SUPER HD TURBO REMIX RAINBOW EDITION: FOURTH STRIKE!

Since I can never leave my pixels alone, I went back and redid all my sprites. I think this should be the last time I mess with the pixels (we'll see). I'm a pixel bully. Constantly messing with them. And taking their money too. And kissing their girlfriend in front of them. And then coming over to their house afterwards and proving how helpful I am with helping the pixel's mom set the dining room table which leads to her inviting me over more so I can mess with them in their only place of escape.

"How come I didn't get any milk?"

Who loves examples? Well get in here. I got examples coming out of my wazoo! My god, it hurts. Nothing should ever come out of anyone's wazoo.

EXAMPLES!

Here is an example of the original knife slash move for Drea step by step. Original version is on the left and the new one... wait for it... is on the right! Imagine that. Single frames by themselves are new frames added in more fluid animation.

Her original face always annoyed me. Looked like a doll's face. A creepy doll in your grandma's room that seemed to stare at you with disapproval. 

Little more build up in grabbing knife.

More of a blur for the knife streak. Plus her knife now gives off a shine onto Drea.

All the knife attacks now end with this staggered fade out effect.

I actually filmed myself slashing a knife for reference because the original always seemed like a weird way to recoil after swinging a knife.

More recoil.

The main reason behind going over these animations and re-shading them is because I got to play a demo of the game and the dynamic lighting that lit up Drea made here look very out of place and showed off how muddy her original coloring was. Plus, I'm a little obsessive.

FINAL VERSION!

And for no good reason besides he rocks, I was watching this earlier. Take it away Mike...

Meet The Stranger

Filming is about to happen for the Into This World Short Film and I am finalizing the other character in my cinematic tour de force to end all tour de forces. After my ITW short film comes out, it will pretty much make all other tour de forces before and after feel worse than watching Birdemic with a disapproving parent that doesn't "get it". Sorry Alan.

The other character in the short is known as The Stranger. In the game, he will be your local arms dealer and also upgrade your gear. He is very handy to have around but he is also not be trusted. While doing his usual scavenging, I think he might have found Ol' Uncle Willy's secret stash of meth and other recreational drugs.

Wow, this post apocalyptic wasteland sure does look like a well kept apartment building in the background. Hmmm... I'm calling shenanigans.

Pre Production Photos

I just wanted to share some photos I whipped up for the Into This World short film I'm directing. It's coming soon for the Kickstarter campaign. This is the concept behind the film: Drea versus pixelated enemies. This will be easy to make. Right? RIGHT?!

And a quick look at Drea's gun. No prop building behind the scenes on this piece. I really didn't want to take the time to explain it all. I think iI was busy watching Cinema Snob reviews at the time. Let's see... Foam, parts of a Nerf gun, flexible thin foam, misc screws, plastic bottle top, other stuff, etc.

More Costume Stuff: The Hat!

The main character of the game, Drea, wears clothes. I know, I know, it's a stretch. Strong women characters in any medium should be butt ass naked. But alas, I thought I would try a spin on a classic here and give her some clothes. One of those articles of clothing she wears is her hat. It's that thing that goes on top of people's heads.

Eh... sort of like that.

Drea works for the United Drilling Federation on Mars. And she wears her company's uniform. This build was equal parts easy and difficult to make. Kind of like sexing it up with a really big fat chick. She's got nice cans but good lord, the rest of her could use a tune-up.
Sorry any fat friends I might have offended. What am I talking about? I'm handsome and only hang out with pretty people! Mwah ha ha!
No seriously, sorry.

First step, bam! Get a hat. I went to second hand clothing stores for a perfect olive drab trucker hat. Couldn't find it anywhere. So once again, bam! Went to ebay. Found hat. Ordered. Finally... KABAM!

Second step, bazoom! I proceeded to cut out the shield shape emblem. I carefully cut into the emblem (the difficult part) the UDF logo. Sloppily I might add. Then I cut the foam in half revealing the negative space from the top layer.

Last step. I cut out another shield shape and glued the carved out piece onto the new shield piece of foam. I spray painted it silver then took a black sharpie to the outer rim of the emblem. I colored the inside too to make the lettering "pop". Then I glued that bastard on and I was done, KADOOSH!
Then my cat asked to get some face time on the blog so this happened.

