Week Nine

Monday 26th April

Progress Update

Using the feedback I got last week, I created a new background design using blues for the sky and more oranges for the sunset. I did not want the background to be too dark as we still need to convey that fact that this story takes place in the "Air region" so should be light, peaceful and calming. Throughout the process, I think I was far too focused on creating a good cloud texture and got distracted from the other details that really mattered. As a result, I think the sky is still far too bright and the colour are a bit too vibrant for a background. The main focus should be in the foreground and too much attention should not be drawn from it. To try and combat this, I have put overlays on the painting. One is a white overlay, seen in the second picture below, and the third picture has a pink overlay. While this did tone down the vibrance, I don't think it looks very good at all. It still needs to be darker and there needs to be more red tones in the sunset that are harmonious with the red assets in the scene.

The feedback was as I expected. The team agreed that the sunset painting was far too vibrant but the overlays were helpful in bringing that down. Tested with a mock up scene, you can see it just looks a bit messy. The colour in the actual assets is lost, they looked washed out against this sky. As the team are happy with the composition, I will keep that the same but will recreate this painting to make it a little darker and more harmonious with the assets that have been created. This will take me a few days to get done.

Today Charisma created some scene mock ups for how she thinks we should organise assets in unity, layering clouds into the background and having our buildings and other architectural details coming up and out of the cloud layers. I think its a really great way to show a big wonderful world yet to be explored and adds so much to the atmosphere of the game. My only suggestions for change are that it seems overly detailed and the clouds should become less refined as they fade into the back of the scene. They should also get lighter the higher up they are in the sky. And where the sun is shining through, they should be tinted the colours of the sky. Above are examples with and without the lantern switched on and as you can see, it's mot quite dark enough for their effect to have significane.

Here the same composition has been repeated but using the sky that I designed in the furthest layer back. In the final composition, these layers of cloud detail, and the details of building and mountains rising from them will be amazing. But the detail should definitely be decreased as it is a little overwhelming from my point of view. Furthermore the sky should be somewhat visible surrounding the levitating platform so it is clear that they are higher up in the sky.

Here Emilia has shown her interpretation of using our assets to build up layers in the scene to add dimension and immersion. It is a little more laid back than Charismas design and as I suggested above, some space has been made around the levitating platforms so sunset is actually visible. Both examples have been helpful in providing different methods to achieve a more immersive setting in our vertical slice, providing the player with immense beauty. I do like how Emilia has decreased opacity on the background.

details. I think that design decision is suggestive of the spiritual nature of the Anima Mundi games design. Once I have all the assets, I will experiment with both of these design ideas and we will work together to work out what we collectively looks best.

More Assets!

Above are some assets that Emilia has created for the detailing of the scene in the vertical slice, adding to the beauty of the game which is what we have promised in our project scope. The Japanese buildings were changed from the red tone from the colour scheme to the brown tone. The red is the same reds taken from the lanterns and the bridge. For all the assets to be that same red, the scene lost some beauty and became somewhat repetitive or bleak. The brown has been taken from the same brown used in the trunk and branches of the blossom trees. This way we have maintained the harmony between our assets but made the scene more aesthetically pleasing. These brown huts work much better in the background than the red huts did as everything seemed to be merging together when the colour was overused. I also think it is more appropriate because it is an earthy colour and therefore fits well in this amazing natural world that we are creating, with focus on natural beauty and wonders.

The Torri gates will be closer in the foreground of the game scene. They are an iconic piece of Japanese architecture, present at the entrances of Shinto shrines but also just as symbolic sculpture. It represents the transition from the mundane to the sacred which is why I thought it would be a great detail to include in the game as it reflects back to the themes of enlightenment and spirituality expressed in the games design document.

Above are the butterflies that have been created by Emilia. She was unsure about animating the butterfly herself but she was able to train herself through a series of videos and experimentation and managed to rig her 2D butterfly designs into 3D looking, life-like animated butterflies. This another example where a member of the Anima Mundi team has levelled up! The butterflies are going to add so much to the vertical slice. To have another moving object, aside from the shaman will be an exciting inclusion.

On the left are the final animations for the Eagle. The purpose of the eagle is to firstly, patrol the skies as the player completes the first four puzzles in the game. As it flies back and forth in the sky, it will be squawking a series of music notes which unbeknownst tot he player, will be required to complete last puzzle before the game is finished. The other two animations are for a second eagle that guards the end of the game, blocking the players path. Its first animation is a intimidating idle form and then its second is of it taking off into the sky after the player has completed the puzzle drawing the eagle out of their way so they can progress to the end. This is achieved by using the gust

ability on some pan pipes. Molly did such an amazing job with this. There are absolutely no faults and she should be incredibly proud of herself. Above also shows the falling animation that she has made for when the Shaman finished his journey through the air region by taking a courageous leap of faith off the final floating island. This anmiation will transition from jump so I think this will only work if the player jumps off the platform rather than walks off of it but I may be able to re order the frames so it looks smoother. If not I can cheat this by putting in a solid object with a rigid body so the player is forced to jump over it and then descend but I think that would be far less intuitive.

