Frankenstein's Monster

IT'S ALIVE!

I'm wanting to incorporate a multitude of classic references, such as Pong above, within SpaceBoy's idle animations.

Idle Animation Mock-ups

Some generic idle animations.

Cheers.

Testing

My post titles have been severely uninspired recently, but judging by the SO FAR title of 'SpaceBoy'; what do you expect. My laziness is just even more visible, is all.

I've been talking with my buddy Oliver - the fella who's helping build the game, via Construct; to keep you in the loop - and he shared with me some builds based around the gravitational mechanics and low-grav/flip-grav/teleport beams throughout the game's design.

With these builds we've discussed camera work - whether it should/shouldn't track the player when the world has flipped, yet, keeping it on the player when in hamster ball-type areas, gravitational triggers - 'press space-bar to flip gravity' - and area zone in which the player can manipulate their gravitational powers.

With these 8 tests firmly in place I've maneuvered swiftly back to animations and, to quote my tutor, "make it look pretty" through potential in-game art and design.

I also managed - again, with the help of my tutor - to alter the image size of SpaceBoy to pixelated, and back again; to give off a glitch-filled feel.

Forget the unregistered shit above the animation; the software was used in order to quickly put the PNG frames together and thus show off a quick mockup of a glitched SpaceBoy running sequence.

Another quick mock-up of an idle sequence 'glitched'.

SpaceBoy in 'prone', transitioning from normal to glitched and back again. The static-like animation references the Wreck It Ralph style of jolty animation (see below).

Notice the minor characters - the ones dancing - and even Felix's walk, reference old-school video gaming it their animations; as though frames are missing, as they jump from one position to another. This is the style I hope to somewhat incorporate within SpaceBoy.

Glitch Generator

SO.

One of the new mechanics - well, altered mechanics - is the addition of the 'glitch'.

The glitch resides in the darkness, and takes over SpaceBoy if he resides in there for too long, eventually turning him into a glitched version of himself. Well, severely pixelated. As a form of metaphor towards wanting to escape the old-school pixels for the more modern, HD-in-an-app look, or whatever.
Glitches, mainly, class as boss battles, and surrounding areas will become tainted by 'glitchiness' (dictionary, without a doubt in there) as SpaceBoy nears them.

With that in mind, I've tampered with how the glitch-look will appeal, and how - indeed - SpaceBoy will look when glitched.
I found a 'create your own glitches' website, that allows you to open up a JPEG image and randomly - or by your own control - glitch the hell out of it.


For example; normal and glitched, respectively.

             

As you can see; the imagery becomes more and more obscure and off, even creating colours that weren't within the original incarnation of SpaceBoy.
They serve as examples of possible side effects of 'glitches' found within the game's design.
It will be fun (frustrating) to see how these play out within basic animations such as movement.






GLITCH GENERATOR LINK

Back To The Concepts

So, I'm going to start another post with 'so'.

So. I've reverted back to concepting. Pen and paper-type shit, y'all. Old School.
I used to traverse, from paper to Photoshop on what I found best with concept work. It even got to a point where designing characters, objects, environments, level designs was much easier on Photoshop, than paper. But as of this week I've gone all traditional and summoned out the pen and paper. I draw better with pen, as any errors in drawings or spelling is forever imprinted in front of me, as a learning/guiding process to avoid such things with future tasks.

I knocked up a 'test list' - of which is exactly what the title suggests; a set of tests that would be designed and then built and tested, in order to get a feel for the animations, designs, and mechanics I'd established within the concept work.
The reason I've recently gone back to concepting - as well as continuing with the testing - is because I don't feel like the game's design is quite there yet. There's still something missing. Maybe, eventually, I'll see that the missing thing is actually the thing I've been overlooking of recent; basic designs, cleverly designed. Not that I haven't always had that in mind, that's in fact the driving force for my project - charm, character, originality - yet, it's often overlooked when consistently feeding ideas and mechanics into it. This is how confusion happens, and an original and simple idea becomes a highly saturated task.
Thus, frustration occurs.

