The Turtle

This is animations of the turtle and when he walks and dies










Posted By Emily Cox

Last post

I just realised that I havent written on the blog for a very long time (since the presentation infact). A lot has changed in that time; we have made all the parts to the project. I contributed the main menu that links to the Intro, the game, the credits and the information about the museum. Speaking of which, I also made that. It gives the kids that play a bit of background on the items that are used in the game in a nice simple way.

I had a few go's at both of these to make it look nice and then had a few codeing issues that John Hayes helped me to sort out (the lovely man that he is). We finished the everything today after a monster 8 hours working on it and now that I look at it I can see that it was worth all the work that we put into it. I must say, I am very much looking forward to handing it in tomorrow and concentrating on writing the report.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog and keeping up with us (sort of). I am going to end on a joke....

5 students, making a game for a museum about metal.

Good one right?

Amazing Game, Amazing Group!

Well our group has been working hard to create the game for Sheffield Museum, hats off to Duane for his work on the game, it is amazing. Emily also has created this genius opening animation to the game, which looks fantastic. My work on the credits also had a lot of ups and downs. First off the groups told me to add Joel's name into the credits, which was fair enough, as he returned to do work on the project. Rendering it wasn't a problem, but how long it took was! About 45 mins to render maybe 35 seconds of footage. But as the weeks went past he didn't turn up, so his name was removed from the credits, and we added the website where we got the music from. Emily found it, whoever composed it. Kudos to you sir. The music is a perfect example of how the game is supposed to feel. Fun, but with a tinge of sadness. Perfect Fit. While all this was going on poor old Guy had problems with the menu, damn you Adobe Flash!!!!! Ohh well he got the job done!

Until Next Time......................

Arjun Chohan

Music

As Joel was our Music man, he had told us the wed before the Thursday lesson that he would turn up to lesson with all the music but unfortunately he did not and he's not really that easy to get a hold of so we decided as a group that it would be best if we had a back up plan. Unfortunately for the group I was the back up plan. I really tried my best throughout the weekend to make up some small little jingles that we could of had in our game but I was apsolutely hopeless, I have NO musically talent what so ever so I gave up. I decided to look on the freesound.org website for a few little songs and sound effects that we could put together to create the music for the game.

I found some awesome little songs and sound effects and now all we need to do is to put them together in the game to create the music.

Introduction Animation

Our 30 second Animation was going to be about the story line to our game. The story line was basically about metal men fighting the guard that guarded the kingdoms treasures and then stealing the treasures so the object of the game was to steal them back. The plan was to start and finish this animation in the 2 week easter break.
It started off quite smoothly. I started off by just doing the beginning which was a rotoscope of a flag in the wind this was to be used in the start of the introduction where it gave you a shot of the kingdom. This worked well and didnt take that long to do so I was off to a good start. Then I decided to draw the entire body of the metal men. I knew it was going to take a couple of days because I was putting a lot of detail into it and the faces took a while to do anyway. I drew the metal men very big, about 3 times the size of the stage just so I could get a lot of detail in. This is where the troubles started, I had drawn the characters too big with too much detail and even when I tried to resize them they still had so much detail in them and the computer couldn't cope. Even though the computer kept crashing after doing 15mins work I decided to be stubborn and carry on with the work and finish the other metal men.
Half way into the second week and I was still trying to animate these metal men and decided it was just taking too long and I would have to try and find another way around it. I didnt have enough time to re-draw the metal men and I really couldn't be bothered either so I decided that would be my last option. I tried putting the images as symbols but this worked for a little bit but as soon as I started animating it more it slowed right down again.
I decided to give up with the metal men scene for now and decided to start working on the other scenes.
The drawings for the other scenes had already been done because those images were going to be use in the game so all I had to do was import the images into flash and animate them. After animating them I realized that the file sizes were still quite big and didnt think that my computer would be able to cope if I put all the scenes together.
The Monday after the easter break I had a brain wave I thought if I could put the images of the metal men into photoshop some how I could just import them into flash and then they would be a lot easier to deal with but how could I do that, I tried to just copy and paste the image into photoshop but this made it really small and distorted. Then I had a plan I thought if I could print screen the image off of flash then I could put it into photoshop, although then my computer would have to last a couple of minutes in flash without crashing.

