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PROGRESS UPDATE
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PLAN FOR NEXT MONTH / WEEK (Including Possible Contingency Plans If
Problems Anticipated)
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Mon W/B 18/01/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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Started the unit. Done the ideas generation.
Chosen the project I wanted to choose and make before it even started.
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Pitch
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Mon W/B 25/01/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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Wrote the pitch with more overall thoughts about
the game, still have to think all in-depth about it. Have done the schedule.
I may have chosen a bit too much to create for the game. Thinking that the
game may not be fully finished but I’ll try making it look finished anyway.
I found the fonts I may or may not use in the
game, started to list music examples from which I will take inspiration as well
as collecting reference imagery that I’m saving on Pinterest.
The music software I found (or was recommended)
is called FL Studio 12. I may also use Audacity. All I have left is to find
the sound plugins that sound just like the instruments I want to use in the
creation of the soundtrack.
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Research, research and more research. The most
difficult is narrowing everything down and deciding.
Hopefully the book will arrive at the end of next
week.
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Mon W/B 01/02/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I began to create a new smart colour palette
(basically where colours can be reused on other parts and it helps unite the
drawing) with help of tutorials and observing other drawings. I finished it
but I imagine that I may change, add or subtract colours from it as I’ll
progress with the artwork.
I’m still looking for sound inspiration and
considering searching for royalty free music if I won’t be able to create a
good soundtrack on my own.
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Finishing off the research (or starting the pre
production) part and waiting impatiently for the book.
All that’s left is sound software plugins
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Mon W/B 08/02/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I began sketching out some concepts for the
environments. Mostly just crude sketches of some landmarks and buildings.
I have done a survey consisting of 8 questions
and sent it to friends as well as shared on Facebook.
I also began searching for secondary research
sources.
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Continue sketching, finishing off the research
for good, starting pre-production.
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Mon W/B 15/02/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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During the half term I was unmotivated to do any
work whatsoever. Terraria didn’t help with trying to work either.
The only thing I did was collecting the survey
responses, 30 overall.
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Catching up with any work.
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Mon W/B 22/02/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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Since the book wasn’t ordered by the library, I
ordered one myself. I bought the PDF version since it was on 10 dollars sale
+ I can access it anywhere.
I also wrote a summary for primary research and
worked on the secondary.
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I’ll have to start working on the pre-production
in my own time apart of lessons, since I feel like I’m wasting time. I
thought the research won’t take as much effort.
I’ll also continue reading the book for further
understanding before creating a base code.
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Mon W/B 29/02/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I haven’t done much this week, apart from writing
task 1, reading Game Maker book and looking at some games trying to find
inspiration. I was very demotivated.
I also had to catch up with other works on
Thursdays.
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Speed through pre-production, so I can catch up,
since I feel like I’m 3 weeks behind. Try to force myself to work in my free
hours as well.
Continue reading Game Maker book and start coding
some time soon.
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Mon W/B 07/03/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I finally started to do some concept art of NPCs,
the witch and her bird companion. I also drew the idea for the HUD and
inventory, although I don’t think I will implement these any time during the
production for this task. I don’t have as much skills to make them, even if I
would have ready sprites for it.
I also started to plan out the player’s
mechanics: jump, dash or walk, attack, etc. And when it came to attack I
decided upon the magic types. They won’t be rock-paper-scissors as I intended
at first, but instead physical, natural and spiritual. I’m not sure yet how
they are going to work and I need to name the attacks. If I will have time I
may make a small skill tree with just 2 upgrades.
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I’ll need to start making the base for platformer
soon. I definitely need to make the character moving – walk, dash, jump,
double jump (or more), possibly a wall jump and duck down, also climb the
ladders, etc.
That should be my base and then I will be able to
move on. I don’t think I will program most of the RPG elements such as the levelling
up or quests, because it may be too difficult now, so I need to simplify the
idea. (Plus I intend to work on the game after the project anyway).
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Mon W/B 14/03/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I have continued on the planning and sketching. I
haven’t progressed greatly during this week.
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Speeding up. I just began to realise how much
time I have wasted throughout the weeks and I’m still behind within my
schedule.
