Case 6: First Entry

Alright, so, I am a bit late about posting Case 6, but I have been too busy finishing up my final product, which is also our exam for animation and interactivity, due tomorrow. Ahahaa... 

Case 6 consisted of creating an NPC with basic AI. The task was to make the NPC follow after the character and have a reaction upon colliding with the character. Like in the last case, we are to use a hittest, as well as an external class document for the NPC. That is to say, two actionscript files. It wasn't as much work as Case 5, really, and didn't take all that long to solve. I had enough time to create a new, if not slightly half-assed, background for the strage. I don't know what the NPC is, some ghost or something. If I was better at programming, I'd make it suck his soul out.

 Non-Soul-sucking Ghost

And that's it. The last case is all finished. Now only exams to gooo....

Case 5: First Entry

Damn, has this been a busy week >:U Mostly because I am no prodigy on coding and I have tons of iRL stuff going on for me and around me, including Fable III. It's also very, very cold, which does not help on productivity. Nevertheless, we have a case to present.

Case 5 consists of using the HitTest function to help create gravity in the game, and our character is to walk on an uneven path. The character is also supposed to be able to pick up an object, which is to vanish from the stage.

I am not entirely sure if I managed this correctly, and I tried adding a messagebox on picking up the item, but that's as far as I got. I couldn't make the textbox go away again, and I haven't had time to disable the character's movements once the textbox pops up. I will look into that, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly. I was going to have the character able to jump, but I haven't made a proper jump animation yet. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to spend my time on when I was stressed. What I did do was add a crouch animation. Can't recall if I mentioned or used this in the previous case, but Shaph is now controlled by using the A, S, D and SPACE keys. Would have used W as well for the jump. While as I managed to program the jump in, I had no animation to use and so I removed it from the game.

Yey cheesyness

I swear I will make the text less... lame. Some day. That's all for Case 5 x_x

Case 4: Second Entry

And Case 4 has been finished! I solved the problem that makes the character stop for a moment before it starts moving and I have elarned the values of ints. I have gotten good help with this one, though, including for making Flash registed what key was last pushed and thus being able to flip the idle animation accordingly. Shaph no longer turns back to face right after the left key has been released. The same for the chop animation. I still haven't been able to make it play all the way out without space being held down, but it turns according to what way Shaph is facing. All in all, I am quite satisfied with the result, though I have no idea what I will actually use it for in my game. I will have to come up with some clever solution.

Shaph, you may now control his mind

Case 4: First Entry

After a well deserved break we have started up with programming. Instead of placing our objects on the stage in Flash like we did in the first three cases, we are to have a blank screen and load our objects in using Action Script. We were also to have a character that could be controlled with the arrowkeys.

We were given all the code we needed to finish the assignment with ease, though there was quite a bit of tweeking needed to make it look good.

Instead of throwing myself at animating Shaph, I decided to get the heavy work out of the way first, and tried my hand with coding a simple stickman animation. A good choice, as I encountered a bit of trouble. When coding like this, one mistake was enough to muck up the result and make it so the file appeared completely blank.

I also encountered a problem with the character animation. The code we were given beforehand included instructions for how to make the walk animation play while the character walked left, but not when the character walked towards right. I figured out how to make the animation play, but missing out on a bracket messed it all, so that when I added the right animation, it refused to play the left animation. Easy enough, but the problem was that Flash didn't alert me that there was an error in my code(I also have found a better site to host my swfs, but Flash still refuses to let them work when I embed them).

My Stickman, gloriously completed

Yes, it's a simple and pathetic animation, but it was more than enough coding. I have included it for fun's sake.

// TestMain.as RJA 2010
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.ui.Keyboard;
import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;

public class TestMain extends MovieClip
{
private var forgrunn:Forgrunn;
private var karakter:Karakter

const L:int = 0; //Left
const W:int = 550; //Width
const T:int = 0; //Top
const H:int = 400 //Height
const R:int = L+W //Right
const B:int = T+H //Bottom

public function TestMain()
{
forgrunn = new Forgrunn ();
addChild (forgrunn);
forgrunn.x = 0
forgrunn.y = B - forgrunn.height

karakter = new Karakter ();
addChild (karakter);
karakter.x = R/2
karakter.y = forgrunn.y - forgrunn.height/2 - 160
karakter.gotoAndStop("idle");


stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, onKeyPressed);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, onKeyReleased);
}

public function onKeyPressed(e:KeyboardEvent) : void
{
if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT)
{
karakter.x = karakter.x -5;
karakter.gotoAndStop("left");
if (karakter.x <= 0) { (karakter.x = 5) karakter.gotoAndStop("idle") } } else if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) { karakter.x = karakter.x +5; karakter.gotoAndStop("right"); if (karakter.x >= 535)
{
(karakter.x = 530)
karakter.gotoAndStop("idle")
}
}
}
public function onKeyReleased(e:KeyboardEvent) : void
{
karakter.gotoAndStop("idle")
}
}
}

