Just got back from SoE live, had a blast. I think I will rest a couple days then start looking into the item forge stuff, seems like a good way to get my name out a bit and get experience at the same time! It was highly recommended by the devs I met at the fan faire. I also did my first EQ tournament while I was there, we had a good shot at third place but unfortunately did not kill quite fast enough (the tie breakers were determined by kill speed). Not a bad showing for a first try, and a pick up group at that! I would also like to give a shout out to Josh Augustine, one of the newer employees running the EQ tournament. He helped our group get rolling and made sure everyone had a fair shot when it came to the tournament event we attended. So great job setting that up Josh, and I will be writing a letter of thanks first thing in the morning to you and SoE for the great time I had.

My friend came into town and we discussed some game ideas a bit. Something involving a werewolf hero etc. Perhaps we might work on a game in our spare time sometime soon, but he gets so wrapped up in life sometimes. Still I will wait and hope for the day we get the chance to create a game together, I am sure we would have a blast. I will keep trying to update this as I can, but material is sparse right now. I guess I am kind of taking a break and practicing up for the SOE live tournament.

Well programmer problems yet again *sigh. My partners seem to never fully commit to their projects. I think I will finish up those characters at some point though. A blast from the past for you: I am playing Everquest again, looking to enter some of those SoE Live events and practicing up. I think I want to take a serious look at competitive gaming, though I will still keep my art skills polished up just in case! As always I will try to post something here when I can. It is kind of turning into more of a traditional blog than a game development journal, but that is life for ya.

Finished the scout animations. Taking things slow still, have the basic sketches done for the other heroes but have yet to get around to coloring them. Will set a goal to at least get that done this week.

Alright, I am getting back in the groove of things now sorry about the delays. I have recently started animating a character for the new game (Heroes village or some such) I am working on seen here: http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34209793 We got an attack and walk animation for an archer type character. It should look familiar because it was created back when I did Legion of Devagog stuff. However, it was never really used so I am using it here. I will have to start from scratch for some of the other animations but this is a good jumping off point. See ya next week! And if anyone knows of some freelance art work let me know, I am currently looking for some extra practice/cash.

Man, sometimes life just comes up and bites you lol. Got a new job a week ago and it has been taking up a lot of my attention. I am working a CNC machine on the night shifts at CAPCO. Not a bad job, a little repetitive, but that is actually okay because I am also learning a ton. Just haven't felt motivated to do art while transitioning to this new lifestyle/schedule. I also am loving guild wars 2, great game so far, but again distracting from my art endeavors. I am beginning to think game art might just be a hobby for me; I just like playing games too much and creating them can be daunting. Still I am not ready to give up quite yet, I plan on hammering out some art this coming week.

Currently working on another side scroll-er similar to the other two games I have posted about. Defense games/fantasy stuff seems in right now when it comes to designing games with Westwood Alumni. I actually worked ahead with a lot of art because I want to binge on guild wars 2, only 3 more days to the head start! At any rate here is some concept art for the new game I am working on:

New game idea in the works hurray, looks like I can use a lot of the art I already have for a decent start too. Working with a fellow Westwood alumni that I worked with in the past named Doug Speights. Looking forward to getting something rolling again, c ya soon!

Been awhile, sorry about that. The IGDA meeting went quite well, passed out a few business cards, and the people were great! Still, a 7 hour drive both ways kind of has me beat. Hope to get back to designing or art very soon though.

Well it looks like we will only have one polished level to present to the contest for Legion of Devagog. However, I do hope the full story will be presented someday. I have been working on tile-sets for the other levels, here is the second level:

I have some blending issues for the tiles... but for the most part it is looking pretty good. The other levels have far less tiles, the second level is probably the most complex due to the rivers. I am actually planning on going to the next colorado IGDA, wish me luck with networking! In the meantime I need to find someone to continue work on supernatural defense... or some other project to work on.

So I was just informed yesterday that the deadline to enter the Westwood College Game Design contest is August 1st (we had heard that there were doubts a contest would even take place, now we get a 2 week notice basically)... My partner has requested some tile work to be done but was thinking it would be more an October finish with her current progress.

