28/2/2019
This week we started on our 15 week FMP. We were given the Theme London: Then & Now and get to choose between making an Animation or a game. I have chosen to make a game.
The first week of our FMP Project was mainly for research. First, we generated a few initial Ideas on Paper.
We wrote down the first things that came to our minds when thinking of London, and then tried to create a game Idea using these. When looking at our Words, I could really only think of a Cooking game.
None of the Ideas generated in this process really stuck with me though. However I was able to generate an initial Idea in my own time. I want to create a 2D Horror Sidescroller Adventure where you play a young girl who walks through her home and talks to her Family. The family will be suspiciously talking in the past tense, when referring to the current day and once you have finished speaking to them, they will reveal themselves to have been gruesomely murdered. In the end it is supposed to be revealed that the girl was the one who murdered her family and that she was in fact living through a flashback.
I wanted to have an ending where the girl kills herself in the end, but I have concluded that that is probably a too sensitive subject for a school project.
When coming up with these Ideas, it became more and more clear that this game will not be suitable for Children under the age of 16 and therefore this must be incorporated into the target audience. The game also has a set of particular themes that will not appeal to people who enjoy lighter games, another trait that comes into play when deciding the target Audience. I'm also not planning on including any multiplayer functions so this game will probably be more popular with people who prefer singleplayer games.
I wanted to have an ending where the girl kills herself in the end, but I have concluded that that is probably a too sensitive subject for a school project.
When coming up with these Ideas, it became more and more clear that this game will not be suitable for Children under the age of 16 and therefore this must be incorporated into the target audience. The game also has a set of particular themes that will not appeal to people who enjoy lighter games, another trait that comes into play when deciding the target Audience. I'm also not planning on including any multiplayer functions so this game will probably be more popular with people who prefer singleplayer games.
After this we looked at Semiotics, what are they and how can we analyze them?
(Semiotics: The study of signs, indicators, likeness, metaphors, symbolism, communication and iconography)
We used our new-found Knowledge on Semiotics to move on to our Contextual Analysis, where we looked at 3 games, that, in a way, fit the Theme London: Then & Now.
The first was the Demo of Devil may Cry 5, that is set in Redgrave City, a fictional place based heavily upon London. We looked at different Details in our surroundings, to analyse how this is shown.
The second was a level from Call of Duty MW3, that is set in London. We analysed what details they got right, and where they lost the authentic London feel.
The last was ZombiU, a game set in 2012 London. We saw how well they captured the experience of a London Resident, but also how they used Police cars from the Wrong time, and how they couldn't capture London's Ethnic diversity.
Analyzing these games has helped me understand the amount of detail needed to e put into an environment much more, which I think will impact the deigns for my game positively. More can be read on the Contextual Analysis Page.
Then, we went to the Museum of London, to have a close look at the many Eras of London we could choose from. I had already chosen a time, but the trip helped me visualize this time a lot better. I had also chosen an Art style already, and had an idea for the Main Character, but looking at the Clothing Models, helped me design her a lot more authentic for that time Period. This can be read about on the Research page.
7/3/2019
In this second week we started on some primary and secondary research, as well as experimenting with our art styles.
For Primary research we went on a trip around London, and for secondary research we searched around the internet for art styles we might like to reference. Both of these can be further read about in the Research Page.
Using the Art Board I created with the secondary Research, we were tasked to experiment with some first Character sketches. As I had already made some sketches in my own time,
I went ahead and started to digitalize those. I had however created 3 colour schemes I quite liked, and since I hadn't chosen one yet, I decided to just start with a random one.
14/3/2019
Pecha Kucha: A 20 slide presentation where you have 20 seconds for each slide.
This week we started, and worked mainly on, our Pecha Kucha in Power Point. We were given an extensive list, detailing what we needed to include and how many slides they should occupy.
20/3/2019
One of the things I was unsure about, was whether I would be able to use Adobe Animate, as I didn't know how to export an Adobe Animation to Construct 2. Using the power of the Internet, I quite quickly found a way to export an animation to construct, but was struggling to find a way to remove the white backgrounds from the actual animated part. With a little help from Vinny however, I was able to successfully export it as a PNG. The results of my experimentations can be found below:
21/3/2019
Yesterday I started off with my GDD and today I managed to finish it. It was quite interesting to learn about flowcharts and to map out my game, and it's helped me get a clearer understanding of what I will be making, as well as how much I will need to make, aka how much work this project will be.
