Week 12 Outside of Class

This weekend I changed the storyboard with the tips I was given on Thursday.

Week 12B

Today in class I finished the storyboard and had a mini critique.

I was told to possibly add a frame after “on his WONDERFUL DREAM ADVENTURE” with a picture of Tony riding the shooting star. Also, I was told to maybe change the villains on the frame and have them eat the words. I am a little hesitant about doing that because I am not exactly sure how I would animate that in After Effects. I was also given the tip to add more game play of Tony collecting a letter after the frame saying “and collect the LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET.” I worked on some of the tips in class today and will see what else I can get done this weekend. The typeface and pictures are still just for placement because we have not completed the logo and game yet.

Week 12A

Today in class I worked on the Illustrator version of the storyboard.  Here is what I got done:

It is not done yet.  I still have to add two more frames.  This is just the in progress.

Week 11 Outside of Class

This weekend, I fixed the branches and nodes and finished the storyboard.

Week 11B

Today in class Kira and I worked on our Branches & Nodes.

I also went through the Stencyl Review and took notes.

“Scenes are where everything in the game takes place.” Scenes don’t always have to be the actual levels, the main menu can actually be a scene.  Scenes can be thought of as a story, or states in the game that you transition between.  The building blocks of a scene are usually the terrain of the game, which is typically made up of tiles. You can use these tiles and virtually create any kind of landscape. You can also use the custom terrain tool on a game that is not tile-based. You can also create layers in the game to make sure that your main character goes in front of an object instead of behind. You can use the Layers Pane inside the Scene Designer to manage layers. Every element in a scene has a position, which consists of an X (horizontal) and a Y (vertical) component – each corresponds to the top left corner of the element (the higher the X value – moves you towards the right, higher Y value – moves you to the bottom).

Each scene has boundaries that you define which controls how far the camera can travel. Going beyond certain boundaries is either not permitted or leads to death. Scrolling is the act of changing what part of the scene is visible. You can use the “camera follow player” block to have the camera follow the player through the level.  The camera can also be moved in two different ways: set the camera’s (x,y) position, make the camera follow and actor (Scene>View>Camera). To make an off screen actor active use (Actor>Properties>Misc.). You can also have the camera follow a dummy actor, which means the player has no control over the camera.

You can create a tile by going to File>Create New>Tileset. Then name it. You will then see a window – 1) Click “Choose Image” to pick out the tile sheet you want to import. 2) Pick out the Tile Width/Height (most cases is 32×32 or 16×16. Click Add to finish the import. You can also animate tiles.

Regions are invisible areas of a scene that detect the actors. Regions could be used for entering doors, healing/hurting zones, stepping on a switch. To create a region – inside the Scene Designer 1) Pick the Region tool. 2) Click and Drag to place the region. Then go to the Events page and add a “Specific Actor Enters Region” event. Then you out the event with your desired values – ex. it detects when the hero enters the region. There are 3 types of regions: squares, circles, and polygons.

Stencyl uses bitmap fonts to display texts, which is a special font that is pre-rendered to pixels. To create a font you use the Font Editor. File>Create new>Font. Heads Up Displays (HUDs) usually display statistics and is a graphical dashboard that is displayed on top of everything else.

Changing a scene involves 3 parts: 1) What scene you want to go to next. 2) The exit transition. 3) The entry transition. In Stencyl you can use 7 different types of transitions: fade, blinds, bubbles, spotlight, blur, box, or crossfade.

You can import music and sounds by going to File>Create New>Sound. You can create looping music for your background. You can create channels when you want to switch the music when hero approaches an obstacle or foe.

To import a background 1) Create a new background. 2) In the background editor, click the dotted box to choose an image. 3) Click Attach to Scene button.

You can customize your actor to do special behaviors. To customize an actor, left click on the actor, and click the Inspector Pane tab on the right of the screen. Then check the “Customize” box. You can 1) Modify an actor’s set of behaviors. 2) Modify the values for those behaviors.

Week 11A

Today in class we had a class critique on our game concepts, character/villain designs, and type treatments.  Then we had the rest of class to work on our project.  In class today, I went back through the WordPress blog and added notes into each post. Professor Pannafino told us that each post should have at least a couple of sentences explaining what each post is and why you did what you did.

Week 10 Outside of Class

This weekend I was in charge of the final colored villains and background.

Week 10B

Today we had all of class to work on ideation and sketching. These were my sketches.

