Project Haunted Light 14-03-05

Last week I spent time working on the main menu for Haunted light, the game me and my group have been working on for some time now. The main menu is going to be rather dark, with a lit candle in the middle that lights up the screen. In the game, the player has a candle, which is their only light source, and the only light source in the game making it rather important, which is why we chose to use it in the main menu as well.  At first, the candle and the flame was only a still image, but it felt way too static, so we chose to animate it.

When the game starts the player will begin at the main menu, as with most (if not all) games. The menu fades in from black, and as the menu fades in, the candle is lit. The animation of the candle lighting up is actually the last of the three that I’ll be showing today that I worked on, and it still needs a few more in-betweens in order to play a tad slower without looking odd. It works however, and I won’t add more frames until later, if I get the time before the games’ final deadline as I’ve got other things to finish before that. I spend a short while looking at slow motion videos of matches and candles getting lit before beginning to work on it, in order to know what I was doing.

When the candle has been lit the player will be able to click around on the menu as she pleases. As long as the player is on the main menu, the flame of the candle will move slightly in the background. Most candles that aren’t placed in a drafty room tend to have a flame that stands almost completely still, but if the flame didn’t move on the main menu it would look very static, which we didn’t want it to be. We wanted it to move slightly, without flickering, as a flickering light would have needed a lot more animation to not feel overly repeated. It took a bit longer than one might expect to do this, as the movement is supposed to be very subtle, and still not feel overly repeated or static. I might go back and edit this later as well, if I get the time towards the end of the project.

The last thing that the candle does is that it is blown out when the player hits the “Play” button. As soon as the player hits “Play” the light will be blown out and the screen fade to black before the gameplay begins. I spent some time looking at images of candles being blown out before tackling this animation, and used a couple of good stocks and references of small blowing flames in order to get the shape of the flame to look like what I wanted. This animation is the one of these three mentioned that I’m most happy with.

I hope that you all have a great week and weekend! Keep up the great work everyone!

MPh out.