Class 53

Today I worked on making the background bigger. I had to resize the background because Justin and I agreed that it didn't really fit well withen the game, however we never saw what it looked like parallax scrolling. So who knows, maybe it would have worked, but eithet way we now have a new background thats incredibly big. The way I made it bigger is I just took my old image and copied bits and pieces from it, I repeated the process until I had a whole screen of buildings that didn't look copied and pasted. Then I repeat that annoying process 2 more times making the 3 layers of buildings. I also began some minor work on adding the mountains to the background, this process is a little more complicated because I drew the mountains into the last picture, but drawing with a mouse if great distances doesn't turn out very well. So next class I will finish up the mountains and the sky and then hopefully it will be big enough for the game. Me and Howie also discussed his music, I told him about how he could make it more atmospheric and ambient by removing a recurring drum, it sounds good, but it just seemed to throw off the ambience a little, the drums where making it more of a "song" song rather then a ambient song.

Class 52

Today I finished up my visual work on the background, I just finished adding small details onto the background buildings, and I changed some of the colour around. I also expiremented with changing the mountains, but ultimately they look the best unchanged and plain. Justin and I are concerned that the image might not be long enough though, so tomorrow I might be salvaging the picture and creating a much longer background, I will take the different buildings and paste them at different heights and orientations to make the city bigger. ALSO Howard has been working on music, and it is really good. It fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the game that I was trying to convey with the art style of the background.

Class 51

Today I added some grass to the background using a Photoshop brush that, well looks like grass. The brush is pretty useful, because it randomly changes the colour based on the base colour you have selected. This makes creating believable grass easier, however it makes it hard to control the colours that get put into the picture, so I used adjust to alter the appearance of the grass and make it look a little more washed out and grey. In the second picture I used a copy of the building on the far left to paste over the unfinished buildings, which makes them look a bit better, however they need more details such as damage and other fun stuff like that. So tomorrow I will add damage and details to the buildings as well as work on the dull boring mountains. Also keep in mind that all these buildings are in different layers that I will have to separate to make them parallax scroll through our game. And when that parallax scroll is done, it will look super good!

Here is a picture of all my current background layers,

Class 50

Today I continued my work on the background, sadly I didn't manage to finish within the class time. However I developed our idea further, creating a very dark atmosphere. I learned more about Photoshop's lighting effects and used them to create our game world, and make it feel a little more alive. So I have three photos, the first is a picture of what I made today, without lighting and sky effects. The second is basic sky and lighting effects as well as the place holder buildings, which I have now placed behind the destroyed buildings. The third picture has it all, it has more complicated Photoshop lighting as well as my basic lighting. In the second pictures the colors look a little more washed out, thats because I made a layer to go over top of the whole image with a translucent shade of the sky, this gives off the illusion that the sky and the buildings actually belong to with each other.
Tomorrow  I will hopefully finish the background.

Class 49

Today I continued my work on the multi-layered background of our destroyed city. I started by making another destroyed building, its much shorter then the last building, I used multiple layers to make the damage and black marks all over the building making it look old and wrecked. I am trying to use Photoshop to its maximum capability utilizing layers and the select tool. The Second picture has a blue thing on it, that blue thing was supposed to be a hanging tarp, however that didn't really turn out like a tarp, so tomorrow I will continue to work on it. Also I will try to finish up more background stuff. Basically I'm just learning ways to create images faster on Photoshop.

Class 48

Today we are starting work on our own game again "Drop Dead" I'm going to continue my work on my multi-layered background.
I'm starting by making all my pictures on one picture, each "layer" in a different Photoshop "layer" so when i'm finished I can just save all the layers as individuals.
So for making the buildings i'm going to start by making large grey rectangles, then decorate them and make them look more like buildings. I'm planning to have 3 layers of building layers, the third layer being the closet and most detailed.
 This is the background with the front layer of mountains "hidden" so I can see all the buildings. The plan is to have this background parallax scroll, so the different layers of the background will move at different speeds giving off the illusion that they are far away from the player and each other.
So far I have finished one building, it might be a little too detailed for one of the far back layers though. The buildings might require a lot of my time, like a lot. Because I still gotta make like ten more, and the closer they get the more detailed they get. And because our game is in a post apocalyptic world, we have to have some buildings look ruined, which is going to be hard. Tomorrow I will continue work on the background because we don't have a full class. Today I learned more about how photoshop deals with large photos, basically it doesn't, it just lags. But i'm pushing through it anyways.
 