I look forward to submitting whatever we have, but I really hope we can get at least a few levels done for a demo and not just the single one we currently have. My next course of action is to ask my partner in this project to focus on extra levels for now... use the AI and such we have so far. It would be better to present as full a game as we can in my opinion.

As for other misc things, Guild Wars 2 beta is looking beautiful for this last event. RvR seems much more balanced and the new races and their areas are looking awesome too. Can't wait for the release next month. Also, I polished up that sketch I did, the lines mostly became guidelines and I painted under them then removed the sketchy stuff. Still could use a little polish, maybe a background as well:

Sorry no updates for this week, and maybe the next. I can tell you the programmer currently is working on the AI and paths for troops on Legion of Devagog though. Other than that it is a slow time at the moment, in between projects and hitting the job searching more. I look forward to another guild wars 2 beta on the 20th though (and the release of the game on august 28th)!

Well, nothing much to report this week. I got some menu buttons done for Legion of Devagog and worked on a sketch:

It is a necromancer concept I was thinking about. Coloring this and cleaning up the line work should be fun.

Final king finished, and all are assigned to their lands:

On the programming side of things we have save/load finished. Things seem to be moving slowly but it is still progress. The programmer for Supernatural Defense seems to have gone AWOL on me, so that project is dead in the water. In the meantime I might work on one of those special units for Legion of Devagog and other random projects.

So next update may be a bit late, but you never know.

Alrighty, so I have all but one king/boss done for Legion of Devagog. Here they are:

The names are just something I can up with on the fly, so they may or may not change. One is a dwarf king, the one that is missing will be a black knight type king/queen, the only one where a face is not visible most likely. After each level a dialog will come up with the face of one of the kings and tell the player a bit more of the story and maybe a little of the next area; they will also thank the player for freeing them from dark magic.

I also added a piece to my portfolio that I did for fun and to increase my skills, a void knight type character: http://dracon852001.wix.com/csinclairportfolio#!2d-art/albumphotos4=0

That's all for this week, look forward to doing the last king and maybe some more random concepts for the coming week.

Last week I said I would be doing some game art, but there was a death in the family and the service was a couple days ago. So art kind of got put on hold, sorry readers. I did update one of my portfolio pieces though, defined the edges better and just improved the entire thing in my opinion. Check her out at http://dracon852001.wix.com/csinclairportfolio#!2d-art/albumphotos4=3
She is my favorite character from a game called League of Legends, so they get credit for the original idea, but I decided to create my own work with her midway between her human and dragon form.

Hopefully I will feel up to doing some more work next week. I have decided to pay more attention to my art skills due to a presentation I watched from Westwood. They had examples of what should be done (yes) and what isn't good enough (no). I kind of thought my art fell into the maybe pile, I think it is good, but with some more attention my art could become awesome. Got to stop spending so much time watching netflix and gaming haha.

So, I have all the levels finished. My final two levels are Lavascars and Devagog's Castle. The shrine levels are all relatively the same setup though I was hoping to have the troops at each shrine have certain effects on them possibly.

Lavascars:

For Lavascars I want to have environmental hazards. The lava will come up at random intervals making troop movement more complicated. The player will have to time when to move troops into battle, and possibly even draw enemy troops into traps to progress. The ultimate goal still being to storm the castle of course.


Devagog's Castle:

For the final battle I want it to be the biggest army seen yet stationed outside the castle (so it starts sort of like a shrine battle). The player will have to engage this first, and after a set time reinforcements would start spawning like they do on normal maps. Every troop should count, each choice carefully considered. Also I was thinking about adding shrine power-ups to help beat the level. For example the player could call upon the sword shrine to strengthen an attack for short time, or combine all shrine power-ups to make a smaller force much more effective etc. There will be no obstacles on this map, just two mighty forces clashing on an open field.

That's all for this week. Next week I am thinking about making some portraits for the kings of each land to go with some end text. Just trying to keep busy and add more to the game.

I have managed to work through 5 level concepts so far. I will skip the first, since that is pretty much already setup.

Level2: Rivera.

