Level 3: Progress

...just finished vectorizing the 3rd level, urhh, this time I vectorized it straight into Flash because I was having problems with Illustator. well, the problem wasn't Illustrator, but how it was exporting the ai.files, for some reason I would have massive slowdowns in the parallax scrolling background when importing the Illustrator files from the previous levels I did. I think when Flash converts an ai. file into one movie clip it would have more movie clips inside of that one. I tried breaking them apart, but it would sometimes get rid of the art entirely, argh. So I opted to do it in Flash, I could possibly get the same desired effect I want from Illustrator, without the big file size and lag...so yays, now I need to incorporate some atmospheric effects such as mist and dark clouds. I need to make the particle health setting a part of the atmosphere for this level, it will be done in ParticlesIllusion, but that is for another post so see ya then.

Level Designs - Level 3

...hey ya'll, sorry, long time no post, just finishing some concepts for the 3 levels and some character designs that need vectorising in Illustrator, and then importing into Flash. For the 3rd level I was trying to get the right conceptualisation of the game environment, looking at its design and visualisation.

Garath Sleightholme is a tutor that has been teaching us the production elements of creating environments and identifying their cultural influences and the visual research required to make a functional concept design. He has been very helpful in the researching and why things look like they do. I am also aware of how the aesthetics of the game can be procedural in depicting gameplay elements.

I've added a collapsed bridge, this creates more depth and atmosphere into the level. I think I'll be using some of the concepts for prologue scenes at the begginning of the level, but wont go into too much backstory as I want the player to start brawling as soon as possible, but because some things have an higher prioriety on the load to do things list and certain time constraints I might not have time to do these things. I could try do something in-game that illustrates the story). The next step is to finalise the 3 levels in Flash (I have been doing this, but not quite finished, still need to put them inside the parallax). I also need to start with the design document over easter. Kay...lots to do and post, I'll be back with more.

Level 2: Test

Argh, sorry again about the quality, for some reason the video is only showing two of the three layers, it looks like theres is quite a lot of foreground, but there is another layer. I can't get Fraps to work so I'm using crappy CamStudio. The parallax works nicely with the layers, but I still have to sort the layer's colours and their speeds relative to their distance, which shouldn't be too much of a problem. Really need to finish the 1st level before moving on to this one, I think I'll stop at level 3, cos making the art assets as vector takes ages (plus, I'm not too good with illustrator, hmm I could just do it within Flash? dammit, oh well already done now). Soo...aiming for 3 complete levels, the rest I will be concepts. kay, tis 7, sleep time.

...this is the finished vectorized level looks like, its really dark in the video clip :(, must differentiate the tones more for each parallax layer that gradually fades further into the background...or it just might be the crap quality of the video, meh.

Level Designs: World 2 Progress

In the previous post I included a redesign of the 1st level in the game, but under that image was the 2nd level that I didn't mention, anyways, this level has an entirely differnt style compared to the 1st, it has a strong silhouette style set in a vivid, dreamlike forest with surreal rectangle shapes for leaves falling from the abstract trees. This level is broken up into 4 layers: landscape, background, middleground and foreground. These layers will be moving at different speeds as a parallax to increase the illusion of depth. The leaves will be a particles effect done in ParticlesIllusion. This particles effect will also be the characters health that slowly turns green to red if the player loses health in the game. Kays, the next step is to vectorize this concept, I tried just using this pixel art in Flash, but it seems to glitch when its moving through the parallax, so vector it is, It shouldn't be too hard to vector this up.

Level Re-designs

...I redesigned the first level. It was too dark, so as you can see it is much brighter and surreal now. I think having an interesting high detail background with vector might not work together, plus they might be issues with mem constraints, I might use these for the game's concept art instead.

Level Designs

Hey ya'll, long time no post, just finished the client project, so sry about that, anyways these are some of the post-apocalyptic level designs. Argh, I think these might cause a few problems within the background, 1. is that I will be tiling these like backdrops in the level, but I think after a few scrolls it will soon get old. 2. is looking at these again, they look as they might conflict with the particles health setting, the idea was to keep the background simple and the character complex (expressively drawn and animated frame-by-frame so that the particle setting will be clearly presented to the player. I will try sort out these problems and will post more of the concept art, until next time. Surresh Out.