Alas! There is light!

As part of the concept art team, I have merged the two art styles of Sook Yee and my (Fiona) skybox and created the final piece:

 =

having inspiration from the art style of Shane Devries found on this post by Amberley.
Now the skybox has a crisp clean sky with cartoon-like fluffy clouds.

Cleaning the piece was at first difficult with rendered pieces that were in a different resolution to the template skybox, but after some adjustments and tweaking, lines were smoothed out and merged to look seamless. If Shadow ever continues its development, the skybox can be altered to suit different times of the day by adjusting its hues and saturation quite easily.

Fun times in Shadow's world can now continue, now that there is light!

-Fiona.

Props in game

Firstly, thank you Christina for proofreading and adding content to this post.

I'm Zac, one of the minor game prop developer as well as part of the animating team. I will be writing up a little bit on the props in our game.

Our props in the game are specially crafted and even though they are small in sizes, they are pretty much a major part of the game, including the gameplay. Even though some of them are not directly intractable, these little things are the ones that give the game a specific feel that we, as developers, want the player to have while making their through the game. In one of the scenes, our props actually almost fill up the entire scene! This is to create a certain type of ambience, in attempt to generate an experience for the player. We want to give a feeling of style and place, as well as character.

So how do we get our props created?

We first decide on the general art style, which is done way early in the project. Next, we have our talented concept artists draw out a couple of concepts for the idea of the specific props we want done. From there it is an easy job of getting the props steamrolled into creation! It’s also important throughout the development that all assets are brought back on track as far as the art style is concerned. Shadow has also made use of reoccurring shapes in the creation of assets. Can you spot any of them?

User Test

Hey all,

I have not posted in awhile, but thought i would update you with our user testing methods.

Our users test will be coming up soon and we will be using three different methods to test our game, these methods will give us the best results and find our sneaky hidden problems the quickest out of all user test methods.

Method A,
Observation

A simple method, in which a user conductor will observe the game while it is being played by a player. This method is mainly to find any unwanted bugs in the game but also allows us to see the players expressions during the game; if they are angry, frustrated or happy and excited.  We can monitor all of this to allow us to work out what stages are working with the player without breaking their immersion.

Method B,
Questionnaire

 The questionnaire is mainly there to get answers that you would not get from the Third Method (focus Group). It’s for more personal questions and for players that don’t like to talk in a group. This allows us to find hidden information that we didn't notice when observing the player. Such as things they found difficult, information that came across confusing or hidden bugs the user found that we didn't. Unfortunately this is rather useless if the results are different from each user, this method will only work if we find a common problem or common issue allowing us to work on the major problems.

Method D,
Focus Group

The focus group is comprised of the user testers and the user conductor. The conductor will ask a series of questions to the group and take notes based on their answer. The conductor will have to run the group and keep them on the topic of the question. They will focus on monitoring expression and behaviours towards the answers from the person, as well as recording the answer said.

This helps a lot in finding out information that is a common solution, for example; If every one jumped over the bridge to get to the other side and that was what we wanted them to do, then we know that its clear to the player they need to jump over the bridge to get to the other side.

Or if the players explain they found a crack in the wall that got them to the other side. Then we know that the crack was not meant to be there and it's obvious enough that all the users know how to sneak past the finial boss =S awkward.

Thats me, talk to you after the user test.

Team Progress Update!

It's full steam ahead here at Team Shadow land! (ie. the media lab at the uni)

With only a couple of weeks left before we submit our game to IGF there's a presiding sense of panic across the team, and there's nothing like fear of international public humiliation to motivate people to bust a gut!

Let's see...

We have models for 3/4 scenes now, all of Samien's animations are complete, we have a lever and a door and a chest and a bridge, we had voice recording for the Master today (thanks to Alex Sefton for doing a fantastic job, also some chirps recording for a friendly dragon...

There's textures and models and scripts and animations flying around like crazy, and apparently it's my job to make everything work together!

Gotta love being the 'integrator'.

Stay tuned folks (there's aren't really any folks, since our pageviews are like zero), and we'll see you before too long with something that might actually resemble the vision we had at the beginning of the project!

Dragon!

Here's some more from the animation department!

This is our 'spotlight dragon'. He shines light from his mouth, unintentionally causing harm to Samien, when all he wants to do is say hello. He's a happy, chirpy fellow with a spring in his step. See for yourself!

Characters!

Character animation is coming along nicely, with both Samien and The Master starting to feel very alive!