In this level I was going for a slightly different setup with diagonal castles. There will be two paths of attack for both the enemy and the player. I hope to introduce collisions (troops can not go through the river, only across bridges) and different battle strategies with this map.

Level3: Sword Shrine

This level is sort of an arena combat type level, there are three shrines (levels 3, 5, and 7) to help a player defeat Devagog with certain powers. These sorts of levels might be a bit easier due to the fact a player can select counters from the start. Once all troops have been placed a sort of melee erupts. If a player has balanced their forces correctly they should prevail and thus win the map. Certain shrines may give the enemy an advantage; once the players gold supply runs out there is no more on these maps. They are sort of sink or swim maps.

Level4: Highpeak

With Highpeak I was going for a sort of maze type setup. Troops will be funneled through the mountains and emerge at various points making defense difficult. The obstacles could also be used for ambushes though. Other than the obstacles it is similar to the first level, just a melee and kill the enemy castle sort of setup.

That is all for this week. I plan to continue working on levels and graphics as time goes on and at least finishing the graphic side of things. I need one more terrain type and some lava pits for lava scars and a special castle graphic for Devagog's castle.

I said I would be more optimistic and pro-active when it came to creating game assets so here is the result: A complete game map for Legion of Devagog!

Ideally this would be displayed as a level transition with players starting at Foresta and an icon moving clockwise as they progress through the game. The finished game will have eight levels if you include shrine battles. Currently we only have Foresta close to finished, but it is nice to have the rest of the game mapped out. I figure my part is just to make some textures and a couple extra graphics. The programmer will need to hammer out collisions and a couple extra battle conditions in addition to map transitions. She is still currently working on unit control and other details at this time though. Once that is done the extra levels shouldn't be too hard from what I have heard from the programmer.

I really appreciate having Kelsey to do the programming side of things, and look forward to making this dream of mine a reality (or giving it our best shot anyways!).

I have returned from vacation and look forward to working on the two projects I have going at the moment. I think I will take a more pro-active approach and start working on stuff we will use if everything goes well rather than waiting for the programmer to catch up (since it is now definite the LoD programmer has returned to the project).

As for the vacation itself; I took a trip with my family to Disneyland, Sea world, and Knott's soak city. We stayed at a time share in Palm Springs. 3 kids around 9 years old, a teenager, myself, and my parents. The kids were pretty annoying, ranging from whiny to shooting people with squirt guns lol. Only one of the kids accompanied me and Tyler (teenage nephew) on roller coasters. We stayed at Disneyland until 1 am in the morning, which was exhausting. I had 6 blisters on my feet, a sunburn from yesterday, and being a gamer/computer nerd I am not in the best physical shape. Still I suppose it was all worth it and everyone had a good time.

Well it looks like I am taking a couple weeks break for now. I have asked my programmers if they needed anything before I went on vacation and they seem okay for now. I may work on some concept art or adding more to the mockup, but I wouldn't expect much until I return on June 4th.

I got a initial mockup for the tutorial section of Supernatural Defense: http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34094589 (you may have to watch it twice as esnips loads it slow or something the first time). It will show players which weapons to use against each foe. Still working on sounds, though I may have some background music now. Projects are almost set to go on hold for a week as I go on a vacation with my family on the 26th though.

Hopefully by then my programmers have caught up a bit and I can hit the art a bit harder then I have been. I really am looking forward to entering the contest Westwood is offering for these games I am creating, but a lot is riding on: can the programmers create something close enough to the original design plan and will it be fun? Still, I am happy to continue working on these sorts of projects as they provide valuable experience; they are also quite fun to create!

I have made contact with the programmer for Supernatural defense and he says things are going well, but the base defenses are not tracking properly. Some design compromises might need to be made but I told him to try and get the original design to work. As such the mockup was put on hold due to this, but I will keep in touch and I have all the elements ready to go except sounds. For now here is how I envision a screenshot of the game to look:

Just a simple hp indicator in the upper left corner with some way to track score and progress on the bottom of the screen. We also see the holy water cannon selected and being put to use on a demon. Some refinements may yet be made, but for now this will be the basis for my mockup should my programmer get those turrets to work correctly.

