Vegetables n stuff
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Making the top down game Mole Munch, one of the most important objects are vegetables for the mole to eat. Before deciding to deviate from the concept document on what vegetables to use I began, among other sprites, to draw the highest scoring vegetable. At this point going by the concept document it was a cauliflower. It was limited to 64×64 pixels to have the correct size in the game. It worked well in the sense that a cauliflower is distinct when viewed strait from the top. It was clear that it was a cauliflower, unlike the carrots that ether had to be unnaturally lying on the grass or stick up from the ground without the possibility to identify them as carrots. Carrots were therefor removed from the game in favor of apples and strawberry plants. When tinkering with level design it seemed to me a bit illogical to have a cauliflower be so protected as we wanted it to be in the game as the highest scoring vegetable but I was at this point occupied with assembling an example level over view for our meeting with Steven Bachelder. He suggested it could be a price winning cauliflower, and that the gardener protecting the garden the game takes place in could mutter something about protecting he’s price winning cauliflower to show how precious it was and how emotionally invested he was in protecting it. Having a price winning cauliflower also seemed a bit illogical so I looked for vegetables that could be price winning while at the same time being distinguishable when viewed from the top. I decided watermelon would fit the profile. I drew a watermelon with a ribbon and a medal to show that it was valuable and in fact a price winning watermelon, thereby meriting it of being well guarded. The group had at this point decided that everything needed to be realistically viewed strait from above so the medal had to be placed on the side of the melon, making it a bit awkward looking.
At the pre alpha testing with Markus Ingvarson he commented that a bowknot would enable placement on top of the melon for a clear view of the medal. I agreed and updated the melon with a new ribbon and a medal on top. We had at this point decided that the eatable objects should when possible have idle animations so I made the ribbon big enough to be able to move with the wind. I also gave the melon a darker green to distinguish it further from the gras environment.
Standing alone it is now mistakable for a melon viewed from the side, but incorporated in the accompanying game graphic it appears as viewed from the top to a satisfactory degree.  |
