Update:Game Engine

Hey ya'll, I have updated the engine, and done most of the things in the previous things to do post, such as the easing with in the background is done (the illusion of the character gradually slowing down), orb collection, enemy collisions, GUI, basic movement and combat controls for the main character are working, but the php leaderboard is non-existant, I'm still thinking if the game really needs one, plus I dont want to be given myself more things to learn because I have another project to attend to, so I'm leaving it out at the moment just until all major things are done in this game and a client orientated project I have on. I also want to include a lot more with the orbs, instead of just collecting them, the player could only absorb them with his gauntlet but some orbs move slower than others, and the player can't attack when absorbing orbs, this could add a survival horror type game mechanic to the game, and make it more or an experience. Argh, still need to do all the animation, I think that will be done after christmas now.
For anyone is interested in the design document of Dream Hunter, I will post after christmas, It has to be in soon, blargh!

The Core Engine

Before I integrate the graphics and special effects, I need to get an game engine programmed. The engine will include side-scrolling, platform levels with various collisions for the player and enemy objects. I have been prototyping a very simple parallax scrolling level, using all the graphics as placeholders.It has been a good way to develop and focus on the gameplay, so far. The key objective now is to finish the core engine to create a framework upon which the rest of the game can be built and added. Unfortunatly, I had to use graphics for these screenshots, just to see the overall asthetics of the parallaxing planes. Still need to include leveling up arrays and enemy collisions and AI. er..need some weeks to animate the characters and enemies, argh.



Things done in the Game Engine:
1. Parallax Scrolling
2. Easing
3. Character Movement Controls
4. Platform Collisions

Things that need to be done:

1. Enemy collisions
2. GUI
3. Particle Health Setting
4. A php 'Captured Souls' Leaderboard

The protagonist

hey...I just thought you might be getting sick of seeing the same level by now so I've put up the finalised character design sketch of the protagonist, [argh done so many variations of him, but yeahh, he lookings mean now] If you want to know more about the character, you'll have to wait for my proposal document, urh, arghh! the proposal...anyways before I start doing the walk cycle, animating attacks, magic etc. [this might take me a couple of weeks to get it looking seamless], I really need to sort out the game engine and make a working prototype. I think I'll need to seperate the prototyping process from the rest of the game and use programmer art such as placeholders, which will probabily make the project simplier to develop, focus a lot more on the gameplay and figure what art is needed later...although seperating the art and technical processes might harder to reintergrate them later, argh. So I think the engine is priority no.1 at the mo, oh and the proposal.

Particle effects

hey...I've been experimenting in ParticleIllusion to try and create abstract visual shapes for the protagonist's special attacks and feedback patterns in the background that will presnt the different phases of the protag's health. ParticleIllusion is a graphics application that will allow me to arbiturary set animated graphics and place them into a particle emitter. I'm aiming to produce some effects that will have some sort of psychological affect on the player [e.g. when the character gets attacked by an enemy, the particles will respond violently and distort, changing shape and colour with more damage [alternative to using a health bar]. This feature is not used just for aesthetic value, but also can ascribe feelings and identify them to the character's inner states.



so... This is me getting used to ParticleIllusion and just quickly experimenting with different particle emitters. I started to make a soul orb thing that you would get after killing an enemy and started to combine different effects and make super-emitters for some of the backgrounds.



I had some problems in rendering the particle effects without the black default background when exported as a avi file. I needed the transparency because these effects would be overlayed on other objects inside flash. I think to solve this I would have to export the effect frame-by-frame as PNGs, I would then go into Flash and import all the pngs for that effect and convert it into a symbol, argh sounds tediuous but it will work for what i want to achieve in the background.



I am currently working on 2 things that I believe would make the background more defined to make the spaces within the parallax be more grounded in realism, but still reaching for the sky [bit like how Johnathan Blow defines a 'thought projecture world', these are:

1. Level Design skecthes will be loosly/expressively painted in photoshop [speed paintings] and imported into the parallax background, but before that, I might do some photoshop mockups to help capture the right composition and mood. Being the furthest plane on the parallax, it will move be scrolling the slowest.
2. I've been thinking on how the design of the background would induce fear within the player...I would have to think of intergrating particle effects with a dark, tim burtonesque style background or maybe using allegorical figures of death...hmm anyways I will probabily show you some screenshots of these in the next post.

