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Game Jam Collab- Week 7
This week, in short, has been dramatic. For reasons I’ll
cover at the end of this post. For now, here’s what’s been worked on.
To begin with, after some critique with a tutor about how we've interpreted the theme of "one-button game" and problems getting mechanics to work, we've scrapped the idea of a continuous runner and are rebuilding, a week before hand-in. However this is not as radical as it sounds, its just a change in nodes and replacement of assets, so we're not really taking any steps back, it just makes more sense for our game, the paralaxing has been implemented and its looking wonderful. However in retrospect, I feel we should have started assets and actual production much earlier instead of getting wrapped up in concepts and selecting the perfect mask, when the character is quite small and its mask even smaller. We've also decided to scrap extra monsters like the crabflower just so we can perfect and polish what we already have, to make our prototype as great as it can be. Myself and Sasha have been working on assets, written from a sign up sheet we three have shared from the programmer, Ian was on backgrounds, but more on that later.
We were given a diagram, or "tile" where the assets are displayed together in where they should be and in placement, from this we use it as reference to create the content. We finished between the 4 of us the assets for tile 01.
Credit: Myfanwy Bundock
I also worked on the sprite follower animations, I played with colour burning them to make them pop, but we decided that a lack of harsh contrast made them seem more like spirits. I did originally want idle and jump animations for them, but due to time constraints and bluepriniting complications, their idle will be a static frame and their movements and jump will be the same animation.
This lil guy shall stay the same.
A small alterations to the legs here.
I struggled with the next one greatly as I tried to give it knees, and got way too involved with it despite knowing so very little about animation so I couldn't get the right nuances in motion, I resolved it by just simply not giving it knees.
We wanted the orbs to orbit as it hobbled around.
The gas fly was also animated. Opting quickly fo orange on the symbols to make them more visible.
But its simpler to have it stationary floating up and down shooting this projectile:
Our team mate, Ian, has been difficult to work with throughout this project. In part because myself and Myfanwy have some personal history with him that led us to absolutely refuse to work with him initially, for me personally it was unimaginable. But we got over it, settled our differences and have tried throughout to include him, but throughout he's been lackadaisical, throwing us every kind of excuse and has produce very little. We've confronted him many times and tried to resolve it, but no amount of coffee or face to face talking seemed to motivate him at a constant rate, so we use google hangouts to chat and give him direction. Myfanwy was pushed to her limit and lost it as she's under a lot of personal strain as it is, having to deal with Ian is also hard, but we're managing. She refused to work any longer on the project, but I've won her round since. We had a conversation with him and a tutor to clear it all up and it very much felt, if I'm honest, that whilst for the hundredth time he said he was ready to work and did for a short burst, his utter apathy for all our hard work and the project was not recognized.
The next day however he started working on UI as informed, we've decided to have the one button as a call mechanic that he'll design the button for and a spirit counter. He was drawn to wooden filigree and the idea of framing the game, but this would obscure much of the view within the game, masking our hard word, yet the idea of "framing our art" is definitely a novel one.
Title wise for our game, so we can illustrate a title, we played with names but soon returned to Mongolian shamanism and Turkic culture for influence. We came across Tagh-Baianai, a female creature that in many many ways reflect our main character in physical description, tey this name doesn't quite roll off the tongue. After many duds, I proposed "Taghsprit" as sprit could allude to sprint or spirit, and at this point, its a name! We also discussed the narrators role and interaction, I thought of this strange creature emerging from behind a shrub with crude animation would be quite a memorable moment. Yet we feel we should introduce him as a cutscene, talking directly to the player in the beginning, the animation for him is amazing, sasha working frame-by-frame. We've been writing and recording script for him. The gallery option in the game is also shaping up well, we're sending in our best peices to implement in game, collectible gems will unlock our concept art for the player. We've still got to work on illustrating menu UI and titles, but Ian's apparently working on that. Myfanwy as an artist is creating the gallery as all she's been working on is nodes as she's the most capable and she really wanted to work on Promotional Art, but due to difficulties in the group, she no longer has the time.
All the game really needs now is to be put together as animations and mechanics are pretty much done, just nodes and the many remaining assets are this final weeks goals.
What must be said however, is on the topic of Ian further. To not put too finer point on it, it has been hell to work with him. However, I've learned so much from the experience as I expected I would, which is why I agreed to it in the first place. Whilst its been ugly and dramatic. we're still working together, I've learned no matter how much you dislike a person, you get on with the job at hand and still work together to achieve a common goal. I truly believe I can work with anyone after this, its been horrific. There have been some rather ugly messages sent to Myfanwy as well due to her outburst at Ian, and with Ian still demanding his hand held through every little direction of twig and particle of dirt, which is draining to handle, he then also trying to implement a very complicated idea of his at such a late stage, caused me to send him this message,
Now, I've annotated this and am including this message here because even on this personal level, truly despite everything, we need to get this project done despite the circumstances, even if that means we work apart for this last week, his work is already laid out for him. This had to be said just to get this moving, I knew this project would be difficult, but I feel completely in my right to have done this and I've tried my utmost to keep this professional for the sake of the project.
With that, we're to truly knuckle down for this last week to get these last assets done, these sounds in, the UI perfected and menus designed. I also produced whats been coined as "the worst bush ever not really attempted" which is making a special cameo in our game in the gallery its so adored.
This project has been so, so difficult, but we've all, all four, come so far with this game and I can't wait to see it finished. Our problems may have come from miscommunication and an over-attachment to the project, which I'll bare in mind for future work and despite diabolical history, we're all determined to get it done. Here's to our final week.
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