Sorry for the slow updates... I always seem to slow down a bit towards the end of a project (mainly to let my partners catch up it seems, since usually one should probably rush to finish the game when near the end). The art is fairly quick with simpler games where one knows details will be less noticeable due to screen size. Currently all that is left is to get some sounds and make a mockup of the game, maybe a couple interface elements. This week I revisited another old project that should do nicely for the intro screen to this game:

We have our werewolf silhouetted by the moon and various creatures in the background, I always figured the best way to introduce a game is to show a player the enemy first. Of course, previews of the scenery are not a bad idea either. This actually started as an illustrator file (vector art), I decided to make the werewolf softer and more like a painting though with my tablet and Photoshop.

Anyways, I am still waiting to hear back on the progress from the programmer, hopefully I get news soon. C ya next week!

Sprite animations complete! Upper left/center is Fae units, far right are demons and lower left are werewolves. We should now have everything we need for a basic game: enemies, a map with various time settings, a base with defenses, and projectiles to kill the enemies.

Next up is finishing up the very basic interface which should include a health bar for the player, a wave counter, and maybe a score indicator. Also I need to work on an intro screen and various sounds to go with these animations.

Supernatural Defense is moving right along, and I can't wait to hear what updates my programmer has on the project.

Okay I will admit it I got a little side tracked with Guild Wars 2 open beta last weekend. All I really got done over the week was some sketches of the characters and how the game would work:

Basically I am envisioning the phone being held sort of like controller and the player can aim using either both thumbs or in a position like this with a surface to rest it on (knees, a table).

As for Guild Wars 2 it was pretty good, could still use some polish but really not bad for a beta. I can see it coming out in a couple more months easy!

Alright, kicking things off fast with Supernatural Defense, we have base sprites finished, the fort is in place and the backgrounds work. I am now working on enemies, projectiles and an intro screen. At the moment I have just finished the werewolf animations, and am working on the other two enemies. The interface comes last this time around.

So all in all I would say the art side of things is a little over halfway done (maybe even nearing 3/4 done).

So it seems my work on Legion of Devagog is complete for now. I have put it on hold to work on another project called Supernatural Defense. It is a base defense game where the player must choose the correct weapons to prevail against various foes. Here is some initial concept art:

I actually had created this background for another game... but that seems to have been discontinued so I see no reason why I can't use those backgrounds for this game (especially since they were mine in the first place haha).

Revised and improved mockup: Added green circles and dots to simulate player selecting unit and moving it (the circles may also designate a target to move to). The train button darkens to simulate a click. And there is now a main menu in the demo that simulates a player saving and resuming the game. The end where the enemy concedes was mainly just to shorten the demo, though it is not a bad idea to implement in the real game.

The mockup still runs a little fast, as if an expert player is playing it. However, it is a lot slower than it originally was (I almost halved the frame-rate to slow it down from the original, because you had to watch it a few times to catch everything going on).

Well, module 9 seems to have went over fairly well, though the instructor said I could tune up my game mockup a bit more. Still 91 out of 100 in the workshop is not bad at all!

Also, I have decided to add a new page to my portfolio to display my game design endeavors:
http://www.wix.com/dracon852001/csinclairportfolio#!game-projects
Please check it out, I plan to put the best of my game assets there as I create them, though you will see some of them here on this blog as well. I hope to continue sharing my design endeavors, thanks for reading/viewing, I will continue to update at least once a week.

In other news, my birthday is coming up, so I fully plan to slack off a bit and give myself something nice; perhaps pre-order guild wars 2 lol.

Yes I am still alive, just a bit distracted still. I will turn Module 9, the final module for the workshop this Sunday. Then I will work on art for the extras I had planned for the game. The new art is looking good, I will link to it when I have everything organized and set up. It has been a great ride and I am looking forward to seeing the art come together and come to life in a game!

So far I have a decent game mockup completed. I have bit preoccupied lately, but I am approaching the finish line in terms of the initial design. Completing this module will finish the workshop. As I look back on everything I have to say it was a great adventure designing this. I firmly believe my skills have grown and that I have learned just a little bit more about what it takes to design a game.

