Gleaming in the Moonlight

... something something Prince of Egypt lyrics here.

This week, the fifth round of RPP has started! Before we dive into that, some updates about the last two RPP rounds are in order!

The third round of RPP was all about "emergent gameplay" - which is just a fancy term for creative a mechanic where the player can come up with multiple ways to solve a problem. Given that this game was being made during October, we went for a very festive Halloween theme! The premise of this game is that you're the child warlock vampire Kidferatu and you're trying to escape from this very SPOOPY house. Ghosts and spiders serve as the obstacles standing in your way to accomplish this!

The reason I've been putting off discussing this game for so long is solely because I was SO terrible at playing this fantastic game. It took me at least ten tries to manage a full run through of the game (and even then, I used a cheat!). My "emergent" solutions are pretty damn weak and basic. I made bridges and ladders. Yeah. Original.

This game was made alongside Raymond, Al, Tamara, and Josh. This was a very pleasant team experience and I think that translated into everything we accomplished together. It was definitely ambitious, given that we even had 3D animation integrated in here. What definitely worked for us is that we had a clear goal from the very beginning and always knew what we were striving for.  A gigantic plus was how well-received the game was! :3 

Noooow onto the fourth round of RPP. This round's theme? MOBILE GAMES. This round definitely seemed to bring back the "fun factor" type of games we enjoyed during the first round. I would say that this round also had the biggest string of successful games among the Cohort. Everyone has become stronger in creating themes and mechanics and executing them - that much is very clear. Whatever we end up working on for Capstone would definitely turn out great. OKAY. SPIEL DONE.

During this round, I was teamed up with Mo, Steven, Chuck, and Jose. While conceptualizing, we wanted to make a game that was OBNOXIOUSLY CUTE so that ended up taking a literal route. Our game tells the story of King Grumps, who keeps color and happiness far away from his kingdom. One day, the citizens of the Kolorful Kandy Kingdom decide to visit King Grumps and cheer him up. You must fight off all of this HAPPINESS and keep your kingdom (and yourself) as salty as possible!

Again, this was a pretty positive team experience! There was a clear direction in mechanics, puns, and art. Jose and I used Lisa Frank as an artistic reference. Remember those folders and notebooks that so many girls had in the 90's and early 2000's? You know the ones.

i envied these girls, yo.

King Grumps versus the Kolorful Kandy Kingdom was a strong SUCCESS. There's talk right now about possibly turning it into an app whenever we get the time to make that a reality. We definitely accomplished something great together!

Aaaand now on to RPP#5. During my last post, I mentioned that The Scales of Truth was chosen to be made into a rapid prototype to later be used for the last round of Capstone pitches. This time around, I've been teamed up with Roselyn, Keiran, Jared B, and Chuck. At the moment, we're currently working on getting the basics of player controls, environment, characters, and level design down.

Through this experience, however, it became increasingly apparent about how muddled the mechanics for the game were. The Scales of Truth was only the second game design document I've ever written so it's pretty nifty that it made it this far. For the past two weeks, I've taken the opportunity to read more about level design for different genres of games and video game design as a whole. It's something I should have found the time for while writing the document buuuut either way, this has been a prime learning experience. Level design takes a lot of planning, knowledge, and studying to be able to get something that's halfway decent.

Last week, Roselyn and I took the suggestion of a fellow artist to start working on art assets for The Scales of Truth. During that time, we undertook the lengthy process of modeling, texturing, rigging, and fully animating our protagonist - Anubis - for our prototype. We did the same for a generic enemy, a serpopard. This'll leave us with much more time to troubleshoot animations, detail the dungeon, and refine mechanics. There's that slight possibility of also modeling & animating another enemy for variation. Only slight. So far, I think that we're in a very good place! Productivity is moving smoothly so a lot will be done by the time Thanksgiving break rolls on by.

Aaaaand I think that about wraps it up for talk about RPP! The homework front is also looking pretty good right now. 

Last week's Drawing Fundamentals assignment was to draw some kind of mech or vehicle by taking a super bike and a stingray as inspiration. My idea was also using Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's as my main point of reference so the final end product looks like a physics-defying d-wheel that could have been used on that show. IT STILL CAME OUT PRETTY NIFTY.

This week ... we're focusing on environments. I used the Feng Zhu method for the first half of the assignment. That method was overlaying a bunch of different environment images on top of each other to make some unique (and chaotic) shapes to draw inspiration from. This proved to be difficult as far as structures go (which I expected) but it was definitely helpful. I'll be using this method on any future environment art I do now.  It's also unbELIEVABLY helpful to be working on a small hoard of ideas all at once instead of concentrating all my effort into one concept that might not even be successful. 

Animation wise, I've been working on two different things. The first one is a personality walk, where I wanted to do something particularly sassy after a failed attempt at a sluggish/angsty walk cycle. It's also similar to a walk cycle I attempted earlier in this semester!

The second part of this is proving to be a weeee bit more difficult ... weight is something I've been struggling with conveying properly in my animations. This supplemental part (we had the option of doing an animation of one of three options: a Personality Walk, Carrying a Weighted Object, or Sitting in a Chair) proved to be a challenge ... and it's still being worked on at the moment. This has been an improvement from my first pass at this!

I think that's it so far!  We're nearing the end of our first semester at FIEA. We'll all be able to  enjoy a well-deserved break after making it this far.