SUCCESS

It worked my computer didnt crash and manage to get all the metal men into flash without it being distorted, I did the body in sections so I could get a lot of detail in. Now I have all the images now all I have to do is animate them. I decided to re-do all the animations I had already done because the files were too big for what they were.

Now I have a 1 and a half days to animate the whole animation so I can show it too my group on the monday.

AHHHHHHH

Lots of key frames made the animation files really big so I decided to motion tween EVERYTHING. (apart from the flag I was leaving that as a rotoscope)

Motion Tween took a lot less time too than animating every frame, why didn't I think of doing that before it would have saved me sooooo much time. I managed to get a 1/4 of the animation done by monday night but I still had a lot more to do.

Tuesday I just sat at my desk working on my animation it took a lot of time but by 1:30am I ahd manage to get the majority of it finished and it was good enough to show my group that following morning


WOOOHOOOOO

The group liked it and now all there is to do on it is the fade outs from scene to scene, the backgrounds and the words which were all finished by the wednesday evening. I had a little troupble deciding what colour to do the writing on the animation and originally I had it red but I thought I looked to harsh and I didnt want it to stand out that much. After a while I decided that the white with the black shadowing looked the best and I went with that option. I also made sure that the text would be up there for a while so children would be able to read it and also see what was happening in the animation in that scene.

The animation was then complete.





Animation for the Introduction


Posted by Emily Cox

Part Deux!

Credits Sequence has been altered to the version we originally agreed on, it looks alot more slicker ;) Originally the basic idea was to create all of our names using the images of the spoons we took at the museam, but as the spoons looked to old i felt that using them in the credits would make it look tacky, plus animating every single spoon would have taken forever (young). Its kind of like the Star Trek credits where the names of the actors and production staff are coming out of the set (image in this case) in 3 dimensions. It looks pretty cool so far, done Duane, Emily and my name, just need to add Guy's name into the mix and its complete, but i think its going to take time to tweak it to make it look nice. Plus the transition from the game to the credits needs to look professional. Well thats another Blog Post Done, ohh rahh.

Live Long and Prosper and Until Next Time.......................
Arjun Chohan.

Friends and Members of The Old Republic

Hello Friends and Members of The Old Republic. Well this is my first blog post (applause). Yes its taken time, but i finally gained access! Well iv finished the Fire background, which looks rubbish in comparison to Emily's amazing drawing skills, honestly mine looks like a childs mash-up on Windows Paint! Well thats one of the tasks done. Now all i need to do is to generate a credits sequence, but the question is will i add in the infamous Joel Houghton to the credits, concidering he hasnt turned up to our group meetings or added to the groups work, then again he did create some musical tunes a couple of weeks ago.

Until Next Time....................
Arjun Chohan

The presentation

Its taken me a while to get around to uploading this, but I never wrote down that I made the presentation using the work that we had already used. It took me about 4 hours over 2 days.

Now for a good news sandwich.

Good news - The presentation went well

Bad news - I had chicken pox and couldn't actually present

Good news - They liked the idea.

Yum!

Last of the Drawings Cloud Level

I had changed any of the cloud level since the last time but here are all the images of the cloud level.
By Emily Cox

Last of the drawings forest level

For the forest level I re-adjusted the leaves and made them brown so they look dead and also changed the background so it looked more like a forest rather a jungle. We made one of the dangers that the turtle could not be in some areas of the mud or he'd become dirty and not be able to move. I also drew a new turtle so he'd look like he's climbing because we want him to climb the spikes. Here are a few of the images used in the forest level.
By Emily Cox

Last of the Drawings Water Level

I completed the water background I am happy with it but if had time I would have liked to have done the reflection of the reeds in the water. For a platform in the water level we have a dragon fly flying around the idea came about because we thought it would look a bit weird if we had lily pads floating about and we wanted the character to use the whole of the screen. I also drew some platfroms where the hidden objects would sit, these were just basic leaves. and i drew a lily pad where the turtle could start off in the game. We also made the turlt rust if he feel in the water. Here are the images of the stuff in the water level. By Emily Cox

Last of the drawings Fire level

I drew all of the fire flatforms and floors and even included three images of a fire so if it was placed one after the other it would like it was flickering. I also included a fir ball but am not overly keen on this. We also made the turtle melt if he comes in contact with the fire. Here are some images for the fire level.
by Emily Cox

Duane Adventures Cont....

