Ritual Build 11-03-2015

This is the build for "Ritual" as of 11-03-2015.  Excuse the dodgy frame rate, my laptop apparently can't handle screen capture software.

I'm pretty disappointing with it to be quite honest.  I feel like my art hasn't improved at all since first semester and if anything has gotten worse,

Forest area

I got some feedback from a friend who saw a previous build who pointed out the trees are too bright for a horror game.  I've darkened them here but I feel like they create too much contrast now.  Perhaps a sort of dull, greyish purple will work better.  I'll have to experiment.  It also feels a bit too cluttered so I'll play about with removing some assets and see how it feels.  I also still need to tweak one of the tree assets that looks unnaturally straight.

A few people have pointed out the flickering overlay is uncomfortable on the eyes, however these folks have only seen the video with the temperamental frame rate and everyone who has played the game so far has found it appropriate.  However one person who played the game did say the flickering isn't random enough so I'll try work out a way to have it randomly flicker.

Hallway

Obviously quite bare at the moment due to being a work in progress however I feel it would really benefit from some blurred foreground assets in order to give a better sense of enclosure and isolation.  I've also thought about adding a letterbox frame to the game for a similar reason.  Won't be too hard to mock that up to get an idea. The floors are also maybe a bit too bright and should at least be darker nearer the top of the asset to give a better sense of depth.  Perhaps I could add a bit of subtle perspective to the asset itself too.  I also find the doors don't exactly scream "school" so more iteration is required.  Also not sure if that purple colour is really working, seems too "pretty"... May have to rework my colour palette for this area again.

Basement Corridor

I think the flickering works well here and could maybe do with being totally dark at certain points to take more visual information away from the player as they're being chased by the enemy.  Also need to make it more obvious you have to press space at the ends of the corridor to enter and exit.  The neon graffiti should have a glowing animation or something just to give the room a bit more life.  Might be interesting to experiment with tilting the floor at an angle however I'm not sure how this would work via code with the player walking horizontally.  The pipes in the background also seem a bit "stuck on"  will have to create a bunch of other subtle assets to integrate them better.

Ritual Room

Really not happy with this one.  The entire scale just seems a bit off.  I showed the concept art for this to Ryan a couple weeks ago and he pointed out the composition as a whole needs more diagonals to break up all the straight lines.  I feel the skirting board I've added to the bottom of the wall is a major part of the problem as it's too big for the scale and thus visually confusing and also breaks up the image too much.


I think the portals look nice though!

Next Steps for art asset creation
- Finish hall assets/tweak current layouts
- Play about with character scale
- Polish overlays
- Feedback animation/tutorial for Ritual area
- Bespoke animations

Gameplay Storyboards

One of the main challenges I've come across so far on my venture in to game design is getting across gameplay elements to other disciplines on a team.  As an artist I'm obviously a very visual person so I thought I'd try storyboarding my gameplay.  They're pretty basic but speed and clarity were the priority here and (hopefully) this gets the job done.  

Optimising my Art Assets

One of the responsibilities of a game artist is making sure all your art is optimised for the game you're working on.  In my experience so far this has involved making sure all my assets are an appropriate size for the resolution of the game, utilising tricks like flipping certain assets via the game code or level editor etc to add a bit of subtle visual variation without taking up any more memory, creating modular assets etc etc.  However, one of the great things about Game Maker is the freedom it gives you as an artist.

I've found it's generally good practice to stick to powers of two for the sizes of art assets however when implementing 2D art Game Maker doesn't restrict you to this.  Upon discovering this I admittedly went a bit, well, mental with it-  I immediately chose a resolution of 1920 x 1080 for the game and created some pretty massive assets as a result.

So, not wanting to sacrifice any quality I finally got round to optimising my assets in game last night thanks to this very handy blog post by Yo Yo Games.

Game Maker stores all the graphics for the game in texture pages - images with several sprites stored on them that sprites will be pulled from whenever they appear on screen.  The first step to optimising my art was to create a texture group for each room (scene) in my game.  

I then went through all of the sprites in the game and selected the appropriate texture group for them.  After doing this all the texture sheets were more or less ordered with all the sprites for each room/scene in chronological order.  This already sped the loading speed up quite a bit as it shortens the amount of texture sheets the game has to look through.