The three sketches above are ideas for villains that our character would have to defeat before retrieving the letter. For example, he would have to defeat an ant before receiving the letter "A".

This was my idea for a static background.  So it would be the same background and would just scroll with the screen.  Then we could add our own trees and bushes to the foreground.  There would also be a bar at the bottom of the screen for the letters of the alphabet. Each letter would light up when he retrieved it.

Week 10 Outside of Class

Outside of class, we finished our game write up.

Tony is an 8-year-old boy who is tucked into bed to go to sleep. He falls into a deep sleep and his adventure begins. Tony is riding through space on a shooting star. He notices an object far off in the distance. As the star travels closer, Tony realized that the object is the moon filled with the letters of the alphabet. The shooting star keeps getting closer and closer and Tony realizes that it is going to crash into the moon. He catapults off the star just as the star is colliding with the moon. Tony then releases his parachute and as he is floating down to earth he notices letters of the alphabet raining down around him. Tony reaches the ground safely and looks around. He has landed in a beautiful meadow filled with many trees and bushes. He unclips the parachute and begins to walk around. As Tony is walking, he comes upon the letter “A”, nestled in a group of flowers. He picks up the letter and puts in into his pocket and keeps walking. He comes upon a tall tree filled with vibrant green leaves. As Tony is looking up at the tree he notices the letter “B” sitting peacefully on one of its branches. It is then that Tony realizes that when the shooting star crashed into the moon it scattered all of the letters of the alphabet around this meadow. Tony had already found letter “A” and was standing just below letter “B.” He decided to roam and search the whole meadow for the rest of the letters to complete the alphabet. He knew it was not going to be an easy task since he had already come face to face with his first obstacle, retrieving the “B” from the tree. Tony bravely climbs the tree and obtains the “B.” He then continues his quest through the meadow until he has found every last letter.

Week 10

Today in class we did different group exercises.  We made a list of retro side scrolling games:

Duck Hunt
Tetris
Sonic
Donkey Kong
Frogger
Pac Man
Street Fighter
Pong
Zelda
Speed Racer
Super Mario III
Space Oddessy
Snake
Mind Sweep
Ships/Aliens
Deer Hunter
Lion King
Road Runner
Super Mario I
Super Mario II
Aladdin
Toy Story
Bomber Man
Burger Time
Crash Bandicoot
Smash Brothers
Tom & Jerry
Bugs Bunny
Rugrats
Dexter (Cartoon Network)
Dragon Ball Z
Ms PacMan
Pop Eye
Astroids
Galaxy
Pit Fall
E.T.
Barbie
Daffy Duck
Mickey Mouse
—————————————-
At this point, Professor Pannafino didn’t believe we had enough games and allowed us to search for games on the internet. 
The list continues with:
Kirby
Q-Bert
Ghost Busters
Jurassic Park
Tic Tac Toe
Team Fortress
Wreck-It Ralph
Jetsons
Wonder Boy
Sonic 2
007
Simon Says
Duke Nukem
The Amazing SpiderMan
Batman
Captain America
Mega Man
Hercules
Escape Plan
Incredible Hulk
Mortal Combat
Power Rangers
Star Wars
Grand Prix
NBA Jam
Space Jam
Soccer
Fifa
Tecmo Bowl
Flying Hamster
Ninja Turtles
Tempera of the Dead
Prince of Persia
Puzzle Bobble (Bubble Shooter)
Addams Family
Moon Racer
Looney Tunes
Star Trek
Sponge Bob
Thrillville
Exit


We did a mind map of anything we can associate with "Tony Dodges Bad Spelling."

Then we created stories using dice.

Create a story after throwing 9 symbol dice as a group.

Once upon a time…
There was a poor lonely girl that wanted a friend so she found a pen pal. She though it was a normal boy, but the pen pal revealed himself as an alien. They discussed finally meeting face to face. The only way the lonely girl could reach the alien at his planet was by traveling on a giant bee. She then realized that there would be obstacles in obtaining the bee. The bee was secretly hidden in a locked underground lair and the lair was guarded. The only way to obtain the key was to scare the guard and distract him to steal the key. This key unlocked the bee. The lonely girl was able to travel the galaxies to finally meet her alien friend. 

__________________________

Using your game words (Tony Dodges Bad Spelling) create a story the same way.

