#making part

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Man making part in workshop

Sanctuary of the Twin Waterfalls | Medieval Fantasy Music & Animated Ambience

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Chapter 11: Hackathons As Source Of Improvement

My next design was inspired throughout MIT Reality Hack. Thing is, last time the game was two-dimensional, with character bound to earth, and with trying to balance inputs and dodging. At this note, I have went on a hackathon. Thing about hackathons is that aside from crafting and designing, you get a moment to talk about your projects. What means you need to tell elevator pitch whenever asked. What means, on social mixers you need to say pitch about 20 times per night. What means, you get a moment to think of stuff. Aside from this, you get a grasp of level of Cool other people get to create in limited amount of time. (And see whole universe in five minutes, what is infinitely awesome). Coming back, I have decided to scrap old visual design, and work on sensation of Flow, and Flight, to make game excited feel-wise. Not exhausted.

This has resulted in a brand new prototype: this time, with infinite scroller, and dramatic cameras. Here, I have connected WASD to motion, making it not only jamming, but also a dodging tool for player to use. While still a bit disorienting, this prototype was much more exciting to play in the end of the day. Yet, I have found a new issue. With this design, the players had hard times focusing on what objects are flying onto them, and what notes they are supposed to play in Suggested Note Line.

Therefore, I went back to prototyping Once Again.

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Chapter 10: Character Design: Nightingale

Placeholder for a Nightingale was a little guy.

This design was drawn in about 5 minutes as a temporary imagery soon to be replaced with something more substantial. The imagery itself was inspired by these specific depictions of musicians of that epoch.

A bit later, I have come up with idea to adapt character design into a nightingale. Solovey. This bird is iconic for Ukrainian culture. In Ukrainian folklore, nightingale symbolised beauty of poetry and music due to their complicated singing patterns. In Ukrainian spring songs- Vesnyanky- nightingale is often depicted as a bird of hope. Ukrainian language is often called "a language of nightingale" because high amount of wovels makes the language sound melodic. At the same time, I was considering incorporating some design elements of the musicians themselves, as like iconic vests and straw hats.

Graphics-wise, I intended to remain two-dimensional, as like in iconic album cover of Chervona Ruta.

These inspirations have resulted in this design.

Later, I have decided to give game some dimension, and started testing different ways of emulate flight. I needed to create more stylized and easier-to-prototype design to start playing with dimensionality. I have looked in artworks of my greatest inspiration artist, Maria Prymachenko. Her style was drawing form folkloric patterns and designs, but adapted them to more modern look.

In addition to this, I appreciated work Ivan Semesyuk did for an album cover for canadian-ukrainian band Balaclava Blues.

These have resulted with me altering the design to get it similar to this two-dimensional style:

This sprite was cut up in tiny pieces for further prototyping. I have come up with this design:

Turned out, sideways motion was making people nauseous. I have moved to front-viewing morion, the one that is used in infinite scrollers, what has resulted in a need to update design once again. Now, in 3D, to allow me to rotate model in space. Material-wise for 3D I have decided to go with ceramics, with this iconic ceramic rooster that survived russian bombing being an inspiration:

At the same time, I was looking in other designs of traditional pottery, such as these decorated kitchenware items:

I wanted to bring back a bit of decorative ornaments into the design, combining 2D art (Maria Prymachenko paintings) with 3D sculptures (the pottery works) What together has amalgamated into a brand new design:

To preserve stylized, cutout-esque feel, I did not create rigging for the model, using separate pieces (wings, body, and head) for animation. In the end, I have added Cool Trails that make everything flowy and pretty C: And here is the model in scene:

Soon, very soon you will learn what is the imagery you see on top ;)

And for now, stay tuned!

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Chapter 9: And We Are Back To Prototyping

After the fail of previous prototype, I have decided to improve visuals to ensure people would have easier times getting grasp behind the game.

Old but gold prototype. Here, the player had two input systems: WASD to make music, and arrows to play notes. Arrows let the player move sideways and dodge attacks. WASD was used to play music. Each key was connected to a note within chord, what let player create music. In addition to this, each time player played a note, game would suggest what one note to play next, and when player clicked right note, it would suggest next one. Upon completing provided combination, player would deal extra damage to the BBEG. While I had not figured out how to record sound back then, it is important to notice first appearance of Note Switching system as well. Core idea behind it was that, while retaining similar values in relation to each other, notes would change their tone to maintain within background music's harmony. This mechanic let players jam along with music, what I felt an important part of the gameplay. Upon play test, players have reported bulky controls that could have been optimised, and some would not hear the sound as well. What was next? What were my bigger and more important steps? How would break impact the project? You will know very soon!

