Case 2

This week, our task was to put levels in our game (intro, one or more game-levels and an ending). The designers were also told to continue designing and finishing levels, and the animators create a jump animation and make their animations better. The last thing were to create a plan for our project and each and every one of us, to make sure everyone finish their work within deadline.

So this week, we have done some prioritizing. We might have worked a little around the case from the teachers, but our main goal is to get the gameplay working, which we almost have. Ole Magnus have been working on the levels in the game, and getting the 2.5D feeling right. (He can tell you more about this further down), Ravel has been working on animating the dragon, Hege have created the backgrounds and icons for the game, and Sondre have created a jump-animation and a attack-animation. And here you can read a little closer about everyone’s work:

Animation!

Hello again! Well, this is our second week on the project and I, as mentioned in the last blog, had to continue working on our main character, the little wizard. This week I have created a jump animation for him and an attack-animation he does while he runs, stand still and going backwards. Even though I am a little fan of magicians that creates a ball of power in their hands to throw on the enemies, the rest of the group wanted him to use a wand instead. So that’s what I did, trying to use what I’ve learned from my classes to use timing and spacing, to give the illusion that he collects power in the wand to send at the enemies. He lifts his body and back and his arms up in the air. He stands like this a little while and then sends his magic at the enemies. By using this method you get the illusion that throws magic with great power at them.

For the jump, I chose to do that after he jumps up, and are on his way down, his hat comes a little later (see picture). Then his eyes show, and you get a picture of how he really look without his hat. The reason for this was to avoid that our hero that actually is you, are too mysterious. I want the player to get to know the character he/she plays.

I also animated him moving backwards, so now you can control him in all directions in different ways. To do this, I reversed his steps, and made his big cape hang a little in front of him instead of the back.

Since we are a little behind when it comes to intro and ending, I believe this will be my next project. I got some middle-age music from a good friend of mine, and that inspired me to a great idea to introduce our game. And of course, the intro is important, because it shall make the player want to play the game. So I’m going to introduce it to the others in the group later today.

We have much work to be done, and much animating left, but as long as I am motivated I am pretty excited to see how this game will be in the end.

See you all next week!

SondreJ  

Second Animator!
In this second case I have animated the walk cycle for the dragon, which is to be an “Non-Playable Character” (NPC). It has been a great deal of trying and erring, in my stifled attempts to make the dragon move the way I want. It's been a challenge to know how to divide the dragon in to the most appropriate parts for the easiest animation. I am in no way so skilled in drawing and thinking about anatomy from different angles that I can make a freehand frame by frame animation. So instead I've used Bone Tool in Flash to connect and move the different limbs and their parts. Each limb is a Symbol, consisting of smaller Symbols as sub-divisions.
Ravel

Designer:

In this case I also had a lot of work ahead of me. I am still doing all the work with the surroundings in Photoshop and then exporting it into Flash. We agreed that the intro level should look a bit like the game level so I made a similar look but it was suppose to look greener and more living.

The wizards apprentice starts his journey in pleasant and lush landscape and moves on to a grey and deserted one as he fights his way to the castle.

I also made a scene from inside the castle. I wanted it to look like a large entrance hall barely lit by torches. Her he can chose several doors to open to get to the potion.

This scene was clearly the most difficult because it contains a lot of details, but I had fun doing it.

I also had to make the icons witch symbolize the weapons. These are so small and were difficult to draw. But after many attempts and feedback from the others on my group and some help they now look ok.


Programmer:
I started looking on the level editor. I made a simple game with it, but continued to work on the old setup I used in the demo. After reading the documentation for the level editor, I knew it would be easy to implement the code and graphics later. 
I created a simple code for the characters jump. It's really simple, but we are going to learn a more advanced way to do it later, so I put it aside for now.
I created AI for the enemy and created a layer system for the character and player, so you can go around the enemy.

                                   

Image from inside the castle

Image from Sorcerer's cottage

Wave icon

                                                      

    

Case 1

We are a group of four students at Høgskolen i Hedmark which this semester will develop a computer game. We will be given several cases each week and work together as a group to produce a great product.