Charisma has set up a google drive to keep track of all of our game assets and make them accessible all from one place, which makes importing things into unity a lot easier for me as I don't need to search all the way through slack and lots of documents to find things. I am very happy when members of the group take intuitive like that as it really is difficult to juggle all of the responsibilities as a team leader alongside my own development.

Thursday 29th April

Development Surgery

During this surgery session, we implemented player death once they fall from a platform. When the player falls, the Shaman will descend until he hits a box, named the "Death Box" which has a trigger on its collider, which will cause the scene to reset, so the player spawns back at the beginning of the game. This event of dying and then the scene resetting was written into a new script titled "Reset", which has been placed on the death box.

We also worked to make the boulder puzzle functional. All of the assets were in the scene, including the three parts of the bridge, the boulder asset and they had been placed exactly where they need to be. We started by making a "boulder" that was a square with a rigid body and box collider. We also applied a polygon collider to the bridge so it has the gap in the middle where the player should just fall though if they are to miss the gap.

Next we made a bridge gap object and turned off its sprite renderer and 2D box collider once they were applied. Then into a script titled "BoulderOne", we write the code for when the player presses "e" in range of the boulder asset we created, the gap will fill as the sprite renderer and collider will be turned back on. A collider in front of the player, placed on the player, detects when the player is in range and therefore able to make an outcome upon the press of the "e" key. This collider sits in front of the player rather than touching it.

Now the bridge puzzle is technically functional. Simply, the player presses the "e" key at the beginning of the bridge and the gap fills with an object. The next steps are to make this look pretty by adding in all of the assets, such as the actual boulder, filling the gap in the bridge. I also need to fix the colliders on the bridge steps so the player is able to walk over them rather than get stuck or need to jump to get onto the bridge.

Problems realised after the session - the player gets stuck inside the bridge gap and I cant find a way to place the colliders so that it actually solves the problem., The asset that detects the player collider so the interaction can take place has become an obstacle so the player path is blocked unless they jump over it. I have also realised that it will be difficult to later add in the boulder throw animation and time it so the boulder gap doesn't fill until the animation has finished player. It will need to be exactly on time. It also means that the bridge will fill even if the player is not stood in the exact right position despite the animation showing that it boulder never landed in the gap but actually on one of the bridge steps. I will work to see if there is a simple fix for this and share with James during the next session.

Week Nine Reflection

Personal Progress Update

I started off this week doing scene tests for my sky that was finished over the last weekend and then collecting feedback for changes I need to make, described above. I will be working on a newer refined sky this week alongside my unity development. I also made a lot of process in unity, first in part 6 of my unity development, documented here. I added some script for turning the player left and right because I'd somehow not done that yet as well as re-slicing the platform sprite sheet and and attempted to scale animations, and other general clean up tasks to make sure everything so far was looking smooth I also imported the rest of the assets that has been created and started building the bridge puzzle together.

Later in the week I had my consultant session with James, documented above, to do some further work within in unity and then on the Friday completed (Unity Development Part 7) the final placement of game events and island composition, putting it all into unity with Emilia. The next steps are to walk though this structure with the rest of the team on Tuesday.

Team Progress Update

This week we got a lot more scene testing done and planned together how the background should look, with Emilia and Charisma taking the lead by making up some mock ups for us to see. We have decided to build up the scene by using layer fading into the pack with decreasing opacity so it's almost as though it is losing focus. It looks beautiful and supports the fact that this adventure takes place within the spiritual world. As a result of this further scene testing, we have established that we are going to need to make some final changes to the sly so that is darker and has more red tones in the sunset.

We have also finished the last few assets that need making including the butterflies and their animations, the eagles animations, the new idle animation and Emilia has made some aesthetic changes to the architecture so it is more harmonious with the cherry blossom trees in the scenes. Charisma has been given the get-go to work on the UI and has began experiments and research for that and furthermore she Molly is ready to start the lighting development with guidance from the VFX lead Nerice, so is setting up an appointment with her for the next week.

The current tasks that the team are working on now:

Daniella - still working on windmill creation.

Charisma - Asset adaptions (new panpipes) and beginning UI design.

Molly - refining gust animation and organising call with Nerice to discuss lighting.

Emilia - Sound design and marketing for both Anima Mundi and Windie Games.

Me - Unity Development, a specific task being making further changes to the bridge puzzle because I'm still having problems with it, and then beginning work on the other puzzles. I also need to make final changes to the sky.

Pipeline Review

At this point in the project pipeline, we are our finishing off our final scheduled week of development, set up to do our first game walkthrough and test on Tuesday the 4th May, next week. This will be great opportunity to involve the rest of the team in the unity build and get some helpful feedback for simple features such as the players walk speed and jump force, as well as more complex features such as how the animations are functioning and how we expect to puzzles to function.

So, on Tuesday we do a complete test for the game so far and then plan to make any changes after the results of that test. The next few weeks have been scheduled for refinement and the implementation of sound, UI and lighting. Besides the unity build and where the progress is there, we are well on track to begin these elements as explained above in this weeks documentation. A self critic for myself is that I could have made more time in the weeks to be spending learning and working in unity and then the target for a playable version to be complete this week may have been achieved. Of course, I have been struggling with ill health so I do not feel too disappointed in myself. It is unfortunate that we have not met that milestone, but I am not concerned that the vertical slice will not be completed in time. I am far too stubborn for that to be a possibility.