I have already gotten to working on my actual product with Shaph getting to be moved aorund, but I am still trying to work out some bugs. I am hoping to be able to flip the idle animation so he won't turn around to face right after having just walked left. We'll see about it and I'll post more soon.

A better stickman

Case 3: First Entry

More stress on the homework front, but finally we are starting to get something that resembles at least part of a game. For Case 3 we were to make three scenes consisting of a background, middleground and foreground that would move. Much like Walt Disney's Multilevel camera that he used to make backgrounds look threedimentional. However, in addition to the Case, we are soon turning in a report about all three cases that will be graded, and it should contain our product so far. And it's not a small job, so, I am in a bit of a hurry XD And very tired oh god I need more sleep. My own fault.

The thing is, in order to get a decent grade we need to include more than the assignment actually says. I personally think this is fun, and I sat all weekend with this. I wanted to try my hand at making buttons again, because they're about the most fun thing I know in Flash. It takes a bit of action script, but Flash CS5 makes this very easy because of the code snippets, so as soon as I found out how they worked, it wasn't so hard to put together something half decent. It's a start, at least.

Part of my game/story/thing

And I think I'll just cut it short this time. Case 3 finished. Need coffeeee.

CASE 2: First Entry

SO, this has been the worst week of school yet. The second case may not seem like much, it was so much work. Mostly because I have designed an intricate character. And considering it's due tomorrow and all I have left is the blog post, bear with me. It's late and I need this finished :B In the second case, this was our assignment.

• Create an idle animation for our character

• Create a walking animation for our character (left as well as right)

• Create a jumping animation for our character (though we were allowed to make another sort of move, so long as we showed we understood the anticipation principle)

I have been working nonstop on this, and it has been some trial and failure. Considering I am planning on making a visual novel, this isn't even ideal for the finished product I have in mind. So far I feel like our cases are forcing us into a specific format, and I may just have to change my idea a little, but we will see what I have time to do. Ffff. On to the animations. First I started with my idle animation, which I thought went quite well. It's a mix of frame-by-frame and tweens. Each limb has been put in a layer of its own and the animations are generally simple.

 

I don't know how good this will look as a video. It's better when it loops, so those who wish to see the SWF file can click this link and see it on SWFCabin

 Shaph Idle

And the next is the walk animation. This was where I got stumped. At first I tried some experimenting with tweening and the bone tool, but it didn't look good together with my frame-by-frame animation. Not to mention I was mucking around, making it into a movie clip in the same file where I did the idle animation, and I really don't want to start copying over frames into a new file just to be able to save it and show you all my failure of an experiment. Discarding that idea, I made another attempt at frame-by-frame. I was far, far more pleased. And since the first video still isn't done processing, I have decided I hate blogger's video feature and will provide links to SWFCabin only.

Sketch

Walk Right

Walk Left

The left animation is, obviously, just the right animation mirrorred. It was a bit of a mess, because I couldn't right-click and flip the image horizontally like in Photoshop when entering free transform. I only realized I had to go to the Modify menu and chose the sub-menu 'transform' to get that option when I was already finished flipping it all. Not to mention swapping the weapons in his hands. Ugh. And I didn't even swap the sword. I am lame and the animation is lame.

AND, important. When animating a walk, have a reference to a 'walk cycle' to look at. I tried without one the first time and I struggled. It's easy to find one just by googling 'walk cycle'. This is the one I used.

Now, for my last animation I sort of hurried and shortened it down a bit more than I wanted to. The format got a little weird because I draw so big, leaving little room for jumping or other movements where the character gets a little taller. A jump would have been really tricky to arrange, so I decided to have him slicing a little with his cleaver. Which turned out to be just as tricky, not to mention I forgot his sword AGAIN. Why does he even carry that stupid thing around? Doesn't he know that katanas are an over-used asian stereotype? Sheesh, what a dork.