In this group we are students from three different bachelors, -visual simulation, animation and virtual art and design. In this group we have one programmer, two animators and one designer. All the steps of a production like this will contain different tasks and we had to distribute each task between us to be able to design the best results we can.  We are best in our own field, but in this project we are suppose to involve in every step of the production to learn something about every field of a production like this.

The computer game we are making shall contain an intro with directions on how to play the game, a game part and an ending. It also has to contain several levels.

In this case we had to come up with a story, divide tasks and make a demo of the game.

Our game is about a young wizard who has to fight dragons. The head wizard of this universe needs a potion which is hidden in the castle and because he is old and weak he sends his apprentice to get the potion for him. The young wizard has to fight these four dragons to be able to get to the castle.

 There are four dragons in the game and each and one of them symbolize four elements, -earth, water, air and fire. In the game the wizard have four weapons to use against the dragons. These weapons also symbolize the same four elements and if used correctly are very powerful against the dragons.

When the young wizard comes to the castle he have to find the hidden potion and face the most powerful dragon of them all.

While our designer have created a dark and scary background in Adobe Photoshop to fit in the story, our two animators have begun design and animate a hero (the wizard) and the enemy (dragons), and our programmer have written down the basics of the gameplay. And here you can read more in-depht about everyone’s role so far.


Here you can try out the game so far: http://www.swfupload.com/view/150497.htm

Animation

Hey, my name is Sondre and is one of the animators in this group. After some discussion in the group, I got the responsibility of the hero. We decided together that he should be a wizard, or a wizard’s apprentice to be correct. I drew sketches of different types of wizards, and decided to go with a little more cute version, by hiding his eyes and make him wear a coat that is a little too big for him. The inspiration came partly from Mickey Mouses outfit in Fantasia. The stars and colors I got from the “standard wizard type”.

For now I have animated a walk-cycle for the hero, and an idle animation where he breathes in and out. I have also begun animating his first attack against the dragon, that will consist of the foru elements, either fire, water, earth or air.




Second Animator
My name is Ravel, and I have got the job to design and animate an enemy. When starting on this case we had many ideas that we discussed. We soon became interested in the idea of including the powers or energies linked to the four or five classical “elements”, which in reality represents the phases of matter; Earth (solid form), Water (liquid form), Fire (“plasmatic” form), and Air (gaseous form). In addition there is the element of Ether (“etheric” or “ethereal” form). First we discussed the possibility to use very different characters to represent the different elements. I initially had the very complex idea of basing them on the eight trigrams of the Chinese symbol system I Ching, but we soon decided that it would be too much work to animate, if not only to design. Eventually we landed on the four or five elements most known in Western tradition. In stead of a multitude of very different figures we also fell for the idea to only use different dragons, as enemies or antagonists of the sorcerer's apprentice, and for representing all of the elements. That made the whole thing a lot easier, but still there was a lot of work and many sleepless nights. So far I have started on the design of the first of the dragons, or the last one. 


Here are two pictures of the dragon design so far, and a sketch. Below are also pictures of two sketches that I made of possible elemental enemies, based on the eight trigrams of I Ching. The two trigrams are “Clinging” (Li) symbolised as Fire, and “Resting” (Gen/Kên) symbolised as Mountain, an aspect of Earth.

Ravel

Designer:

When we started this project we basically had a rough start. All at once we had to come up with a story as well as designing, animate and programming it. When we divided the tasks it was pretty clear which one of us who would take care of the various tasks because of the different bachelors.

My task in this case was to create backgrounds and environments to the game. Since the game was to take place in a forest I first tried different variations and looks.  But after more discussions and brainstorming about how we wanted it to look like, I ended up with a grey, deserted and dark environment.

Ole Magnus, the programmer, had made a draft of the scene and how the game could look like so I just had to make the environment fit in the scene.

In next level the wizard comes to the castle.  I tried to design a dark and spooky castle, but it is not finished yet. Also the inside of the castle is not finished and it needs more work. For now we have what we need for the demo of the game and I will keep on working with the design further on. I also designed the icons for the weapons the wizard can use.

I made all the drawings in Photoshop and then exported them to Flash which is the program we are suppose to use making the computer game.

                                                                                            

-Hege-