Spiritus Development Blog

End of an era

2009-06-07T10:19:00.001-07:00

Hooray! I have graduated from uni!

This project I got an A14, and for my dissertation I got A15

Overall degree 2:1

I was proud of my efforts for the grad show too. I planned about 90% of it and it was a huge success!
plus 34 of my 50 business cards were taken. I have a sneaky feeling that those were mainly from fellow
Newporters.

Now to look for jobs.

Byebye Newport, I'm heading out into the big wide world!

Feedback

2009-05-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

I went out and filmed a bunch of people ranging from 5 years old, to 70ish. General consensus is, the games are pretty to look at, but the controls are not the most intuitive at the moment.

Don't forget to visit the website www.spiritus.oddvalue.co.uk

The show's not over yet

2009-05-02T19:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.spiritus.oddvalue.co.uk/ go here for the website we made + the games

Jim handed the project in for his course yesterday, so we have definitely finished to the point of having 4 games that are playable.

However, there are still things to fix which I am aware of. They might not happen before my hand in, but they will be fixed by the Crit on the 12th definitely.

The Website-
Bugs to be fixed, specifically when using Internet Explorer to view games, and theres some problems with Firefox. This could be due to the fact we are using Highslide to open up very nice looking windows for the games.

The alignment of the text for the actual games needs to be sorted.

This website was made in a matter of 2 days, so I think overall we did pretty well to get it to this standard. it *will* be fixed soon!

The Games-
They require control fixes to make them slightly more user friendly
Start Screens so you actually know what you're doing
High score table which will appear online [currently only Bird game #2 does this - so go play it! get some high scores!]

other than that I am reasonable happy with them.

In retrospect. I would have liked to do something a bit weirder. But I feel we accomplished some pretty games in Flash, using non vector graphics so thats a win.

Project Title + Poster art

2009-04-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

The name of the collection of games : Spiritus

Wolf game title: Ferus

Bird game title : Alatus

The Website

2009-04-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

I have now designed the Spiritus website, it should be up and running fairly soon, and will eventually have our abstract, and all the playable games on

Wolf Game Development

2009-04-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

These 4 are part of a little story...

and this one is a loading screen.

Bird - Level 1 Demo

2009-04-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

Demo for bird level 1 - the sea

Keep altitude by flying over thermal currents (the red clouds)
and avoid the blue clouds
flying faster means you lose 'stamina' and thus altitude.

controls:
left and right directional buttons = left and right ;)
up = speeds you up

note: it isn't finished, so the altitude bar won't be there in the final version. The placement of the animations will be different, they have just been dumped in for now. And generally it will be better.

Wolf - Level 1 Demo

2009-04-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

Not entirely finished, things need tweaking but here it is for now.

Up is jump
Left and Right are Slow down/Speed up
Spacebar is 'Attack bunny'

Wolf - Level 2 Finished

2009-03-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Click Here to play

Up is jump
Left and Right are Slow down/Speed up
Spacebar is 'Attack bunny'
-music hasn't been added yet

Bird Game Development - final level

2009-03-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

There is no art to speak of for this one yet as I'm not fully sure on what we're doing. I know, that sounds really bad. But honestly all my effort has been on producing the art, the tiles, the animations for all of the other 5 game levels.

So the idea is this,

We have bird level 1 which is high up over sea. Bird level 2 which is over land and a bit closer to the ground, so bird level 3 should be pretty much on the ground.

Thinking that maybe the bird could catch worms and hop along the ground rather than fly. I want things for the bird to go under, to restrict visibility at times. For example. there could be a horse, *As seen in original concept work* and you could hop under him, it would be nice to see the scale of the bird which is tiny compared to the massive horse.

Wolf - Level 4

2009-03-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

It made sense to make a 4th level for the wolf to us, so thats why it's here!

It's a cave level!

So in the third level you go up the mountain, to find the monk who can lift the curse from you so you can stop running. But as you get to the top of the mountain you fall down into a cave! oh no!