Class 47 - Review Week - 4

So today we are encouraged to try something new with the game, and or bold. So I am going to try to make everything big right off the start.
My bold method is attempting to build really big structures right away to maximize vital resource production, however this has led to metal problems, my colony has no metal what so ever, which could prove disastrous.

This method was almost successful, however I think I went to fast, my workers got unhappy and stopped working. This Colony has lost its potential, so I will just start again. To end my Colony a tiny bit faster. I have removed the airlock so the Colonist's are trapped inside, I have also shut down the oxygen generator. Funny enough, as soon as I turned off the oxygen they started to work harder then ever. Sadly it was too late because I removed the only way out of the base. So they all died. But hey, at least they redeemed themselves in their final hours.


My Final verdict on the game is pretty positive. The game starts off strong, the majority of the fun comes from failure, but then it transitions into a very in-depth space colony simulator. The game is fun, but I see the possibility of it becoming repetitive in the future. The game lacks some kind of greater purpose, without a goal your only choice is to try and survive, which is a goal in itself, but maybe just not the best goal to play towards. The game is fairly flushed out with small details from interior furnishing to Colonist's having names. The colonist's themselves are even complicated, all with different jobs and needs that must be fulfilled to sustain a state of well-being in your colony. Overall this is a good game, but i'm not quite sure if its worth $21. But if you like space, and you like simulation games, this is a must have for you.

My Colony is still running strong.

Class 46 - Review Week - 4

Today in Planetbase i'm going to attempt to not get my Colonist's stuck on things. I'm pretty certain I trapped my Colonist's in between cable connections, but even after I removed them, he was still stuck. So i'm going to try and not do that.
I started my new Colony, and so far things are going good, nobody has died.
My colony is running pretty low on Metal Resources, so construction has been really slow. So did my first trade, I gave the Trader some Medical Plan for 4 Metal. Was it worth it? Probably not. But I really needed Metal.
My Colony has run into a minor food problem, a few of our colonist's are hungry. But we cant build more plants because we need Bioplastic. Nobody has died yet though, so that's pretty good.

Just ran into yet another problem, this time its a really big problem. I never built a spare's factory, and I just ran out of spares. Without spares my Colony will fall apart soon.

Class 45 - Review Week - 3

- COLONY D12 REPORT-

So today I jumped into the actual game of Planetbase with no restrictions, it was going smoothly. Until of course I ran into a small bug within the first minute, my only construction worker got stuck, hes been put into an endless loop of walking. His comrades are now just watching him walk in place, hes attempting to go and build a power source for the colony, but he will never make it.

They all died.
The others suffocated, and somehow he managed to hold his breath long enough to starve.

- END OF COLONY REPORT -
(Name of Colony?) - Colony D12
(Why did it fail?) - This Colony fell into chaos because one colonist named "Fire Mann" went on a fitness binge instead of creating vital things like a power source. He died, after he watched the other 6 members of the colony suffocate before his very eyes.
(How could I fix the problem?) - Hopefully this problem doesn't require fixing, but i'm going to try and make an effort to not get my colonists stuck.
(How fast did the Colony fail?) - It took around 5 minutes for "Fire Mann" to kill the other colonists before he finished his ritualistic suicide. 

- COLONY D5 REPORT-

Shortly after the fall of Colony D12, Colony D5 has been established. D5 doesn't seem to have fitness extremists, so it seems to be a step up from D12. Production is good, basic needs like food, water, and beds have been met in under 5 minutes.

D5 is running smoothly so far and is only running into one minor problem. That minor problem being a small fluctuation in power at night, this can easily be fixed by increasing power storage limit, and creating more Solar Panels and Wind Turbines.

When your Colony gets hit with a meteor in the first minute.

Class 44 - Review Week - 2

Planetbase tutorial

When you start Planetbase you probably want to get familiar with the game, especially if your not familiar with resource gathering RTS games.


Default Controls
W,A,S,D: controls the position of the the camera.
Q,E: can rotate the camera giving you different angles on your new colony. 
+: Speeds time up to 4x the original
-: Slows time down, back to regular speed
Alt: Shows your current resources
Tab: Toggles interior and exterior view 


Before we get started you need to know where to go, look to the top left of your screen.
You will see seven octagons. These seven octagons all have different purposes. The first one is your build menu, this is the most important tool you have. This is the only octagon you need to know for now.


