Blog Week #6

Hello there dear reader! The final week of our groups project Mermaid River is coming to an end.
It’s been a really intense week, filled with a lot of refining and discussions about the last things we want to polish before
We’re ready to let our baby go..
..To be honest, I think we’re as ready as you can get to just close this chapter of our lives, called Mermaid River, for good.

Like the week before, and before that my major task has been to work with the background.
This week I’ve mainly focused on refining and remaking the objects that are supposed to be in the back.
Since I changed the way the ”sand-tiles” work last week, some big changes to the old objects had to be made. This was simply because they were all rendered according to the earlier art-style.
So in the beginning of this week, I threw away all of the already existing objects just to get a fresh start. When this was done I started sketching on new objects like stones and seaweed. Since I’ve already put a lot of time creating objects I had a better perception of which objects that would fit better than others.

When I had like ten quick sketches of different objects per each parallax layer (there is 3) I started to add color.
What I knew was important is that the objects has to fit in according to the distance from the player.
With this in mind I started blocking in the objects close to the horizon. My feeling is that it went pretty good timewise; my work was more effective than it had been earlier.
But since I have done this so many times it feels like a lot time was wasted.
After I had all the shapes blocked in with the colors that I thought would fit in, I started to render it so it would look representative.
When rendering the objects I had another thing in mind (aside from the colors) – the objects that are far away don’t really have any details.
When I was done with all of the objects in the layer furthest away from the playter, I went through the same process with the layer located in the middle as well as the layer closest to the player.

When I was halfway through with the objects in the closest layer, I noticed that the colors was a bit off, compared to the objects in the middle layer. Now this has created a little problem, in my own corrupted mind, that this looks kind of strange. The problem lies in the fact that here isn’t really enough time to adjust them again, so I will just leave them be like they are right now.
Aside from the fact that the colors between the closest layer and the middle is a bit off, I feel satisfied with the result. I really exaggerated the depth of the stones (closest layer) and I think they came out pretty good:

Thanks for reading, now it’s time for me to get back to the final polishing before the presentation tomorrow.

Blog week #5

Hello there reader and welcome to blog week #5. It’s getting closer to the final week of our project and we’re probably not the only group that can feel it.

Like the weeks before, I’ve mainly been working on the background. My plan for this week was to start designing the level as well as polishing the background, but I got stuck with refining the tiles. Hehe.
The background has once again received a different approach, and I like the way its heading right now.
At the beginning of this week, this Monday, we had the beta-presentation. In that version the background was kind of dark, like I’ve mentioned earlier in the blog.

I haven’t really been satisfied with the result of that version, but it gave the player the feeling of being underwater as well as it conveyed that dark feeling of being somewhere you don’t really want to be.
This new approach started with me adjusting some of the already existing objects when an idea stuck me. An Idea that a few hours later (after I counseled with the others in the group) were something I decided to develop. It was mainly the thought of really exaggerating the depth that made me experiment with a few mockups.
The game’s current state vs. how it looked in the beginning of the week:

Newer version – is not yet completed

 

Older verison

What is nice is that it really reflects the depth of the sea and the colors just feel awesome to me. It will require a lot of time to remake all the objects to make them fit in again, but as long as I have faith in myself I think this can come out really good.
The ”old” objects is now a real mess and I’m thinking of making a whole new bunch of them, just to make sure they all fit with the new angle the background have.
Being this close to the deadline (next Friday) makes me wonder if this really is a good thing to adjust right now, when there is a lot of other polishing to do. But since all of us in the group liked the new approach I think it will be worth to add some of that extra feeling to the game. It’s also nice to get this boost of energy when you find something that can be made better.
Something else that I have started to make is objects that are located in the foreground. These objects will appear in front of the player, giving a further feeling of depth.

Until next week!

 

Blog week #4

Hey and welcome to the fourth week of my blog.
Another week started with some really good playtesting. It’s always really good to get some feedback on the current state of the game, especially from people outside the team who can look at it with different eyes. Even though we had a version that was kind of buggy, which we were well aware of, the feedback that we received made it really clear what the players want. Thank you for your feedback!!