This level should be manic, stupidly difficult. we want you to fail. because we're mean. and thats how the story goes for now. One day it will have a nice ending too but we're rapidly running out of time now!

Don't hate us!

Wolf - Level 3

2009-03-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

Tiny goat to jump over

Wolf - Level 3

2009-03-10T05:52:00.000-07:00

This is the idea for the Wolf - Level 3 design. It's a sloped level, so a bit different to the other 2. There wont be bunnies, cause one does not generally find bunnies up mountains. Instead it will mostly be avoiding falling rocks and jumping over rocks.

However I think we will need to think of a way of giving the player the ability to regain some health. Else it could get frustrating? The third level should have a higher difficulty but we don't want it to be impossible.

Here are the tiles for it. Making tiles is good, helps Flash run better. It has come to light that Flash really REALLY isn't designed for high graphic games. I think in the Summer when we do the rest, we might get these running on the XNA thing instead. It would cope much better than Flash.

Wolf - Level 1

2009-03-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

I reworked the wolf animation for the first level. Added a tiny bit of colour to the fur... I have somehow managed to exclude the last couple of frames here, but you get the idea.
I don't know if we will use this version because it means making the Jump animation and the Crash animation again, and with the time scale we have I'm not sure I can afford the time. So this will be benched for a while I imagine.

Wolf - Level 1

2009-03-03T04:54:00.000-08:00

This is Wolf Level 1. which obviously preceeds the other Wolf level we have made. You are essentially doing the same thing, catching bunnies and jumping over rocks but it's easier due to the fact that there isn't so much stuff to hide the rocks like in the second level. It's based on the flat planes. The levels would join together in story by having the wolf eventually running into the forest.

We had the idea that the wolf is constantly running because he has been cursed by the witch, because he was eating all her source of food. The rabbits. Or something like that. So I will be drawing some sort of explanatory artwork at a later date to accompany these games.

Bird - Level 1

2009-03-02T05:19:00.000-08:00

Bird Level 2 Finished

2009-03-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

Level Finished!

Here it is
note: Music doesn't loop properly *yet*

catch bugs
different colours = different amount of points recieved
use left and right to control the bird.

Bird - Level 1

2009-02-24T19:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the low quality videos here. Youtube is rubbish, and I'm keeping the filesize small for now.

They look much better in the game

Bird - Level 1

2009-02-20T18:51:00.000-08:00

This will be level 1. We decided to have a level preceeding the one we already had. That way the story can roughly be how the bird has flown back from being out over the sea, and in level 2 hes catching bugs to regain energy.

This level is set at sea. The clouds you see in the picture will slowly rotate and there will be many little animations underneath, like this fishing boat.

The idea is that you catch wind currents to keep up altitude, red currents indicate rising thermals, and blue pockets of air will make you lose altitude. To continue playing you need to keep up speed and altitude.

Bird - Level 2

2009-02-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

To indicate the time allowance for the game, we put this hot air balloon in. You have until it reaches the right hand side of the screen to catch as many bugs as you can

Concept Change

2009-02-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

Problem hit:
So the coding is taking quite a long time to perfect all the little bits and bobs for each the Bird and the Wolf game. This means we have spent too much time working on them so we don't have enough time to produce 3 whole new games as well as finishing these.

Plan of action:
We are going to make different levels for each the Bird and the Wolf game. This way, we can reuse existing code and cut down on the time spent making all that. It just means I need to think of some new levels. I can do this relatively easily now I think.
We plan to make 3 levels for each game.

Note:
This doesn't mean the other games will be forgotten. We are merely postponing them until the Summer, after we finish this Uni year. And will *fingers crossed* have a full set of games ready to show at Gamecity in October/November

Bird - Level 2

2009-02-06T17:32:00.000-08:00

New background. it's much prettier. I will put other elements in. I'm thinking maybe some bison in the field, a little house, and use the fisherman which is in my original ideas.