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Mon W/B 21/03/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I started coding the game using Game Maker. It
started off fairly good with making a simple starting state machine for the
player (state machine is basically a way to code using scripts for different
states; eg. walk – jump. The code that way is less messy and confusing plus
it doesn’t have to process everything when not needed).
I made the player walk, dash, double jump, ledge
grab and even climb the ladders which was cool.
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Continuing on coding, adding more elements,
especially enemies.
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Mon W/B 28/03/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I continued on the programming and this time
added enemies. And there where things went too complicated and I been having
a lot of errors, mostly with the wandering state of enemies. I also started
to make the player’s stats starting with HP and hearts.
They did stand and started to chase the player, a bit too fast but it’s good enough at the moment. When were close enough they paused and attacked the player (or rather just drained it’s HP at this point) and even jumped or tried to jump where there was ledge or wall.
With wander state, it didn’t work. I tried to
make them walk some random distance in random direction and maybe switch to
idle at some point, but I couldn’t manage to make it work.
I also couldn’t make the coding to deplete halves
of hearts using the new coding so I’ll probably try another one.
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Fixing errors and doing graphics: making new
player sprite, continuing on the tileset and making enemies and other things.
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Mon W/B 04/04/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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The Easter break started and I just knew I won’t
find any motivation whatsoever to do the work. I barely can be motivated at
home and was worried that it will be a disaster and I’ll be much farther
behind.
For first few days I haven’t done anything at all
apart of looking at palette and asking for help with coding on Reddit
(because forums for Game Maker were under construction).
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Drawing and trying to do something QnQ”…
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Mon W/B 11/04/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I still couldn’t motivate myself much, but I
managed to do a little bit of work. I continued on making the tileset. At
first I swapped the colours to ones from my palette, then I began to adjust
the visible length of the ground, so it won’t be a very thing stripe on which
player walks, but more wider – since it’s a 2D platformer the perspective is
stylised and fake, so it fits.
I also made the first player sprite for idle
animation.
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Finding motivation and trying to catch up or at
least reduce the amount of unnecessary work in order to be able to finish the
game.
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Mon W/B 18/04/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I managed to make the enemies wander using a
timeline. I made it simple so far, so it just walks left and right and turns
either at ledge or wall, or when time runs out. And it works with other
states, so it still chases but when not then it uses this timeline.
I also made the simple swap of characters and a
temporary state where it’s inactive.
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I need to work on attacking and damage as well as
build up to the timeline, so the enemy will seem to have more ‘random’
movement. I also need to implement the GUI and make player use stamina and or
mana from it.
I also need to create a bit different movement
system for the bird character (that is a small square right now).
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Mon W/B 25/04/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I implemented the main piece of the HUD and
positioned all elements as they should be. I made the player use up the
stamina while dashing and then stamina regenerates over time. It is quite
chunky but alright.
I also made the player to lose health when
attacked. When the health didn’t show up, the player was damaged once per hit
but as I tried to make it been shown in the hearts, the player started to
lose twice as much health for whatever reason.
I also made the damage object to disappear in one
frame after being created. (I don’t know the better way to make it damage the
set amount without is being a sensor in a physics world).
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Warping to other rooms plus main menu is needed.
Improving the attacking and player getting damage (may be repaired once the
stats are put inside player not the stats object).
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Mon W/B 02/05/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I made a simple menu that is accessed by either
arrows or WS keys. So far it only opens the game or closes it, but that can
be altered at any time.
I created ‘doors’ but decided to remove them
since they caused a very serious glitch. For some reason while making the
player go from one room to another they ‘lost’ their X and Y coordinates and
the enemies stopped chasing them and platforms were glitching.
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Trying to improve platforms so they don’t lose
collisions but still allow player to jump through them.
Implementing different movement to the bird and
creating a simple AI for the inactive player and the bird.
Improving the wandering timeline. Fixing hp
reduction.
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Mon W/B 09/05/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I made the wandering timeline much more random
with more ‘alarms’ or actually moments since that’s how they are called. For
every of them I gave the action to choose whether to move left or right or
stay idly.
I made a Boolean (true/false) variable for
players and then used that to code the camera to follow either depending on
who’s selected.
