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.
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.
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.
...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.
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.
So yeah, talked with Oliver - the fella friend who did all the technical buildy stuff with Lima - and he mentioned that we should start SpaceBoy from the beginning.
'It would be easier starting afresh because once I got it working in the Lima project I would have to redo it all again in a new one... saves time and we can get the show on the road'
So forget the other stuff I mentioned on the previous post about working with Lima's core build to create early prototypes of SpaceBoy.
I'd edit it but that doesn't show growth now does it.
Further exploration of EGON brought me to the developer's 'Devlog', showing small updates such as a run cycle and in-game interaction with other characters.
He's also produced a demo, marked 'old', and it plays like The Impossible Game - with endless running and precise jumping to hurdle obstacles. Though the developer intends EGON to be a 'atmospheric puzzle adventure game', so this demo is most likely an engine and animation test.
So recently I've been a very busy little boy, arranging my mama's birthday with my family for the whole of last week. Excuses, excuses. As such, I've barely been able to comprehend game playing. The playing and inner monologuing/analyzing has been put on hold.
End of the world, right.
But now that that's all over with I've been back to rekindling my yearn to get this project started. Well, started as in actual ideas and the development of these THROUGH the initial research displayed within this blog.
As such, all throughout this two WHOLE months of Masters so far, the main concept has been nostalgia. And with that, I've wanted to follow in the footsteps of the concept/character/level design-based Honors project I had spent the majority of my time on for last year.
The project was essentially a design document, but without the bulk and core assets usually seen within these such as detailed and specific information, about each and every single thing needed within the game.
It was essentially conceptual-based, with the amount of work based on idea sheets I'd sketched up, and the evolution of these through further development and design, to show the whole process of how the game's design was unfolded; like a visual story book.
In addition to this, I'd created a fully fledged level design - based on the asset, gameplay and overall visual presentation - of which unveiled a basic introduction to the game's visual and technical prowess in the form of an interactive PowerPoint presentation. The user was faced with 10 slides - 8 slides of level playthrough and 2 dedicated to the intro and outro of the level - and would animate when specific objects, characters and important assets where highlighted with the mouse cursor. This was originally intended to be built as a small puzzle-based point-and-click level, with players having to move back slides to discover alternate and essential pieces to further the level until the end.
In PowerPoint, however, this deemed improbable, and I resorted to a simple interactive storybook that instead gave the user information and intention within each piece they could animate.
A visual interpretation of the game's intended look and feel. With the addition of the character interacting with the environment - large mushroom. The game's whole design was based around light as the source of life for the character. Without it, they would eventually fade into the dark and forever become and outline like everything else in the world.
The project's title, very linear and uninspired.. sure, but it's something I clearly have to work on. Video game titles. Sue me.
Essentially, the idea was always to create a prototype. I enjoy conception, and generating ideas and design, but I wanted the whole package - a working demo.
With the constraints of time, and the fact that I was already creating the game throughout concept and design I'd established that at a later date, or within another project in the future, I wanted to further the game.
The game's protagonist - SpaceBoy - designed with 8-bit in mind. The further and original designs show the character is a slick, modern, HD-style, though I did intend, before the addition of 'black and white visual design', to have the game as a throwback to those old-school visuals, with a modern twist. Yeah, nostalgia is essentially what I've been working with for the last few years...
So, with my Masters, I've been considering retreading old ground, and essentially developing a working prototype and/or demo, as most of the game is already there, waiting to be brought to life.
Obstacles I'll encounter within the next few weeks and upcoming months will include the chosen game engine to develop it in, and how the design will fair now when compared to it's design half a year ago.
The engine I have in mind is Construct 2. Plus, with working with it for Lima I can essentially use it as a basis for early prototype builds, that implement SpaceBoy's gameplay with Lima's assets.
A small but visually impressive model of Contruct's engine capabilities is EGON; a small indie game I found while searching for Construct-based game examples.