Oops! Stupid Pixels

Consider this post a tutorial if you will. A tutorial on how to not screw up.

So a lot of game development goes into proper planning. But where would we be in this world if we always planned everything to the last tiny detail before jumping into the unknown? For example, the Wright Brothers were originally trying to build a better toilet and not the famous invention they ended up with (no, not the popcorn popper, that's Charles Cretors, silly). And by some bizarre miscalculation due to poor planning, they accidentally built a flying machine which brought a joy to everyone that the world figured only belonged to the birds. Of course that is all horse shit (except for the popcorn guy). The Wright Brothers planned thoroughly before they got in that flying deathtrap.

"I like how you are comparing your game to the invention of flight. Whatta' douche."

Eat it, Bannon. Eat it hard.

So like any endeavor and especially one such as game development, you must plan ahead. Or like this moron (aka: ME!) you will draw things without any recourse of how things will interact with each other in your game. And how those things will even react once in the game. Confused? I am. 

Let's see how I finally got down proper tile spacing and my trials and tribulations from the beginning of designing ITW.

So... This is how it all started.

  

And then...

And then

   

And then...

  

And then...

 

Wait... not that beginning. How my game got started. Get it together, man.

When I first came up with the game I knew I wanted a girl piloting a mech. I decided on an egg shaped mech. And at first I thought about making the game a shmup (shoot em' up). But I remembered how boring those games are and nixed that idea immediately. But the character design stayed the same. She had to pilot an egg bot.

This was my first concept piece for the game. I decided on a white paint job because it stands out from the background vividly but still be devoid of bright colors. Funny how many different colors I tried for the cockpit glass. I settled on green. Woo hoo! GREEN!

Let's go for a walk.

A

B

So as you can see, there is a big difference between the A (the final version) and B (the original version). When I first started drawing the EDU, I just slapped everything onto it (the jet pack, halogen lights, drill arm, etc) without any sense of how this awkward shaped character would fit into the game levels. Sure this might work for a Metal Slug type game where there are not a lot of platforming elements, but not for a platforming sidescroller.

So with the smaller more condensed final version, I made sure that the EDU would be able to fit much better with the tileset where the tiles are 32X27 pixels in width and height. The original version was the exact height of two tiles. That would make it so cramp and you would have no wiggle room when you tried jumping to a higher walkway. You would have to jump into spaces EXACTLY. Almost like a square peg being put into a square hole. Plus that jetpack was just impractical. So it got shoved up the EDU's butt instead.

A

B

C

I even tried to keep the drill arm on my original design but it still wouldn't be able to jump up a shaft that was only one tile in width (check example C). It was killing me trying to maintain the original design and keep all the features I wanted. But alas. The drill arm had to go, otherwise it would overlap the tiles and that wouldn't be good for business.

Spaced out.

I should have just looked at Super Mario Bros for how to do this whole character to tile spacing thing. Why did I not listen to you Mario.? You are the size of all the tiles. It makes perfect sense. If you bash the bricks above you, you can fit in the hole you just made and continue moving upwards. Ugh.

Absolutely no way that fat ass can fit through there. Unless I made every single vertical shaft two tiles wide. Even then it would be cramp.

See how the character can now jump up a vertical shaft tile in length with no problems. Albeit the EDU is squeezed in there but it's a claustrophobic game. The player needs to feel a little trapped and alone.

So in conclusion, work out the size of your player in accordance to the tiles you are going to make. I sacrificed the drill arm in favor of strictly using mounted weapons. It did change the way I perceived the game, but you make do with what you have and you evolve your gameplay from there.

Check out this snippet of info about the amazing Shadow Complex video game. This is a classic example of poor planning. But catch it early enough like they did and you can still pull through...

