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."

  

  

Painless Fonts~

How'd it go?

Finally something without hidden complications!  Fonts are a breath of fresh air.  Making them and using them is too relaxing! 

On a side note, I cannot recommend the Surface Pro 2. That probably doesn't matter much since the 4th version is what people are looking at now.  Still.  STILL.  Don't buy a Surface Pro 2.  The number of random issues is greater than the number of random perks.  

  - The track pad mouse on the keyboard will randomly get 'sticky' on some location and snap back to it like a rubber band.  

  

  - Sometimes disconnecting the keyboard causes a hard reset

  - Home and end keys stopped working for some inexplicit reason.  Probably because I need them.

  - The screen pen accuracy varies from one end to the other.  As an artist this is a mojo destroyer level 99.

  - Sometimes the mouse will wobble uncontrollably and taunt you.  You know that disconnecting the keyboard could reset the computer, but it won't stop wobbling.  Like right now. 

  - Want to use your fingers?  Sorry those buttons are too small, not going to happen.

  - Waking the Surface up from sleep mode teaches me to be thankful to my mother for her patience when she used to get me up for school.  MUST BE VERY PATIENT WHEN TURNING ON SURFACE PRO 2.

  - Windows 8.1

  - Peeling paint.  Seriously what?
  

  - The dissatisfaction of knowing you're already 2 generations behind.  

  - Ridiculously quiet speakers.  Do Microsoft executives employ mice to design this shit?


Anyway now that you've been suitably warned, back to the font!

This could not be any less quick and painless if it were  _______.  Be creative.

And that is entirely thanks to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxPf1M7YORU

With a voice on par with Ben Stein, he walks you through every minute detail and after 15 minutes you have the POWER to unleash your CREATIVITY on the UNSUSPECTING citizens of the DRASTICALLY overwhelmed CITIES.

I dunno where this is going.  Trying to do everything on the Surface Pro 2 has driven me insane? Or packing? Moving to a new country?  A little nervous to be going to Dubai.  Hope it goes well, just lots of things to be OCD about. Everything is all packed up, waiting to be re-packed once I've procured a scale.  I've got desktop withdrawal.  All the art is over on it..  Okay enough excuses, let's finally figure out how to draw on this tablet.  

Here's the code for the font scene2d label above:

public void addScore(int value){
    bottlesBroken += value;
    bottleLabel.setText(String.valueOf(bottlesBroken));
}

Constructor:

chunkFont = new BitmapFont(Gdx.files.internal("chunkfive-export.fnt"));
bottleLabel = new Label(String.valueOf(bottlesBroken), new Label.LabelStyle(chunkFont, null));

What are you working on next?

I've been thinking a lot about how to make the level useful, ways to use the space.  The problem is the original intent of the game.

The intent was to be a precursor.  Not a full game.  A taste of a game.  The game I really wanted to make was a Megaman/Blaz Blue combination.  A nice big 2d side scrolling world.  Dialogues, beautiful character effects, attack skills.  But I knew that game would take a long time and people said not to shoot too high for a first game.  

The Megaman/Blaz Blue game is itself just one of the games I want to make.  I've got an idea I'm excited about for an educational RPG.    

So the problem is that breaking bottles and dodging obstacles doesn't really need a big huge world.  We've got to come up with a way to use the space a level provides.  Here are some ideas:

• Player can collect energy bottles to fill up their special attack bar
• Run from some attacks that are big  
• Dialogue trigger points, as the player walks across dialogues will pop up
• Terrain assisting, like being able to jump off a spot to see higher, see a bottle more clearly
• Hiding under some parts of the terrain to escape bottles

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated ^_^

I'm also ready to start mocking up a full Hud with background pictures for the health bars, buttons, etc.. but.. need a real computer to do that..  Arrrr using photoshop on the SP2 feels like I'm doing surgery on the head an angsty pin.

Implementing the Overhead kick

Man with all these different posts, how are you keeping track of which one you should submit first?

Hahahaha

Okay so here we're going to figure out how to implement the overhead kick.  We're just using a rough sketch for the "prototype."  Honestly "prototype" is starting to take on the meaning "Rushed and half assed."  Using unfinished assets, half baked code, unplanned levels.  But that's okay.  Spending a full ass of time is just not practical.  Not to answer those important early questions.

