[charlotteridgway]

Playtesting

After getting a build done, I’ve been able to do some playtesting. The main points I’ve noticed are that the puzzles are definitely working as intended and there is an element of learning how to complete them. I’ve played the levels quite a lot and I know how they work, so I hadn’t realised that it would be difficult for another player if they haven’t encountered it yet to figure out what to do/the best way to do it.

Positive comments are that continuity of the bullets on the boss level are helpful in knowing what will happen next and learning how to beat the game, and that the art style is nice. Everyone has eventually beaten the game, but there have been a few deaths which would suggest it’s not too easy either. Yay

Things I anticipate I can fix tomorrow:

Collision box for water death is visible

Include some more dialogue after the mushroom/pipes in the second level to explain what’s going on

Make the vines for the lilypad longer

Make the vines for the pipes look nicer

Move the tree further to the left/more clear that you can jump on it

Change the 1st attack bullet to something a bit nicer - Dagg has suggested green/neon colours

Improve the platform appearance in the boss level - make them stand out a bit more

Loading screen

Disable print to screen code on crouching + boss is dead

Pipes falling down into the water are confusing/look like a platform

Boss death explosion/exit game etc

Increase base for the grassy thing/land

For exhibition:

Overall timer/score

Fix the borders/ratio on file for the game needs to be a normal size

Proper boss death animation

Loading screens/long wait time between levels

Fix typewriter text widget so that it fills the border

Things I’m not going to be able to fix; the art style can be a bit confusing in terms of what you can and can’t jump on or interact with. It is probably too late to improve this but I will chalk that down to a lesson in design for the future.

[charlotteridgway]

Progression of level one

[charlotteridgway]

Creating a logo for the game

I’m not sure what I’ll use this for yet, but I thought it would be nice to make one.

[charlotteridgway]

Fixes

The boss level sequencing of the bullets is now working.

Added in some small dialogue sequences using the UI and typewriter script I’ve made at the beginning of the levels and after events that might need a little more explanation.

Fade in and out of each level (in addition to the border), which is helping it feel a bit more polished.

[charlotteridgway]

colour coordinated my blueprints! other than that, this week I have been sorting out UI, trying to fix little bugs, and the boss level. I feel like I’m finally getting my head around it all a bit more now.

Here is a link to the typewriter UI tutorial I’ve used. It looks really good, and it’s definitely helping solidify the theme of the game and UI.

Tomorrow, I just want to get some sort of loading screen in, maybe the toolbox UI, sort out the boss face stuff and package everything. I feel like I could keep adding stuff forever but I’ve just gotta polish what’s possible in the time left.

Then I’m done!

[charlotteridgway]

My laptop is being slow so I’ve gone back to paper to do some spaceship designs and revisiting the world map.

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Reviewing what I’ve got and see how I can improve the design. The updated UI art is on the left. May have some issues getting it into engine due to overlapping problems with the tree things.

[charlotteridgway]

A test for my level selection.

The plan was for the world to be based in a solar system and the world rotates depending on the level which is selected, but I’m not completely happy with the way it turned out. I will be trying out another option shortly, but I’m quite happy with the look of each area, so I think it just needs re-arranging at this point.

[charlotteridgway]

UI test.

The tool box was done with a mixture of photobashing, 3D, and photoshop.

[charlotteridgway]

It took a full day of uni but the character sprites are finished! It was a lot of photoshop layers (~25 head, body, individual arms and leg layers) and trial and error animation testing, but I have a walk cycle done, jump/fall and idle (with hair bobbing motion). I only really need these at the moment, just to replace the little megaman pixel dude I currently have. All these have been cut up and put into spritesheets, and are now successfully functioning in UE as flipbooks.

[charlotteridgway]

Getting the cutscene in engine/Making the boss level

This has probably been one of the most challenging aspects to get working as of yet, so I thought it would be good to document my steps.

As mentioned in my previous post, I exported the timeline animation with Photoshop’s render video option. However, with both .mov and .mp4 files, I had no success in getting them to play back in unreal. I then went home to convert the media files into .wmv - and the next day I managed to get it playing at least.

I initially followed this tutorial on how to create a cutscene using a UI Widget image, and placing the media texture on there, which worked really well. I had problems with this however, in terms of the placement not lining up and it just looked really out of place because it overlapped the foreground/character.

Above is the folder structure I made, following the tutorial.

The widget blueprint.

And then how the widget is used in the level blueprint.

I decided instead to delete the widget media player, and opted for a cube, which I altered the size of so that it was the same as my original background, placing it behind the foreground elements.