Chair Entertainment's creative director Donald Mustard stated that much of Shadow Complex is based around the gameplay of Super Metroid, a game he considers "the pinnacle of 2D game design".[4] Much of their effort was in creating the Metroid-style of gameplay, a first for their company. The first month of development was spent having the team replaying the various Metroid games in order to establish the language and concepts of such games for development in order to expand on enjoyable sections while avoiding the mistakes of these games. Chair's design process started by drawing out the game's world on graph paper, using the concepts of tile-based games to craft out the world, despite the final game not being tile-based. This process set certain rules, such as how high the character may jump with the various upgrades or how far the character must run before a certain power would activate. They then played out the game on this paper map to make sure that all parts of the game were possible to complete. Such a map was also used to help with the game's pacing, making sure that the player's interest in the game would remain despite the acquisition of more and more powerups.[5]

Roughly six months into development, they recognized that their initial selected jump height was too large and did not fit with the game, forcing the team to redesign the map with a smaller jump height; Mustard noted this was one of the few changes they made that "hurt" but was caught early enough in the process to be repaired.[5]The team also had to consider the impact of the variety of power-ups they wanted to include, made more complex by their desire to have the power-ups usable anywhere. For example, while other games would specifically limit the use of a hookshot to specific surfaces, Chair's developers sought to have their tool usable on any surface, and had to consider all the potentially game-breaking routes that would be created by introducing the tool too early.[5] Several iterations of this paper map were performed, though Mustard noted that about 85% of their original design remained in the final map.[6] With a brush stroke tool within the Unreal Engine, they were then able to quickly build out their drawn map into the 3D computer engine, using a cylinder to represent the player. After working on tightening the feel of the player's movement controls with the simplistic map, they then began prototyping the rest of the game.[4]

Getting to know you

Let's get to know each other!

Well, just got done watching another shitty episode of Grimm. How is it that I have watched every episode and have never been enthralled by it? Yet, I have seen every episode? Must be some Hexenbiest spell. Meh.

So let's get to know the main character... Drea LeBas.

Drea Cuadra
So she had some bad luck in the past year or so. Her planet was overtaken by an alien virus (boo hoo). She was ripped in half and put back together with cybernetic parts (double the boo thrice the hoo). And to top it off she is now back on Earth and fighting an army of creatures to find her long lost brother (cry me a river, then jump in said river and drown yourself, please). So, basically she is a drama queen. Possibly a diva. Still working that out.

Drea has a military background but for her recovery process, she has been working for the UDF drilling company mining precious ore in the caverns of Mars. She acclimated her motor functions through diligent work and got used to her new cybernetic body.

She is kind of a Bitter Betty since the accident and doesn't talk much. She is pretty legendary around the Mars community due to the fact that she is the only person to ever survive an attack by the alien planet.

My inspiration for this character was of course Samus Aran. Who is of course inspired from Ripley in Alien. Drea is not a rip off but more of a homage to the perfectly competent female capable of kicking some major ass type of character of movie and game lore. At the same time not throwing it in the face of the audience that Drea is a woman. Sure she has some nice bazooms but this character can be a male or female. Doesn't matter. It worked for Ripley in Alien and Aliens (we don't talk about the other movies).
The major difference in character is that this chick is pissed. She has a military background and therefore does not take anybody's crap. Unlike some people that would like to talk out their problems, Drea would rather punch it out. Since the accident where her body and face got mangled, she has become kind of a shut in. She's kind of an emo girl that would kick your ass. On a side note, I pray to whatever cosmic god out there... Please O mighty deity, let there not be this vile emo fad in the future. And if you do not heed my cries, it's no future I want a part of.

"Since your'e rambling, I thought I might add my two cents. I don't know if the emo craze is still officially going on. I think they started as scenesters, evolved into emo then into their latest form of hipsters. Much like the misunderstood nerds turned into goths then eventually turned into vampires after Twilight came out."

Uh... wha? Anyways, you'll get to know more about Drea when the game comes out. During the game you will be able to jump out of the EDU drilling mech and give your legs a stretch. Of course you won't be physically as strong as your mech but you will be able to fit in smaller spaces and be more nimble.

   

I promised bazooms. You shall receive bazooms.

"Another thing about social classes. Why do the jocks and bros pop their collars? The original collar popper was Dracula. It was used on stage to help the actor disappear into a trap door but a giant popped collar is synonymous with vampires and other nocturnal ghoulish fiends. Why do jocks pop their collars? Dracula is just about as gothic as you can get. Don't jocks despise and pick on goths? Sure Drea has a popped collar but it's because she wears a military flak jacket. It's meant to protect the neck. And have you ever tried to fold those things down? Impossible. Plus a popped collar was how they used to make seemingly boring characters seems more hip and cool."

He is as cool as Mickey Mouse playing a blue guitar without any pickups and not even plugged in. Good job, bro.