Closing up

Here it is, one of the (if not) final updates for my MA.

So what did I do this semester?

At the start of it I revisited my Semester 2 work with the intent of working on that throughout, however I felt that I couldn't add much more to it, so I decided to create a new project entirely.

What I did manage to add, though, was a shortcut menu, inspired by a playthrough of Kingdom Hearts. It helped me realise that some spells were a little complex, and in a tight situation wouldn't execute as fast as I'd hoped. So I added in a shadow that would be assigned to one of three slots. Depending on how complex the spell would determine how long it took for the shadow to cast, and I feel it was a nice addition that sped up more intense combat.

I recorded a new video below to show it in action.

After I amended that, I thought that the project was lacking with how it handled movement. The level design offered no compliments to the gameplay outside of battle, and to add more movement mechanics would have tipped the balance from being so heavy focused on the combat.

My compromise was to call this project as a game combat focused, and move onto a new project which would merge the movement and combat into one seamless experience.

Because I didn't have much time to execute, I decided to make it a 2D platformer.

The final video is below.

Transitioning from the movement to the combat is as seamless as possible. I feel as though I've created a blend of two different game modes. The controls never change to accommodate either mode, and so gives a consistent feel.

I'll write up a more in depth postmortem, but this is all of my work for 3rd semester, and my final submission for my Masters degree in Games Design.

I'm gonna miss it.

Here's to

Panic Induced Progress

So it's going well.

I have a level sorted for the 2D side scroller, and I'm slowly getting more art in it.

The downside to this is that I'm not seeing how the combat performs outside of the testing area.

It's bad.

But I've little time to fuss about that now, I'm racing to get as much polish on the art as possible, after that I'll make sure that the combat is 100% what it needs to be, or I'm purposing it to be a pure platforming experience, which is absolutely NOT what I want to do.

I'm also in talks to try and get a little bit of audio for my previous project about the bard character.

It completely compromises my artistic integrity, but then I can't guarantee I had any in the first place, so in for a penny.

I hope you're happy, Jim and Josh.

Here's a very early shot of the level with minimal lighting, but it's getting there.

Hopefully it'll get more colour soon, and I can begin to completely remake the combat mechanics from scratch. Sounds fun, I know.

Life takes a while

So what have I been up to with so much time between updates? Here's an abridged series of my summer;

- Trying to find work
- Trying to have a roof over my head
- Getting part time work
- Having no money for the electricity bill
- University sites closed, or I'm at work
- Get job in Industry , now full time Mon-Fri
- Work as much as I can while trying to pay electricity bill
- Pay electricity bill
- Set up an internet contract
- Now it's September

So it's been a real uphill struggle, but I've been doing as much as I can to make a\ fast paced side scroller. Why this, and not building on top of my previous project?

Because my Masters is all about creating a solid flow with controls. It's about tapping into an innate sense of fun. I've had play testers tell me my previous project worked, what more can I gain from that? I couldn't think of adding anything new to it, other than more of the same. So, I wanted to make something new.

My first project focused on navigation, how the player moves from place to place. My next was entirely about combating obstacles head on. So I decided that my new project would become a mix of the 2 different styles.

I chose a 2D sidescroller because, design wise, I only had 2 dimensions to worry about. With my schedule being full enough as it is, I needed to save time for making the mechanics shine. I spent a lot of time last year playing Bloodborne and Kingdom Hearts on the PS4, so I took a hack and slash approach inspired by them. The characters abilities are based on fishing hooks, taken from where I come from, Fleetwood in Blackpool.

All together, the core mechanics are there. The player can run, jump, attack, grapple ledges, enemies and execute special attacks. So far, it's fun.

But then I've done absolutely 0 playtesting, an error I need to fix, and SOON. Otherwise I'll be out of pocket 20 nuggets.

So what's my focus for now? Polish.

The character feels fun to play, and all of their functions work without error. It's time for environments, particles and a proper level.

I really hope it's not too late to pull this back.

Bard

A doozy of an update!

So I’ve decided to start my side-scroller project! Although I really enjoy working on my Bard game, I wanted to try something new and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

After some head bashing and research, I decided that this project would be themed around a Ye Olde setting, which starts in a fishing village. I knew from the start I wanted a lighthouse to be the aim of the level, so I based everything around that. With this in mind I did some research into games that follow a similar theme and created some moodboards to help broaden my idea.

