It's in the story

Thanksgiving used to be one of my favorite holidays until this year. Black Friday started at 8pm on Thursday. Give people time to enjoy their meal and digest and all that before you send them out into the holiday shopping zombie mode. Apparently 2 guys got in a fight over some underwear and another guy died from a choke hold... Yeah Black Friday is not safe. Either way I had a good time, I wound up being able to see my family in the DC area which I thought wasn't going to happen so that was nice.
So now's the time for yet another update. I find these are helping me work out things that I need to do in order to get this stuff done on time. So far I have my GDD underway. I am referring to an old book from CCC because I feel like it goes into more detail about what each section requires and I want to be sure I don't forget anything I may or may not need in order to get this thing done.
Thus far I have several sections of the GDD finished as far as the first draft. I have a few concept art pieces for the first few levels done and I need to add them to the GDD. I also decided that I'm going to finish developing this game on the OUYA which is not going to be released until April 2013. I need to find out how much the SDK will cost and then I'll save up, until then I am going to continue to flesh it out in GameMaker  and then Unity that way I'll know all the assets look the way I want them to. I am in the middle of working on the Story Elements, specifically the actual story line and the environment aspects.
I am going to keep working on the story. It is a huge part of the game and I want it to be better than something thrown together. I'm reading up on game narrative which also includes the different camera angles of scenes (if applicable), character dialogue, and the like. Honestly it is taking a lot longer than I'd like it to, but I also know that you cannot really rush a good story. If I were working on my own time I wouldn't be discouraged, but I do have a deadline and the real world will often have deadlines.
Time is of the essence, I think there's only 3 weeks left in the semester if you include the Finals week. 3  weeks, 3 projects, 1 paper... Also I like to work with music on really low to give me some ambiance, but I can't really decide on a station in Pandora. Maybe I need to switch online radio players. I wonder if Spotify has a better video game music genre than Pandora does.

this just in

I'm realizing that before I can get to any real work, I need to know what my game is going to be like. In order to do that I need to get the GDD done ASAP (especially considering that there is a prototype due on Dec. 17th. That being said I'm going to get as much of the GDD done as I possibly can. I'm opening up all the books I have and looking at the GDD's I've done and the one I'm working on for my other class. I feel like once I can confidently say I know everything that is going to go into my game I can start prototyping because as of right now it seems like everything is just a big scramble of ideas in my head. I'm pulling at straws, so for now I'm going to put a pause on prototyping and get a solid document done.  I still need any materials I can get on Level Design for video games and I want to do some research by playing metal gear for the NES and SNES since metal gear has the idea of punishing players for going into open combat.
Also I wanted to thank everybody for viewing my blog so much, it really is good to know I have people supporting me. I would like to say that any comments or feedback would be appreciated whether it's on here Facebook or in person. If you're not friends with me on FB go to http://www.facebook.com/christoph.farley . Again thank you everybody for your support it really means a lot to me and I'm going to get a prototype out by the end of winter break for sure.

so much to do... so little time

Since last update, I've gotten a lot done. I have gotten a lot of feedback from people about my game and the things I can do with it. I have finished my project proposal, and you can check it out in the entry http://cfarleyprojects.blogspot.com/2012/11/project-proposal.html. I also got a walk cycle done and I am working on making improvements on it. That took a lot of time. I am trying to figure out what placeholder art I can use to get prototyping off the ground sooner. As of right now it would take me till next semester just to get the sprites done which would be completely useless to me.

Now that I have the proposal done I am going to work on the design doc so I can use that as I flesh out the game itself. The prototype will be made as a way to support and help explain the documentation as well as playtesting. By next update I will want to have a player able to shoot a barrel and take out an enemy. I'm going to have to really focus on GameMaker to make this happen. I need to go over the tutorials presented by yoyo. The only problem is that this week is Thanksgiving so I'm not sure when this will all get done.

Thanksgiving and work are my two biggest obstacles this week. And black Friday but we'll see what happens.

Player Character Animation 1

Houston we have motion. This took longer than I care to admit to get going. It's a simple 8 frame run cycle for the player and I'm probably only going to use it for the prototype before I improve upon it for the final game.  looking at it uploaded, it looks a lot more jittery than it did in Photoshop. However like I said I plan on fixing this eventually. I'll add more as I get them done. I'll give you all a full update on Monday after I present this for my senior capstone proposal.

Project Proposal

This proposal is geared to my senior capstone class rather than to an industry publisher. Still there is a lot of similarities between the two. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/67097158/capstone%20proposal.pdf   (copy and paste the link and it will download for you) I figure many other people have their PPD's up for view (namely BioShock and Fallout 1), so why not. Just copy and paste the link and it'll download, take a look and leave a comment what you think either here, Facebook, or Twitter. Facebook http://www.facebook.com/christoph.farley Twitter @cfarely89

Finally, another update

Okay, so I'm gonna give you guys an update. I've been meaning to do this once a week but it hasn't worked out that way. Anyway I'm gonna discuss what I've accomplished for the game over the last week, what I'm going to accomplish, then talk about obstacles that will prevent me from meeting my goal.

