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: