The Day of the Dead
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We are currently working on a game based on a game design concept made by another group in the course Speldesign 2 – spelutveckling, 7.5 hp. The game is a bullet hell based on a “parade mechanic” which makes the enemies follow the player once they have lost their health. The original concept has been modified to better focus on the targeted audience. Among the many assets the game needs the “Parade bar” is one of the more important ones. While the enemies are going to be visible behind the player avatar, we still wanted the player to have some sort of feedback on how they are progressing on their (hopefully) growing parade. This is done through the parade bar which can be seen below.
The game has a Day of the Dead theme, which is mainly communicated through visuals and sound. To make that more apparent we use every opportunity to convey that theme. For the parade bar I took inspiration from the themed bunting I found while researching Day of the Dead. They were colourful with various motifs or patterns, which I figured would be a more interesting and a better way to convey our theme. (Example of them below)
After som initial concepts I started working on the first iteration of the parade bar. I used Photoshop and blocked out rectangles on a layer mask for the silhouette, and then I used a clipping mask to paint in the holes of each piece. After that the silhouette layer and the clipping mask was merged to cut out what was supposed to be transparent. The line which they hang from was made with the elipse tool, and then the top half was cut off using a layer mask. Originally they were all black because I found it easier to work black on white instead of the other way around. However, before exporting them to Unity I inverted the colours so that the colour could be adjusted in the engine. This lets us use a single asset for every colour variation of it. The assets were put on a sprite sheet using Sprite Sheet Packer, imported in to Unity, sliced with the sprite editor, put together as a simple prefab and then finally the various colours were set.
The first iteration of the parade bar is done. Adjustments and additional variations will be done once more assets have been put into the game. It is really difficult to know how an asset will look with the rest of the game before they are all in place, but I already have ideas for how the parade bar could be improved. The colours should be changed to a less randomised colour palette, and atleast the bottom edge of each hanging paper should be less flat and more interestingly decorated. And thats it for now!  |
