Project Aetherial Blog One
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Introduction We are currently on sprint three of our game project, based on the concept document of the game Aetherial. For this first blog I will focus on the creation and development of one of the games’ enemies: the so-called sky pufferfish. As one of the graphical artists of the team, I am in charge of all the “common” enemies of the game, while the other artist is in charge of the player avatar and final boss. This was decided in the hope to have a consistent style for all common enemies. Concept art and color During the first week I created concept art for all enemies (with four different designs for each enemy). These contained a color palette, inspired by the underlying concept document, with some ideas of my own. A central part of the game is the existence of the resource “aether”, which is supposed to be received from fallen enemies. As such, I wanted a visual representation of the aether present in all enemies. This was visualized as a lighter blue color which glow, and the later plan is to have the light go out as the enemy dies. The enemies’ residue will therefore be an aether “crystal” (in that same blue color) which can be picked up by the player. Apart from the glowing light, all conceptual designs also included crystals in some shape, form, size, and placement, in line with the concept document. All concept art was judged and approved by the teams’ designer, who chose one design of each enemy to strive towards.  The Sky Pufferfish There exist three enemies, apart from the final boss, in the concept document, the sky slug, the tangler, and the aether-ray. The sky pufferfish was created as a fourth enemy by request of the teams’ designer. While discussing enemy behavior, the team wished to have an additional enemy with a different way of attacking. The pufferfish was chosen as a model, due to it being an underwater creature and due to its “inflating” ability, which the team easily could transform into an exploding type of enemy. Behavior and animation Next step after getting the design approved, was to come up with a behavior for this enemy. This was relatively easy, as we had already decided that the sky pufferfish would be a bomb like enemy. The sky pufferfish would spawn at the right side of the screen, as with the other enemies, it would move towards the player, and once it comes into close range, it would explode and reduce the players hit points. If the player manages to shoot the sky pufferfish before it comes close, it would also explode. After the explosion, in both cases, the sky pufferfish would die and disappear. The current user story has the sky pufferfish move slowly across the screen and do high damage in the case of explosion close to the player. This will give the player the incentive to either avoid the sky pufferfish or shoot it before it comes too close. The final step of development was the animation, which is separated in two animation cycles, one for movement and one for exploding and dying. Both animations are still considered works in progress. They are “off” in some places, texture and lightning could be improved, et cetera. For the animation, the timeline tool in Photoshop was used, with 12 frames per second animation. All the line art was created on one layer and all color on another.   Going forward Apart from further training in the difficult subject of animation, I would also like to research how the principle of anticipation can be developed in this design. I suppose it will be more apparent once the enemy is tested in-game, but the enemy behavior should give the player a chance to understand and react upon that “something” is going to happen (in this case an impending attack). The team also have to decide if the explosion damages other enemies in close proximity of the sky pufferfish, or solely the player. Adding the possibility of damaging and/or taking down other enemies may result in more work, but also opens the way for a more tactical and in turn hopefully more interesting gameplay. Finally, it was also discussed if, after the sky pufferfish explodes, it should temporarily leave behind a poisonous cloud, which damages the player if they fly through it. Again, if the team should choose to implement this feature, it results in several follow up questions, as how long the cloud is present, how much damage it does, and if it damages the other enemies as well. First blog finished, thank you for reading! //Therese  |