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