Prototype 2 Coming Along

So today we were suppose to get another visit from our client since he came up with a few ideas to improve our games over the weekend. But he never showed up, so for the meantime we continue to work.

Our group sat down and talked about some specifics of our game. We talked about how the game is going to be laid out, and how we are going to do it. For now, we will stick to the "bomb diffuse" idea that we have and I've altered an image that I found on the internet to be our bomb for the game. I made the fuse longer and straight so that Felix and Derek can use it as a timer for the player.

The idea is that we won't so how much time the player has left to solve the puzzle, but the length of the fuse will sort of tell him how long he has before the bomb explodes. This will add some tension and hopefully get the whole "bomb diffusing" idea across to the player.

Josh will be helping me with the icons and I will try to focus on the layout to make it look as good as possible. This will be our "one sliver" of final art on how the game will look if it were ever to be developed beyond this prototype.

Here is the image that I reworked for our prototype:

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Presentation

So today Josh presented our idea to the client and overall it went well. They seemed to like it and we are going ahead with it.

We sat down and decided on what tasks each of us was going to work on to get a solid version of the game by next week on Thursday. After that, we will polish and add more levels if we have time.

In the meantime I have to work on better art than what I submitted yesterday. One thing that we added is that since we need a some reason to motivate the player, we decided with defusing bombs. So for now, the idea is that there will be a bomb with a lit fuse and it will move slowly. Once the fuse reaches the end, it will blow up if the student didn't finish the circuit in time.

So to start out, I will be working on the bomb. I will also be working on some tiles and icons for the game.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Stuff For Circuit Mockup

So like I said before, we are going with a circuit mockup for tomorrows presentations and I had to make some quick icons and 2 grids for the game idea that we have. A few of them I just grabbed from the internet and resized them.

 Here is my stuff:

So as you can see, all the images are really simple and it's just to get the idea across. Some of them I make, but its just easier to adjust images for this mockup.

I also emailed all my stuff to Josh and I can't wait to see what he will come up with for tomorrows presentation.

In the meantime, that's all. Thanks for reading.

Prototype 2

So today we found out what we are going to do for the next prototype, we are going to work on a game to teach core concepts of Mechanical Engineering to incoming freshmen.

At first it was kind of hard to try and come up with something because what the client told us was so broad and didn't really narrow anything down to try and focus us in a particular direction.

So after our team sat down and talked about different possibilities for a game, we decided to stick to a game that would teach students about circuits. Felix (we are in a new team now, which is: Josh as producer, Felix & Derek as engineers, and myself as artis) found a game that is really fun that shows the player simple concepts of a circuit board. 

Here is the game that Felix found:

We are going to take this game and make the player think a bit more than just trying to figure out a puzzle. We are going to try and make it so the students will have to try and think about what they've learned in class and try to apply it to the game to solve the puzzle.

Felix was also saying that they (the engineers) might even be able to make it so that the level design will be done through text files. This will make it so that once everything is set into place, anyone can design a level for the game and then have a student solve for the problem.

I have to come up with some quick art assets for a concept UI and icons that will represt: a light bulb, a power switch, wire, battery, and a resistor. I will have to get this done by tomorrow night so that we have a mockup ready by Wednesday when we pitch our games.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

First Prototype Finished

So today was when we had to present the prototype that we have been working on for the last two weeks.

It went a lot better than I thought it would, but we still had some feedback that made me reflect on some things.

For example:

• Since this is an internal prototype, we can use existing material and modify it to suit the needs of our game. I tried to make original art, and got "marked down" for it because none of the art was close to finalized.

I had a few more things that I was going to write for my list, but I can't seem to remember them right now.

Also, we were told some details about our next game.

This time around, we are going to make a game for incoming freshman students in the Mechanical Engineering department. The games that we make here will be deployed to students to try and get them interested in Mechanical Engineering and teach them core Mechanical Engineering concepts.

I'm still not sure what the last part means, but we will find out more information on Monday.

I'm already in a new team, and this time the producers were in charged of putting together their own team. The only catch is that everyone in the team hasn't worked together in the last game. So this is an entire new team.

We will be using XNA for the next game, but I'm not too concerned since Felix is the same team I am and he has experience working in XNA.

Other than that, we are not required to but we can do some research over the weekend. I think I might ask a few questions to one of my cousins in California who is now a sophomore mechanical engineer, and see what it is that he had to know before starting and if there is anything that he didn't know, how did he go about learning all the necessary information.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Factory Character With Gun

So I did some tweaking to the factory character that I made, but this time I aded a gun.

I don't know if we are even going to add it, but if we do then we have something to work with.

I also made a really simple factory to place at the end of the level so that people can see where are going to go "next". We just won't have a next level for this prototype.

That's all for now, I will post another entry if there is other stuff I end up working on before the presentation tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Improved Background

So yesterday after the professors went around the room critiquing out games, it was clear that I needed to make some much needed changes to the background. A lot of people couldn't tell that the blue in our background was actually water and not the sky.

So I had to go in and tweak it just a little and I added some islands that I made in illustrator (btw, my skills in Illustrator are definitely getting better) and not it looks way better.

Here is an example:

Compared to how it was before, it looks much more like a beach now.

I still have some stuff I need to do before we present tomorrow. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Factory Character Finished

So I finally finished the last character for our game. I think this one looks much better than my last 2, I can at least say that after this I know Illustrator just a little bit better.

Here is what I did:

I think the first one looks better, but I don't know if people might think that the character has his knee caps really high, so I brought those things down a bit. But I don't know if it helps since he looks a little square now.

I still have to add a gun to the guy to finish him. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Main Character Sprite Sheet Done

So I'm not very good at 2D art as I've mentioned before, but I sure as hell have improved over the last week or so.

After finishing the background, I started to work on our main character and the sprite sheet for the actions.

It's not very complicated, but when you don't really know what you are doing it makes it really hard to get anything done.

So here it is:

I still have to make 2 more sprite sheets, hopefully the next ones won't take me 7 hours to complete. :(

Thanks for reading.