Welcome to Devlog 5.A

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Why 5.A, this week will be broken into 2 parts. One will tackle, graphics and assets. (Here!) and the other will deal with results from a testing session, with the rest of the KIT109 students! Lets get into it!

What happened this week?

Won't be any actual talking about coding today. Will will be talking about art! (Assets) If you've been following along the majority if not all of the assets present in the game have been white boxes. All of them. Which isn't very engaging is it. Now in this case, I needed to break up what was needed for the game.

What assests do we need then?

Three areas that need assets:

Player:

• Base Character Design based off concepts
• Walking Animation
• Flying Animation
• Falling Animation
• Smack Animation

Worldspace:

• Obstacles:
  • Missiles
    • Missile Flame Animation

  • Rectangle Obstacle

Sound Effects:

• Music Tracks
• Footsteps
• Death Sound
• Missile Locking Sound
• Missile Shooting Sound
• Jetpack firing sound

What did we settle on?

For this section, I enlisted the support of a close friend named Thomas who provided around 60% base for the assets. While I filled in the gaps, and animated all of the animations you see in game, based of the base assets. Lets talk about them in order.

Melon Man (Player)

This is what we call Melon Man he is based off of the concept art from the original devlog, with a few stylistic deviations. This was created by Thomas.

Now in communication with tom we decided on making the melon man asset into multiple smaller assets, which could then be manipulated into various poses and animations.

Now those who are particularly observant will notice a little folder called renders and a little file called play run!

This is is run cycle animation for the game, now the reason we decided on this approach was in part consideration of the scope of the project and the style I had in mind. This approach was much less time consuming then standard 2D frame by frame animation, or tweening and was very easy to implement with generic software. (I used Krita!) We used this approach for the majority of animation in the game.

Worldspace:

Now it was very important that we make a clear distinction between the world and its obstacles to easily identify them as a threat, so with tom, we came up a few things.

For the Missile:

We wanted it to feel unique and interesting compared to jetpack joyride. 

We came up with the missile we made the Knife Shark Rocket Missile. Because what is more dangerous then a knife shark missile?

Its also paired with a very generic ! indicator I created.

Now, there is another obstacle called the Saw, this replaces the static rectangles and the spinners. 

The design we moved onto allowed use to to some interesting scaling in terms of the y axis.
For those who play the full release will also get to experience the big boss! But I'll keep that a secret for now....
I have also contributed the assets for the start screen. (Coming soon!) Athough not as good as Tom's work. I also worked on the development of the background, making some assets that refineforce the factory asethtic. Although I orginally went through a few iterations on what to consider.

This was my original idea for a tumbler/conveyor, I intended to put in the foreground of the background. This had a few issues, as I could not implement because of the way the game handles player movement, and I wished to do a little bit of parralax, to give the game world some depth.
 

I setteled on a system like this, I made a conveyor which is actually just a set of two static lines. I then spawn, a set of objects going right to produce a parralax effect, then  using a different object (gears) to produce the illusion that  the conveyor is moving, then I added a two part "tumbler" that acts like its sending melons onto the conveyer, I recieved positive reviews on it, so moved forward with this design.

Last thing I will talk about is the foor and roof.
I initially tried a perspective based floor tile, although this had a few issues, one it fried completely everything when I replaced it on the floor, I tried cutting it up into tiles, but I lacked the skills to implement this in a time effecient manner, so I went with a different solution.




This is the roof, I switched the roof from a scaled X axis. It represents a vent and a roof. The way it will be set up in game will be a very high risk area, as the player will travel behind the vents, so keep your witss about it you! Here is also the floor, which has a tiled design, with interesting machinations underneath. The reason I am using tiles, is that otherwise scaling it to be long, would make the textures stretched, so this is a good comprimise.

Sound Effects:

For brevity I will only be attaching the song assets I am using, SFX will be listed in the final devlogs implementaion. 

I decided on a few tracks to help keep the games atmosphere feel more alive and engaging.

For in gameplay I will be using two tracks.

 "Luminare” - Fast Action 8 Bit Rock By HeatleyBros

And "Fury Road" Fast Action 8 Bit Rock by HeatleyBros

And for when the player dies.

What is next?

This week, this changes are not being implemented this week, but after 5.B and into week 6 . Week 5.B will deal with user feedback and peer review!

Thank you for following the game.

References:

HeatleyBros. (2020, June 21). “Luminare” - fast action 8 bit rock by HeatleyBros. YouTube.

HeatleyBros. (2019, December 29). “fury road” fast action 8 bit rock by HeatleyBros. YouTube.

HeatleyBros. (2016, September 9). “Ancient passage” mysterious spooky game music by HeatleyBros. YouTube.