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.