Bounty Dev Blog

Development blog of "Bounty", a 2D mobile game project by Jan Tuts.

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I’ve updated the Bounty Brawl prototype into an arcade game, complete with a custom table-top arcade cabinet, for Proximus Foundation’s Digitalent course.

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Art Update + Demo Feedback

I finally replaced all the sketched UI art with neatly drawn versions. I also made a new background, just to see how everything would hold up. The intention is to have multiple locations: the Saloon, this Desert, a Train, ...

I also showed this version of the demo at the Brotaru game developers meetup last wednesday and received some good reactions.

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The “Brawl” demo is coming along nicely

I’ve fine-tuned the animation timings and updated them with actual art, improved the bottom HUD elements, gotten rid of some inconsistencies in the code and added basic hit and gunshot sound effects (I haven’t figured out yet how to record sound along with my screen, so there’s is no sound in the above video).

Up next is overhauling the top HUD elements, making the HUD actually function and adding the all important screenshake. After that, I’ll be creating some inbetween frames to make the animations more fluid.

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Hooray for silly (but useful) placeholder art!

I decided to capture some video references for the character animations. After I was done, I realised I could simply use the keyframes from those as placeholder art. This way, I could immediately start working on the animation state machine and game logic, instead of first making all the sprites.

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It actually starts looking like a game

I’ve done away with the perspective for now, tweaked the HUD colours a bit and expanded the framing. The addition of the run animation and a mockup of the pause menu starts to make these images look like an actual game, when viewed on my phone. This gave me a feeling of accomplishment and a great boost in confidence. It was at this point that I decided to create a development blog to log my progress and start working on a playable demo in Unity.

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Things get moving

I’ve figured out an animation process in Photoshop that works for me and a first animation is done. I’ll probably update this later on as I get more experienced, but the art style is basically set.

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Getting somewhere

The first decent concept art. It looks nice as a still image, but as a game, it becomes obvious that the framing is too tight. The perspective with light and shadows look nice, but will be annoying to pull off in a pixel-perfect visual style. It also interferes with the HUD. In an effort to improve the visibility of the HUD, the shadows are nearly entirely obscured. I’ll have to work out a compromise.

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3D base for 2D concept art

To get an better idea of what the saloon setting for the “Brawl” mini-game could look like, I created a quick and simple 3D model. I also used this as a temporary background while figuring out how the interface would work.The tables in the foreground provide a place to tap without obscuring anything important, as well as provide a place for defeated opponents to fall behind and disappear.

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Humble beginnings

The entire “Bounty” project originates from a quick sketch, finger-painted on my phone in the evening, and 3 post-it notes, written up in the morning.