Until now we've been using a pixel as an orientation.  That pixel gets lined up by the code to make sure the animations play in the right place.  

These are two frames from the current 'Jump Kick' animation.  The character doesn't actually go any higher in the image, we let box2d take care of that.  We didn't have to pay attention to the vertical distance in the drawing at all, we just moved it up a tiny bit mostly by accident.  Also please ignore how much bigger one is than the other, thanks.  

Can we do the same thing for our overhead kick?  Can we just delete the white space at the bottom of the image and stick an orientation pixel in there?  Can we just not do that and let the animation determine how high we go?  Can we please be lazy??

No sir.  Not for us, not here.  We have a box2d body that the animation is attached to.  When it jumps, we stay stuck to it.  It makes it easy to handle gravity and ground interactions.  If we don't use the box2d gravity then there might be something strange later, like the player thinks he's doing an overhead kick but really his box2d body falls to its sad death.  So we will use the box2d physics and give the body a push up.  Not unlike the time I made the mistake of helping a girl in a short skirt climb up a metal pole.  Yes both of us didn't think that one through very well.

So yes we will push our box up and then it will fall down with gravity.  Let's look at the overhead kick again with a fake little red happy box2d body.

For our first question we can ask: how high does the box need to go?  Does the box need to stay in sync at the bottom of the character?

Well, yes if we want the character to be able to move right or left while kicking.  If they can do an overhead kick while moving and we want them to be able to jump up on different platforms, yeah the red body box has to stay at about the bottom of the character in the image.


Beyond that we probably don't want a normal gravity interaction with some of our attacks or jumps.  For example as we saw earlier, when we let go of the right button we don't want our guy to slide to a stop slowly.  It's disconcerting to see our character do that.  Other objects look fine but when our in game persona isn't under our direct control it feels uncomfortable.  When we are walking in real life and we want to stop we don't slide to a stop while waiting for ground friction to do its magic on us.

For now we are setting our speed to 0 when the player lets go of the button.  Later we might use a fixture and adjust the friction setting as detailed here: http://www.iforce2d.net/b2dtut/fixtures

Which brings us back to the overhead flip.  We can see that the time spent going up and the time spent going down are very short.  To capture this effect in the game lets first try increasing the gravity for just the character.  Then we'll increase the force of the push.  Later to get some fancy "flying through the air" effect we could try setting her gravity lower during the animation or attack.



Here we set up the bounding boxes for attack, hurt, and orientation.  (Can't see the last one)

Then we use the gdx texture packer to put all the files into an atlas.











Next we load them all up in an XML file to read them into the program.  (Making sure to duplicate the frames that last for .1 seconds instead of .05 seconds.)

Then after loading up the animation and adding a new state and input method (all of which I'll go into excruciating detail with later) we've got our overhead kick!

The last thing is to add another button to the HUD.  Scene2d is not well documented in terms of table layouts and getting things to line up.  It's less like programming and more like playing the lottery.

*Time passes*
Well we played long enough and got what we wanted for now:



And here's the code so you don't have to keep rolling the dice;

controls = new Table();
controls.setHeight(stage.getHeight());
controls.setWidth(stage.getWidth());
controls.align(Align.bottom);
controls.add(touchPad.getTouchPad()).expandX().align(Align.bottomLeft).padRight(stage.getWidth()*.8f);
controls.add(kickButton).maxHeight(stage.getHeight() / 4)
        .maxWidth(stage.getHeight() / 4).align(Align.bottomRight).expandX();
controls.add(kickButton2).maxHeight(stage.getHeight() / 4).expandX()
        .maxWidth(stage.getHeight() / 4).align(Align.bottomLeft);

I gotta say, this new attack makes hitting the high flying bottles a lot more rewarding..  Waiting and trying to get the timing is just difficult enough to be satisfying and not so hard that it feels cheap.

Prototype First Reactions

Whoa so we showed the game to some people!

Yes my phone was put into the hands of a few other indie dev type people.  Without any explanation of what the game was or how to play. It was incredibly helpful to watch them.  Watch them like a total creeper.  Because the game is so basic they didn't have much feedback to give.  There were a few "Nice direction.  Good art" type comments. But the most important thing they told me wasn't something they communicated with their mouth face part.  It was the way they played the game.