I've decided on concepting again to take a step back and look at the 'novelty', the 'kitsch' - to a lesser extent - of what makes a game - and indeed, hopefully mine - stand out, through (as stated above) charm and character.
And with this, I've been highly influenced by my own past experiences in gaming, music, film and TV.
It's about using an existing thing or product, what works and doesn't, and almost borrowing from multiples of these to create something that's my own, something that highlights the best and worst of nostalgia and charm to bring a fresh spin on an old idea.

For example, I've been working on 'idle animations' - of which are animations a character will produce when un-moved by the player - which aren't a necessity to video game design, they're potentially seen as novelty, yet lying in these small details comes the charm, the character. Disney and Nintendo's famed franchises flourish in charm, through small, almost seemingly unimportant features like these, these are - in fact - what makes these stand out from the rest. Anybody can replicate a blueprint, and mimic a design, but it's the masters that turn something so simple into such a wondrous and complex experience that excel, in my eyes at least.







Abrupt end.

To be un-abruptly continued...

The Indie Space Title Boom

uh oh, space isn't the most original backdrop in video games anymore...



The PC Games Column: Space-Exploration



...not that I ever thought it was, nor did I want to break new ground with SpaceBoy.
So, up yours column.

I kid. The link above is dedicated towards the ranking of the 'pluckiest' video games in a 'rising genre' of space-related titles on the PC.
Discussing indie hits from Kerbal Space Program to the pixel-based Interstellaria, and universe-sized sand-box multiplayer experiences such as Space Station 13, the column gives a short but interesting insight into the kind of setting I'm exploring with SpaceBoy. After Testing. And further concepting. Potentially. Eventually.
















Oh and, I have a small, broken - yet - charming build, as a means to show off probable style/animation for SpaceBoy.


....Here.

(W, A, S, D to move).

..alright.

Terrible sequel. And even more terrible that I put it in, and that you don't even need to watch it because the tagline at the top of the video pretty much sums up what I'm going for.
Metaphor though - bare with me - walking from the smoke and crumbling debris, returning back from the brink (Christmas/New Year) with a vengeance. Though slightly cut-up and bruised; ready to face whatever else stands in my way.

Or whatever, who cares.

So I haven't done an entry in a while, Christmas for me was essentially 4 weeks of multiple illnesses, positively rounded off with the anticipation of, and the giving - there of - of gifts.

My recent contribution to the project in hand has been to teach myself the application of which SpaceBoy will surely flourish on, in 9 short months - Construct 2. With this, I thought I'd learn the basics, to further a grasp of the task at hand and how to - therefore - beneficially produce quality in the grand scheme of things.

Already, after doing some basic tutorials for platform game development, I see the process much clearer - as intentionally it was me doing all the concepts, design and in-game artwork and assets, and my wise friend fella Oliver who was putting it all together, to form a functional combination of a few years conception into a small playable game.

As such, I wanted to also to know the software for future reference, and if for any reason progress is slowing down, I can potentially be there to chime in, with basic programming, as well as my initial project role.

I've also established the need for play testing. Sure, something that clearly is needed to ensure a solid gaming experience for the other player(s), but also as a basic means of seeing how mechanics I conceptualized last year, fare in quality when actually running in real-time.

The final reason - for now - for wanting to learn Construct 2 was the fact that I prefer seeing how something's made, how it functions, if it works, if it doesn't, pacing, design, etc. That's why I loved level designing so much last year, it was - if anything - my favourite of the three modules, as it required small sketched out concepts, that I would then apply and further within the game's level editing software.

I enjoy coming up with ideas and concepts, but I don't feel like it's complete without actually producing something - from those ideas - that can be played, tested, criticized and improved.

So with all that crap above justified (I haven't proof read) to me anyway, I will be providing updates based around testing and Construct 2 learning.

Cheers. Merry January.