yep

This is a blog covering my mastering of game development at QUT. Abraham Birkelund. n10469877.

[abesterman]

Darker Times Rreturns Dev Blog 2

Once i finished all the concept art we got together to talk about what we wanted to do. Some key decision we made were to make the rolling function the first unlockable skill

[abesterman]

Darker Times Returns Dev Blog 1

The first thing we did was make a gantt chart projecting our workflow for the following weeks, allowing us to spread the workload and set goals. After that the first thing to do was some quick concept art, and mood boarding. Both of which i was in charge of so here is an example of both.

While doing the concept art it doestn hurt to think about possible mechanics or effects that can be connected to what you are doing for example animtion styles and such. I did this a lot since i will also be making the animations for the game, for example while doing a zombie’s concepts I wanted to amek it pop from what could be a dark blue/green background so instead of the usual very green, i through in a lot of pinks and reds.

[abesterman]

Darker Times Returns

For my group project my concept, Darker Times was chosen for us to work on, so expect more posts on this game for now though I will just refresh your mind on what the game was.

In Darker Times the player plays as a mysterious, masked figure in deep red clothing who is attempting to get out of an underground ruin he has just woken up in. On his path he will enocounter various enemies and will fight them back with various weapons that he finds along the way.

[abesterman]

Asteroids and Dat Postmortem

[abesterman]

Spaceships and dat Dev blog 3

[abesterman]

Space and dat Dev blog 2

[abesterman]

Asteroids and dat Dev Blog 1

[abesterman]

Aliens and dat (game elevator pitch)

You are protecting your asteroid mining facility from whatever may approach, this may include fast moving asteroids, aliens, highly competitive miners, and so on. As you play on you can retrieve the scraps you acquire and take them to your base for upgrades, either through selling some scraps or repurposing alien technology. For the visual side of the game I would like to stick to a simpler art style, this time being 32 by 32 or perhaps 24 by 24, as it would give me additional time to work on my project while still allowing me some time to enjoy the artistic aspect.

The gameplay will be focused around protecting your base from the enemies and between waves you can return to your base and upgrade your ship and repair any damages. After a set amount of rounds there will be a boss, and once said boss is defeated then there would be a different type enemy that will begin to appear.

[abesterman]

Darker Times prototype Postmortem

This may well be the final post on the Darker Times project, since i believe we will be moving on to a new game type this week, but i just wanted to share what i personally learnt from this experience.

My game was of course less then playable last checked and this is mostly due to me not noticing that using readily available art would be a much more time effective way of doing things. The reason i didin’t do this opriginally was so that i could make the specialised positions and animatinos without having to copy their artistic style, but I now realise that I could have had it look bad and that just be fine as long as I understood that while testing gameplay mechanics. The mechanics i had planned to incorporate had been that every level had a different weapon you would acquire and could use to solve different puzzles and you would use a combination of these weapons to defeat bosses as they went through their stages. For defensive abilities you would have a roll that dodges thigns and a jump, and at some stage you would find a shield, to add variance to the defensive side of the gameplay.

Overall the biggest issue was that I decided to do the art myself and at too high of a level, which consumed unecessary time for a gameplay prototype. 

[abesterman]

Darker Times Changing Weapons

I realised that the way i was planning to do the animatinos for the character holding the weapon, (by redrawing the the character and all his animations with that one weapon) is less than practical. So after a couple of internet searches and some quick thought i found that there is a way to stick an object to anothers point using the “change the position of” command, like so:

Of course once it was tied to the main characters coordinates, i need to tell it to turn with the character as well and dissapear when he rolls.

[abesterman]

Darker Times Roll Animation

Today i decided to try making a rolling animation as i wanted a similar rolling mechanic to Deadcells, where it is effectively a dodge that works against almost anything. Mostly this roll animation concept is to show how big the roll is and how long it lasts so i can use that for reference when designing enemies and bosses especially. For example the amount of time between a bosses attacks would depend on it since if they bosses attacks are faster than the dodge animation then the dodge would be pointless.

So after making the animation’s frames in photoshop like before then i went and explored the interface to find a way to get the animation to stop after one and not get inturrupted by other animations, and this here is what i came up with:

This should probably have a faster animation and make the character travel faster.

Deadcells: https://store.steampowered.com/app/588650/Dead_Cells

[abesterman]

Darker Times Creating a walking animation

As i understand it we are able to use pre-existing art for this project using free/open-source sets to create our characters and world. And while i may end up doing that for the floor and walls as doing that all myself would be immensely time consuming, i would still very much like to make the main character myself. So with that noted here is the concept i decided to follow up as its simple and highly editable.

Of course this will still be considered a concept and when designing gameplay mechanics then i will use a simpler sprite.

And here is the walking animation: (did individual frames in photoshop)

[abesterman]

Darker times Creating floor textures

Using other platformers like Carrion, Deadcells and hollow knight i have begun looking into making ground textures, of course i am no master artist and this is outside my usual style as well, but here is the inital attempt that i will use as a stand in for now till i need a better one.

kinda looks like poop, or charcoal lol

[abesterman]

Darker Times (Platformer elevator pitch)

Pitch: Escape the beautiful yet terrifying undergriound ruins going through various puzzles and enemies, in hopes of reaching the surface.

Unique selling points: A darker overall story, every level u find a new weapon that will change the overall playstyle, the combat especially, and ideally the art style will be unique.

Aesthetic/artistic inspirations:

Art by  Pierre Raveneau: 

 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wEP6O

Art from Hollow Knight: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/