The original game consisted of flying along a scrolling game. We have changed it so you fly around this area. It makes more sense for catching the bugs when you're in a more contained area. It gives a better sense of freedom being able to move in all directions rather than just up and down.

Bird - Level 2

2009-02-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

Here is the first Demo of the Bird game. The Flies are temporary ones made by Jim.

Use left and right to control the birds flight.

Note: The game hasnt been mounted online properly so you can see the edges which you shouldnt do.

The birds tail is also temporary

Bird - Level 2

2009-02-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

This is the background for the Bird game. I don't know if I'm entirely pleased with it, might have to rework it sometime soon.

This is the animation for the bird. All the animations I do are done by drawing each frame in Photoshop then putting them into Flash

Wolf - Level 2

2009-02-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

Background animations

Wolf - Level 2

2009-02-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

Various animations I did for the Bunnies that the Wolf will catch.

This is the original line test

Here it is coloured in. However it is too long. The wolf would have run past by the time the animation finishes.

Here is the final animation we went with. It's simple and short and repeats quite well.

Wolf - Level 2

2009-02-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

These are examples of tiles I made for the Wolf game floor. There are 3 different heights that line up with each other. It takes a while to do so many variations.

And here is a Demo that Jim made using these tiles and the original backgrounds. Press [Spacebar] to jump over rocks, or face the horrendous placeholder for the 'crash' animation.

Wolf - Level 2

2009-01-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

These backgrounds are made in Photoshop, all the levels of trees are on seperate layers which will move at different timings to create a sort of paralax.

This is the first version, as you can see it's insanely dark. My laptop screen was really bright, which was fine for me but I soon realised that noone else has similar screens to me! So I had to mess with the settings for ages.

This next one is when I fixed my laptop screen, but then I ended up plugging my PC monitor in and using that instead. The difference between this one and the previous is massive. Looks much better. But it's too blue.

Here is the final version which we used, I have added lighting effects which are more visible when you see it scrolling, they are basically coloured shafts of light filtering through the trees. It's much prettier now, using purples fading into greens.

Wolf Animations

2009-01-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

These took many painful hours and many different versions to get it vaguely right. I am no animator, but I am fairly please with the result. They look much better in the mock up game Jim has made.

Fish, Squirrel Backgrounds

2009-01-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

Fish background and foreground

I started working on the background for the Squirrel Game. Here you see the bottom, which is the Spring section. I'm not entirely happy with it just yet. And then it leads into the summer section which has no leaves right now, and no background trees.

Storyline plan

2009-01-02T11:53:00.000-08:00

As you see here, we have made a diagram showing the progression of the story. We had the idea of making it so everytime a player plays the games he/she would get a slightly different experience depending on whether he/she wins or loses.

So as you can see you start with the Bird always, and you can either go on to the Fish or the Cat. It does also mean that each time you will only play 4 of the 5 games. I think this could encourage people to play again, if they discussed playing it with their friends and heard about a level they didn't play it could make them come back and play again to try and get that level they missed out.

Perhaps once one has played all the way through the story, the games could be available to play singularly. Makes them quicker to play for someone who doesn't have hours on their time.

Wolf Concept

2009-01-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

The Wolf
This would be the final level. You play as a wolf, you run along the forest catching bunnies for energy.
A story idea we had is that the Witch [bottom right] has cursed you because she's mean, and you now can't stop running until you find the monk in his shrine at the top of the mountain. But he's not there. because you've just seen him climbing trees in the Squirrel level ;)

Squirrel Concept

2009-01-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Squirrel.
You have to jump from leaf to leaf, in an upward scrolling game. You must reach the top of the level before it becomes winter. Acorns will fall you must avoid being hit by these. There will be acorns on leaves for collection also. You need to collect as many as you can so you can hibernate.
The monk, badger and fox shown in this picture relate to a story I read by Peter Gaiman, and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, called The Sandman. I loved the story and really wanted to incorporate it in my games.