Week 6

This week i have gotten the gravity for the turtle working, also have a vertically moving platform in place that our turtle can now stand on and doesn't stop.

Duane Adventures

Progress over the last 5 weeks....

Week 1

In week one we got together and discussed the plans for the game, the flash introduction and how the menu system would look. We also discussed what jobs people were going to do in the up and coming weeks. My job was to be the game and sprite maker, Emily's was to do the concept art and flash introduction, Arjun is making the credits and some background images from the game and Guy did the presentation and and is going to do the flash menu.

Week 2

In week two i worked out how to load application files from flash. At first i had some problems figuring out how to attach this to a button, it turns out i was using the wrong actionscript. This will help us load our game from the flash menu system as well as any other application we wish to load.

Week 3

In week 3 we discussed our plans for the presentation and planned out what sections people were going to talk about. Guy made the slides for the presentation, I got some art work from Emily to be turned into sprites. We assigned Joel to make the music for each of the four levels. We also added an extra bit into out project which would be and information section with pictures, this section will also be make in flash.

I started making some cloud sprites, but i did not like them as they were rough and i did not know what size the cloud where going to be yet.

Week 4

This week was our presentation day, unfortunately Guy got the chicken pox. That left me, Emily, Arjun and Joel to do the presentation. The presentation went well, we got a bit of constructive criticism and have now have changed the jungle level to the woodland level, and the Fire(larva) level to iron ore. This fits in with the Sheffield steel industry and the museums better.

I made the turtle and the cloud sprite, i also make a practice game to test out the sprites as well as test and figure out how to program the game.

Week 5

This week i made the first prototype of the actual game, i got the animations of the turtle working. Walking left and right. I got a path working which makes one of the cloud objects move horizontally, unfortunately when the turtle attempts jump onto the cloud, they both stop. I need to work a bit more on the collision detection for this.

Everything I've done untill now!

Tuesday 16th
I completed the Jungle background, I was very happy at how the leaves turned out but when I put the leaf platforms on it to create the layout the leaves blended into the background and you couldnt really tell which leaves were the platforms so I'm going to adjust the platforms and make them less detailed and more bold.

Monday 15th
I saw Arjun's background and wasn't very happy with mine I thought it looked too basic compared to his, so i combined photos and drawings like he had done and made it more detailed, it looked a lot better than the previous one and work well with Arjun's too. I also started my jungle background and I wanted the drawn leaves on this one to be very detailed.

Saturday 13th

I scanned in my cloud background and added colour I also added the platforms to it to see what it would look like.

Wednesday 10th

Met up with the group and we agreed that there should be some information about the museum in the game somewhere so we decided to have a button on the menu screen so you can get to the information about the museum from there, we assigned this job to Guy because he wanted more to do. We also decided how the game would look and added some more stuff to the credits. We decided that you could collect bonus items in the game and they would be the body parts of the giraffe and you have to collect all four to rebuild and save the giraffe. In the credits we would then have the giraffe being rebuilt. We also decided what order the levels would go in. We are having four levels Sky, Jungle, Fire and Water. We decided to part the levels in order of hardness Sky first, then Jungle then water and then fire. We also decided to make the turtle rust if he touches the water.

I did some more sketches of the backgrounds and drew out some level images that would be turned into sprites so the turtle can jump on them. We also decided in our group that if the turtle fell into the water on the water level he would rust so I also did six more images of stages of the turtle rusting.

Tuesday 9th

I read half of the museums guide lines and got the impression that they would like a little bit of information about the museum in the game so I decided to bring this up with my group in the next meeting. I also read about what colours they like to be used and about there logo's, I would also bring this up with my group in the next meeting.

Monday 8th

I carried on with my turtle image I need to make 6 images that could be turned into sprite's, 3 forward and 3 backward. I twisted the legs round to make them look like they've come forward part of the way and filled in the gaps. I also started the last forward sprite but decided to take a short break.

