Character turn around

Following to the thumbnail assignment we now were to choose just one of them, and construct a character out of it. I choose this one.

The reason was because I couldn't choose. So I decided to challenge myself and do a female character, as I've had difficulties with females. This one was the one I liked the most of the female thumbnails I had, because of the linear highlights which speaks to the image I have of the game world as a dark neon city. As for the clothes I think they fit the profession of a parkourist but also with designer details. Making her look interesting although she is a regular human. And this thumbnail turned into this.

Her design was kept almost to the letter, except for her hair. Her hair was changed because it would fir more to her personality design of a confident and reckless youth.

The purpose with this this assignment, to make a turn around of a character, was becouse a turn around is needed when modelling a character. A modeler use this sheet to be able so turn it to 3D. It is very important that the pose is simple and that every design element is seen. For example, that is why the arm is removed when viewed from the side, so that the modeler can see what is beneath.

Thumbnail Assignment

Our first assignment in the new course 2D Computer Graphics: Theory and Application 1 was to draw 20 character thumbnails for a chosen concept out of two, given from the teacher.

I chose the concept that had a focus on fantasy and combat. You play as an ordinary person of this modern world that travels through different dimensions and realms to find gods and spirits to fight the chaos that is going to end the world.

Since the main character was an ordinary person that is going to fight evil beings I thought that he or she needed a natural trait to be able to do that. I went with agility, and that lead me to parkour. I then simply wanted to create an agile person in clothes that is easy to move around in, and that yet is looking interesting enough compared to the fantasy beings in the game.

So here is what I got. I really found it hard to find inspiration for all of them.
Cheers.

The different suits of Mary

Continuing on our five weeks project spoken about in the previous post.

This week we first had a brief meeting discussing the basic mechanics of the games. How the character is going to move, shoot etc. We changed a few things. First, we would have the game runt from room-to-room, but now we decided on a continuously moving screen not locked to the player avatar. We decided this because it would offer a better flow to the game, and a bigger challenge if the player was always forced to move, never being able to stand still.

So the avatar is always in movement, even if you don’t touch the forward key. If you touch it, you will speed up, hence moving forward. If you press the backwards key you will slow down, but you can’t stop, as you reach the left edge of the screen it will continue to push you forward no matter how much you press the backwards key.

The player will move through a level full of enemies that will shoot randomly, and the avatar will defend itself by shooting as well. The avatar takes damage when hit by enemy fire or colliding with one. The avatar has three health points and will die and the level will reset when those three lives run out.

During our second meeting we built our paper prototype. We made a simplified grid-based version of a level. The player always moves one step forward each turn, but can additionally choose to take one step forward, backwards, up or down. Backwards is only available if the frame allows it. Onto of the board is a frame, that also moves one step forward each turn, illustrating the continuously moving screen in the game. We have yet to playtest enough to figure out how the battle will work, but there is monsters and projectiles as well.

So, as for the story of the game. The game begins during a public demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Bell call’s up a volunteer from the audience, which is the avatar of the game, Mary. There is two telephones on the stage. Bell makes picks up one and makes a call to the second, and Bell is to answer that one. But behind the scenes Elisha Gray, Bell’s self-proclaimed nemesis is fumbling with the cables, wanting to sabotage Bell’s demonstration. But something far more unexpected happens. Too much electricity enters The telephone, and when Mary picks up the telephone she is sucked into it. She comes out through another telephone, during world war 1.

Mary has traveled through time, and now it is her mission to find her way back to Bell’s demonstration back in the late 1800-centry. She has to find a working ringing telephone (the one she came through broke). She will be opposed by static creatures that interferes with the phone call and has to fight her way through. When she reaches another phone she is taken further into the feature, going through the 30ies, 50ies, 70ies and finally 2010, where at Bell’s museum she will find the original phone and be able to return home.

As for the personal work I have done so war for this project I’ve made the different outfits of Mary. At each level, which is another era Mary has a different outfit, a different suit, that is proper to that time. That is how we included “suit” into our game. “Telephone” I think is pretty obvious how we included it.

Until next time.

Different suits of Mary

Suit and Telephone

For our next project we were assigned to make a space shooter game in five weeks. More or less.

