Week 5

This week i really got down to working on animations. Everyone on programming had been given their tasks and so I just mainly focused on my own work whilst checking in occasionly to my team who were not running into much trouble thankfully. 

For making the player sprite I decided to take a closer look at games like Animal Well and Downwell that have very simple art however animate their player very expressively which contributes to their gameplay having such nice feel. One thing in particular about Animal Well tat i found very unique was the way it outlined its player and other objects. In most games with pixel art a character consists of a number of colors and is then covered in a fully black outline, Animal well strays away from this by outlining its sprites with a lighter color than whatever pixel its next to. Since i do not see many games using this technique I tried to incorporate this into my player sprite. For this I am going to use the wonderful Asesprite as that is simply the software I am most used to.

These are made by devs in a similar situation to us where they are a small team trying to recreate the magical look of those old Gameboy screens and Crt’s and so with the knowledge acquired of old gaming mascots in previous weeks as well my new found knowledge in researching these two gems I was able to transfer my concept art to pixel art.

And so this was the final result of my designs. I think it turned out quite well, I incorporated the exagerrated features the best I could like his small body and put emphasis on his most expressive part, his head to show that he is made of ice I made a completely different colour to everything else in the sprite. I think this is a simple design that can be animated well as well as work as a great mascot for our game as his design is simple yet unusual enough to catch your eye.

I also decided against the scythe I drew up in my concept art I felt it’s shape did not transfer well to pixel art and ended going with this energy sword that combined with an aggressive swing animation will make for some very beefy attacks in game.

 

 

Games like Hollow knight use their attack swings as a way of platforming, for example when the player is in the air and swings and hits something below he gets launched further into the air. This kind of mechanic would compliment the style I am going for in gameplay a lot and so I’ve tasked Samuele to try and create this system using the animations above.

 

In this weeks lecture pixel art software was discussed but I can definitively say from my past in my own projects and from working on this Asesprite is the way to go. So if you are on the fence about dropping 30 euro on it, just do it.

Tasks At Hand

  1. Try and devlop some tiles for the player to move around.
  2. Make a start on the games music
  3. Give the team new tasks once they have completed the ones that they have.

What I Learned

  1. Asesprite is king.
  2. Being able to incorporate different elements from different sources.
  3. How time consuming animation is so once again embrace limitations and aim for whatever field you can do best no matter how simple.
Week 6