Semester 1 Feedback

Proposal Grade:  B+
Feedback:
- Be careful with the use of the term "modern", "contemporary" might be better suited.
- When including images, directly discuss it in the text .
- Be careful with repetition.
- In methodology be clearer about who exactly will be testing my artifact
- More evidence needed to back up that 2D horror games are rarely explored (sweeping statement etc etc).


Pre-Production Portfolio Grade:  A+
Feedback:

"The pre-production portfolio showcases an excellent approach to skills development, research and conceptual development.  The practical work is appealing and considers the subject matter, visual style and design well overall. The portfolio could benefit from further consideration of gameplay design and it’s relation to environment design, flow and user experience.  The concept is appealing; however there is limited evidence of iteration possible interactivity and the impact this would have on the player experience and thus the impact of the horror aspects of the game.  Experimentation with design of set-pieces of interaction (through further animatics), considering timing, flow and pacing (of which there is evidence of research in the blog) would greatly enhance the final game moving forward."

As the majority of my feedback has been directed towards the design of my game, I've decided to collaborate with a programmer.  I feel my skills in this field are not strong enough for my game to reach its full potential and focusing on improving them would take away too much time from design and art which are the main fields I am interested in.
I'll need to get a rough prototype ready ASAP with my current design in place in order to implement Jesse Schell's theory of the loop, where I will be able to constantly test and iterate the design throughout the rest of the year until satisfied with the result.

I've decided to scrap the idea of creating a paper prototype as I feel it will be much more effective to dive straight in to creating a technical prototype as this will keep my skills with Gamemaker fresh (I still plan on working on additional code for the game whenever possible) and I imagine conveying a horror atmosphere will be much easier in game than on paper as visuals and audio play such a key role.


Concept Development Document Grade:  B
Feedback:

"The concept development document is clearly structured and links each inspirational source to the project aim.  The project draws from horror games a great deal therefore moving forward it may be helpful to expand inspirational sources looking beyond games and films to consider how other media/theories/artists can challenge conventions within these kinds of games and offer you a fresh perspective on the genre.  The document discusses sound, mechanics and art style clearly; however the link to your own work is very direct and it may be beneficial to consider these techniques as an inspirational tool kit which you will contextually consider with sensitivity to the most appropriate methods for your developing project idea.  The analysis of examples is to a good level but could benefit from further depth to unpick the impact of the identified techniques on the audience (and your project) further. "

For inspirational sources outside games and film I could look more in depth at artists who tend to use horror scenes as their subjects.  Off the top of my head I've always found the work of Francis Bacon to be quite disturbing so this could be a good starting point.  I could also look at game artists specifically and analyse individual horror assets they've created.  I could even go out and explore some creepy environments in real life, like graveyards or woods at night to see why (although that might be a bit dangerous to do alone so I might have to rope in a friend!) and take notes on why people find these environments so unsettling.  Might even be worth taking a field trip to the old primary school my game's setting has been unintentionally based on!

Game design-wise, in retrospect I've been sort of Frankenstein-ing the mechanics I've come across in horror games for my own game design which is obviously not the best way to go about my design.  During case studies I should definitely start putting more emphasis on mechanics rather than mostly focusing on art direction.  Furthermore, as my feedback for this module addresses, I need to analyise why certain mechanics frighten me rather than just pointing out that they do.

Project name change:

During a supervisor meeting, Ryan also suggested that I should change the title of my project as "Unsettling" is too vague a word to describe what I am trying to achieve.  Currently the title of the project is:

"Two-Dimensional Horror:  Creating an Unsettling Atmosphere in 2D Horror Games"

However some alternatives could be:

"Creating a Horror Atmosphere in 2D Games"

"Creating a Sense of Suspense and Apprehension in a 2D Horror Game"

I'm sort of stuck however I think something short and sweet like the first title here might be more in the right direction.  I have a supervisor meeting tomorrow so I'll run it by Ryan then!

Global Game Jam

Last weekend I took part in the 48 hour Global Game Jam.

This is the second game jam I've taken part in and I've found they are a fantastic opportunity to work on artistic areas outside my comfort zone and thus improve skills I'm lacking in.  Animation is an area I really struggle with so I jumped at the opportunity to flex my character animation muscles some more during GGJ!

My awesome team Blank Canvas (formally Richard & The Nigellas) hard at work.

First off I'll talk about our general process.  

The theme was "What do we do now?" which initially left us thinking up ideas for a strategic survival game inspired by Don't Starve however after much serious discussion we realised it didn't sound fun and decided to kill it.  We then came up with various hide and seek inspired ideas but couldn't really think of ways to add meat to the gameplay so we killed those off too.  By midnight we were all starting to flag and debated going down the "interactive narrative route" however after an hour of discussion decided that was also too boring.  At 1 AM things took a pretty dark turn after someone brought up the idea of kids and imaginary friends and someone else yelled something about an imaginary friend being the dead friend of the kid.  

That's when we came up with the concept for "Revenant" - a short, local multiplayer puzzle platformer game where one player plays as a little girl searching for her friend down an abandoned mine shaft and the other plays as the ghost of a little boy she meets there.  The girl character can shine her torch on objects to allow the ghost character to interact with them and the ghost character can interact with "ghost objects" to bring them in to the real world for the girl to use.  After solving a puzzle in the game players will discover the body of the little boy's ghost and the screen will fade to black as the text "What do we do now?" appears.  Yeah, things got pretty grim.  

