more what it do. So a layer in Photoshop represent a piece of paper sort of, you can manipulate it and I use it for keep some colors and items separated. This helps a lot if you need to remake the color or maybe an object. Then you go to the layer (remember to name the layer to something that represent that drawing on the layer) and change what you want to change.

So I colored the background and added some rough shades and light to it. I am pretty satisfied how it turned out, I am looking for a cartoon-ish style and not too realistic. I did though add some texture on the brick wall, road and the house which I do say looks pretty neat.

I also spent my time on all the buttons and windows for the menu. Here I needed to keep to the style we have in the HUD (Head-Up Display) in game, example of a HUD is the inventory in our game.
I managed to do pretty well with the final result but I did struggle. I accidently saved over my whole file with all the buttons and I had to remake them all again.

First I created the frame of the button and colored in separate layers. After that I started to make some lamps which I wanted to light up the buttons when the player holds the mouse over the buttons.
After I attached the lamps to the frame button I made all the text. Each button has two types of text one with a lower opacity of glow and other one with a higher opacity of glow. The lower one will be used when the mouse is not on the button and the other one when the mouse are over the button.

The two windows screen Credits and Score Board I created was the same process except I did not have two different text nor two types of lamps. I only made the text with the brighter glow and the lamps when they are switched on. 

Thanks for reading and see you next week.

/Kim

GAME DEVELOPMENT WEEKLY BLOG POST NR4. MAIN MENU

This week I am working with the main menu for the game, so pretty much I have only been sketching and drawing the whole week this far. Most of the time I have been drawing some different backgrounds, which have take more hours then I thought it should. This is because I am not the fastest artist but I am perfectionist and want everything should be as good as it can be. Also I think the main menu is important because it is the first thing the player will see on her screen. It is important for the player to get the right narrative feeling and I think the main menu also can give a certain expectation of what kind of quality the game have. The narrative feeling I am trying to give the player are that the environment (the mansion you are breaking into) are a bit spooky. Also that the mansion is huge and a touch of a steampunk theme.

The buttons in the menu going to match the HUD from in-game game-play, some sort of metal frame with cogwheel and maybe a pressure gauge. (check down bellow for some sketch drawing of the buttons)

The nr 1 are pretty basic but are surrounded by tesla coil electricity. This feature we maybe will use when the player holding the mouse over the button.

Nr 2 have some metal, cogwheels and pipe that smoke coming out from. This design I did because to get some feeling of steampunk.

Nr 3 design is not that far away from nr 2 but I added a pressure gauge to it and different metal pieces.

This nr 4 consists of a long tube which also exists in-game.

The background I made some sketches, the very first one was kinda small but it gave me an idea of how the final background should end up.

When I sketch I always use color red this is because later I can put down the opacity of that layer and add another layer on it and draw over it with black color. I do not trace it, I just draw over it and make it better.Sometimes I use different layers for different objects or details so I can simple see if the drawing works with it or not. After this when I am happy I merge the layers (not the sketch layer) and start painting with colors.

So for my background I got sketches and a kind of a clean lines drawing. But it is not colored yet.

This is the first sketch of background, to give a picture of how I imagine it to look for my coworkers.

This is how it looks like now.

Leave a comment with some critic or what you think and if there is anything you wondering.

See you next week!

/Kim