Week 2, Month 1

Second week of the challenge and I've made some minor advances in both art and design. For the first I've managed to finesse the run animation and iterate on it several times. For the first I completed a rough so that I could implement it into the game engine for testing purposes.

This piece of animation is mostly to check for timing, what I found was that with a scrolling background the animation actually works and different speeds. It just makes the background look further away if he's going faster. This is a happy mistake to stumble upon as I hope to implement a mechanic in the game where speed increase the longer he runs and this means that if I can work out how to increase the animation speed within the engine it'll be a cinch.

This is the screengrab from that placeholder animation the game ground still needs to be created but the trees and mountains scrolling in the background are working ok. There is still an issue with a gap in the scrolling background that shows the seams of the loops. I'm going to work around this in a few ways. First I will separate the sky from the mountains so that I can hide the mountain seams behind the trees. Second I will cut the trees so the there is a gap anyway and i wont be so noticeable. Thirdly another layer of trees will be in front of those that are currently in place and will be sparse anyway.

Although hard to see the screenshot also show the character jumping, which was easy enough but I will add a specific jump animation sequence to the action to help it look smoother.

Lastly I have done a clean up version of the run animation with colour to test for resolution dependance, I added a face to the bear to give him a bit of personality as it was really bugging me that he looked like a generic run animation.

I feel like there is room to improve the personality side of this character through animation by giving him a few more secondary actions. I am considering adding a backpack that would bounce and get some dust kicking off the end of the steps. My research in to endless runners has given me a good sense of the details that you can get away with using characters that will fit on an iphone. The animation will also play quite fast so I need to keep it simple.

The next week will be finishing art assets for 'Picinic Goodies' and obstacles and the implementing collision system to the game as well as scoring. After that I hope to get start on the 'Drop Bear' aspect of the game that will involve swiping and scene transitions.

Week1 Month1

Week 1 of Month 1.

So I got my first Challenge on the 1st of May. The Challenge is for a Game Design, an exploration of small scale game design. I must produce an app that can be played on a smart phone and make it available on the open market.

Awesome.

After a little research I've found the free program called 'GameSalad' which allows you to create game for use with iphone and even has a publishing feature. The app utilises object oriented program without the need to know specific code language, which is perfect since it's been a long time since I've done any coding whatsoever.

The type of game that I will be developing will be an endless runner. My concept for the game is that you play as a Drop Bear, a somewhat mystical creature known only to Australian folklore. The Drop Bear will run through the national park collecting Picinic Goodies ( It's not a typo), earning points along the way. The Picinic Goodies will also help to fill you 'Drop Bear' meter which once full allows the player to launch into the sky and come smashing down on an unsuspecting picnicing family. All of their Picinic Goodies will fly into the air and the player will have to bear swipe them down to get the extra points. There will be hazards along the way which can include logs, rocks, low hanging branches, water, birds, monkeys, hunters and bees. Failing to avoid these hazards will end the player's run but in tripping over and falling to the ground they get one last chance to earn some points and the Bear's Picinic Goodies get thrown in the air.

So far research into endless runner tutorials for Gamesalad has given me lots of useful tools and understanding of the program and I feel confident I should be able to produce the game to the standard I'm hoping for. I've begun creating a scrolling background ( a necessary staple of the endless runner genre), a quick animation test, and some prototypes of the endless runner.

 Background plate - others to come to create a layered scrolling background effect.

 Initial sketches of Drop Bear - in normal run and 'Full Powered' run

 Picinic Goodies - Different shapes for readability at small screen scale.

 

Animation Test, First I've done in a very long time.

The challenges I've met while addressing this challenge have really come from getting to know a new program. GameSalad is still in beta for the windows version and doesn't always give you all the information you need when something goes wrong. I can be very frustrating setting up rules and behaviors for game elements and to all your understanding have done the right things to make them work and then have them not respond at all. Coding is very difficult and while the node based coding allows for alot of ease of use it can still leave a lot of logical gaps in it's execution.

I have enjoyed learning so far and am very happy to create some art for the first time in a while. Although it's as simple as it can get for a run cycle, knowing that, that information about animation hasn't left me makes me feel relieved and happy.

Next to come will be learning more code to be able execute all my ideas for the game and getting stuck into creating all the art assets.