A1: Independent Games Project

 

Monday November 6th.

Research.

The location of where this will all take place within Doxford park, Sunderland. I picked this place specifically due to the magical potential of forests.

To apply to the brief, I want to have the bright colour pallet of the Splatoon franchise with the style of Zelda: Tears of the kingdom. Providing the highly coloured game colour that Nintendo is known for towards the mild realism of the recently released Zelda game.

GDD.

Tuesday, November 7th

Usually, magical items are commonly depicted as either wands, swords, bows, shields, potions and rings however the flow and movement of scythes are one of the more lesser explored out of all of them.It can be a medium-weighted weapon with a high mobility to allow easy movement however depending on the attack used it will do different damage.

 

I enjoy the appeal of the images 1 and 2's  scythe blades. I also like the magical aspect of the blade clamp within the 3rd image. For the scythe as a whole, I want to do the mix of what I mentioned prior along with the end of the snath of image 3.

The shield however will be a sort of a potion on which will form a shield as you pour the liquid out. It will be a temporary shield and be able to be 'broken' and mildly translucent.

I am in favour of the idea of having items inside of the potions to make them look more pleasing and differentiating to see rather than just a recoloured liquid I do also like the abnormal potion bottles it provides a contrast to the stereotypical potion glass that you see within many games. It in addition, this can link to the wing on the fairy tonic elixir from Tears of the Kingdom making it stick out to the player as they see this. 

As for the shield itself however, it will resemble like the liquid colour perhaps having different shades of that colour accompanied by the object within the potion. As a reference I do quite enjoy the look of the royal shield along with the knight's shield from Tears of the Kingdom with how they have a recognizable logo or centre piece.

Using the symmetry tool, I created a starting drawing with the idea of the potion in mind thinking on the idea of a basic shield along with stepping away from the idea of the regular round potions. I want the potion to look simple and easy to understand it's purpose so having the bottle appear as if it is a shield seemed to fit what I had in mind.

I added a type of cork as like within the first reference image due to wanting to still stay away from the regular potion look. Then, doing as mentioned prior, adding two pieces of herbs as those are what are usually within certain magical potions.

I began to create a Trello to keep alert on what I need to still do. Using the Kanban method throughout the three different categories it will allow for some planning and reliability. The colour coordination allows me to understand what category it is within without needing to read the name.
The colours mean the following;
Gray is Pre-production,
Red is Modeling,
Green is Animations,
Purple is Coding.

Wednesday, November 8th.

Stylized Character 3D Modelling-Preproduction. 

 A1.1; Explore and develop investigation skills and informing ideas.

I wanted to base the enemies off from actual animals, like most of the enemies in Tears of the Kingdom. For an example how the Bokoblin are from pigs and hogs. It will also appear as if the animals of the forest are attacking you and retaliating.

To tie in with the surroundings of forestry, I have stumbled on the nature aspect and flowers due to that. I would like the flowers to be growing onto the enemies as like Clicker enemies from The Last of Us however a more child-friendly version.  I created a mind map full of different ideas of these enemies with a variety of the several forest creatures that are seen. Eventually writing down small game mechanics within the mind map and how they would function. I ended up choosing the wolf-based enemy due to my own significance with dogs and wolfs. Linking to the endangerment of deer within the UK, I would like to show the enemies wearing deer skulls as a sign of respect for the creature that the humans have led into endangerment. To stick with the vibrancy of Splatoon, the flowers will be a different from creature to creature allowing verity and colour difference however for the wolves I have chosen poppies and white tulips. 

To keep on track, I moved the Mind map and mood board sections of the preproduction's to 'Done' along with attaching the files to the respected sections.

Monday, November 13th.

I cleaned up the outlines of the potion and added the solid base colour of it along with the shading of the potion. I had as well updated the potion art to 'done'.

 

Tuesday, November 14th.

I started to create the concept art of the scythe and moved the Scythe concept art to 'Done' due to time constrates.

Wednesday, November 15th.

Pseudocode.

If Player presses [W] or [Up arrow key]; Character moves forward.

If Player presses  [A] or [Left arrow key]; Character moves right.

If Player presses [S] or [Down arrow key]; Character moves down.

If Player presses  [D] or [Right arrow key]; Character moves right.

If Player presses [Left mouse button]; Scythe attacks.

If Player holds [Right mouse button]; Character will pour potion.

While potion is poured, If  player holds [Right mouse button]; Shield will block attacks.

If Enemy hits Player; Player losses HealthPoints.

If Player hits Enemy; Enemy losses HealthPoints.

I started to create the enemy concepts. In my personal favor, I do like the second image making the flower grow around the neck of the creature. Perhaps, I will combine the flowers growing onto the antlers along with the growth of the flower around their neck together to create a final design.

Wednesday, November 22nd.

 A1.2; Explore and develop problem solving skills.

 A1.3; Explore and develop creative and technical skills.

Using a combination of the extrude tool, manipulations and the insert edge loop I started to create just the head of the monster. I used the smooth preview to see how it will look as I model it. All using the box modelling method. I did have to cut the amount of horns on the antlers due to wanting to simplify it for my first time doing this. The skull could be improved upon due to its shape and structure. 

Monday, 20th November.

I continued with my ideas and created a basic shield concept.

Using the box method, I started to model the weapon within Maya. I also used the symmetry tool to help.

Tuesday, 21st November.

Wednesday, 22th November.

Thursday, November 23rd.

Monday, 27th November.

To have functions within games, people will use Classes to group all of the relating code with one allows to have easy legibility within code place. Classes are nouns. The Classes are the physical objects you can see, for an example, C# script -> Weapon. The weapon would class as a Class here. A function of this class would be, in our case to apply to the brief, Function -> shoot. A function is a verb and allows it to be an action. 

Due to the idea prior of the potion, I will not need to model a handle because the potion will be the handle.

Tuesday, November 28th.

Wednesday, November 29th

 A1.2; Explore and develop problem solving skills.

 A1.3; Explore and develop creative and technical skills.

Monday, 3rd December.

I began coding the Scythes bullet attacks.

Monday, 4th December.

Monday, 4th December.

I UV unwrapped the scythe to prepare it for texturing.

Tuesday, 5th December.

I UV unwrapped the Shield and potion to prepare it for texturing.

Monday, 11th December.

The code within here allows both the weapon to shoot and for it to shoot forward from the barrel by getting the trajectory of the weapon  which allows it to shoot from the barrel of the weaponry rather than the trajectory of the player.

I had added a new section to the Trello that being the texturing, blue and added the scythe to 'done' and

the shield to 'doing'.

Tuesday, 12th December.

Monday, 18th December.

Monday, 20th December.

I started to bake a navmesh for my enemy's.

This AI script sets the AI controller to the variable of myContoller. It also allows it to follow the player.

Wednesday, January  10th

A1.5 - Communicating and reflecting on your progress via your blog.

I've learnt that character modeling goes through several iterations of drawing before the final concept is chosen. The use of box modeling allows it to have good typology.