Hello,
Sorry this has taken so long to get here. Codey and I have been so busy making this game, that we neglected this blog :(
Anyway,
heres where we were and where we are now.
After the Pre production was handed in, we decided to take a break from the game slightly, and dedicate some time to our Dissertations. But before doing this, we created place holder animations and levels, to give to a few people to see if they could help us with an engine. While searching for and engine and some programming help, we sought help for the sounds and music for the game.
We were interested in keeping the game seamless, from the titlescreen and onwards, we didn't want there to be a break at anypoint. We also liked the idea of the creatures in the game having an almost cicle like existence. With the game having an almost mothering or family theme, we like the idea of it maybe having something to do with growning up. So we developed the idea of the maincharacter being on a journey to become an adult, its adult form being the little buggers. So it is on a quest to grow up and avoid being eaten by its cannibal elders. When the game is complete and the player has transformed into a bugger, then the cycle beggins again, the character now returns to the start to hunt for other newborn.
A little twisted perhaps, but left it as it was to dabble with later.
We dabbled with the idea of trying to develop the game in XNA as it would be perfect for distribution once our degree was finished. We did find someone from the Computer Games and A.I degree, who apparently could help us program the game. After a few weeks of dissertation writing and tests with the programmer, it became clear that it wasnt going to work, and the programmer already had a lot of his own work to crack on with. So it came back to Multimedia fusion, which we also had someone to provide some guidence for.
As for the music, Codey asked some friends from the Creative Sound and Music course, if they would be interested in a collaboration.
As it tunrs out, some of them were. So we gained the help of Andrew and Aiden. Andrew for music and additional sounds, and Aiden for Sound Effects.
We met up with them quite a few times before they began the work, discussing particular games which had a similar sound to one we would like to achieve, including We Love Katamari, and Earthworm Jim.
We wanted the music and sounds, to sound as though they were live instruments, as this would as the kind of quirkiness katamari uses. It would also work better with the curves or the almost 'organic' looking scenary.
Once our dissertations were handed in, and we had a few days break, we got straight back into work. Codey managed the sound guys and our Multimedia Fusion expert 'Joe'. He began working closely with joe to produce the engine that would need to get the right kind of movement we were after. This took a few seperate builds to get the ideal pacing, but it was worth it, to learn from the pros and cons of the builds before it.
While Codey began the Engine and animating the worm creatures, I made a start on the character animation. I looked over my place holder animations, to see if there was anything worth salvaging. Turns out, there wasn't, so I started completely afresh.
First of all I worked out how I was going to create the Glow that we had around the character in the pre production mockups. Which led to our disscovery and learning of After Effects.
The looped animations can be seen on my blog:
http://iaingillespie.tumblr.com
When it came to animating the little buggers, and tackling the task of getting them to individually travel along the curves of the landscape, we had a few problems.
The initial idea was to have them move as a troop, and they would travel over the curveture much like a snake or worm, though they would still be hopping and skipping. But this would mean lots of intricate and difficult coding, which we had no idea how to do, so we seperated the little buggers up and gave them their own behaviors.
The problem with this was that if the player was running swiftly away from them, they would often float through the landscape in order to catch up, which just wouldn't do.
The other problem with the individual buggers was creating the animation of them eating the main character. If one bugger who was ahead of the others, caught upto the character and triggered the animation, then the rest would disappear and snap to that point. Also, if the animation played out on a curved section of the landscape, it would wrong as the animation was set on a horrizontal surface. This was my fault, as I assumed that we could attain the same kind of coding to run the animation at the same angle that it was triggered on.
All of this led to us making quite a large change in the design, which was make the foreground layer (the little buggers layer) FLAT!. Which also meant the other layer would have to be flattened out slighty, in order to keep the buggers an integral part of the game. This wasn't so bad, because although we had quickly mocked up a level, it wasn't coloured, so we didn't have to change too much. It also made it easier to colour, as the foreground was now a tile base.
With this change in mind, we rebuilt a basic level, again with only block colour to identify the different layers. We tested and tested and tested and tested the level as much as we could stomach, and then did some more. once we had a level that worked, we began to colour. We also added the paralax scrolling, which made so much difference to the game, adding so much depth. It was a little purprising that we hadnt added it sooner.
This took quite a long time, in which we watch out of the corner of our eyes:
The Lord of The Rings Trilogy
Star Wars Eps 1,2,3
Army of darkness
and maybe something else.... hehe
While Colouring the level, we also found a few things that could be changed. This seemed inevitable by this point, as the more we looked at the thing, the more we wanted to change. But we stuck to the original concept as much as possible and work changes around it. The main problem was that with the flattening of the foreground layer, we had lost some of the excitment in the chase sequences.
We developed a section, in which the midground layer (the players layer) was extremely thin, and stood only slightly above the foreground. This meant that the player could still be killed by the chasing buggers on the layer below, and at the same time have to navigate through obsticals on their midground layer.
Due to the Multimedia Fusion engine, we also had difficulties getting the buggers to catch up with the player if they were going at speed through the section. Which caused the buggers to be inefficiant, which was dissapointing. We were unable to achieve the extravigant chase sequances that we had hoped for.
So to make up for this, we added more interesting sections of landscape, which didnt entirely exclude the buggers, but featured them in the backgrounds and foregrounds, running along and eating other versions of the player. The paralaxing also strangely dissapear have way through the level, which we also un able to fix but worked around, by placing extra sections of level and animations in the background.
So after quite a while of not having that much sleep, we managed to get a game made. It perhaps isnt quite the game we were hoping for but Im sure that it's the same for a lot of games. Unfortunatly it came down to our overestimation of the Multimedia Fusion package, and its difficult sluggish methods.
Here is the Trailer for the game, which we name OBLRON.
OBLRON TRAILER from Iain Gillespie on Vimeo.
