Sprint 4/9

ACCOMPLISHED:
Valkyrie helped me come up with a better design for the box art.  I tweaked it til I got something that I was satisfied with.  Everyone else seems to like the new box art as well.

I don't think I mentioned this in my previous posts.  But somewhere along the way (I don't remember which sprint) I made a smoke animation that plays to show where hidden enemies are (guards or shadow monsters). For this sprint I changed the sizes of that smoke animation so that we can use if to different sized enemies.  That was a bit of a hassle as the shadow monsters are all different sizes.

I also fixed some problems with the sprite sheet.  I had somehow forgotten to add the pushing and pulling to the new sheets.

QUALITY:
I got a lot of positive comments about the box art, so I think it was good quality.  I haven't heard back yet about the smoke effect.

EXTRA:
I outputted some hi-def videos of all Suni's animations and the guard's animations so that Alice will have them at her disposal when she makes the trailer for our game.

EXAMPLES:

 

The FINAL BOXART!!!

BELOW You'll see the guard animations with the new shading. You've already seen Suni's new Shading in previous posts, but not the guards so I figured I'd add him here.

NEXT:
Cristine and I are going to try to convince the programmers to somehow include the old man in our game.  He's oh so adorable, it'd be a shame not to include him.  Even if we just use him as a loading screen graphic.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  They have moving lights and that's essentially all the old man is...

Also we need to make some better art for the start screen.  And Cristine still wants us to start drawing up some simple cutscenes for the story even if they don't make it into the game.

Russel says that we can always patch the game and add a story later, but I think that's a horrible idea.  Most games on XBLIG only draw attention when they are newly released.  If the game sucks when it's newly released people don't play it.  Even if it does get patched later, it won't matter.  It'll just be extra work for us that will not result in any more sales.

The reason I think that a story would help is this: I have played a lot those indie games, and I've never come across even one that actually had a good story that was presented well.  If we could just have a couple stylized cutscenes in our game (like the stylized still images used in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smiles), I think it would do a lot to set us apart from all the other crap available on XBLIG.

Anyway, that's all wishful thinking.

Since I'm already ranting, why stop now? I've told Russel several times that the sneaking should not be mapped to the analog stick.  It needs to be mapped to a button.  Stealth games are like my favorite genre, and having sneaking on the analog stick is one of the most frustrating things you can do.  You have to constantly be careful to only push the stick a little, so that she'll sneak.  If you accidentally push the stick to far she'll burst into a mad sprint and the guards will turn and notice her.  All that could be fixed by mapping it to a button.  You still use the analog stick to move her, but she just does it in sneak mode.

Sprint 4/2

ACCOMPLISHED:
Oh so much.

I finished the Shadow Switch animation.  I also did a reverse version of it (Russel told me we need a reverse).

I did a sneak idle for Suni.  I know we probably won't use it, but it was the very last thing on our list of needed animations that we made at the beginning of the semester.  And I guess I'm a completionist.

I re-colored both Suni and the Guard so that they are shaded in more of a toony style.

That meant that I had to re-output all of their spritesheets again.

I also drew some art for the Box Art.

QUALITY:
Cristine totally loved the shadow switch animation

She didn't care for the box art so I'm getting my sister Valkyrie's help in making some more aesthetically pleasing art.  She's a graphic designer who has made logos and things professionally so she'll be a good help.

EXTRA:
I feel like everything I do is extra these days.  I helped Cristine with designing a Zen Tower for the village level.  And I did a bunch of other stuff I probably don't remember.

EXAMPLES:

 

The Original Placeholder Boxart I made

 The Boxart I drew

The Shadow Switch Animation. Some of the cool FX didn't translate too well to GIF format

NEXT:
Better box art.  Different shapes and sizes for the smoke effect (did I ever mention that?).  Fix some glitches with the sprite sheets.

Sprint 3/26

ACCOMPLISHED:
Suni's attack animation for stunning the guards.  I had to do a lot of tweaking on this animation to get it right.  I'm still not fully satisfied, but I've spent too much time on it already.  I've also heard rumor that we're going to end up taking the stunning out so I'd rather not spend too much time perfecting it.

I finished a very cool level design for the final boss.  But I don't think we'll be using it.  They're still working on the farm and city levels.  They haven't even started on the mountain or palace.  There's no way this final boss level is making it in.  Oh well.  Goodbye for good, Baghead.

