Resting Animation

Woo long time no see!  How's it going?

Pretty good!  Dubai is great so far.  It's nothing like what I imagined.  Haven't been able to get my workstation set up yet so I've been roughing it on the Surface Pro 2.  Gotta say though, even though it's such a pain to use, it still lets me get the job done.  4x more slowly, but hey, I'm not complaining.  If I were complaining though, would anyone send me a Surface Pro 4?

How's the animating?

Definitely going to try to get away with doing rough colors on a rough sketch for the attacks.  Doing the lines and accurate colors takes about 10x more time.  So.. I guess I've spent about 40x more time on this one animation than I should have.  Sounds about right.  

The one on the left was done roughly and took about 20 minutes for coloring.  The one on the right took about 4 hours for lines and coloring.

So why aren't you doing them roughly now?

Ahh fear I guess.  I guess I'm just scared that if it's not perfect then it won't be good enough.  Which brings us back to where we are now.  

Now all the lines are "done" for the 15 frames and we're going to color the first one so we can figure out how long it takes and what it feels like to color on the SP2.  Doing lines feels like I'm drawing with both hands tied behind my back.  Like using my feet I suppose.

Here is what the line animation looks like.  It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence compared to the sketch, but I'm pretty sure it will serve our purpose:

This is how we make the shadow forms:

Another thing I've got to be more honest about is the viewing resolution.  I'm 99% positive I won't try to do a PC version of the game so I don't need the assets to be the big 3500px files they are.

Since the images are so small it's tempting to throw rough versions into the game.  I could spit out an animation or two every day at that rate.  I've been considering making a different game with an art style like that, just to experiment.    

Next we'll take the first frame to completion so we can get used to doing things on the demon tablet. Just a reminder, don't purchase an SP2 for art!

This is about right, give or take a few tweaks here and there.  This first frame was done with a typical base/shadow/gradient layer set for each part.

Next we spend a few seconds agonizing about how long this will take.  Let's also congratulate ourselves for getting so much done on the tablet of chaos.  I'm also a little nervous since the first time I tried to animate something with values it didn't come out well.. this is partly experimenting @_@

*time passes*

Drawing leaves a lot of the brain open for musing.  Programming on the other hand occupies all of my language center in a protracted expletive.  Here are some musings.  

What if no one wants to play this game?  Am I okay making this game even if not one single person plays it?  Hmm the answer is probably no.   But the reality will probably be a painfully similar "Not enough people play it to make more than 1$/10$/100$" 

How can I market this game?  What is marketing?  It's where we build up the appeal of something right?  We make implications at deeper meaning and hint at hidden satisfactions.  We say why they need to play this game.

I'm defeating myself a lot here, I can't find a reason why people should play this game.  It's just a game.  Play it or don't.  But that attitude must be wrong right?  What about games that I get excited about?  Why do I get excited about them?  Why do I want to play them so much?  For me.. I like big open world games of exploration and adventure.  I like the experience.  The story.  But I don't have to actually play to get that experience.  For me the games I've enjoyed lately have all been through watching Let's Plays.   

At least I'm being productive while I self destruct~

 I'm so crazy slow but some frames can be copied over with minor changes.



Looks like we're on the right track but the hair will need a little stylizing.  Also I'm thinking since this will be an infinite type game that we should have 3 difficulty modes.



The intuos+surface combination is quite likely the smartest thing I've never done in my life.  I had to wait until someone (thanks my lady) suggested I do it.  In what is probably a first for humanity, there were no driver conflicts.

I'm also seeing that the cuff on the left arm shouldn't be so stiff at the end, it should move a bit to the right..  Is it fixable!?  Yep looks like it.

Here we have some more booby bounce.  Again this was at the direction of my special someone.  "I wish the boobs would bounce more."  She said when looking at some of the earlier WIPs.  I'm not sur why I feel it's necessary to explain that.  I mean I personally also like having the bouncy boobs.  I guess I'm a coward when it come to sexually provocative things.  Good thing she's brave!  ^^;

The hair, as always, is difficult for me.  Luckily most of the issues disappear at the viewing size closer to what we'll see on a cellphone. (Tiny)


After getting to this point I had to ask for feedback.  Luckily my girlfriend was there (again!) to let me know the hair wasn't working for her.  She wanted it to be bigger and have a nice swaying motion.  I had seen an animation on Facebook recently, but as you may or may not know depending on your century, Facebook uselessly doesn't have a way to look up the "history" of what you've seen.

We made a little sketch of how the motion might go:


We're just about at a merging point anyway so we merge each frame's layers and then throw some white on top to give us a drawing surface:




And after much much trial and error I'm 98% satisfied with this one:


Well, one frame was driving me nuts.  Can you guess which one it is?  After chopping the time in half and making an extra frame and giving the hair a little extra movement I'm much happier.


And then much mucking around later, we have this:


It's not finished, but for now we'll stop working on it.  Recently someone trotted out the old "Art is never finished, only abandoned" quote and I snorted.  Scoffed.  Disbelieved.  Ah, what a naive soul I was, two days ago.

Whoa finally.  Good job!  What's next?

Next let's get this bad boy into the game!  Which if I'm not mistaken is also a great time to fix the nagging "left/right" orientation distance jump.

Hud theme design

Time to get started with the theme design huh?

Yep.. 

How are you going to go about doing that?  

Well first I guess I'll Google "Theme design." or "UI design" or  "Hud Design"  

Don't you feel supremely unqualified to design a Hud?  You've never done it before.