This proved to look a lot better, and can now implement camera shake, disabling player movement during the scene, and some speech text from the boss.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mVNZpE8UWdc

[charlotteridgway]

‘UTOPIA’ - UKIE Game Jam 

We were given the theme ‘Utopia’. During the initial concept process, the excitement of the team for the idea that we went for in the end, Lootopia, remained throughout the process and I definitely think it was in the spirit of a game jam and having the creative freedom for two days to come up with something ridiculous and run with it, which was a welcome change from the seriousness of the final year project.

I was tasked with handling Blueprints within UE4 - as currently I am the only team member working with it for my final project. Although sadly I didn’t get to do any art, I did get to sketch out the initial idea of what the game level would look like!

The blueprints were challenging and nothing like what I had done previously, but we pulled through - and we ended up with a nice playable loop which demonstrates the general idea!

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And here is the cutscene. It was interesting setting up the timings for this - I’m feeling it may be an issue to get it into engine - It may be best to actually export it as a film clip sort of thing and play it, because UE4 won’t accept sprites that big and also it’s a bit of a faff and the timings I’ve applied will be lost - as flipbook uses the same length for each frame.

After doing some research, the best way to get it as a video will be to convert the normal timeline to a video timeline and render the video, then export in video format. And it’s all do able in photoshop, which is convenient!

Next I’ll be making some better-rendered pipes to put in my levels. I am looking to make them modular so I can re-use them where necessary.

[charlotteridgway]

After the UKIE game jam on Monday/Tuesday (which I will be doing the write-up on this weekend), I came back into labs to start back up on my own project. I didn’t get much done on Wednesday because I think I was still pretty drained, but on Thursday I started the animations I’d need for a brief cutscene at the beginning of my boss level.

As you can see above, it was a trial and error process (like most of my animations). In the end, I’ve found it’s easiest to draw the frames out in basic perspective on paper so I know where everything needs to be.

Then I’ll colour the first frame, and warp/resize it and do small recolours frame-by-frame, which is quick and allows the colours some continuity throughout.

I will then be creating lighting and the awakening animation in timeline, and playing it as a cutscene before the battle, so it feels a bit more epic than just going straight into the fight.

[charlotteridgway]

Trying out some new effects with my 2D, as I wasn’t happy before - but don’t have enough time to re-do all my art pieces. I will be keeping the ‘paper’ and layered techniques, as it unifies my designs better -  even though they aren’t exactly what I want in terms of the style of art, I can’t change that now but I feel like these changes help it more towards what I was aiming for.

I then added on some more leaves to add to the drop shadow/layered paper effect. I will probably apply these using the HUD Widget - but I am not sure about how to make them move yet. I love how easy timeline is to create a mock-up for the effect I want to achieve though.

[charlotteridgway]

6 Week Countdown Remaining Evaluation

Now seems like a good time to assess what it is I need to do and what I most want to achieve by the end of this project. I’ve been unsure about the final style of my game throughout the project and after talking with Mark today during the Thursday session, I’ve decided that what is most important to me and for my portfolio is to have a coherent and impactful visual style throughout my levels, because considering my aspirations I need to be able to create sucessful designs. I’m happy with where my blueprints are at currently - it’s just the boss level that needs doing but at this point two days before Easter break, it probably won’t be done until afterwards.

So to keep myself productive over Easter - I will be doing a redesign of my project and character animation to a standard I’m really happy with. Here is my plan for the next six weeks:

Today I will start getting designs together to reflect the ideas of the game and audience. Considering in particular the colour palette and shape language and textures to create a well-thought out style.

Week 1 Easter:

Friday > Wednesday: Break. I’m visiting home and will take some time for myself

Thursday > Friday: Redesign character, helper, and boss

Saturday/Sunday: I have to go to work during the day. In the evenings I will be polishing my character designs

Week 2 Easter:

Monday > Thursday: Character and boss animations. Helper character doesn’t need to be animated. Just have different facial expressions for dialogue box

Friday: Work on environments

Saturday/Sunday: Work during day. Environments in evening.

Week 3:

Start getting the boss level code working

Work on/implement character animations when stuck on coding issues.

Week 4:

Keep working on boss level blueprints

Design environments when stuck on coding

Week 5:

Start finishing up on all level blueprints

Polish up designs and add any other animations required

Week 6:

Polish with any new animations

Export the game

Get everything together for submission files

[charlotteridgway]

Wave animation tests and a mockup of the level so far. Looks a bit redundant in the tests but it works well in the final 

Since monday I’ve been making this final of level two. Since my first level is going to parallax, I figured I would try to implement that in my designs here because I have the script for it so it’s not that much extra effort for the depth it gives. I prefer the style of this one though which is annoying. I was trying to get it to fit in with my style from level one, but I’m finding the consistency difficult.

At this moment I simply do not feel I have the time to go back and change the style for level one to match, but I’ll be aiming to keep it more true to the style I started looking at from now on - rather than move to a more illustration-style thing (even though I really like it), I will just use elements of that alongside my main inspirations.