Blogg #6
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In the end of this course we had created a game for children age 8-9, that consisted of 5 levels plus a boss level, and seven unlockable costume changes for the player avatar. The first level was a tutorial level, explaining how to play the game. I am very happy with the game that we made. It was the first digital game me and my team members had ever done. Even though there must be a million ways that we could have made it slightly better, faster and prettier, I am very proud of it and think it is a good first game and I am proud of my contributions to it. I am very happy to present Beeloning. If you want to try the game press the link below: https://team-mimic.itch.io/beelonging
Many of those that played Beelonging really enjoyed it. Especially those that played similar games as children. Some of the players were confused by different things in the game, but most people understood how to play the game after playing the tutorial level. It is a children’s game but adults can enjoy it too. It is childish and fun, but the level of difficulty in the game is pretty high. I think that it actually would be a suitable game for kids around 4-6, if the level of difficulty wasn’t that high as it was. Since we never had a chance to have kids playtest it, only other students in our class, the difficulty was adjusted for that. One of the things I think we did well is the graphics, specifically that the art looks coherent and it looks like it is all made by the same person. Me and my fellow artist Moa, achieved that by showing each other our sketches when working on a new design for assets and giving each other feedback. And when we painted, we would check each other’s work that was already done for the game, and to make sure that we had painted it in the same way. For an example, to see what colours we used for the honey, so it would look the same throughout the game. All the art assets we put on Slack, giving everyone in the team access to everything and it also worked as a good platform to give and get feedback from the whole team. Another thing that we did good, was to start with the boss fight early in the process. Had we saved it for later we would have missed out the opportunity to test it out on the playtest. We also had more time to tweak it and try to improve it. A boss fight wasn’t a criteria to pass the course, but we knew we wanted to have one right away. To set your goals high is a good thing. Even if you don’t know how to make something, decide to do it. If you want to do it you will gather the necessary skill to do it – thus, learn a lot. What we could have done better is that we could have put some more effort on the music and sounds of the game. We didn’t even start working on the sounds until very late in the development process. And the same goes for the level design and backgrounds. That was also not really put much effort into until late in the development, thus we lost valuable playtesting feedback on our level designs. Some people are asking why we didn’t implement a high score system. The aesthetics of the game is to feel part of something bigger and to feel belonging. It is not about defeating the most enemies that you can. The story is that you are rushing to your hive so save your friends and your hive, so just trying to avoid the enemies works just as well for that.
Throughout this course I have become more proficient in working with photoshop. Obviously, working with a program every day gets you more familiarized with it. But I also learned a lot from my fellow graphics people from working side by side with them. There are an infinite amount of tools to use and there is always a way to become faster at doing something in photoshop if you just know what tools to use. Everyone knows of different tools and likes to share tips on what tools to use, and how to create things better, faster and easier. So a god tip to you if you are graphics person, ask your fellow graphics people for tips and tricks that they know in photoshop. I have also become better at using photoshop to make animations and found a way to utilize the functions that I feel is the easiest. There are many ways to animate, you could create a video layer, or use the timeline, or make frame animation. By testing all the different methods I learned which one I liked the best. For me, I found the frame animations the easiest to use because in it you can manipulate a layer (move it around and show any layer that you want at any frame that you want) which I found was simplest. Also because it is simple to set the timing because you can set the time that each frame is shown. It is also very easy to click between the frames, which makes it a nice and easy tool to use. Knowing a way that you feel comfortable working in, and making a method of how you animate, will make it easier and much faster to created assets. It will, in a sence, become like an assembly line if you are routined in your work. Then your assets will also look more coherent, since they all are made in a similar way. Making the sprite sheets; When putting an animated character into a 2D game, you need to put every frame into a sprite sheet, where all the frames for the entire animation cycle is. Every frame needs to be in place, even if one of them is just a few pixels off, it can be seen in the animation. I found that downloading a script to make an animations into a sprite sheet directly in photoshop won’t always work. I had an issue where the sprite sheets were cut in a weird size, leaving more empty space at one side of the sprite sheet, which caused the animated characters to make weird jumps around the screen. A friend of mine who used the same script got her sprite sheets backwards, so that the animations would also play backwards. Since I didn’t know if there was something wrong with the settings and just wanted to get my sprite sheets quick and easy, I found another way. Just by saving each frame as a PNG and then putting them into an online sprite sheet maker I could get perfect sprite sheets fast and without getting to involved with any settings, programs, or downloading anything. I have learned a lot during this course, but there is so much more to learn. I am excited for the next course and eager to keep learning more.
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