Whoaa I'm so negative today.. Well there's a first time for everything. :)

*Goes to Google*

After reading this: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/game-ui-by-example-a-crash-course-in-the-good-and-the-bad--gamedev-3943

I feel that I definitely have no idea what I'm doing.  I thought I would just make some nice background images and stick then behind the bars and buttons.  Now I'm ready to meditate for a month on the existence of life.  Start with the basic questions first, I say.

What design do you want?

Yeah, I want something that's Korean-esque.  The game has lots of Korean themes, maybe we'll even say it's set in Korea.  Here are some reference images that appeal to me:

The plan was to use these shapes and patterns in various parts of the UI. 

I think that's fine, let's start figuring out what the UI consists of.

Parts of the UI:

• Life bar
• Energy bar
• Bottle count
• Timer
• Joystick
• Attack/Special Buttons

We also need a menu button right?  Anything else? It's probably time to play some games and see what kinds of buttons they have.  

First up is Zenonia 5, what do you think of it?

Zenonia 5 is a great looking game, but after my 10th "Kill 15 Crocodiles and bring me their meat" quest, I felt burned out.  I'm past that stage of my life where I want to feel like I'm working by grinding away, fulfilling a game's menial demands.  

Now I demand something more mentally stimulating!  I demand the game of making a game.

But Zenonia 5 is beautiful.  And that Hud looks awesome.. So let's see.. what can we cherry pick?  First of all, those buttons on the lower right side are very small.  I think that works well for them because they don't have any combination button presses.  Will we?

Secondly they have this nice metallic circular theme with lots of blank space.  We can also set the Opacity to be lower I believe.

Thirdly they have a shop button..  Do we want a shop button?  We were planning on selling a costume and pets.. But putting that button on the main part of the screen would be rather annoying, when players are trying to see bottles or other items.  But now we are not selling anything!

Let's take a look at another game: Shadow Fight 2

Two bigger attack buttons in the lower right.. but look at that huge touchpad on the left.  Does it need to be that big?  Were they worried players might want to see their character?

This game also lets you buy stuff, but happily no store button. Now I totally don't feel pressured to have one.

One key difference in play between Shadow Fight and Bottle Smasher is the auto-facing design.  Our character always faces the enemy.  For us, we have to decide if we want to have front and back attacks or only front attacks.  Do we want to make the player work harder?  Will that be more rewarding for them?  I don't know..  This seems like the kind of thing to decide through play testing.   

What are you thinking?

What kind of design to do..   Do we want a 'wood' feeling?  The bottle counter going dead center at the top actually might be distracting since we have a vertical attack and bottles are landing on top of us a lot.  Let's put the bottle counter and the timer in the upper right.  And a little menu button in the bottom center.  

Also green for the life bar might not be so great since the bottles are green too.  Let's make the life bar red like in these games. 

Zenonia's upper left has a little face and level and exp counter, but we don't need that face.  Right?  It's just getting in the way of the valuable screen space right?  Right?  So let's just use the 'door' design to give our life bar and our buttons a little zest.  I've got some ideas, time for a mock!  

*much time later*

 

Here is the current mock and the direction we're going.  The top elements need to be redone more sharply and with some color control, perhaps chromified.  My inner critic #8 is telling me that the circles on the bottom and the designs on the top don't match and that this is not good.  He says that people will possibly make comments about it, and that they will lose respect for the game.  He might be right, my inner critic.  However I am perfectly happy with the shape differences.

The menu button needs some love, how about a little 'see through white rice paper' kind of effect?  Yup that looks good.  Another thing I'm wrestling with is adding a timer.  I'm somewhat leaning against it..  The 'special' button will need to become a kind of 3 option slider roller ring thing, considering making it look 3d but not sure yet..

Okay next let's get to work on mocking up the new game screen, the explanation screen (loading), and the results screen!  Good luck!

P.S. The move hasn't completely destroyed productivity~ So far UAE seems alright, it's only been a couple days but the people are very friendly!

Project Reorganizing

Reorganizing?  What does that mean?

Talking with a friend helped me realize that the goals of this project need to be restructured.  I need to reduce the timeline way way down.  Cut out a TON of content.

Don't you like this project?

I love this project!  The programming is always rewardingly difficult and learning animation is incredibly INCREDIBLY helpful!

What was your goal for this project?

Yeah they definitely changed.  Originally the goals of this project were: 

- To make a first game and finish it

- To make a precursor game for a bigger version

- To relearn programming and gear up for a bigger different game

Then in the middle, after diving into animation and the Libgdx framework and getting excited about the possibility of earning money with it, and finding myself loving the process, I went into full on feature-creeper mode.

However the problem is that the game itself isn't one I'm passionate about.  I don't think "this is a game that needs to be made."  The problem is that there is another game I feel incredibly passionate about.

If I could be sure that this game would be a money maker, I would of course finish it in all of its 1.5 year long development glory.  And if people get excited about a smaller version of it, I'm more than happy to keep going with it.  However as I'd like to be a game developer, as a career and actually make a living, as opposed to the slowly dying I'm currently doing, I need to make the economic choice.  I've got to invest my time in the game I believe in strongly.

So this game's focus is going to be re-oriented as an infinite smasher.  Less levels, less effects, less attacks, less everything.  I'm satisfied with this decision.

Well, back to the Hud design as that hasn't changed much regardless of this "refocusing."