Parallax scrolling experiments

I was experimenting with parallax scrolling backgrounds that will allow different planes of graphics to move at different speeds to increase the illusion of depth in the game, so objects nearer to the screen would move faster than the objects in the background. These objects are supposed to represent the post-apocalyptic setting , I know that this technique is used in most 2D animations and arcade games

These objects placed in the parallax background are stylised gravestones that will depict the environmental collapse in the game. They were vectorized in Illustrator then imported into Flash. I have placed 3 different planes of gravestones with either a small. medium, large size into the parallax background that will affect the speeds of the gravestone planes with the foreground speed that will essentially create the illusion of depth, space and perspective within the level.


The Parallax scroll is working with directional keys, but without no easing because I was having problems with the coding. There is a section of code that increments the background speed by 1 if the background reaches a certain speed, this would show the character and background gradually speeding up, but stoping that background speed from increasing once the direction key is let go was still a problem, so me need to sort that at some point.


In, all this background has helped me build up the framework of my game and focus on the integration of the artistic and technical processes of building a conventional 2D parallax setting, and slowly improving it. I have resorted to keeping the environment very minimalist for animating later on, but the complexity of the protagonist [frame –by-frame animated] will later balance out the aethetics of the game.

Game Plan

hey dudes, welcome to my independant project blog for my game [argh, still working on a title, but it doesn't matter at this stage]. This where I will be keeping you posted on the design and development of this game. so here is where it goes down

...Let me first start with what kind of game I will be making, it will be a 2D action platformer that incorporates some RPG elements. This game will be developed in Adobe Flash CS3 (using actionscript 2),but keeping in mind that it will be implemented as a XBLA game. The basic plot is set in a post-apocalypitic world where nightmares rule their host. The levels will consist of nongridded, parallax scrolling backdrops that consist of dexterity-based platforms. I think these mechanics will be the starting point in developing the game engine.

Player Presentation: The player controls a hunter [protagonist] that has various abilities in harvesting souls from defeated nightmare creatures that spawn from the host's unconcious, well, anyways from these elements the game consists of different mechanics that are required to level up the character to improve his weapons and abilities. There will be different types of magical souls that can be absorbed by defeating different types of nightmares, such as orb powers [a stock system that fills a guage that executes special attacks] can allow the player to replenish health, use exp.souls, shape-shifting soul abilities [the character having the ability to shape-shift into the nightmares it has captured] etc. The GUI will visually represnt the player's collection of soul types in real-time, except the health, which will be shown in a more uncoventional way that is less boring and more stylised to become one of the game's ISPs.

I will discuss more about the game in a later posts and will add screenshots of the game's progress. I don't want to be going into too much detail at this stage, things are still open to change, plus this game at the moment seems to have a little too many gameplay features to develop for just one game. I think I will start with coding the core gameplay in and getting it relatively stable, then I'll move to developing the ISPs. These are the things I've been doing over the summer holidays and that I've done so far:

1. Parallax scrolling background in Flash
2. Level design sketches
3. Character design sketches
4. Particle-generated effects in ParticleIllusion
5. Concept art [backgrounds]

Things that need to be done for next week:

1. Core 2D parallax scrolling engine [with easing]
2. Level design and UI mockups in Photoshop
3. Finalising main character and nightmare designs [need to vectorize in a 2D perspective]
4. Protagonist's template walk/run cycle
5. Start writing up the game proposal document in InDesign
6. Finished Level Design in Flash

..and finally the game plan:

1. Create a demo with at least 2 playable levels
2. Add character movement and collision functionality
3. Add combat functionality
4. Er, that will do for now, will add other things later on in the development, prototyping might be a good idea once I have the overall structure of the game to experiment in making innovative gameplay.

..kay, lots to do.