For this week I’ve continued my work with the background. Since we did some major changes in the color scheme last week I’ve spent a lot of time re-making the old objects, as well as the parallax layers (for the 100th time :D).
My work has mostly consisted of adjusting the objects in the background, making them fit in to the layers that represent different distances from the player.

Something that came to me when I was going through the feedback-surveys was that the objects in the most distant layer (seen from the player) seemed to be a lot bigger than the objects close to the player. This wasn’t the case but just an illusion (all of the objects were the same size), but had to be adjusted.  This was easily done by just lowering the size of the objects. To reinforce the feeling of depth I’ve also started to make changes in the color of the objects.
They are more or less saturated depending on where they are supposed to be located. The objects close to the player will be more saturated and the other way around for objects in the far distance.  I’ve also changed the color of the water to make it fit better with the parallax as well as reinforcing the feeling of being underwater.
Overall my work has been about adjusting and polishing the already existing artifacts and is something that has been very time consuming.
Even though it is really fun and I learn a lot during every session it happens that I end up question myself why I’m doing this and to what purpose. I’ve mentioned it before and I will do it again, it feels like the time spent is flying away and especially when it’s about refining old things. The result end up being just a few minor changes and gives me the feeling of wasted time.

Here are some examples of how the objects will look depending on which distance they are from the player:

Detta bildspel kräver JavaScript.

I’m sorry about it being hard to imagine how it actually looks in-game. I tried to make a .gif of some gameplay but failed miserably. Maybe for next week!

Blog week #3

Hello, the third blog week is here!
During this week we have really made changes in the visual aspects of the game and I’m going to continue to talk about my work with the background.
This week started with a regular sprint meeting, where we sat down to set up our work schedule for the upcoming week. After it was finished we (the “graphic team”) discussed and created a color scheme appropriate to the vision we shared. It made a massive impact on the visual aspect of the game. We talked about what mood we actually wanted the player to feel, and from there we decided that we wanted a more damped tone of everything that’s going to be underwater.
To achieve this we decided to add a hell of a lot more blueish-gray color on all the objects in the background. This resulted in a more harmonious and realistic feeling of being under the surface.
Something we had to take into consideration is that when adding too much dark/gray color, the background/ environment could turn too dark – giving the feeling of a horror game.
The grayed background did also bring us broader opportunities to add more “powerful” highlights on objects that are more interesting for the player, like enemies or power ups, making them more naturally conspicuous.

A few sketches later we had a new color scheme and with that a better vision of how the game should look. Something I think we should have done earlier, even though we have been pretty satisfied with our earlier work.
I think that all of us in the graphic team found some extra motivation after this meeting. I can at least speak for myself and I nearly rushed home to get into work again. Here’s an example of how the background and a few objects will look with the new color scheme:

As you can see, it’s a total remake of all the tiles as well as the objects. It actually felt really good to start from scratch with the background, even though it was a little annoying in the beginning. Mostly because I feared that it would take a lot of time. But it showed that all the experience I’ve gained during the project happened to be even more than I imagined, covering a lot of things I didn’t even have a clue about in the beginning.
Another thing that eased my work is that my programmer finished the code that makes it possible for me to use my tiles in the program I mentioned last week (Tiled).
This system allowed me to implement the sprite sheet (one file where I organized all of my tiles) to the program, build the level, and then just save it to the game-code making it appear in-game.
I guess this could be explained better but as a mortal (graphic artist) I don’t really know how the immortal code works.
Anyway, this system made it a lot clearer for me and my work, since I can now not only implement every new change in the background in a few seconds, it also allows me to modify the speed of the parallax scrolling so I know how the different layers will affect one and another.

Before I go I want to give an extra shout out to Jonas Gardell and my programmer for creating the system for implementing the background, thanks!

See you in a week!

Blog Week #2

Alright, it’s Thursday again and time for a new update!
This week started with a busy Monday, where we for the first time had the chance to set up our game for playtesting. It was an experience I can tell. Big thanks to everyone who played our pre-alpha and gave us invaluable feedback, it’s been really helpful!

