Class 68

Today I downloaded Particle Designer. I started by experimenting with its basic functions and colour effects. Particle Designers layout is pretty simple and easy to use to make generic looking effects. For example I started to work on a sparking effect.


After making the sparks I decided I would try something a little more complicated, however it didn't work out very well. I was trying to creating a stream of gore, or something to that effect. I started this by creating my own particle sprite. After making the sprite I out it into particle designer, and well it looks... not good.

So instead of doing gore right now, I will attempt to create smoke for Justin's fire effect. The smoke I made ended up looking really cool, sadly however its way too fast and probably won't be used in our game! Next class I think I will continue to work on Particle effects!


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Class 67

Today I worked on particle effects with Justin. We started by just fooling around with this particle program trying to learn it's basic functions. We accidentally made a sun that actually looks really cool. The sun has a wiggle and fade effect to it, making it look really bright and real. I'm not quite sure how the particle program works, but I believe you just mess around with your settings gs and find something that looks good. Then you hit an import button and it probably just pastes the code out for you to use.
Anyways our sun particle looks pretty cool, we made it using the sphere particle. Next class I would like to continue to work and learn about how to make different particle effects with Justin. We also started to work on a very basic fire effect that we will improve in tomorrow.

Class 65 - Field Trip

Today I wasn't in class because I was out of school attending a field trip to Grandvile Island. But Justin called me and messaged me about the game. That's when we started to discuss his snow, which I strongly disagree with, not because I hate snow, but because then we would have to cover all our assets with snow. ANYWAYS. Justin decided to change my mind by telling me we will just call it ash, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

So now I have to come up with something to do for our game.
Tomorrow I will work on the particles with Justin, only if he wants me to.
If not I will work on level design stuff.

Class 64

Today I did some more work on some character sprites, by that I mean I finally made Howie his own character. Normally when making one of these characters I would use a template, but the template is sadly at my home computer, so I had to use the main character. So I started by putting two pictures of the main character side by side on two separate layers. I then started to create Howie. I decided to make his shirt after the one he sometimes wears that looks like a game controller.

I also started to work on the rest of the new weapons, so I started with the sniper rifle. This time around I tried to give it more shape. This method worked out significantly. This new rifle looks 100% better then the last one. I used a picture of what I believe to be a Swedish Mauser for reference. Using a reference picture was very handy, because it gave me a better sense of the shape of the rifle. The rifle I ended up creating doesn't necessarily resemble the Mauser, but it has some similarity's. Some of the similarity's would be the general colour and shape, plus those weird metal bands on the barrel that I can only imagine hold the woodwork of the gun together. So far this is my favorite weapon sprite I have created. Tomorrow I will work on exterior buildings, and buildings you can enter. Or work on more weapons and talk to Howie about his cool new recoil.  

Class 63

Today I made the shotgun sprite. This sprite has always been kind of challenging because its very simple which is super easy to do in pixels, but not quite what I want. So I changed it up by giving it a tiny little stock thing out the back. Also I added lines on the stock implying it has a grip, so its a pump shotgun now. I used this random picture of a sawed off double barrel shotgun for reference. It helped me get the generic shotgun shape, which is really hard to show at such a low pixel count.

 


Then I went and talked to Justin about what we are doing, I also asked Howie if he needed help with anything. Hes currently working on some HUD for our game, that will require little mini sprites. I'm looking forward to helping him with that. That's what I will do tomorrow if he has finished the coding on the HUD. We also decided to have the character always equipped with the machete. It cuts down on some of the coding Howard has to do, and makes more sense gameplay wise.

After talking to everyone I came back and decided I could make the Shotgun better then it is, so I decided to extend it making it longer, I did this because it was kind of short compared to every other gun. Like i'm pretty certain the pistol was longer. Anyways I made the barrel longer and added some strapped on shotgun shells to the side. You know, like you always see in movies and stuff. I also made the stock a little bit bigger, because extending the barrel would make it heavier and make it *EVEN* more impossible to shoot with one hand. So adding the stock adds a tiny bit more realism then no stock at all, in my mind anyways. Either way our main character is some badass terminator or some shit who can hold a shotgun with one hand and shoot stuff. Not what was necessarily intended, but whatever. Basically he means business, whoever he is. Which leads me to my next thing, we still need some kind of story for our game, our main character doesn't even have a name.


 In case you don't understand what I mean by looking at the new shotgun sprite, here is a picture of the actual thing.

Class 62

So today I attempted to make a blood pool with just a sprite, so far it looks pretty bad. So I think i'm going to let Justin figure this one out. His plan is to do some weird shader thing I don't really understand. But as long as it looks better then this GIF, I don't really care. Also well taking that GIF I noticed a bug in our game, the running animations don't seem to activate when i'm making GIF's.


So after looking at Justin's game I realized hes missing arms, I never actually made the new guns for the new character model, so that's what I did today after I finished up the stupid blood test. I started by redoing the very basic pistol, this time around I give it a more brownish tint, making it look older and more worn. 

I then started to create the AK47, but asked myself, why can you run around and hold an AK with one hand? You wait you can't. It would be way to heavy and hurt to shoot. So I decided to make the Ak47 into a compact SMG, however using one hand to hold a SMG is still not very realistic or practical, it makes more sense then an AK. The Submachine gun also has a brown rusty look to it, effectively making it fit with our new art direction., I started on it by taking the base shape of the pistol and just kind of working over top of it. Hopefully we can see these guns in game in the next few classes. As for tomorrow I will finish up my work on the Guns, I still have to make the Sniper Rifle and Shotgun.

Class 61

Today just required my help with water water reflections, so we went into the office and watched a tutorial on how to create reflections, however the terms in the tutorial didn't quite fit with our game, so we are going to attempt to create our own. Another problem with the water, is that is in fact water, and not blood. So we put it into our game hoping to just change the color and make it look like blood, but this just made it crash, a lot. So we gave up on that for now and finally imported some of my new sprites from home. It was at this moment the school went into practice lock down, so then everyone thought it was a good idea to crowd into the little office. Then we just continued to import sprites. So tomorrow I will start working on water (blood) again, but I'm going to try and just make it a sprite overlay thing rather then a shader. Justin isn't a fan of this idea but I'm going to try and see what it looks like to maybe change his mind.