After your colonists land, and you are introduced to your new crew, you are assigned your first goal. As the manager of the colony it is your job to tell the workers to construct, and the first thing you need to make, is a Oxygen Generator.


Your Oxygen generator should now look like this. Note the red warning triangle. This signals that the structure has no oxygen. That's because it needs two more structures for it to be operational, it needs a power source, and a fuel source. So your next plan of action should be to construct a Solar Panel. I would recommend using "+" to speed up the time it requires for construction. Remember to hit "-" after the construction is finished to set back time to its regular speed.

   Now you have hopefully successfully created your first power source. Solar Panels absorb the sun light and convert it into power, this obviously means when night fall comes, you will not have power. So later we will establish other means of power, and power storage.

After you have built a second structure, you need to make sure you connect them. Start by clicking one of the two structures you wish to connect. Then click on the second structure. A green line with a link will appear. Click the link and the connection will be made, as shown below. Keep in mind, when you connect structures with interiors it will make a hallway connecting them, not a cable. Cable connections are for external structures like the Solar Panels, and Water Extractors.


But we still need a fuel source for our Oxygen Generator, so lets build that Water Extractor next. Start by navigating back to your build menu and finding the Water Extractor. Place the structure and link it to the Solar Panel. Now hit "+" and then "-" again to speed time up for the construction process. Now that you have connected the Fuel source and the power source, your Oxygen Generator building should fill up with oxygen. Don't panic if your red warning triangle hasn't gone away yet, it takes some time for the generator to fill up the room. Your colony should now look like this.


Now that you have oxygen inside, you should probably have an entrance. So now its time to create a Airlock. Navigate to your build tab, and locate the Airlock. Once you have placed the Airlock you must connect it to the Oxygen Generator like the previous structures. Now your colonists will be able to enter the Oxygen Generator and get out of that hot martian sun, also they can get some "fresh" air,


Your colonists now have air, but they still have other needs that they require to keep on living. One of those needs is food. So now we will make a Canteen for our colonists to hunker down and enjoy a good meal, and well you know, not die. Start by placing the Canteen within range of a adjacent structure. Then link the structures, and speed up the construction. This should result in the creation of a hallway allowing your colonists to walk from one structure to another.


The Canteen starts empty, so it serves no purpose other then some visual aesthetic. But eye candy doesn't feed your colonists. So lets add a Table, Water fountain, and a Tv Screen to the interior of the Canteen. To edit interiors start by clicking on the desired structure, the menu on the top left of you screen should now change into three options. Clicking the second option will now give us the ability to add interior objects to our structure.


Now that your Canteen is furnished, your colonists will most likely all rush to the water fountain for water. This is a good thing, don't worry.

Note the yellow triangles above the colonists showing that they require specific needs. The "Z" means the colonists are tired, currently our colony doesn't have any beds, so we need to make some. We will start by making a Dorm so we have a place to put the beds, then our colonists can take a rest from all there hard space work.


 Keep in mind you can click on a colonist at anytime to see there specific needs. And their name, and profession, if that interests you.


The Dorm structure is considered a dead end structure, which means it can only have one link, you should definitely keep that in mind when you are constructing your base. When the Dorm structure is built, it will be empty like the Canteen. So once again click on the structure and navigate to the interior components tab, Now place the desired amount of bunk beds.


Now that you have established somewhere for your colonists to sleep, place a Wind Turbine, and a Power Collector to make the colony more sufficient. The Power Collector will allow your colony to store extra power, and the Wind Turbine will get you a little bit more power on extra windy days.
Our Colony still needs a constant source for food, so lets build a Bio-Dome, and put a Meal Maker in our Canteen. This will make our Colony self sufficient to some degree. However we still need to put grow plants in our Bio-Dome, so lets place Onions, and Tomatoes inside the Bio-Dome using the interior components tab.


Now your colony is well on its way to being successful, so lets remove our Lander Pod. To recycle a structure click on it and find the recycle tab, if you don't know what that looks like, shame on you.
Now we need more resources, so lets build a Mine to gather more ore for our colony. But we can't build structures out of raw ore, so we need a Processing Plant to turn our ore into metal. Remember when the Processing Plant is created, it will be empty, so click on it and add interior components, more specifically add a Metal Processor and a Bioplastic Processor. Bioplastic is used for creating electrical connections, and interior structures like beds.
The Bio-Dome could also use a faster crop, so add Rice to the interior of the structure.