I also added to my art board and turned it into a mood board, with references for the art style as well as overall desired theme and feel of the game.
This is the first step towards the dark target audience I am aiming for, as this showcases the mood I am going for, a mood that will not likely appeal to people who enjoy lighter, less grim games.
This is the first step towards the dark target audience I am aiming for, as this showcases the mood I am going for, a mood that will not likely appeal to people who enjoy lighter, less grim games.
I also presented my Pecha Kucha last Tuesday. This experience provided me with an extensive amount of feedback that I was able to use when planning out my game and the research I will be conducting.
One last thing I completed was my Game Proposal, and now I feel as ready to start Pre-Production as ever.
In my free-time I also went ahead and digitalized my second Character design; the Players sister. When designing her character, I took care to follow some guidelines for my art style, so as to assure the two designs look cohesive. I tried to experiment a bit with her hair design, however I found that the first design I made, looked the best, and fit well with the bubbly and excited personality I had in mind for her. For her clothes I used the picture of one of the clothes mannequins I had taken in the Museum of London.
I coloured her in 2 of the colour schemes I have come up with, as I have still not yet decided on one. I think this design has come out very well and I am quite happy with it. I also started sketching out her death pose, however I have encountered technical difficulties with Photoshop and have yet been able to continue.
25/3/2018
Over the course of the weekend I mangaed to finish off all the character designs, among them the Aunt, The Parents and the Brother:
At this point I had narrowed down which colour scheme I wanted to use, which meant that I, in most cases, no longer needed to draw more than one colour scheme. And since I was quite tired when designing these, I frankly didn't have the energy to make more than one. However I am nonetheless very happy with how they turned out and do not think I that any other colour schemes are necessary. Next tim,e I will begin with their digitalizations.
28/3/2019
This week I worked mainly on digitalizing the designs you can see above. Not only did I create a digital version of the normal character however, I also created their dead version.
This is the darkest and most morbid part of my game, and will therefore hopefully appeal to the dark audience I am aiming for. It is also the reason that this game will not be suitable for children under the age of 16.
This is the darkest and most morbid part of my game, and will therefore hopefully appeal to the dark audience I am aiming for. It is also the reason that this game will not be suitable for children under the age of 16.
I am particularly proud of how the mum character turned out as I think the ripped off face looks the best out of all the deaths.
The week I was creating these, was not my best which resulted in the process being rather slow and tedious. I don't think nit affected the quality of thew work, however I feel like I haven't come as far as I could have. I also accidentally broke my Tablet pen in the Process, which resulted in a necessary tablet switch, as I started using one of the colleges tablets. However I have already ordered a new one and should be able to use my own again by next week.
4/4/2019
This week I worked heavily on finishing my environment art, as well as the close ups of the objects in each of them. I tried to keep the environments fairly simple, since I needed to do a few of them and needed to save time. Despite that, I am, as of right now, quite behind schedule, as the environments take long to create nonetheless.
When designing the kitchen, I took much inspiration from the kitchen in the Dennis Severs house. I tried to recreate some of the furniture and items that are seen in it. I also took note of how the kitchen in the Dennis Severs house is located in the basement. This makes a lot of sense if you try to imagine that this served as a means of separating the Staff from the Household. Therefore I also decided to recreate this aspect in my design. Another thing that stood out particularly, is the big shelf that is cluttered with various cutlery and dishware. I also tried to add in one of those into my kitchen, although I did not particularly succeed in making it as cluttered as the reference. I then also drew a table with fruit on it, as the picture also has one.
The Hallway was also mostly inspired by the one in the Dennis severs house, although I took quite a few artistic liberties. I tried to recreate the dark wood, and the decorative door frames, but I took inspiration from the dark wood to create a Gothic look. I thought this would be fitting with the game theme, and also is a personal preference. I paired it with a greyish-light pink. to give it that feminity that is often present in the Gothic style, and paired this with a red tiled floor, to compliment and yet contrast the design. This is probably one of my favorite designs, as I think it not only turned out really beautiful, but it also accurately portrays the atmosphere of the game, and what the house is supposed to feel like.