I finished my turtle images but was a little curious on how it would look when it moved so I decided to put the images into flash and make them move. It looked pretty coll and was happy on how it would move so I decided to finish there and keep the turtle as it was.

Sunday 7th

I scanned in my image of the turtle so I could put it onto photo shop and add colour i also needed to make the turtle look like it moving, by having another turtle image and moving his legs forward a bit. I first added colour to the main image, I didn't want the colour to be too bold because I still wanted it to look like it would be made of metal. I also cut out the body and legs of the turtle so I could make it move. I started to rearrange the legs so they would look like they've gone forward a bit. I decided to leave it there and finish it later on.


Wednesday 3rd
I did some quick drawings at the museum before I met my group for the second time. I did a tonal drawing of the turtle so if the group liked the idea of using the turtle in the main game I could use it as a base and design my character from it. I also drew some sketches of the giraffe and some possible items that could be stolen from the metal men.

I met up with my group for the second time and discussed all of our ideas for the game. We combined all of our ideas for the story of the game, we decided instead of having the metal men as the evil, but characterising ourselves into evil metal people. We also decided to make it on game maker and to do it in the style of Mario where its 2D and you jump up to separate levels. We decided to combine 3 programmes, Flash, Game Maker and After Effects. The Flash would be used for the introduction and explaining the story line of the game but also making the menu screen for our game, the game Maker was for the game and the After Effects was to make the credits. We also assigned each other jobs. Guy was our team leader and was to make the menu screen for the game. Duane was making the game on game maker, Arjun was to make the credits and i was to do the drawings for the characters and make the introduction for the game. The credits are going to be very interesting with animated spoons and forks flying around and spelling out our names.

I started my character design for the turtle, I thought the turtle looked a bit unhappy so I decided to give him googly eyes and a smile. My first design didn't look that great he looked more like a sea lion than a turtle so I decided to go back to the drawing board and to keep the original turtle image that I did in the museum and to just change his eye and mouth. This worked well so I decided to add shading to make him look more metal like.
For my introduction I decided to do the first frame to show my group what I was thinking of doing and to get the go ahead from them to carry on with it. I wanted it to be very detailed.

Monday 1st

I did some quick storyboarding to show how my preferred idea could work on flash, if we couldn't use game maker, it was just to give my group a visual aid of my idea and help me to explain it.

Thursday 28th

After meeting my group for the first time, I decided to start brainstorming ideas for the game project. I came up with either making a type of walk through around the museum or a game in the style of Mario where it is based in a made up world. I didn't really like the idea of the walk through because I didn't think it would be very interesting and if it was actually put in the museum you wouldn't need a walk through because your already in the museum. I really liked the idea of creating a separate world because it would have a story line to it and it would be learning about the objects but learning in a fun way. The story line I came up with was to turn the characters in the museum into character's in the game. For example the giraffe with three heads would be the guard to all the treasures in the metal world and the turtle would be the main character. i would also have two evil characters in the game which are the metal men and they original sit in the garden outside the museum. I would play on this by saying they were banished to the forest but one day got up and attack the guard and stole some of the metal objects in the museum, the turtle would then have to retrieve them, but the only way to get them back would be by answering specific questions on those objects. the questions themselves wouldn't be that hard the idea of the game would be to find the object in the museum and answer the question this would have made it more interactive and more fun for who ever is playing it.

Posted by Emily Cox

The weekend

This weekend I have spent a lot of time working on the menu for the game using flash. It is only a draft copy and will need some changes to it.

I also spent a few hours working on the first half of the powerpoint presentation for the pitch. I have been using the pictures that I already have to make the basis of it and I have written some notes on what I think we should be talking about on each slide. But I am happy to change some of the talking points.

All together this weekend I have done about 3 or so hours on the project and I am planning on doing some more before our pre-meeting on Wednesday. CANT WAIT!!!