Finally for each room I created a "create event" for an object there and added the code:

draw_texture_flush();

Which clears the texture memory.  This was followed by the line(s) "draw_sprite([sprite name], 0, 0, 0);" for one sprite on each texture sheet for that scene (the forest scene in the above example has A LOT of sprites).  As I understand it, this way the game now instantly knows which sheets to load up for that scene, rather than searching through all of them for each individual sprite.

I've also had to scale down the scope of my game due to time restraints, so the current map looks like this:

However quality over quantity, and the game is running a lot faster now!

Gameplay Footage 04-02-15

Gameplay footage of "Ritual" as of the 4th of February.  Currently everything is either placeholder or 1st pass at best.  It's not pretty but it's coming together slowly.

I've mainly been messing about with getting things to flicker on screen for one frame at a time and trying to get sounds to work.  Later the flickering images will become increasingly obvious, along with more aggressive SFX, leading to a climatic event of a chase sequence which will happen after the player triggers the portals.

I'm currently experiencing an issue where my WAV sound effects are distorted.  I looked it up and apparently it's a Game Maker bug.  It'll be such a shame if I can't get it sorted as my sound designer's worked really hard on them.  Game Maker is unable to play two MP3 files at once hens why I've had to use WAV files for the SFX (the BG wind noises are MP3).  However in the final version of the game there will only be background sounds in the forest so hopefully this won't be an issue for the rest of the sound effects.

However aside from that little hiccup the player can now interact with the "portal trigger" object (which in the final version will be a sort of spell detailing a tutorial) and interact with the three portals that pop up using space to close them.

Next week I'll hopefully have the time limit working with a countdown HUD in place.

Game Design Brainstorming

During the past couple weeks I've been trying to come up with an appropriate idea for my game.  Above you can see my ~super-organised~ process for this.

I was really inspired by the demo for Uncanny Valley and Don't Starve's The Screecher mod as I feel they are the perfect examples of the length for the game I want to create - 10 to 15 minutes seems like a good amount of time to demonstrate the pacing, atmosphere and aesthetics I want to achieve with my game and also seems like the right amount of time for it to be demo'd for the showcase at the end of the year.

--
The Story:

Setting - A school at around midnight (the school will be located remotely, perhaps in the countryside, to potentially give off a greater sense of isolation.)

The local school is rumoured to be haunted by a vengeful demon.  The protagonist's brother goes missing after joking about performing some sort of OUIJA board esqe ritual there with his friends.  The protagonist must go to the school and save him.  However in order to get her brother back she has to escape the schools infamous monster first.
--

The Mechanics:

Hiding and timed gameplay sequences.

The ritual involves opening and then closing several portals and for this a time limit mechanic will be employed (theoretically making use of the "Always close" trope in order to give the player a sense of achievement after closing them in time).

When the time limit runs out the "Big Bad" will come and the player will have no choice but to hide.  If the player makes it to the final portal, they will be chased and eventually caught by the monster (even if they escape far enough to hide.)  Every time the player hides in the game there is a random chance the monster will find them.
--

The Pacing:
-Slow to begin with, with sudden flashes of the brother's friends (with their humanity completed distorted after being caught by the demon/monster/"Big Bad").
-One jump scare - perhaps the first glimpse of the monster?
-The Big Bad will appear and slowly creep towards the cornered player then disappear at the last second (as if to toy with the protagonist)
-There will be a brief calm before the storm moment (making use of the "Hope Spot" trope).
-Finally the game will end with a chase sequence.
--

Risk Assessment:  
- I may not have the technical skill to program all of this myself.
- The pacing may not work as well as I think it does.
- Timed gameplay sequences and having to hide might frustrate players.
- Introduction to story may involve an animated sequence that I may not have the time to do.

Risk Mitigation:
- Collaborate with a programmer (if I can't do it myself.)
- Find specific examples in 2D games where similar pacing is used and examine how and why exactly it works.
- Create a very basic prototype to determine whether these mechanics alone work well even without the atmosphere.
- Storyboard intro sequence ideas, have backs up ideas to convey story that involves little animation (e.g. dialogue boxes such as those used in Year Walk, or the illustrated sequences used in Clock Tower).

I've also created a scale of Horror Simulation Vs Horror Wrapping games in order to illustrate where my game would ideally be on the scale:

I've also created a one sheet/concept overview document for the game.  Next semester I think I'll create a basic Game Design Document too however I don't want to get bogged down in documentation as this is a very art direction orientated project therefore I won't be dedicating too much time to it.

My next steps are to create a paper prototype and create concept art.