New Sprites

So, here are some of the sprites I've been working on for world 2.

New Transformation! New power!

These were a lot of fun to do. Trying to really push the cartooniness to make transforming feel really cool in game. I'll talk more about the robot power and its features in a later post.

New Enemy!

Here's the Roboshoot 5000. He shoots at you. He doesn't die like the stingers in the first world, he just shuts down so you can always go back for the power. 

New checkpoints!

In the past we used the light gates as vague checkpoints. That wasn't their original function, and the checkpoint spots were kinda thrown in as an afterthought. We've now made for real checkpoints and are placing them more thoughtfully, which is important because the levels in world 2 are a lot longer. In the future we're also going to revamp world 1, placing them less haphazardly, and reworking enemy positions to ease the learning curve. 

Turrets! They shoot at you!

Oh no!

That's it.

Polishing the Transform Animation

I spent a lot of today finishing up that transform animation. It gave me more trouble than a lot of the others because I had started the first pass straight ahead on 1's, 2's and 4's without much of a plan. The result I got was basically good, but needed a lot of polish

Here's what I had started with:

It's not the worst thing in the world, but there are parts that could be clarified. The idea of the transform was that his arms would pop into wings and pull him up. As a friend pointed out to me, it really isn't clear that his arms are what's changing. It almost just looks like wings are popping out of his back.

The reason is that the initial antic pose for his arm was all scrunched up like so:

Which I think could have been kind of fun....if anyone could see it...

The fact that I followed that with a vague smear didn't help much.

Fixing it was a simple matter of making a bigger deal out of his arm before it changed

I made the arm pose a little cleaner and had it slow in to the anticipation so that it stays around that pose for an extra frame before popping off. I also replaced the vague smear with a clearer morphing pose.

Here it is animated:

The next real issue is that the spacing's a bit of a mess. Since I did a lot of it straight ahead I hadn't planned for proper slow ins and outs, so his bounce is a little mushy. I went over the whole thing and pushed his up and down extremes a little further, while cleaning up the overall arc a bit. 

The differences are subtle, but there. From there it was mostly clean-up.

I cleaned up the body and arms first as they're the main action. The legs are all follow through, and the face is largely secondary, so I threw them inside of symbols to be dealt with later.

Then I dealt with them.

...guess that's it...

'Till next time.

Transformations

One of the hardest things we've had to come up with from the design side is how the transformations are going to look. We've had a lot of cool ideas, but they had to be scrapped simply because there are too many variables to account for. We needed an animation that would work no matter what state the player/enemy sprites are in and no matter which direction they were facing.

 Here's the idea I think we'll end up going with:

When the player kills the enemy it'll swoop down and compress into a little ball that hovers over to the player.

Once it hits the player he transforms into his new state with his new abilities (unless it's a slime...those don't give him powers. It just hits him and disappears).

Here's the first pass at the roughs for his transformation. I'll fix a few things then clean it up tomorrow:

It's a nice, simple solution that separates both animations, and should help them transition smoothly from any state.

So, How's the Game Work?

Ah, day 3 of the production blog. I suppose it's time to explain how the game actually works.

The basic premise is "Light Demons have invaded Shadowland and possessed all of the creatures. It's up to you to stop them!" (I'll go more into the story once I get the cut-scenes drawn out for you.)

It's sort of your basic platformer. All the enemies are these glowing light creatures:

(Well, in game they glow...the glow doesn't export well into an animated gif)

Somewhere in the level each enemy has a lightswitch. When you turn it off they become shadow versions of themselves

At which point they're harmless and you can merge with them to use their abilities to solve puzzles and get around obstacles. (You can only flip one switch at a time, though. Once you deactivate one, it reactivates all the others.)

For instance if you wanted to get to the ledge in the upper left:

You'd kill the little flying dude, and fly up there.

That's an easy example...

Eventually it'd get a bit harder...you'd have to dodge spikes and stuff...

Should be fun...

Here's hoping

Designing Shadow Jones

So, I guess I'll start off with the development of the main character, Shadow Jones, the Shadow from Shadowland.

Funny enough, he started out as a magician:

It was an idea for a short film I had a couple years ago about a sort of magic duel between a magician and a sorcerer. Not the greatest idea in the world, but I wanted it to be in a cool, silhouettey style.

Anyway, eventually I canned it in favor of what became The Mighty Hunter

After TMH I was back to trying to find an idea for my next short and started doodling that magician again.

If you look across those pages from right to left you can almost see him change from the magician to the shadow. I eventually simplified his slicked back hair into just that little swoosh in the back, and dropped the sleeves and pants in favor of simple arms and legs.

Eventually it became a story about a little shadow who's wandering around one day when he finds a little glowing light bulb. He reaches out to touch it and the light burns his hand off. Once the light bulb has a taste for shadow flesh it starts chasing him around and stuff. Then the shadow...

dies...

or something...

I never really worked out the story 100%...

It was becoming little more than an extended chase scene, so I was about to scrap it. Then I figured it'd make a cool game, so I suggested it to Cody.

Now that's what it is...

Here are some sprites of him in a couple of the forms he takes in the game:

Pilot

Oh hey, I didn't see you there.

Welcome to the production blog of Off-switch, a cool mobile game my buddy Cody and I are making. It's a puzzle platformer about this little shadow dude who's home has been invaded by light demons.

I'm doing all the art so I'll be posting neat stuff like:

Concept Art:

Sprites:

And Level Design:

Hope the whole thing ends up being interesting. We'll probably post links to beta versions and stuff as we get them, so stay tuned.

-Marty