This is not to say the game is finished, I still have a lot of things I want to add into it to make it a unique and fun experience. But I continue work on my own rather than with a structured workshop. I plan to keep in touch with Kelsey, my partner, and keep things rolling, so stay tuned for further updates.

Module 8 complete, it called for a refined interface and background:

This will probably be the final interface template I use. The background seen is probably what the first or second level will be based off of. So a lot of the elements are complete and we are well on our way to a working first level! I know the programmer is still working on some things, but it is nice to be almost done with the modules.

Module 9 looks to be mainly gathering everything up, refining some images, and presenting. A mockup of the game is called for as well, presented via a flash animation. I look forward to putting everything together!

Module 7 complete, I actually had to refine my image... Unfortunately I redesigned at my old size and not a bigger size so there are some pixel artifacts (not too bad though). Note to self, design larger, it is easier to shrink things than it is to make them bigger lol.

The level 1 map currently looks like this (though it may actually be level 2, I got to talk to my partner and see what they think, they may already have a rough map to finalize for a first level):

Module 8 is refining this background and my interface elements further. I actually will redo the larger portions of this at a higher resolution per the instructors recommendation.

two modules left to go, but I feel we can take this game above and beyond this course if we keep in touch and keep working on it!

Module 7 was about interface elements and creating a first level as far as I could tell. My general thoughts on game interfaces are: Keep them simple, unified and unobtrusive. A good interface lets the player access the game options or components and then fades into the background.

I know this is a bit blurry because of the compression used but it should give a general idea of my interface. The music is from

http://www.last.fm/music/Christoph+Sachal/_/Lofwyrian+Forest 

I was not sure about what the terms are for that music, but I figure as long as I cite the source in the credits it should be okay in this case.

Hm it seems we are moving to another workshop, but keeping all the progress we made in this one. I welcome more time to work on the game though! As it stands I have just turned in module 6 and hope to move on to 7. A new workshop will give more time to add some of those little extras I have tacked on the end of my game design document!

Progress to date for the game:
Most of the assets for the first level and introduction screen are done. We have road tiles, trees, an enemy castle, a friendly castle, and the basic troop frames done.

On the programming side of things we have some basic AI up and running, troops move towards bases and charge enemies if they get within a certain range. Next up is getting them to fight to the death in certain situations.

All in all things are moving along nicely, but we still have a ways to go. We need more maps and sounds, possibly some more units (extras). I put an initial guess at the game being around eight levels.

Hope to see some other students accompany me to the next workshop, and for others reading this I hope my ramblings help in some way!

And Module 5 was a success! In module 6 we are refining the sprite sheets further for a final draft of the animation cycles. In my case the feedback was: The knight animations look a little jittery and jump around a bit, also it was not clear what was happening in the death animations (not enough movement). These changes should not take too long to make... I just go into photoshop and bring up the frames, make my tweaks, and import them back into flash files en mass. Then I save the files, gather em up again and seek more feedback or move on to the next module. I plan to do one set a day, so by the end of this week (Sunday) I should have another submission for the workshop if all goes well.

With less than 3 weeks to go in the workshop I am putting my foot on the gas so to speak to see if I can rise to the challenge of finishing it in time. It was a slow start, but now I am gunning for the home stretch, Module 9 is the final module and it is my goal to make it there!

Whew, Module 5 was a lot of work. Not only did I have to add a lot to my sprite sheets to make better animations but I also had to find sound effects for said animations. I looked around and found a couple good ones at http://soundbible.com/ but for the most part I ended up creating custom sound effects with Audacity (.wav recording program) and adobe soundbooth. I also got news today that the workshop ends in 3 weeks, and there are 4 modules to go! thankfully I think the last two are wrapup modules but it will be a busy time coming up that is for sure.