To try make things clear from my last post, where I might have explained everything about the tiles in a very messy way – apologies for that. I’m using three different layers for the parallax scrolling.
Every layer represents different distances from the player, so they are supposed to scroll with different speed. On each individual layer I use a few different tiles which I loop.
We have implemented the tiles with parallax scrolling and its working fine, even though I’m not completely satisfied with the result regarding the graphic aspect. It will require some more work from my side!!

Now, let’s continue to the subject. As I mentioned last week I’ve been working on the background for our game and even though this week mostly been about playtesting it’s been a pretty decent week.
I have once again been putting a lot of time into researching about the tile-system which is something that can get to my head at times, mostly because the fact that the time seems to just disappear…

While in a discussion about the tile-system with one of my fellow programmers I was recommended to check out the program called “Tiled”. This was game-changing for me in my work with the background! Mostly because it’s been hard to imagine how the tiles (painted in Photoshop) would look when in-game.
Basically what the program does is that it allows me to insert my tiles and build the levels for the game in a very easy way. It’s also nice to get a better overview of how the levels will look, without the need of a programmer that would have to spend a lot of time implementing every little thing I want to try out (like the position of certain objects as corals).
The best part is that we’re (programmers) also working on a system that will allow us to save the level created in “Tiled” and just copy the information into the game (this is hopefully ready to be tried out next week).
Of course it required some time to get somewhat used to the program, but well spent time I must say (I can really recommend this program to anyone who uses tiles for their game – go check it out if you haven’t already).
Here’s a printscreen of the different sand-tiles and the background:

The “sand-tiles” (sadly) look almost the same like last week and I haven’t really been working much on these. This is partly because we’re missing some objects in the current state of the game, so when I haven’t been researching or playtesting I’ve been sketching on new objects (Like seaweed and corals). I would love to just get those sand-tiles completed so I can get them out of my mind, but I guess everything can’t be perfect, right?

Till next week!

Blog week #1

Herro! My name is Lukas Graff and I’m a 22 year old guy who studies Game design and graphics at Uppsala University – Campus Gotland. As a part of this course we are supposed to write a weekly post where we talk about our progress covering one artifact we’ve been working on during the week.
My project group is working on a concept called ”Mermaid River”, which is a 2D side scrolling space shooter.
Mermaid River is a game where you play as Captain Noleg – who is on the hunt after a mermaid who took all that Cpt. Noleg ever cared about, his treasure.
Equipped only with a harpoon and the oars that he use as legs (after experiencing an attack years ago he lost his both legs – whereas he had no better solution than using two broken oars as legs) the player is on the hunt as captain Noleg to bring back his stolen treasures.

This week I’ve been working on different things but with emphasis on the background for our game project.
Its been a pretty long and difficult process (covering more than one week), mostly because the lack of experience and routine.
My vision about how this was going to be executed has changed a lot since the beginning of the project. What was decided pretty quickly is that we wanted the background to be of parallax scrolling – which means that the background have different scrolling speeds depending on how far away the player is from the objects.
Objects close to the horizon will scroll much slower than the objects close to the player. This creates a stronger feeling of movement.

The big question has been to decide if the background is supposed to be divided in different tiles or if it should be a long loop of one big background.

Struggles like how to render the sand to make it look representative and at the same time are able to be looped without giving the player a feeling of recurrence was a hard part. The first approach was to reflect depth in the background itself where the foreground was shaded in a way that it slowly disappeared at the horizon. After a few sketches (pic.1) this showed to be really hard when it comes to the looping part. Every single loop as well as object would need a lot of extra rendering when put together. It would also include that the parallax scrolling wouldn’t work the way we wanted.

 

After a lot of research and sketches of different approaches we decided that the best way to execute the problem with depth in form of parallax scrolling was to remove the idea where the sand fades at the horizon and instead make the background directly from the side (pic.2). This would also make it easier to make loop able tiles as well as adding existing objects, like stones and seaweed without the feeling of repetition.
All the objects like corals, stones and seaweed was also very uncertain in the beginning but feels a lot clearer now when we have a better understanding how the tiles for the background will work out. The tile system will also make it easier to create the levels inside the game – since it won’t require as much extra rendering like showed in the first picture.

We will continue to go with this tile-approach and that we hopefully can test the parallax scrolling in-game before next week!