In order for our structures to continue to operate they need maintenance. Maintenance will require a Factory, your Factory (when furnished) will produce Spares, which are used by your Mechanics to repair structures. To do this you need a Spares Workshop inside your Factory.
Another thing you will need is a Sick Bay which is used to heal your injured colonists. Make sure to once again add the interior structures, without the interior structures your new Sick Bay will be useless. Healing Colonists requires Medicine, to create more add the Medical Plant Crop to the Bio-Dome.
You also need to build a Lab, this will allow you to make synthetic meat for your colonists to consume, and process the Medical Plant into Medicine. Make sure you furnish your Lab.
 Lastly build a landing pad, this will allow new colonists to join your colony, keep in mind they will only join your colony if the think its well-run, so try to minimize work related incidents.

You are now well on your way to making a Space Colony.

Class 43 - Review Week

Planet Base - First impressions

Planetbase is a colony simulator where you guide a group of space settlers on their mission to create an outpost. The game is currently being developed by Madruga Works. Among their staff is Martino Figueroa, who helped design and program on other games such as Need For Speed; Hot Pursuit, Burnout Paradise, and Black. 

In this game you manage your own Space Colony, you control the construction of the base, and you control the colonists. However the game looks like it has a learning curve, so don't get to attached to your first colony, or the colonists living inside it, basically they will probably die. You must manage the base's basic resources like food, water, power, and obviously a must need on a foreign planet... oxygen.  

The game currently has three different planets of increasing difficulty. The Desert Planet, the Frozen Planet, and the Gas Giant Moon. As seen below they all have their own unique style, and atmosphere, atmosphere not being the planets physical atmosphere, but the feeling you get from the game.  

   

The goal of the game is to reach milestones, which are more or less like generic achievements from what I have seen. Unlocking new milestones lets you gain access to harder Planets, increasing the overall challenge of the game. Your colony is always in danger, whether its powerful sandstorms or just a good ol' fashioned meteor.

The Game seems to have an in-depth construction system, with the ability to not only build exterior structures, but interior structures as well. The interior creation is a nice touch, but seems a little jagged with the placement of objects. Personally I have not played the game, so this is more of a speculation. Here's a screenshot so you can make your own opinions. 

The game can even look intimidating at times with all the different pieces of furniture and heads up displays. This game definitely holds promise, but after watching a few videos on the gameplay, I feel like some players will find themselves bored without a long term goal.   

Class 42

Today Justin told me to work on putting together interiors, so I spent my time learning how to design levels in Game Maker, using tiles. I decided to put our existing interior sprites together in a visual test level to see whats missing, and what needs improvement. Looking at the picture I can tell we need more variety in wall types, which I will have to do again because I cant find my wall tiles. We also will need more furniture like, tables, chairs, barricades, dead people, blood, and other Zombie apocalypse related props. Tomorrow I will finally start on making a parallax scrolling background, which I would have started on today, but I was busy doing grad photos for the last 30 minutes of class. Like I said in a previous blog, I will use a picture of Vancouver as a reference point for my background.

Class 41

Today I helped Justin develop the new floor tiles for the game, we sat down and discussed different styles trying to figure out what fits best for our game. We mostly struggled with making a smooth transition between tiles, grass and concrete to be more specific. We also continued to discuss the direction of our games story, we are still very uncertain about where we want it to go, we might just leave it for awhile and focus on game play elements. As well as discussing ground tiles, we talked about our parallax scrolling backgrounds. We learned more about different ways to play around with tiles, and backgrounds by messing around in Game maker. Also ran into a very strange "view" bug where we cant see the floor, good thing the bug is only on Justin's version, which is more or less a testing ground for my sprites at the moment. We began more in depth thinking into the setting of our game. Obviously still keeping the game located somewhere in Canada, because who doesn't wanna make a game about their own country. I think tomorrow I will look up some pictures of Vancouver and use them as a reference for our background. Or maybe create some more interiors
(like the floors and ceilings, not the walls)

Class 40

Today I started on trying to make the multi-layered background, sadly however I soon discovered its much harder then it looks, and will require a lot of images. So I decided to hold it off for another day. So i'm spending my time looking at pictures of mountains and other peoples multi-layered backgrounds on the internet, trying to figure out a better way to do them. I also began some more work for walls, like adding this nice boarded up window tile. Basically i'm now trying to teach myself how to slap a bunch of images together to make a fancy background. Next Class I will talk to Justin and decide what kind of background we want, like if it should have a city scene or forest. After we have planned it out a little bit more I will start re-creating it, along with learning more about parallax scrolling.
 