I also got started on my first HUD designs such as: The Title screen that flickers between two images, a selection symbol and a dialogue box. I wanted the two screens that would flicker between each other to really have a strong contrast, so as to emphasize the difference between the two things the titles are supposed to represent; the look of the game and the actual theme of it. In the dark title, the word FAMILY is also crossed out, so as to symbolize how the family dies and only the girl remains.
23/4/2019
Over the two week holiday, I managed to finish off all the designs I still needed to do, that included the rest of the environment art, as well as some HUD designs for the inventory.
For the environment, I still needed to design the Living room, the Outside, the Study and the Attic, as well as finish off the Hallway and Adam's room I had started.
The Living room I had already previously made a traditional sketch for in my Sketchbook, so designing it was not such a lengthy task. However it is one of the more detailed designs, meaning it required a more in-depth approach when colouring. Ella and I also decided to have a few Easter eggs referencing each-others narratives in our games, therefore the picture frames in the Living Room are filled with two of Ella's character designs. I used images of the living room in the Dennis Severs House's living room as reference, and found those very inspiring.
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The outside was meant to look like a somewhat sunny day, but it should at the same time be quite cloudy and dreary, as it is meant to be a fatefully gruesome day. I tried to design an intricate fencing design, that would portray the amount of effort people used to put into detailed decoration, which in modern times has vastly decreased. I also wanted the small bits of wall that are seen, to show that the house is quite dark and, if it were to be seen fully, very ominous and creepy. Then, lastly, I painted the door red, as this is something I see quite a lot when walking around London, and also it added a nice contrast to the other colours.
The Attic was designed to be very dark, and most of it should not be visible. This was because it is the room the game will end in, and I wanted to make sure the Players attention would be directed at the Character during this scene. Therefore the background is very simple, with no attention grabbing details. In addition I added five pairs of eyes, lurking in the darkness, to symbolize the five people that died in the game and the five voices that will whisper to you in this moment.
For the HUD Designs, I needed to design the Inventory Button, The Inventory Menu, and a Pause screen.
For the HUD Designs, I needed to design the Inventory Button, The Inventory Menu, and a Pause screen.
25/4/2019
After I, over the Holiday, had successfully managed to catch up on my work, I was ready and on schedule for the tasks I had set for this week. According to the schedule I have set myself, I was meant to be working on Coding the Map Layout of the game, so as to allow the player to access all Areas. I finished this task successfully, and even managed to add a fade effect for the transition between rooms. This allows me to start on my next task, which is to make sure the layouts are coded so that the player spawns in front of whatever door they entered from.
When coding the doors to each room, I wanted to make sure there was a prompt that appeared, so they knew which button to press. This meant that I had to choose a font for the text in the game. I decided to use the font "Chiller", which I converted into a sprite-font using a website and the Construct Sprite editor. I've found this font to look perfect in the context of the game so far, and am very happy with my choice.
Coding the fading transition between layouts proved to be quite difficult at first. Although I successfully managed to code the layouts to start with a fade, I was struggling to get the fade to work when exiting. After a while I figured out that turning off the "active at start" setting in the Fade behaviour properties of the object.
14/5/2019
Last Tuesday we had a group feedback session with the art students, where we were split into groups and presented our current progress. I presented two of my Character designs, as well as a few of my backgrounds.
It was very interesting to see what others had ultimately chosen to do with their project, and how they've been progressing. I also received some helpful feedback.
In the meantime I managed to finish the coding of the game, to include proper room spawning, Progression, Dialogue and an inventory and Pause screen. Despite how I was worried these things would take too long, or would be hard to figure out, I managed to complete them quite swiftly. The spawning I added using Global variables, worked right from the beginning with no problem and the progression worked quite well without much trouble. I struggled to get the "You cannot progress yet" message to appear properly for a bit, however after figuring it out, I was able to successfully apply it to all the areas it was needed in. The Dialogue was quite easy to add in, as I've done so many times before, so I was quite experienced in getting it to work. Both the inventory and Pause screen seemed very scary to me. I had never coded anything like them and I was worried it would be quite complicated, but after thinking of an idea of how it could work, and trying it out in construct, I realized it was much simpler than I thought. I am happy with the results, and feel a sense of accomplishment for succeeding in this task.
To program the spawning, I created a global variable dedicated to this task. When a player uses a door, 1 is added to the global variable, so that the room behind this door can be set to spawn the character in a certain position when this variable is 1. In rooms with multiple accesses, like the front room and the hallway, I simply did the same with a variation of numbers other than 1. This worked right away, and is something I am very proud of, as I figured it out with no help.