QUALITY:
Like I said, the attack animation could be better.  I still think the palm strike I went with looks pretty cool though.  Cristine liked my ideas for the final boss level.

EXTRA:
I started work on making a short tutorial level, but I didn't finish that, and I don't think I'm going to be doing any more level designs.  So far people putting the levels together have completely disregarded my level designs.  It's not because they are hard to understand.  I created a numbering system and I uncluded documentation with each level so that all the puzzles would be clear.

Right now the levels are looking very awful.  I don't see anything from my original designs.  I mean they are using some of my puzzles, but they're also just putting things in random places.  Seriously, the levels they are making are nonsensical.  I have no idea why they put shadow monsters where they do.  I know they're working hard, but these levels are our entire game so they need to be put together in a way that makes sense.  I've voiced some of my concerns (don't worry, I did it in a nice way).  And Sarah said they'll keep trying to improve the levels.

Anyway, Cristine's got other stuff for me to help with, so for now, I think I'm off level design.  The reason I was on Level Design in the first place was so that I could make sure we keep the story I wrote progressing throughout the levels.  But Russell nixed having a story in the game weeks ago.  He says we'll put in a story if we have time (yeah right).  Even if we do have time, which we won't, a story isn't something that you can just throw in at the last second.

It's too bad cuz I literally have zero interest in games with no stories.  I don't play a game unless there's some kind of narrative driving me.  This is probly cuz I started gaming with games like Monkey Island and Zak McKraken. That's also the reason why I've never liked games like Tetris or story-lite games like Mario.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
We're getting close to release so all of Suni's animations need to be done.  The only one left to do is the Shadow Switch animation. I'm also in charge of box art.

Spring Break Sprint 3/12 and 3/19

ACCOMPLISHED:
I finished Suni's death animation.  Made it as creepy as possible.  I'd like to make some alternate deaths for when she lands on spikes or drowns, but I think Russell and Cristine need me to get other stuff done first.

I created a fairly cool level design for the Palace level.  I would really like to create one final boss level.  Something that brings everything together and puts the players skills to the final test. Hopefully we'll be able to put a cool final boss level in.

I created a design for a special chasing guard (who I would re-use as the final boss). I was very clear to ask Sarah if we could have a chaser.  I even specifically asked her if it would be too hard because of the chekpoints and how the game has to reset when you die.  I know they'd had problems with resetting states before, so I wanted to make sure that we could include this guy before I did the work for him.  She told me that we could have him in.

But unfortunately, after I did the work, she tells me that we can't have him.  She says that it's just to hard to have a constant chaser because of how their checkpoints and resetting states after you die works.  So we're not having this guy as a constant chaser.  This was a little frustrating to me because I had specifically asked her if that exact thing would be an issue and she said no.  Oh well, hopefully we can still use him as a final boss.

QUALITY:
The death animation is my favorite of all the animations we've done so far.  Cristine absolutely loved Baghead's character design (the constant chaser and the final boss).

EXTRA:
I didn't get the chance to do much extra this sprint.  I spent most of Spring Break catching up on all my other classes that I've been neglecting because of this game.  But I guess you could count Baghead as extra since we're not using him (unless we end up having a final boss level).

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
Suni's attack animation (for stunning the guards).  A level design for the final boss level.

Sprint 3/5

ACCOMPLISHED
Revised Pushing. I decided the original pushing didn't look good enough so I re-did it.

Pulling.  I got the pulling animation done.  The problem with this animation is that she pulls things of different shapes and sizes, so it's hard to tell where she should grab on. Also apparently her hands will appear behind the object, and we can't change that, so it doesn't matter too much how her hands look. I tried to make the pulling as generic as possible so I can change it if the programmers have any ideas of how to make her be able to realistically look like she's grabbing things when the objects she pulls are different shapes and sizes.

I also made a design for the Mountain level.

QUALITY:
Good. I re-did the push to make it better quality.  Cristine was pleased.  I hope to keep the quality as good as possible for the animations.  Cristine really liked my design for the mountain level.  It should be a very cool level.

EXTRA:
The push animation revise was technically extra. No one told me to make it better, but I like it a lot better now.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
The death animation got bumped to next sprint. I will also work on a level design for the palace level. And do some art for the final boss.