With the clock ticking and the team deciding we wanted our main characters to be children, I showed the guys my concepts for the little brother character for my honours game.  They really liked the style so I decided to go for similar proportions but with the flat textured art style that myself and Stuart, our other artist, like to go on about so much whenever we do game jams. 

I didn't bother with any silhouettes or any of the other techniques I usually employ in my character design process and just went ahead and churned out the designs.  I'm pretty pleased with how they came out considering.  (However I did add a penguin silhouette to the little girl's dungarees, a little Easter Egg from our last game jam game Gentoo.)

In this idle animation the blink is way too fast and I got careless with certain frames (the accidental brush mark on her legs around the time she blinks.) It's also just generally too static and could benefit from overlapping action such as a nervous hand twitch or a subtle turn of the head.

The animation here is super janky in this walk cycle.  The hair bobs/flicks too late (it should be bobbing up at her shortest point and down for when she reaches her tallest point) and it could do with a couple more in-betweens to smooth in out.

The ghost boy's idle suffers from the same issues as the little girl's.

And in his walk cycle he appears to changes sizes slightly in a couple frames as does his horizontal position.  This was the result of careless Photoshop work on my part.  Next time I'll take better care (and also not animate after just a couple hours sleep I spose.)  Atleast the actual motion of his legs came out a lot smoother than the girl character.

I also worked on a couple animations for climbing and turning cogs however they were the result of just a couple clunky last minute frames so I won't bother critiquing them here.  However you can see them in action in the following video of gameplay footage:

Despite their flaws, working on these animations has left me feeling much more confident about working on the character animation for my honours project.  I recently completed the first pass animation for my main character (which I'll make a post about soon) and I now have a better understanding of how to improve upon it for the 2nd pass.  For instance I was having issues with how far apart the highest and lowest points of the character's gait should be space and experimenting with these animations during the jam has helped me determine the correct heights.

All in all, the game jam was a fantastic experience and I'm really proud of what we achieved in such a short amount of time.  Can't wait for the next one!

Click here to download our game!

Sound Design

I really wanted to avoid using freesound.org and incompetech for the sound in my game as I feel it's really obvious when a game has used open source audio.  Playing Home and listening to the same door opening and footstep sound bites I've heard a million times before really killed the experience for me and I don't want my project to fall in to the same trap.  Audio is so important for horror games in particular as the sound plays such a large part in creating suspense and tension and therefore needs to be tailored specifically for the experience the designer wants to create.

So I'm really happy to be collaborating with sound designer Lewis Bage for this project!  This post is mainly for his benefit however I've included a diagram of where the audio will be used in game which also gives some insight in to the level layout of the game.

SFX Asset List:

1. Footsteps
1.1. Footsteps crunching on ground
1.2. Footsteps on wooden flooring
1.3. Demon* footsteps slow
1.4. Demon* footsteps running
 *Basically normal footsteps but with echo?  Nothing too heavy/stompy. Slow footsteps should be ominously dragged out and will be used for hiding sequences where player can see the demon slowly passing by.

2. Interaction
2.1. Old wooden door opening
2.2. Locker opening
2.3. Pages turning
2.4. Shuffling of objects (books)
2.5. Portal closing
2.6. Scared, heavy breathing (female, for when player is hiding)

3. Demonic voices
3.1. Various demonic voice sound bites (distorted human voice, perhaps reversed?) x 3
3.2. Loud demonic scream x 3 (preferably one long and two short)

4. Atmosphere
4.1. Wind blowing
4.2. Animal scraping/rustling x2
4.3. Subtle atmospheric title screen music that will also be occasionally used in-game.

5. Assorted Noises
5.1. White Noise
5.2. Ghostly whimpering
5.3. Ominous atmospheric sound clip
5.4. Knocking quiet*
5.5. Knocking loud/increasingly aggressive*
*These sounds will be used to guide the player to the basement area, where the knocking will be loudest.
5.6. Tap dripping
5.7. Quick, assorted sound bites of "things that go bump in the night", perhaps chairs being knocked over, metal being dragged along the ground, rattling?  Probably won't need too many of these.

6. Chase sequence music


3. Demonic Voices 
Five Nights at Freddy's Night 5 phone call great example of demonic voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIIguXoQl-k
The important factor is that the human voices are completely distorted and unrecognisable.

For the screams, something sort of distorted and loud
e.g.. 15 seconds in to this footage of The Screecher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIpdQ5bLB_E
These could potentially be used for a jump scare.

4. Atmospheric Music
Something quite subtle that fades in and out.  Will probably be used quite sporadically in game.  (My intention is to remove the music suddenly at certain points, such as in the basement, to create tension.)
Maybe something like the background music in Neverending Nightmares:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8b54Kajgak

5. Assorted sounds
5.1. White Noise
Something really uncomfortable sounding.  The noise 40 seconds on this YouTube clip of the Lone Survivor Mother boss fight is an excellent example of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpCe6l4U5mE

5.2. Ghostly Whimpering
Cynthia's ghost from Silent Hill excellent example of atmospheric  ghostly crying.  Really like the reversed crying noises:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUbOuJHekyE
Theoretically the whimpering will be from the protagonists little brother but honestly any gender would probably work.

5.3. Ominious Atmospheric Sound Clip
8:45 Creature passing window sound from Neverending Nightmaresbite good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8b54Kajgak

6.  Chase Sequence Music

Something fast-paced and uncomfortable.  The aim is to essentially to make the player feel stressed during these sequences.  Maybe something similar to the audio of the mirror sequence in Clock Tower (1:25):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6c5cm4zuE

Click to enlarge.