Cat Concept

2009-01-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Cat game.
This one is probably the most simple of all 5 games. You are the cat. Sat by the sea, or a lake. Fish will jump out, and you have to catch them in time. There will be different colours. You have to collect only the colour that the cat likes. It will be a random colour each time a player plays this game. For example. the colour could be blue, so you get points for catching blue, and you lose points for catching any of the other colours.If you catch a colour he doesn't like, he will thow some of his previous catches back in just to spite himself. Cats are fickle creatures.

Fish Concept

2009-01-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

Fish game
The Bird game will lead onto Fish. The Bird could fly over to the fisherman at the end of its game and the fish could jump out. This would be a nice transition between the two games.

The Idea behind this game is you are the black and white fish as shown. You will be swimming around and you blow bubbles up to catch falling plankton-like things. The other fish shown will be in the foreground, quite large, they would block your view.

Other details include other things swimming in the background, like the whale as shown, or a diver, or something similar.

Bird Concept

2009-01-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

Bird Game
This is the first game. The 'Bird' level. You play as a bird. You must navigate the area, collecting bugs as you go. More bugs mean more points at the end.These pictures show some of the details that will be in the level. There is a fisherman and his dog. The guy in his leopard hat and his horse [above]. Both of these could potentially have their own little comics of some description. Or they could be part of the main story.

New Concept

2009-01-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

New Concept Idea

There will be 5 separate mini games, based around the basic story premise which is actually for a larger game concept. These 5 games will share the same style and design treatment, and will interlink with each other using small details such as being able to see elements of the other 4 games in the background, indicating more to the story. The bigger game would be in a 3D world. But these 5 mini games will be 2D in flash and up online so anyone can view/play them.

There is also plans to do some webcomics, or something thats not part of the game exactly, but using elements from the games to produce something else. Convergence is good.

Engines

2009-01-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

The original pitch I have realised is not going to work.

Unreal is all we have available to us to work with. But sadly this is only good if we wanted to make an FPS style thing similar to Unreal. It is not able to produce a racing game, unless we have a LOT of knowledge of the programme. Which we don't. This is an art course.

Other programmes we looked at using were, Havok and Ogre. Again we didnt use these because we had no training in them, the University couldn't provide us with tuition for these and there wasn't enough source online.

Our final programme we looked at was Monolith's Lithtech engine. Codenamed "Jupiter EX," Fear was made in this. They offered it to us at a lower price of something like £5000. Thanks dudes.

So we changed back to Flash. It's simple. Jim has an extensive knowledge of Actionscript 2, and is very able to teach himself the necessary stuff to code these games. Plus, I'm more of a 2D artist than a 3D one anyway. I think we have potential to produce something better this way.

I am thinking I want to make something along the lines of Ferry Halim's collection of Flash games. I want to use high resolution art assets, I feel like most flash games are vectorised, which is great because you can fit more into the space. But I want my games to be relatively simple, but really pretty. We're going to see how far we can push Flash.

Original Pitch (As pitched in September 2008)

2009-01-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

[Click here for the Pitch]

Click the link to see my original pitch presentation. There is no preloader sorry so just wait and it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to load. Use directional keys on keyboard to navigate through.

My idea was to make a racing game. Which involved controlling animals with little riders, similar to that of 'Bomberman Fantasy Race'.

Unlike Bomberman, I wanted much more variety. I wanted many creatures, with customiseable options, like clothing, and patterns, different fur styles etc. For example you could have a giant spider with a top hat, or have a chariot pulled by 3 tiny stripped giraffes. This would lead on to a very extensive game, as I think people like to have the option to customise their avatars in games.

I would want the game to be able to have downloadable content so there could be more creatures/riders/chariots/items added constantly.

Firstly you will see reference pictures from the Art of Okami book. I loved the little characters in this and wanted to do something involving tiny people with naturalistic outfits made from bits and pieces.
The next images are by Daphne Yap. In her book, 'Daphne 01' She has outfit designs which are so creative and interesting, they really inspired me to do something a bit off the wall.

You will then see character and creature designs by me, these are rough sketches as this was just pitch ideas, nothing was absolutely final.