Choppy choppy

I believe I keep getting a little better for each animation, but we'll see. I am still hoping I will actually be able to use this stuff that I put so much work into without having to change my idea.  This is also frame-by-frame, and it was a hell of a lot of work. I have toiled a little around with backgrounds in photoshop, and I hope I will be able to include a bit of pixel animation. Here's to hoping. A big point is to not use too much pixel art and stick to vectors, which is what Flash is based on. It will make the animation run way more smoothly and load faster.

Also, for the record, fuck Blogger's video feature. It's still processing >:U I don't think this will even work.

ANYWAY, Case 2 is now finished. Only one entry, this time. C: I felt pretty rushed about this all, but I feel that the result was decent. I hope I will be able to spend more time working on my concept and not drawing details on clothing over and over again next week, though.


ZE END!!

CASE 1: Second Entry

It has come to the end of the first case. And about time, because this is due tomorrow :B

The Actual, Finished Character (Maybe)

Shaph. He's just thrillled to be here. Practically dancing with joy. Now in PNG for your transparent enjoyment.

The first case was pretty fun, and all that remains is my finished product as well as typing out what my actual concept will be. Drawing a character in Flash goes fast if you don't care to put too much detail in it. Though I personally love drawing in Flash, I struggle to get the depth in Flash that I do in Photoshop. While as in Photoshop, I prefer colouring without linework, this isn't so easy to do in Flash and would take me way too much time. I decided that rather than do my drawing from scratch, I would use my earlier drawing in photoshop as a starting point.

Step by step for funtimes. You can also see my layers in Flash here. One for lineart and only one for colouring as well as linework. This is to make colouring easier in Flash, where you can 'cheat' a little when adding shading.

 
I prefer drawing with the Brush Tool in Flash because it has a wonderful effect called 'smoothing'. It's like lens flare, or vector sex. However, colouring is still a bit of a problem for me in Flash, but a clever third year student showed us a really cool way to do it fast and make it look good. I threw together a simple tutorial on how to do it because... well, I like making tutorials. Don't judge me.

Pretty basic stuff, but as a bit of a n00b in Flash, this helped me out a lot.

Some of the shading I have done without using this technique, but only for the small details. Doing it like this keeps my lineart nice and pretty even if I don't make the lineart a separate layer. I do like keeping a copy of the lineart on a layer of its own, however.

Now, I might change Shaph's design around a little when I get started on making the actual product, as I am not entiiirely satisfied with this drawing, but we'll see when we get there.


The Concept

 For my interactive production I have in mind a game more like a visual novel. The motive of the story will be something pretty basic. Gather three of something to kill bad guy. What will hopefully make the game more interesting is that along the way, the player has to make choices that will affect the outcome of the story. I am thinking along the lines of moral choices, whether to be good or bad, and depending on what the player chooses there will be granted different bonuses in the following events.

The story will be set to a sort of post-apocalyptic themed fantasy world. I am getting inspiration from Ōkami, and Samurai Jack in particular, for something Asian with a combination of futuristic and feudal Japan. The point will be to make something visually appealing. I am thinking less animation and more detail. As I will be constructing it much like a visual novel rather than a game, it means more still images. Then I will also be able to use Photoshop for my backgrounds without causing any major lag. Fight scenes I want to properly animate, however.

Other than the technical work, the story in a visual novel will of course be of importance. I still don’t want to make it too complicated because I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and never get done.

The concept is that the ‘evil villain’ of the story, the Scream has sucked all the magic out of the land, which renders it a dead wasteland in a state near anarchy where people struggle to survive with little food and shelter.

Years after the Scream stole the magic from the world, three artefacts called the Tears of Power appear. These are the last bits of magic left in the world that the Scream does not control, and of course people fight over them. Some want them in order to defeat the Scream, some want them simply in order to survive. Shaph is a trained warrior and he, too, seeks the Tears of Power for unknown reasons.

The story will consist of three main events where Shaph finds a Tear under different circumstances. The player decides by what means he acquires them and, in the end, how he uses them.

While most visual novels carry on until the end, or at least for a great deal of time before they let the player face the risk of dying, I am thinking of adding in some fighting sequences to add some difficulty. It will mainly be a choice between different weapons against different enemies, unless I come up with something better. I have depicted Shaph with a cleaver, a sword and a staff, though I imagine the cleaver to be more of his main weapon.

I have a vague idea about what the different scenarios where he acquires the Tears will be, but I haven’t quite decided, so I won’t go into depth about them. Looking at the sketches in my previous post, you sort of get where I am going.

And that’s about as far as I have gotten with my ideas. Looking forward to the next case so I can develop this some more.


END OF CASE 1! Whoohoo!