So I made it to module 5. It is basically refining my sprite sheets to create better animations. So those 6 frames from the knight sheet turned into this:

First column is the new attack animation, second the new walk, third the new death animation. Each animation used to be only 2 images each, now it is a lot more and thus brings more life to the character. The all combine to create something like this for an overall character animation:

 Diving into Module 4 discussion:

"Let's get the art and development team sharing information on what it takes to display animations in the game. How do sprite sheets work? How are the sprite sheet assets created? What is the optimal format for the sprite sheet?" - Westwood

A three part question eh? Well, first off sprite sheets are basically a grouping of images that change slightly to create the animations we all know and love in games. For example a walk animation has to have the feet, arms, and even head move each step. Each stage of the animation is a separate image. All these images in one place create a sprite sheet for the movements of a character.

Creating a sprite sheet is usually done in a graphics program such as Photoshop. You want to copy an original image and move parts of it slightly to make a realistic animation (too much and it is jerky, too little and the movement is too slow). The sheet can then be tested to be sure it is all working properly in Flash or some other program that can combine the images in the form of frames to create a movie clip of the animation. The links in this module go to programs or sites that help put these sheets into some form of order. With more complicated sprite sheets this might be necessary (though with the one I posted I think I got it under control).

The optimal format for a sprite sheet seems to be a PNG image with the sprites that make up an animation evenly spread out. When discussing this with my partner they requested that each sprite be the same size as well. So in my case each sprite was 64X64 pixels, so each frame of the animation is that size. The reason that the images are PNG are so that you can see the background, since PNG supports transparency layers.

It seems I already have most of this under wraps, but I will see what sort of feedback I get from the instructors on my submission in a bit.

Moving on to module 4! It appears this module focuses on the sprite sheets. While the last focused on model sheets like this one:

It could use a bit more polish, but was my overall best. I think I will try and make this one portfolio worthy over the weekend and then move on to refining the sprite sheets.

So far here is what I have for a sprite sheet:

The black and red are the enemy troops while the grey/cyan are player troops. From top to bottom the animations for said sprites are: Idle, right foot, left foot, ready to attack, attack, death. I uploaded these to adobe aftereffects to test out animating the sprites with these poses. The right and left foot alternating can make a walk animation, while the others are poses for actions or events in the game. I look forward to seeing how I can improve these with the resources mentioned in module 4. So next week I get to work with animating in flash and plan to submit a swf file by the end of the week.

Whew big update, moving forward with things though and I am starting to think of features that will make my game idea unique and fun. Time to kick back and enjoy the weekend for now though!

This week I focused more on sprites. I had the concept art, so now it is down to model sheets and deciding how they will look in game. I will probably just use very simplified graphics rather than 3D models, though 3D models have the advantage of being easier to animate. In this case I just plan to have different poses to signify events like attack and defend, maybe an in between frame or two to smooth it out.

My partner has made a list of the assets we need and I already have a good start on that list. I look forward to getting the basics done for the sprites next week and maybe looking a bit more into the storyline of the game.

Here are some new concept art pieces for the game:

From left to right should be pretty self explanatory: Knight, Mage, Archer, these are the basic troops a player will control in the game. They of course will be simplified as sprites, but this is just a concept of them all to get things rolling. I think the best one of the bunch is the mage, The other two just didn't come out as well as I expected.

I am also putting together a story which will tentatively put the game at eight levels. More art to come later as I finish up module two of the workshop. Perhaps I can make a decent action scene to go with this "standoff" scene.

Introduction:

I decided to enroll in Westwoods Android workshop. As it started up I hammered out an idea, I wanted to take the best aspects I remember from some classic games and combine them to make a unique fast paced fantasy RTS. While I know there are already some big names for that genre, I figured it would be a good experience to try my hand at designing one for myself. I reviewed some of my favorite games like Ogre Battle March of the Black queen, and Brigandine to get an idea of what I wanted to do. I then drew up a game design document to detail the game. In essence I liked the two games mentioned earlier, but I wanted a more streamlined combat system with the same basic concept: defeat the enemy army, take their castle, advance the story.

After a bit of looking I found a programmer to help me implement my design and took it from there. I created sprites and the initial map in Photoshop. I also worked out an intro screen... I tried a bit of voice acting but my partner kindly informed me that while I was trying for evil and menacing I didn't succeed lol.

Some initial art for the concept is below: