Smiley health counter

Okay recently started up a new blank Stencyl game for the started in Game Design. Like with my previous experiment, I want to make an actor become a health counter. This is a mechanic used in a lot of games like Mega man, which has a heath bar actor. Here is the actor and the emotions:

 This health counter starts from the yellow being at full health to the red near death expression. I could have this in the top area of the screen but I could even try to have it above the player characters head. This has proved to be a challenge a the animation still plays for the smiley despite the appropriate event being set up. This could have been due to the issues I had with the player not dying in the template, so I'll keep working on it in the blank game.

Floating green monster

Okay recently I've done some experimenting in Stencyl and decided to create a floating monster for a challenging and harassing the player.

This guy was created in Photoshop which has been set up as Stencyl's default image editor. This has proved to work out better than Pencyl which wont open on the mac lab computers for some silly reason. It does however work fine on my laptop but at this point for better quality images, Photoshop is highly recommended.

Beat chart

Okay the Beat chart has been submitted and only contains the first four Islands, which is a total of 12 levels. Technically the full game will require a few more Islands but for the moment these will be enough to work on. In regards to Stencyl, I've been working through various tutorials for my technical skills. I plan to master Stencyl so it's a main focus and will be a benefit for making this game or any other games I work on.

Boat and checkpoint concept sketches.

Here are the hand drawn concepts of Chance's boat and the check point flag. These are rough sketches that will be coloured in. I've also been testing out the pen tool in photoshop and find it very useful for making nice line-work. I find this tool more tidy and takes less time to work with compared to just drawing it with the paint brush tool.

More concept art! Woot!

Okay here are some more concept are images. I added thee to the ten-page game design document which is now finished. Next will be the Beat chart which I've already started and still have yet to complete.

Chance character concept

Here is the first hand drawn concept of the player character Chance. He is a pirate in training who sets out on a quest to seek out his mentors treasure. I decided to give him the chibi look to match the game's toon quirky style. I decided on giving him a jellyfish on his bandana, which I randomly decided to add there. :) I'm not aiming for realism or a serious sort of style for this game. Next update will be Chance's small boat and the check point pirate flag.

Ten-pager

So far I'm at 9 pages with this document and just need need to refine it further then add in some concept art. This will include character designs for Chance, Fortune and enemies. Will also work on some environment/level concepts and include them in the ten-pager. My beat chart has the first few levels completed so that can be knocked out very soon. Will have concepts to post very soon.

Beat Chart

Last weekend I started working the games beat chart. I didn't know what a beat chart was until I looked about it on Google. It's basically a chart that maps out the contents of each levels and gameplay elements in your game e.g. enemies, weapons, time of day, story beat and mechanics.
I've so far nearly completed the first three Islands which each contain three levels including a boss level. I'll probably add some more levels soon and post an image of the chart on here.

Stencyl tileset fun.

Okay this weekend I played around in Stencyl and decided to start a test game. I made a two characters, a player and the jerk who tries to get in your way. It's a simple platformer that involves trying to avoid a very annoying enemy and hopefully make it to the end goal. I first played around with character animations then tile-sets...which make stencyl do weird things. After I design my tile in pencyl, I close the program then can't close the edit tile window which means I can't get it to appear in the tile-set editor. I proceeded to get slightly frustrated (thanks to this lovely herbal tea called stress-less I had today, I can't get mad at this problem with Stencyl at all.).

Inspiration

Here are some games I got inspiration from for my game concept.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Yoshi's Island

Ghost Online

Brainstorming time! Yay!

Okay now that I've got an idea, more brain storming seems like a good plan.

Log line: Pirate goes on an adventure seeking treasure.

Genre: Platform with RPG elements. Could even be a hack and slash adventure too.

Style: side scrolling. Vibrant and colorful.

 Setting: Player character lands on different Islands and goes exploring each one to the end.

Inspiration: Dust: An Elysian Tail and Yoshi's Island.

Rewards: Player works towards gaining more bits of treasure from either lying around or by defeating enemies. The amount of treasure you pick up will determine what reward you get at the end of level treasure chest. The reward is in the form of armour, a weapon which are the best items to get while usable items are the common ones.
Defeating a boss at the end of each Island will net you a treasure chest which contains a sea chart to another island.

Levels: Each Island is a different environment like:
*Forest
* Desert
*Grassy plain
*Volcano
*Snow field

Alternate concept.
If I wanted to go down the path of a more gory mature game, then instead of just treasure hunting and defeating monsters, the main idea could be pillaging towns on each Island. Instead of monsters it would be towns people in the way. Technically it's just going all out with carnage and mayhem in the pursuit of treasure.

Stencyl Showcase activity.

Today I played some games on the stencyl showcase and two of my favorites were: Reaching Finality and Shrine.

Reaching Finality: This game reminded of the earlier Legend of Zelda games. The story and Humor were the most satisfying. The story revolves around a ghost seeking the help of some random farmer guy in order to reach the after life at a specific location. I found this to be like different to other games as you wouldn't imagine a ghost finding a farmer for help. Now the humor was good as the first weapon is a pitch fork which according to the game dialogue, unleash it's wrath onto enemies.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/14230


Shrine: This is in the style of a side scrolling plat former with puzzle elements. What interested me the most about this game was the game play and strategy. The game play focuses on moving one source of light around the level to navigate around traps and platforms in order to reach the door the end. this involves some strategy where you need to position the light in spot where you can see ahead of you but the ball of light can't hit any walls which cause it to blow up due to being unstable.

 http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/23199

Two other games I liked for the visual style was Wild King and Tanooky Tracks. Both had nice aesthetics and good level designs.

Wild King: http://www.kongregate.com/games/camaleonyco/wild-king

Tanooky Tracks: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/599903

Possible Stencyl game

Okay for a possible game idea, I wish to do a platformer with Role play game mechanics included. The actual concept is based around a pirate's adventure to seek out treasure and defeat enemies along the way. This will be a side scrolling platformer like Yoshie's Island or Mario. There's another game that's influenced me in this direction, Dust: An Elysian Tail which is an action RPG done as a side scroller.

What I had in mind in regards to the RPG elements is when the player character (the pirate) defeats a really strong foe guarding the end of level treasure, the boss will drop a piece of equipment required to strengthen the character in some way.
Even if I don't get to do this idea now, later I'll get back to it and develop it further.

I figured doing something like this would a lot less time consuming than a proper rpg like my attempt at Milk Run last year. While I love rpg games the most out of all game genres, there's just so much involved in it like the battle system, dialogue, navigation, characters, towns, dungeons and inventory system. I chose not to include soundtrack in that list because that's an important part to all games.

Yeah so my plan would be a platformer with some rpg elements included.

Introduction. Yay!

Okay this is another Game Design blog which is for the first semester of Digital media. My previous one is from the second semester which I completed first.
For the assessment, I'll be sticking with Stencyl instead of Unity. This was a difficult choice as I like both game engines but in regards to the time frame, Stencyl is a better option.
Right now my brain is malfunctioning due to early morning work, so I'll add some more info later.