From this research I started to mock-up the game in UE4, I started by adding in a double jump and a wall jump. Character movement is also very crucial to this games design, so I changed how quickly the player can move and how high she can jump. 

Wall Jump

Then came the tougher stuff, I put in some attacks that affect the player, making them hop and jump back when attacked. As I couldn't visualise how she would navigate the level until the character was designed, I had to wait until I'd modelled, rigged and animated her.

From here I needed a character, I asked Becky to help concept the protagonist. The character design had to look rogue-ish as I thought it'd be fun to make a dual wielding character. I gave her loose instructions and she came back with this:

With these quick sketches, I 3D modelled a character that was very much out of my comfort zone, I'm used to making float-y armed characters that have a large head. I made two copies of this model and squished her to make the style more charming. 

After UVing the smaller one, I set this to Becky to texture whilst I rigged the character. Below are some WIP shots of the texture work: 

Two days passed and I was still trying to get the skeleton to work, I had to decide to make some changes to this design. I ran into trouble with making the hips animate right and with a deadline looming I'd rather have this done. So I went back to what I know, and tweaked the design to fit with what I'm comfortable with. 

Then came some problems with the style. It was really difficult to translate the poofy pants into the new style and sadly they had top get scrapped. After some humming and ha-ing Becky managed to find a design that looked cool and worked! So off I went to model it!

Here's a screenshot of an older model:

So this money thing

So I've got the very basics down for the platformer, should have a character going for it soon. I've been really busy with looking for a job and a house to live in, seeing as though I have another 3 weeks before I'm out of this place.

I have a job lined up, but it's not in industry. As for a place to live, I've been looking, and I'm still looking.

This is putting a real brake on my Master's work at the minute, and man, I hate it.

I've done about 2 days worth of work since the last Unreal meetup, and that's not with me not doing anything, I've had no time with a constant search for a sustainable income and a roof over my head. With the timing of everything, I'll be having a very tight budget for the next month or two, with very little progress on my work.

I'll talk to my tutors about maybe some extra time, because as it is now, my work is definitely nowhere near where it should be. I might ask for some work too, anything to pull in more hours for more money.

Crawling on through, wish me luck.

Unreal Meetup

So last night I went to Futureworks in Manchester along with some classmates to attend the 3rd Unreal Devs meetup. This was an incredible opportunity to showcase my work and get some feedback.

For the past 3 days I've been working frantically to implement a quick select menu which I intended to test out at the meetup. A critical piece of advice I took away from the meetup was to let people know there was a quick select menu in game, because absolutely no one knew it was there.

The response was mostly positive with a lot of feedback on things bug fixes and in general cool ideas. One of my favorites was a guy who suggested that when an enemy fell off of a platform a small helicopter would appear above them and they'd fly back onto the platform.

I'm going to be taking some time off of this project for a while, though. I want to create a 2D platformer. I honestly believe that it's a strong direction, I have concepts for the character and how it'll play. I feel that within a month I could have a very solid playable that is not only a lot simpler than my current project, but also shows off just as much.

I won't stop on the little bard guy, but I'm taking a break from work... With more work,,,

Rock n roll

A huge amount of work has gone into the tutorial rocks from the beginning of the game. They teach the players the different spells in the game, so they need to be near perfect for the 30th.

They're activated now with pressure pads, and a particle will play to let the player know something has changed. The stone then acts as usual, and the player continues.

I've also drawn up a list of secondary effects I want spells to have, if they don't have one already. Implemented so far is the Fire spell. It creates a small blast wave, knocking back enemies that come into contact with it.

One of the last things I want to compliment is a huge step in customisation. I want players to change how each spell can be cast, ranging from how fast the spell travels, to strength, to potency of the secondary effect.

It's a lot, and only 2 weeks before the showcase, so I'll probably shift focus now to the boss of the level, a duels shield wielding knight that can reflect magic, but not much more. The intent is to teach players to find sweet spots in enemies, given that the boss will always be deflecting things from the front. Canon fodder might adopt a similar approach, so it's up to the player to work around them.