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Chapter 8: Character Design: Eagle

At this point, I started looking into UI.

I had an idea for depiction of BBEG for the game.

I wanted an apocalyptic and threatening antagonist. We are talking about Soviet Union, and what is it to Eastern Europe and Central Asia countries? It is steel curtain, colonizer, nuclear explosions, censorships, and repressions.

It is cult of victory in WWII, that forgets about all sacrifices and all deaths, and glorifies the war itself.

I wanted to make entity that will represent these horrors. I want game's boss to be intimidating and monumental, to capture the sense of steel curtain at least in design. Two of my big inspiration pieces were soviet monuments and russian coats of arms, that were turned into this monumental steel eagle. In addition, eagle was getting shiny red star- another favorite logo of soviets. Here is an initial sketch:

Being baby Ukrainian in 2000s, I had a bad luck to witness russian cultural presence in my home's media. They were everywhere: TV, cinema, newspapers, music, and more. And russian culture was often posed to be "superior" to any other one. We were always playing role of silly village people of some sort. One of great symbols of that invasive omnipresence was this specific imagery burned in my retina, impossible to erase even with my nerd decreasing vision:

In some ways, indirectly, this specific image has amalgamated into semi-final design of the eagle of censorship:

I wanted to keep wings low-poly intentionally. I kept thinking a bit of the war planes, and the brutalist steel sheet sensation that was wide-spread around.

Motion-design wise, I was very inspired by Omega Flowey from Undertale. I wanted to create this collage-like, Spongebob Random Realistic Element sensation to the BBEG's motion. In further iterations, BBEG is made to be a pre-rendered PNG, what not only improves my computer's performance, but also contributes to the game feel.

In the end of the day, my colleague told me how he felt "being yelled at in russian" when looked at the render. I do find this phrase an indicator that design works the way it is intended.

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Chapter 7: Typing: the game

As for new prototype, I have decided to play with the "suggested note combination" concept. For these purposes, I have created this game:

Here, the players were timed again, but now they had much more accessible interface (we are talking about keys instead of strings, what is much more intuitive), and whenever they would input any of suggested notes- they would receive a suggestion on what to type next. The game was timed, but had no interface yet. One of my big ideas was to not start doing any parts of "pretty" UI until I get mechanic to work (I did not want to waste my time on something I would need to scrap anyways in case of emergency). Oh boy, I was wrong. Playtesters were confused about the interface, and, what is worse, they were not as interested in a gameplay. On the other hand, I assumed that with adding of narrative and visuals players will have better grasp on what was going on within the game. On this note, I went back to prototyping.

[soloway-videogame]

Chapter 4: Ideating and Prototyping

My first early prototype was a box with the note line inside. The first idea behind core mechanic was to translate Guitar Hero-esque rhythm game mechanic into use of an actual bass guitar playing. The idea was to teach my audience how to play music within my chosen genre at very first place. But then, just before testing, I decided to push idea a little bit further. I was inspired by the way boxing circuits work. You are provided different movement combinations, and you need to produce as many of them as you can in limited amount of time. The new design idea worked this way: player was provided time windows in which they had a chance to play as many different note combinations from list as they could, and these combinations would accumulate to deal damage to the big bad evil guy. In this iteration, the rhytm behind the gameplay was only in phases of offence/defence, and music itself was not bound to specific timing. At this point of design, I have started relying on a theory behind innate sense of rhythm of human beings.

In this version of prototype, I would time people 30 seconds to recreate provided combinations of different notes (it is up to them to choose which combination to try and play), and record how many they would possibly recreate. Big issue with this iteration was general confusion of human beings behind timing and notes. The results would range between 6-7 different note combinations and 0 combinations in worst cases. While I had instructed to focus on strings rather than frets, they would still get disoriented about note combination. Looking back, I am considering that results were also drastically impacted by use of real guitar, that humans unfamiliar with instrument would find intimidating. But also, some reviews found this game idea not interesting, what, in combination of general disorientation, resulted in me scrapping this prototype and returning back to ideation.