Class 39

Today Justin and I hunkered down in the small office cubical thing, to essentially talk about the games story again. We are trying to refine the story into something that actually makes sense and isn't just a random amalgamation of ideas, although that adds more content, it also makes the game seem rushed and half-ass'd. We also looked at how we need to do floor tiles in the new game style. We discussed many ways to do the floor tiles but we ultimately decided the best way to achieve what we want is to have them gradually fade to black. We learned that this is the best way to make the game more direct, rather then just having random tiles going deep into the ground, distracting the players eyes. With it fading to black they can focus more on the actual gameplay. We then discussed "parallax scrolling" as Justin called it, which is something I didn't really know about. So we sat down and learned about it from Ty. Basically its like having a multi-layered background, the furthest background moving slower across the screen then the first one. This technique gives the impression of great distances between the viewer and the background, it really just adds a sense of dimension to the game. So tomorrow I will begin creating a layered background, starting with the sky then onto mountains. Then possibly a city, so the world looks populated.

Class 38

Today I worked on interior design, now that the game is 2D we have to make wall tiles. I started by making the base wall, then I duplicated it across a new document. I'm going to cover all the walls in dirt and decals, then take the actual pictures of the walls out. This will leave a picture of various dirt patterns and blood stairs that Justin can use, by putting them on things like a tile. This is my first time doing a tile sheet, hopefully it will work out. I'm teaching myself on how to make tiles by just diving into it. So far they look pretty good. Next class I will make more decals for the walls and make different variations of walls, by simply changing the hue of the picture altering the colours. I might also start on interior floor and roof tiles. making the game more atmospheric. 

Class 37

Today we had the important meeting to switch the game into a side scroller platform game. After we talked for a bit we decided to convert the game. The next few days is going to consist of us scrambling together to make some big changes. This class I helped Justin with changing the physics system in game maker. We have decided that a 2D game will give us more freedom to develop our ideas and art style. Justin is even confident that he can make a decent lighting system. Hopefully the conversion of the game is for the better. But basically today all I learned was that changing a games view point mid development is hard, but not impossible.  Next class I will continue working on interiors, but now because its 2D that also involves making the walls. I'm going to try and make walls that have dirt tiles to paste over them, so the rooms have variety in their destruction.

Class 36

Today I continued my work on the zombie animation. I started by touching up a few details. Starting with the way the back leg moved. I a gave it some more movement to add the feel of it being dragged behind the zombie. The animation is still missing something though. I'm quickly learning that making movement animations is not an easy process. This could possibly be because i'm using a mouse instead of a stylist. I also changed the colours of the zombie, making him look a little more grim. Though these processes I learned that I cant just make everything grey and hope for the best. Because now my zombie blends in with the indoor tiles.

- Justin and I just had a discussion about making a very big decision for the game. We are planning on possibly making our game into a 2D platform game instead of a top-down isometric monstrosity, This choice will require talking with everyone working on the game because it changes so much. Next class we will discuss the change with everyone else, and if it will be beneficial for our development. Hopefully everyone can manage to agree on the necessary changes to better improve our games development. Personally I am all for the transition into a platformer game.  
  

Class 35

 Today I began to work on the animation for the Zombies movement. I started by learning more about the movement of muscles in a regular person, sadly there are no real zombies to study. Looking through pictures of the way the leg muscles move and bend together also greatly improves my understanding of how legs should be drawn. Although our game doesn't require immense detail in leg muscles, as an artist its not a bad skill to have. I have also been looking videos of people walking, which feels creepy, but necessary. You don't really notice the small details until you actually try to find them. I also began to start touching up some of my blogs by adding some minor details I missed previously. The changes can be noted by the red words. Next class I will continue to work on Zombie Movement, and then a couple more attempts of that and I might finally build up the courage to come back to the player animations. But tomorrow I think my main focus is going to be the Zombie. Possibly even making some variations in colour and appearance.

- The picture at the bottom was requested by Justin, the eyes just need to be a tiny bit darker and then its good.