Samien's animations have been polished off, with a few extra specific ones still in the works. The Master is rigged and ready for action, with a basic idle that shows how he will look in-game.

Art Update

Another quick post to show progress on our 3d assets.

 The Master mesh has been completed and is being rigged as we speak

The starting area is now 95% done, we are just missing one or two props. Here are some examples from this scene.

Overall we are progressing quickly now and are all working long and hard to get this game done!

Samien Comes To Life

Work on our character, Samien, is progressing! He's been rigged and skinned, which generally involves building a skeleton to allow movement and joining the model to that skeleton. Now work can start on the animation, and indeed some rough work has already been done!

Here's a the first pass on his walk, run and jump animations.

Art Update

I just wanted to post a quick update on the 3D assets. 

So development is really starting to progress. Our characters are starting to come to life and the environments are being created. Here is the mesh for the masters house (unwrapped and ready for texturing)

 

And we have also started to building the objects that will fill this cozy little home.

Books, writing equipment example

A letter the player interacts with.







We are cranking these assets out as fast as we can and will post again soon.

Puzzle concepts rendered

Just built these quickly in 3ds Max to show two dynamic puzzles.

This is the double cross. The idea is the player starts in the right hand dome's shadow, and walks along the path to a level. After pulling the lever the double cross rotates 90 degrees. This removes one path and adds another, allowing the player to finish. The double cross would be indicated to be mechanical by having gears all over it. This way the player knows that if they see the cross, it requires the elver to use it. then player must find the lever.

It also restricts the player, can can be used as an element to control their movements through a level when used in combination.

This is an example of the spotlight dragon, an NPC. It would walk around the leave on its own. When you whistle or signal it, it will look at you, coo, then shine its spotlight and approach you. The player can shield themselves by grabbing the square plank. This creates a safe and mobile shadow for them to use. They then must 'kite' the dragon towards the tree, whilst facing the exit. This way the dragon will begin eating the tree and leave the shadow path to the exit for the player to travel.

The Original Meeting (Pre-Pitch)

Well before Shadow was decided on, several members of the team got together to discuss some of the possible limitations of the game and thus game play. Possible demographic was also added to the discussion; below are original notes from the session:

·        The game was pitched towards both genders to play; having said this through there was a heavy lean to the general player age being 8 or older. This was because of the level of possible understanding - without being overwhelmed - that would be required for taking in the death of the Master mentioned in the story outline. Also the player (especially a younger player) would need to feel a possible sense of failure and responsibility on finding the Master dead within the game. They would also need to be able to focus as solve complex puzzles.

·         Naming of the main character or protagonist at the mid-point of the story is considered to be highly symbolic, with a name comes the weight or responsibility of the task ahead.  Several names were to be work-shopped (Samien winning out after a team vote). Another possible change to suit this vision was that the graphic of the main character may change slightly to show that they have accepted their new way of being. Such a change is still under discussion.

·         Art style based on Shane Dervries;  (http://www.shanedevries.com/) so warm, high contrast, vibrant with surreal shapes. That being said there is a difference between the two states of the game (pre-crystal and post-crystal acquisition). Before the colours while bright, focus on a COOL pallet meaning a lean towards colours that are toned with blue (but not all blue and NO GREYSCALE). After the character gets the Crystal though the pallet of the different worlds starts to change to a WARM pallet (ie one that has a focus on colours that have a red tint to them)

·         The main challenge the game is about traversing the levels, something which changes on if the character has their crystal or not. Pre-crystal the character can only move through shadows and thus must plan a route across or through a level that strictly follows this. If not then they are wounded or dazed. At this point the character also can not physically interact with any possible monsters and must avoid them. 

·         Post-crystal; however, the character not only gains the ability to walk in the light, but to interact with the levels (and thus worlds) in different ways. Such as being able to get rid of monsters if they so choose, but don’t need too.

·         As a whole the game would fall into the CASUAL genre.

Introducing the World of Shadow

While our character and animation teams make leaps and bounds with their progress on Samien the concept and environment teams have been concerned with their projects; namely a way to communicate some of the key areas of the game to the player for the first time. With one team working on a simple yet homely depiction of the Master’s house the other has been assigned to establish a visual for the turning point of the game – the Crystal Cave. The later project is currently still under wraps though with not much seen other than the initial concept art that was posted earlier in the project there has been some definite solidification regarding the dwelling of the Master. This in turn has given both the team and potential players their first possible glimpses into the world of Shadow.

At the same time there has also been much discussion about how Samien (the main character) will be getting around and what it might look like.