We have the restrictions that the game must fulfill which is as follows;

• No Gravity. The game shall not contain elements that an additional force needs to be programmed. So jumping can’t be a feature in the game, yet walking up and down is allowed.
• The game needs to be played on PC.
• It needs to have 2D Graphics.
• Can be produced within 10 weeks.
• The game must contain some kind of projectile, and at the least 3 different kinds of power-ups.
• High score. A score system.
• The game scene which can either scroll together with the player, move from room to room, or just be one scene and the enemies comes to you.
• The game must contain the two key words given in some way.

That’s the requirements. Today our group sat down to come up with a concept for the game. The key words we were given was “Suit” and “Telephone”. In 2 and a half hour we sculptured a concept for narrative, levels and their basic features, aesthetics, key feature, and ideas for power-ups.

The game we came up with centers around “Telephone” and is more of a comical exploration game. In fact, it even has Bell himself in it. I’m not going to explain the actual narrative of the game, much rather how the game works. The game progress from level to level. Where each level is built up by moving from scene-to-scene. You can walk rather freely around the scene. Up, down, left, right. You are only restricted by certain obstacles like house walls, crowds and such. Every scene has one entry and one exit, moving from left to right. Enemies and power-ups will rain down from right to left on each scene, going against the character. The character is hurt if touched by the enemies, and the character can shoot them to make way to get forward to get to the goal. Each level has different outer forces instead of just the enemies, making the player have to keep an eye on the surroundings as well. As an example, if there is a war going on in the level. The player needs to watch out for bombs and bullets. Each level has a time limit which will determine your score together with enemies shot. That is the basic of the game.

Next time I’ll maybe get into the game setting and what it is about, and how we included suits and telephones.

Game: Spectral Traces

A game design by Emma Mörk.

“Want to hear the other side's part of the story? In Spectral Traces you can find the truth from the spirits that has yet to pass to the other side.

Switch between the two main characters to gather information from the dead and the living to solve the mysterious crimes in a darkening city. Solve puzzles to access hidden areas, and witness the consequences whether you caught the right guy or not.”

That’s the high concept for the game. It is a puzzle adventure game. A Detective game with a supernatural twist. The basic gameplay consist of running around in a level with a crime-scene and surrounding areas with clues and witnesses. Both real and ethereal, namely ghosts. You gather clues and talk to the witnesses to conclude a suspect of the crime. The crime can be a murder or burglary.

Concept of split screen gameplay.

Features of the game:

• Switch between characters with different access’s in the game. Sarah has the authority to arrest the suspect, access the crime-scene and be taken seriously when interviewing witnesses. Alexi can talk to ghosts to get clues, he is agile and can access difficult places, and he is able to eavesdrop on conversations.
• Co-op. Played on separate machines, or split screen. The split screen function works that when the characters are close enough the screen become one.
• No identical crime scene. The clues are randomized to a certain degree for each game, providing a slightly different play through each time.
• Puzzles. Everything from pressure plates to dilemmas between ghosts. All puzzles is rewarded with a clue or the access of another area with a clue. These clues isn’t affected by the system of clues disappearing when another one is gathered.
• Consequences. View and listen to the consequences. The game world is affected with what is said on the radio, how the civilians behave, and events on following levels.
• Color highlights. The color highlights will give the player a hint of what is going around them. Blue is neutral, nothing special is happening. Green is safe, having positive conversation. Yellow, alert, something suspicious is going on somewhere close etc. The color’s meaning will be taught early in the game.

The characters of the game is Alexi and Sarah. Sarah, a special police investigator with authority. Alexi, a boy who have been able to communicate with ghosts since birth. Alexi’s brother was murdered and the culprit was never found, as the police wouldn’t listen to Alexis’s first hand proof from his brother’s ghost. Sarah was the only one to listen to Alexi. She claims to believe him, and offers help in catching his brother’s bane in exchange for his help in solving crimes. Together they’ll find out whether influence from the dead is really good or bad.

Character Concept.

Jumbo Snack Cake

Sissy fight remake response

As a minor assignment we we're given the task to give a response to other team's sissy fight remakes, which was an assignment for all of us a week back or so. The game our team received was Jumbo Snack Cake. In the given game’s memo it was given the task to adapt an advertising touch for particular sweeties. To put it simply, to be able to play the game they would need the appropriate snacks. Then following the game would involve consumption of the snacks. This was handled rather well. But…

To come to my point I need to explain the game. The game was set up more or less like sissy fight, for the exception of the defense card. Each player has 10 points which serves as their hit points. You attack the other players in order to increase your own points. Between each round you can use your points to buy snacks. Each snack represent a certain amount of points, and cost the same. By doing this you secure your score as players can’t steal each other’s candy. Yet also the player can consume one of their candies to get a bonus. Like that your attack hit with the double damage, or that you are invulnerable for one round.