I also made enemies drop some gemstones but
didn’t manage to make them spread yet (since the tutorial I used was for top
down games and it’s hard to make it work with gravity).
I created a simple fairy parent who heals some of
the player’s HP when touching it. I also deleted the player’s stats object
and instead put everything inside the player. I then fixed the issue where
the player takes twice the damage.
Finally I made all enemies killable.
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Improving platforms and movement states for bird.
Inactive state AI. ^^^ (look above)
Making player inflict knockback, same with
enemies.
Making more enemies and trying to make a boss.
Working on some (even crude) graphics.
Possibly trying again with door transitions.
I just realised how little time is left for the
unit and how little I have actually achieved. From some time on I had to
pause or discontinue many of the aims on my schedule, because entire project
progresses so slowly.
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Mon W/B 16/05/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I attempted several times to improving platforms
and even asked for help on reddit forum. However, I still couldn’t manage to
fix them and I think I just made everything worse though I know how I want
them to work.
I started making graphics, I created 2 slimes:
blue and red (red is just a placeholder for a unicorn) and recoloured old fairy
sprites with colours from my colour palette. I finished the first idle sprite
for the witch and created gemstones with HUD icon. Lastly I made finished
idle unicorn sprite based on the tutorials from my pinterest page. Additionally
I created a very simple and ugly sky.
After that I coded the graphics in. At first I
tried to make the slime image flip on x axis but that made them fall off
platforms so I just created another sprite animation by mirroring the other
and applied it that way. I also added the cross eyed sprite for when it’s
hurt but somehow it only applied when they attack not when they are attacked.
The player is flipped on x axis and that doesn’t create any issues. I also
applied the background but it was blurred and I realised it was that way
because it was too big so I divided it in parts and placed with an offset.
This time I was actually working during the
weekend.
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Pretty much most of the things from above since I
still didn’t do any of them except for starting the artwork. I’ll also need
to animate the player and the unicorn and then apply the unicorn graphics
instead of red slimes.
Most important things for now are the platforms
and the boss battle.
Once I’ll make the proper background I will need
to encode it so it will be slightly parallax.
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Mon W/B 23/05/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I partially forgot what I have done this week,
because I’m filling this section two weeks later. I think I rewritten the
movement state for the bird, so that it either walks or flies. I tried to
make him pick up objects and I managed to pick them up but not to release on
ground again.
I created 2 more attacks for the player: bubble
shot (with bubbles floating kind of like real bubbles) and a fire bolt. They
work alright except that they turn when player turns and I’m not sure how to
repair that yet.
I looked at the old platformer tutorials by Shaun
Spalding and from there I managed to repair platforms (though there are still
issues with player getting stuck in the middle of them, but it’s not game
breaking as before). From them I also managed to make slopes but only the
solid ones, not platforms.
I think I also created the second sprite for the
player character and made a sprite for a unicorn.
Finally I think I made 3 other rooms for players
to read about controls, credits and some basic info about the game. Then I
applied some very basic visuals for them, but I didn’t go in detail because
they are placeholder for other rooms which will be once I advanced more with
the game after the project.
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Continue on the sprite work so everything will
look decently enough. Animations are equally important, even if not very
dynamic or detailed then at least some cruder ones. I need to finish off all
unicorn animations, because I need unicorns to the game since, well, they are
titular creatures of the game.
Create the boss timeline (charge, earthquake and
maybe jump or something). Or at least try and if it won’t work, don’t do it.
But if it will, then start making animations for him (by recolouring
unicorns).
If possible repair platforms.
Export the game, make a survey and gain feedback
for the game.
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Mon W/B 30/05/16
(Detailed Weekly Summary)
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I started animating a unicorn and done a lot of
player animations, I think I made all she needs.
I created the boss states as well as the timeline
but for some reason the boss doesn’t move, so I deleted access for him in the
exported game.
I created all unicorn animations: walk, gallop,
jump, fall, idle, attack and hurt. I programmed them in and just used the
same states as other enemies have.
I exported the game and made a survey and I
filled in the rest of written work to the blog.
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J
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PROGRESS UPDATE
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PLAN FOR NEXT MONTH / WEEK
(Including Possible Contingency Plans)
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