The progression is simple to code, as you must simply say, that certain things wont work or happen until the desired amount of progression point have been gathered. Similar to how it works with the spawning, some interactions add to the progression global variable.
The Dialogue was something I've done many times at this point, as it was my main focus in the last game, as well as something I had experimented with for fun. It was simple and fast to add this in, but it truly adds the most to the game.
Finally for the Pause and inventory screen, I basically had them appear when you press the desired button. Then i used the same coding I used for the start button on the title screen to allow the player to exit the screens. The inventory screen needed some extra coding, as it needed objects to appear after being looked at. This was actually quite simple to add, as you simply add a sprite with an invisible animation and one that shows the object. Then you tell the game not to play the animation with the object on it until the needed global variable is set to 1.
During this I also assisted Ella a bit with her coding, as she missed a week of pre-production and has had many technical troubles with her project, putting her a bit behind.
After finishing coding I moved on to animating my characters. The first animation I made was the walk animation for the main character, as I felt it should take priority. As this animation is the one the player will see the most, I wanted to add a great amount of detail.
This resulted in this animation taking quite a while to make. I was starting to get worried I wouldn't be able to finish all of them in time, however when I made the rest of the animations, I made them a lot simpler,which ended up saving me a lot of time. I quickly created the idle and talk animations and even the death animations came together quite fast
I also asked for the microphone stand, so that we could record standing up, which would sound much freer than if we were sitting.
In the meantime I managed to finish the coding of the game, to include proper room spawning, Progression, Dialogue and an inventory and Pause screen. Despite how I was worried these things would take too long, or would be hard to figure out, I managed to complete them quite swiftly. The spawning I added using Global variables, worked right from the beginning with no problem and the progression worked quite well without much trouble. I struggled to get the "You cannot progress yet" message to appear properly for a bit, however after figuring it out, I was able to successfully apply it to all the areas it was needed in. The Dialogue was quite easy to add in, as I've done so many times before, so I was quite experienced in getting it to work. Both the inventory and Pause screen seemed very scary to me. I had never coded anything like them and I was worried it would be quite complicated, but after thinking of an idea of how it could work, and trying it out in construct, I realized it was much simpler than I thought. I am happy with the results, and feel a sense of accomplishment for succeeding in this task.
To program the spawning, I created a global variable dedicated to this task. When a player uses a door, 1 is added to the global variable, so that the room behind this door can be set to spawn the character in a certain position when this variable is 1. In rooms with multiple accesses, like the front room and the hallway, I simply did the same with a variation of numbers other than 1. This worked right away, and is something I am very proud of, as I figured it out with no help.
The progression is simple to code, as you must simply say, that certain things wont work or happen until the desired amount of progression point have been gathered. Similar to how it works with the spawning, some interactions add to the progression global variable.
The Dialogue was something I've done many times at this point, as it was my main focus in the last game, as well as something I had experimented with for fun. It was simple and fast to add this in, but it truly adds the most to the game.
Finally for the Pause and inventory screen, I basically had them appear when you press the desired button. Then i used the same coding I used for the start button on the title screen to allow the player to exit the screens. The inventory screen needed some extra coding, as it needed objects to appear after being looked at. This was actually quite simple to add, as you simply add a sprite with an invisible animation and one that shows the object. Then you tell the game not to play the animation with the object on it until the needed global variable is set to 1.
During this I also assisted Ella a bit with her coding, as she missed a week of pre-production and has had many technical troubles with her project, putting her a bit behind.
After finishing coding I moved on to animating my characters. The first animation I made was the walk animation for the main character, as I felt it should take priority. As this animation is the one the player will see the most, I wanted to add a great amount of detail.
Then it was time to make the ending Animations. The first was an animated cut scene, which required me to draw an enlarged frontal view of Alice. I then used a camera layer to zoom in on her mouth, where I then animated a smiling mouth, and the words "I REMEMBER.."
In a surprisingly short amount of time, I had this cut scene fully animated, and could mover on to the last animating task. I needed to animate the ground opening up, and Alice falling through it, which once again proved to be shockingly easy. Soon I had finished all the Animating and could move on to Audio.