Guy Copitch

A catch up of what we have done

Since we started with seperate blogs, this is everything that I posted on mine:

One week before the pitch

Meeting during class on 11/02/2010 at 9 - 12

Today was a really special day. We finally met the last member of our group, Joel. We decided that he should work on the music for the levels as he plays guitar an piano and hopefully we are going to get a few samples in time for the pitch on Thursday.

We also confirmed that I should get the information on the museum and the objects that we are going to use. The problem is that we haven't decided what the objects are going to be so I cant get information on anything.

My task before the meeting on wednesday is to get the powerpoint prepared for the pitch. Its going to be pictures of what we have done, so the slides will be more like prompts then have writing on. I just need all the pictures and so on so that I get it all down. My aim is to get it done so that we can go over it on wednesday and decide who is going to say what.

I am also going to do a quick mock up of what the menu is going to look like but I expect its going to change a bit since I need to see the end of Emily's introduction to see what it should look like. All in all, it looks like its going to be a busy few days.

The people who attended this meeting was

Duane Millett

Arjun Chohan

Emily Cox

Me

Joel Houghton

wednesday, 10 february 2010

The meeting after

After a lovely weekend we met again on 10/2/2010 at 2 in the cafe at the top of Owen, I got a coffee, it was average. The fire alarm also went off, that was irritating.

Over the weekend we had used our thread on Facebook a lot to discuss the game and how easy it would be to get the things that we wanted. After a bit of a worry that it would be too hard we decided that it was do-able (meaning, could be done). We also used the thread to discuss the location of our missing team member. It appeared he had been spotted in a class but was unable to attend our meeting.

In addition to this we decided that we would have a section of the menu that would have information about the museum and about the exhibits that we are using in the game.

We also saw the start of the backgrounds the levels were going to have and decided that instead of their being enemies that you have to avoid it would be more of a lateral thinking game, e.g. there would be pits that the player had to avoid by going a certain path on platforms.

We made small changes to how the levels were going to work such as if the turtle falls into the water it will rust.

Another idea we had was to place parts of the giraffe that gets attacked in the introduction (if i said that before? If not, thats whats going to happen) around each level and the players have to try and get each part as a bonus.

Then we talked about how we are going to do the pitch that will be in two lessons time. We decided that we would have a powerpoint to show the work that we have already started as prompts and talk about what the idea is going to be. So thats something for you to look forward to.

The people that attended this meeting were: (I bet you can guess by now)

Duane Millett

Arjun Chohan

Emily Cox

Me

Meeting number THREE

So we met again during class on 03/1/2010 from 9 until 12.

In this meeting he went over our idea again and made sure that it was viable. We also wondered where Joel was...

Emily showed us a picture of the turtle that she drew that is acting as our main character and we discussed the sprites for the game as well as how we are going to place us in the game.

We considered the idea of music but decided that we should wait until everything else is done before thinking about it.

We then went to the museum (again) to look at the exhibit (again). We then took some photo of ourselves so that we can be drawn and placed in the game.

It was a productive day...

The people that attended this meeting were...

Duane Millett

Arjun Chohan

Emily Cox

Me

We met again (this time in our own time) on 02/1/2010 at 2 in the museum. We agreed this date on the Facebook thread that we made after the last meeting. Our aim to meet at the museum was to look at some of the characters we could use for the game and to see some of the pictures that Emily had drawn.

Although the meeting was only an hour we got a lot decided. We finalised that or main project would be a game. However we also decided that we would have a flash introduction and credits.

The people that attended this meeting was:

Duane Millett

Arjun Chohan

Emily Cox

Me

This is the basic diagram we drew to show how the game is going to work.

During this meeting we also decided that the game would have 4 levels (Clouds, Rainforest, Water, Fire) and the introduction would be a flash animation of us stealing parts from the museum)

We decided that the levels would all end with one of the objects that was stolen from the museum being available if you answer a question about it (the answer will be somewhere in the museum).

As well as managing the other parts of the project I will also be making the menu that will link to the game and the credits.

First Meeting

We had our first meeting on 28/1/2010 at 11.

We discussed our roles in the group and what our strong and weak points were. We decided that I would be the team leader and that we would do a DS game as a project. This meeting was only an hour long.

We also agreed to set up a thread on Facebook where we would be able to discuss any issues that we had and organise meetings.