It would be easy for me to be disappointed because they only played the game for about 30-45 seconds before handing it back.  But what they did when they played, man that was awesome.  They were focused, trying to figure out what to do.  They were fully absorbed, for 30 seconds.

One guy mashed the attack button.  One guy immediately walked across the game world and ignored!? the bottles.  Another guy tried to time his attacks carefully.  No one was able to break 15 bottles and clear the level.  (Not that they kept trying after they died.)

The takeaways from this:

• The bottles that go off the screen are too hard to anticipate for an absolute beginner
• There must be something preventing a player from continuing on in the level, some kind of obstacle that they have to overcome
• It's too hard for players to see the character right now, it's just a bunch of lines
• There's no sense of reward when they break a bottle, the tiny little 'flash' effect is barely visible
• The life bar is too hard to see or keep track of
• The character's attack trajectory is too hard to anticipate in relation to the bottle 
• As expected, without any sense of accomplishment or way to gauge their progression, or reason to continue, players have little interest in going multiple rounds or getting better.. 

So the next steps in development will be:

• Making the character's movement stationary/player dependent during left/right attacks
• Adding a 'tweeny' effect to the font (where the score number gets bigger and shrinks when they break a bottle)
• Changing the score font to something visible/exciting
• Throwing down some super rough values on the characters so they are vaguely more visible
• Changing the bottle throwing function so that I can optionally control the height of the bottle trajectory.  (To keep the first batch of bottles on the screen so that players can get used to them)
• Changing the bottle breaking sound so that the sound is different when they hit it, as opposed to when it hits the ground, or hits them
• Figure out how to make moving across the level harder/slower/staggered
• Add the Hud bg images

And of course, keep working on those animations @_@

Before I had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask people but now I just want to see them play.  Observational Scientist Mode Activated. O_O

Player controls

What are we doing today?

We're going to work on something that I kind of stupidly haven't yet thought about in much detail.  How the player moves and attacks and what kind of abilities they have.  Yep.  Just the minor stuff really. Not like anyone really cares about that.  People are going to play this game for the gratuitous panty shots.  No, I jest.  50%.  Lets jump into the storm of braining.

How do we do this?

I have no idea.  

I guess we look at other games and say "Yes, your idea is good enough to steal." In this case that would be MegamanX and BlazBlue and Zenonia.    Because although Bottle Smasher! is a small game, don't forget we've got our eyes on expanding it to be a much larger game... ..next year. 

So lets ask a question, we have to focus.  "What do players need to do?"  

*Raises hand* They need to break bottles and dodge other weapons and navigate the terrain.  

The need to dodge gives us related movements like jumping, ducking, sliding, dashing. 

The need to break bottles gives us attacks: Attack.

Is this going well?  

No it feels too basic to do this kind of analysis.  We've got the shield ability, attacking ability, healing ability.. woo maybe a time slow ability?  Hooo boy.. that.. hm.. mm.. i dunno.  For attacks, something like.. hmm we could have 'left attack' and 'right attack' buttons or we could make them be 'front attack', 'top attack' and 'back attack.'

How about combos?

Yeah it would be good to have combos!  Definitely pressing the attack button two times should do a different move.  I'm not sure about combining moving with attacking.. But without it maybe it will feel too clunky.  Not being able to move and execute an attack at the same time..  Right now the attack I've been using has an auto move built in and it locks the keys.  Perhaps there should be two kinds of key lock, one for moving and one for attacking. That way some moves will let you be mobile during their execution.

How many buttons do we need?

So far.. 3 attack buttons, plus two special buttons.. that's 5 buttons.  That's way too many.. right? Maybe the special abilities are scrollable.  just swipe to switch... okay it's time for a mock up!   

What's next?

Now we need to design the attacks.  They'll all be kicks because that's her style.  They all need to be useful too.  A question we have to answer is.. does the character's facing direction affect the kick?  For example if she's facing right, and the player hits the left button, does it do a back attack?  Or does it do the "left" attack..  Let's answer that later.  Now we need a mock to show kick hitbox ranges.

The inner bands represent the first attack, with the outer band being a double tap.

I'm not sure yet but I'm leaning towards having different attack animations when the player is moving.  Though to be honest it might be best to have only two buttons, an attack button and a special move scroller.  Or perhaps just left/right.  Hmm.. a little perplexing but not the biggest issues to address yet.  Let's move forward and get those rough animations done quickly so we can get a prototype out!