I short while before I finished animating, I had booked the Recording booth, and held an audio session there. I had Ella and Faz helping me by voicing 2 characters each, whilst I did the same.
We had a bit of a struggle with the recording, as TJ wasn't able to find the equipment we needed right away, and so the first 20 minutes, of the hour I had booked, were wasted on waiting and setting up. By the time we actually managed to finish Ella's recordings, it was time for our next lesson, and so we had to abandon the booth. TJ was kind enough to keep our stuff for us however and we were able to continue afterwards. It ended up taking a very long time, and since we had already finished our lesson at 5, we didn't get to leave college until very late. I think it was all worth it in the end though.
The microphone I had originally asked TJ for was a boom mic, as it was what we used on my last game, and I knew it recorded voices well. However due to the issues I mentioned before, we ended up receiving a Rode mic. I'm not sure if this different selection of mic,= made a big difference on the way the sound turned out, however I am very happy with the clarity of the recordings and so I think this was a good choice.
The Rode mic, like the boom mic, is a directional mic, which means that it only picks up whats right in front of it. this makes it great for recording voices, as it won't pick up the background noise.
I also asked for the microphone stand, so that we could record standing up, which would sound much freer than if we were sitting.
I am very happy with how the voices turned out, and how I feel like they are able to accurately capture the personality of the characters they are meant to represent. The voice for the brother, in my opinion, should have been slightly different, as I don't think its able to bring across his secluded side enough, however I think it works well enough in the game.
It was all in all, a fun yet stressful session, but I managed to get all the Audio I needed to finish up my game. I will however need to look up some royalty free sound effects for her footsteps and the doors opening, as I didn't managed to record that. As of right now, I am working on labeling all the audio clips, so I can add them into the game.
16/5/2018
Adding in the audio was a task that did not take very long, and I have actually finished the production of my game. Since I wanted the audio clips to randomize each time, instead of having set audio clips played each time, I had a bit of trouble with getting said randomize function to work. Even now the game sometimes generates the same number twice in a row, which stops the clip from playing again. But I've had to learn how to live with that, as I was unable to find a solution for this.
After this I moved on to trying to fix some bugs. On my own I wasn't able to find any bugs, other than things I had forgotten to add in or adjust, which I did as I was playing it. To combat this I had Mikial play my game to see if he could find anything. He was very thorough in his attempts to break my game, and actually managed to get my game into a state where it was unplayable. But since I'm not entirely sure how he was able to do so, I don't know how to fix that. I am however able to fix the smaller bugs he found and am hoping that one of those was the problem, and that it won't happen again. One thing he found, that I had not thought of, was that you were not only able to open the inventory and pause screen at the same time, but that you could still control the character and progress dialogue whilst in those screens. When trying to fix this, I first tried a slightly complicated method, but this only led to the player either not being able to move, or being able to move during dialogue. So I scrapped that attempt and instead made small changes to my code, which I had been trying to avoid, and was able to solve the problem much more efficiently. Another bug was that when pressing the A and D buttons simultaneously, the Character would do a still moonwalk of sorts. To fix this I set it so when the player presses these two buttons, the Idle animation would play.
23/5/2019
This week, since I've finished fixing the majority of the bugs, I had some people come by for QA testing. I had them fill out a Feedback sheet I made, so that I knew all their thoughts, and if they found any more bugs. So far the Feedback has been very positive, with some people stating some personal preferences and others sometimes debating that. Particularly the audio has been mentioned a lot, as some people remarked that it was too loud, whilst others were happy with it how it is. I've encountered a specific bug however that has been troubling to try and fix. At the end of the game, the player is sent back to the title screen, where the game is meant to be able to be played all over again. The first play through of the game works perfectly fine, however this second time playing, after the ending, has shown a reappearing bug, which makes the game unplayable. In this second play through, if you open either the inventory or pause screen, the collision boxes for the buttons that allow the player to exit these screens, have been moved. Sometimes this means that the buttons can be pressed if you find the collision box somewhere random on the screen, sometimes however they disappear completely. For obvious reasons, this is a rather severe bug, but I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to fix it. I've tried adding a line of code that should set the collision boxes to their rightful positions each time the button is pressed and when the screens are visible. However this has not fixed anything.
One Person thought the writing was "not clear enough", a problem I am unsure how to solve, as they didn't detail what exactly this means. And one person thought there should be a different transitions for when the characters die. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to create new animations.
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