Player Sprite

What I've done: I finally decided to stick with pixel art to create the sprites. I was going to do raster based sprites with a higher resolution then scale them down, but I am able to keep much better control on the appearance of each sprite if I keep the resolution low. I wish I had figured this out sooner it would have saved me a couple hours that I could have put towards the current player character sprite I'm working on now. I probably don't need to be as obsessive compulsive about my sprites as I am being. Right now I'm literally counting pixels to make sure everything looks symmetrical. It's much more noticeable in the lower resolution I'm working in I suppose so maybe there is a good reason for it. I also have the PPD (project proposal document) finished for the most part and the presentation is going to be next week.

I also started working on a player sprite that I thought would be an interesting design. I know it looks very different from the girl I showed a few weeks ago, and that is actually for a reason. The lack of armor on the girl is supposed to symbolize her vulnerability and her disdain for war. Furthermore, the previous picture was of a little girl who would more than likely not be donning a suit of armor.

What I am going to do: Next class we need to have proof of concept done. I am hoping to get a walk cycle done for this sprite (3-5 frames). And then I want to put it into GameMaker. I am only going to have a 4 way walk rather than 8 way which would include diagonals (at least for the prototype). Once the 4 way walk is done I am going to edit a few things in the proposal document. I feel like the Ouya is a much better fit for my project than xbla.  I am going to comprise a storyline for this game so I'm not just winging it as I write my design document. Once my proposal is finished I am going to post it on here in a series of PDF's for people to give feedback to me.

Obstacles: As I've said in Game Lounge, Breaking Bad is an awesome show. That seems to be my biggest problem as far as distractions are concerned. I still have another game I need to do and a website that I need to put together. I am going to have to use better time management skills to get all this done. Oh yeah and there may be a new baby moving in soon... there goes my sleep.

Pixel vs. Vector

Pixel

Vector

I got a vector version of the previous sprite, on the one hand I am more familiar with Phostoshop than Illustrator. On the other, animation would probably be a lot easier in Illustrator. Let me know which you like better. comment vector or pixel to let me know what you guys think. Winner will be the art method I use for the game. Pixel is up top (the picture from the previous entry) and vector is to the right (darker colored sprite). Working in either medium for so long will make me better at the art so these are preliminary placeholders for the prototype.

Spriting

I've never sprited before in my life. I have a newfound respect for the artists I worked with in my other games. That being said my spriting skills will continue to improve and I will be able to work faster. I already realized several things I could have done different in order to make this sprite faster. I feel like the color pallet I chose is a little boring for her so I tried to give her accents of blue and red. Altogether this took me close to three hours to do, simply because I was trying to figure things out (I didn't know about the pencil tool in photoshop till half way through).
I am thinking of using a higher resolution simply because I felt really limited with the amount of detail I could put in without it looking too weird. In addition this doesn't look very smooth. Currently the dimensions are 132 x 175 pixels. and a 72 dpi. I'm wondering if spriting is the only way to do a 2d game because a lot of 2d games I see nowadays look a lot smoother and clean. It probably just takes a lot of practice. We'll see how things go as I continue development. I think the worst part about spending so much time on this sprite is that I did it in the wrong camera angle. It's supposed to be done in an isometric view and this is a 3/4 front view.

Senior Capstone week 1

Still haven't come up with a name for my game, but I have my project proposal text done which is all I need to hand in. I would still like to create an actual PPD. I'm doing the game for my senior capstone in GameMaker and the final product will probably be in Unity using the 2D aspects of the engine. GameMaker is an easy to use interface that is mostly comprised of drag and drop elements. I'm reading up more on game narrative because I want to do the most effective, best job I could possibly do. I've always been one who loves game narrative and I believe that this game is going to be very story driven. I want to come up with effective ways in which the story progresses. I don't want to take the player out of the game too often for a cut scene or what have you. Instead I think I'm going to have it happen during gameplay. I feel like that might not be a good idea either though because the gameplay itself would distract players from the story. I feel like we have a much better way to tell stories than simply using cut scenes or quick time events or simple audio being played as the character travels through lull points of the game.
My design process is going to be to make one level first which introduces the player into the mechanics of the game. Once the level is at a decent prototype where it's stable enough to send to people for testing I'm going to do that. After that I plan to go through and make each level as well as whatever way I decide to progress the story. Finally I will make a main HUB to go from one level to the next and sort've combine the pieces together. Each level will have challenges and tasks to give the game a little replayability. Overall I'm excited to start working on this thing. I am probably going to do one update on my game each week and one fun update.
I am not expecting anything to get in my way except for the other projects I have going on, one of which I haven't even started yet. However, I feel that they won't be a problem because I'm working on both in a group, so I'm going to simply do that work in the group setting and use my own time to get everything I need for my capstone done.