All of this was rather fun. The game didn’t end too fast and it was pretty tactical whether to secure your points and become vulnerable in the game or not. But there was just one flaw we found. The consumption of the candy and the bonuses was found irrelevant. It just seemed out right stupid to waste so much points when you had so little for a bonus that only lasted for one round. To fix this you maybe could increase the points of the player to make it less risky to spend such a big amount. It is discussed in “Fundamentals of Game Design” that a risk always needs a reward. Now I’ve found that the reward needs to be appropriate to the risk that is taken.

As the sense of the consumption of candy didn’t work in the game as we played it, this game may have failed their memo’s task. Yet, I found the idea rather appealing. The game just needs a little more tweaking and testing. And polishing up the instructions for the game a bit.

Space Invader analysis

At our first lecture in analysis and design we talked about what a game is and what we’re going to do during the course. We’re most obviously going to analyze. We’re going to learn how to deconstruct games to its core systems. See how the game works in its simplest definition, where it’s just components reacting with each other. Simply see through the flashy graphics and see the mechanism.

A way to do that is to break the game into pieces, objects. Your character is an object. The object has different properties that make it differ from your enemy. And they have behaviors, and relationships on how to react with each other and make something happen. Our first assignment was to analyze an old classic, namely space invaders with this method. It’s a very simple game, to the eye. But what lies beyond can be pretty tricky.

Let’s start with the objects. The objects are everything, together they create the game. At the most basic we have the player controlled craft, the enemies and the shields. But rather we have shield parts, since the shield is made out of squares that one each gets destroyed while hit. The whole shield doesn’t disappear, hence each part is a separate object but with the same properties and behavior. The bullets, or lasers is also objects. But the score and lives is also objects. Even the screen is an object. The objects is part of the whole jigsaw puzzle that creates the whole picture, the game.

Next up is the properties. The properties is what defines the objects, makes it what it is. Without location it couldn’t be there, without visual graphics it couldn’t be seen, without speed it wouldn’t be able to move. There is other properties as health, or also called hit points. Sound, hit box, and the ability to spawn a bullet. The enemy will have similar properties, but it’s an NPC, and the other is player controlled. Yet the shield narrows down to location, graphics and hit box. It can’t move, or spawn bullets like the other two. Score only has graphics and location.

But behaviors then. Behaviors is whatever the object is able to perform. There is very simple behaviors in this game. For player craft it’s simply movement and attack. When you have all this you’ll get something looking like a game very much, but there won’t be much fun. You’re bullets won’t be able to destroy something without relationships. What happens when a bullet hits an enemy? The enemy takes damage and is destroyed. That is a relationship between the bullet and the enemy. When a shield part is hit by a bullet it gets destroyed. If a bullet collides with an enemy laser it neutralizes. Player craft has the relationship of spawning with bullets.

It’s here when things can get confusing. Is it really a property of the player craft to spawn bullets, or is it a relationship? Or both? Does shield parts have no behavior, as being destroyed when hit is a relationship? There is a lot to be discussed on this subject. And still it’s not all of it. For every relationship there is a system. A system made out of an input, process and an output, hence a feedback for the player. And one system triggers another one. There is a collision system that triggers the damage system, which in turn triggers the score system and so forth. I’m not going into depth about systems this time since the plan was to keep this short. It has been a very interesting assignment, and even thinking about breaking down more complex games like this is truly intriguing.

Pilot

Hello! My name is Emma Mörk, student at Uppsala university Campus Gotland, Gamedesign; graphics. This is a blog for documenting, discussing, and sharing my following two or three years at this university. Four years ago as I was starting high school I heard about the game design program at Gotland and since then it has been a goal to come there. I’ve always had fire burning to be creating my own, amaze people and tell stories. Games have proven to be a highly efficient medium for just that. Yet for a brief period my decision was wavering, being challenged by other universities and future valuations. But I decided to go for it and I came to my conclusion when I was looking at student results, and it was quiet clear Gotland had the best. It might just mean talented and engaged people happened to choose that university, but I decided to put my trust in that. Thus I’m finally here. Excited to start a new way of life.