There once was a boy named TONY. Tony was tucked into bed and shut his eyes and dreamed a dream no one had ever dreamt before. He was riding a SHOOTING STAR that was about to collide into a misspelled word. He jumped off the star and released his PARACHUTE to safely travel back to Earth. Tony landed safely in the branches of the largest TREE in the forest. He remembers that he has to get home in TIME to do his spelling homework. Tony FOLLOWED the CLUES to travel HOME safely and overcoming dangerous obstacles. 

Story 3:
Divide the die, and add a sentence from each person going around in the circle.

Little Susie realized she was missing a key ingredient while making a blueberry pie. It was too late to go into the store because it was dark and and was scared aliens would eat her. Out of no where, a Chef Genie popped out of her fireplace. The Chef Genie gave Susie a flashlight to travel outside and to not be afraid of the aliens. The genie gave her a key to get into the store. As Susie was travelling, she took a wrong turn and becomes lost and scared. A magical/mystical rainbow appears and gives her a friendly message saying she can travel safely on a cloud to get to the grocery store. The cloud was trustworthy and delivered her safely.

Then we had the rest of class to work with our group on a 300 word game summary.  This is what we got done during the class:


Tony is an 8-year-old boy who is tucked into bed to go to sleep.  He falls into a deep sleep and his adventure begins.  Tony is riding through space on a shooting star.  He notices an object far off in the distance.  As the star travels closer, Tony realized that the object is the moon filled with the letters of the alphabet. The shooting star keeps getting closer and closer and Tony realizes that it is going to crash into the moon.  He catapults off the star just as the star is colliding with the moon.  Tony then releases his parachute and as he is floating down to earth he notices letters of the alphabet raining down around him.

Week 9 Outside of Class

This weekend I created a WordPress and invited all of the group members to join the group. I also created a half page game proposal for my game idea.

            My game proposal for motion design is for a game with numbers.  It is geared towards a four-year-old child.  The child controls the character across the screen to find numbers.  Each level has ten numbers to be found.  Level one would be numbers 1-10, level two would be 11-20, three would be 21-30, and so on.  Each number would be shown in written form instead of number form.  By doing this, you are teaching the child to count and to spell/read each number.  Each number would not be shown in the correct order in the level.  What this means is that the first number seen in the level could be seven instead of one.  This means that the child has to go find the word one before moving on to two and three.  Therefore, the level would not be that big because the child would be moving left and right and backtracking a lot through the level.  Each level would also take place in a different location.  For example, level one could be in the jungle, level two is in the desert, and three could be on a beach.  The main character is playful and cartoony or could even be an animal.  The child would control this character around/over/under obstacles to pick up the numbers.  There would be 10 levels, with numbers going up to 100.  Along the way the child can pick up fruit to gain more points but should avoid the monster-like items that will deduct points.  The final boss could be a monster-like character that is defeated by feeding him junk food.  Children would pick items out of a list to feed him.  They could pick from fruits, vegetables, and junk foods.

Week 9B

Today in class we were split up into our groups for the game design project.  We then participated in a group bonding activity by deciding what 12 items we would bring with us if our plane crashed and we were stranded on an island.  Then we spent the rest of class watching a movie on the history of gaming.

Week 9A

Today we had a full class critique.  Some of the feedback that I received was to add some time to the end of the video so that you have time to read everything on the screen.  People voiced that they liked that it was just black and white because it reflected the atmosphere of the restaurant.  I was given the tip that for my portfolio it could be a good idea to create another one or two variations of this animation focusing on different aspects of the animation.

Week 8 Outside of Class

This weekend I finished my logo animation.  It is an end tag for Bianco e Nero, a high end Italian restaurant I created for my Type class.  "Bianco e Nero" translates to "white and black" in Italian, so my logo and name are just in black and white.  The whole restaurant is a black and white theme.  It is a high end Italian restaurant so I wanted to portray elegance in my end tag.  That's when I came up with my idea to focus on a place setting and then a wine glass and bottle.  My logo reminded me of how wine looks when being poured into a glass, so that is how I portrayed it in my video.  Everything being "drawn" on with a white line was created by using a stroke in After Effects.

Week 8B

Today we had all day in class to work. I changed the "Bianco e Nero" from being handwritten to just fading in because the handwriting did not look that great and it was taking too much time in the video.  I also slowed down the beginning so that you can make out the place setting better.  I also added some sound.  I still have to edit the sound to fade out.