Character Design

            There are a few obvious factors I need to think about when creating my character;

·         Keep them within the Mexican/Luchadore theme.

• ·        Give them a large upper body (since they’ll be doing a lot of throwing!).
• ·       Make them simple enough to animate efficiently.

With this in mind, I began by creating a set of silhouettes to get an idea for the form of the character:

I actually like quite a few of these, so my next step is to take them into Flash and Photoshop to colour them and give them a more definitive personality. Here’s where I’ll also come up with some sort of costume and mask design/colour scheme to go with the character.

I think this first concept is good in the way that it’s quite unique, but I really don’t think it suits the direction I’m looking for my game to go in. Plus, that face is seriously creepy. He looks like he’s just been plucked from the ground or something.

I like the way the muscles could be really squashed and stretched during the animation stage in this design, but there’s something about the rest of the body that I’m not too keen on. I’ll keep the point about the arms in mind as I continue. I like the colour scheme of the mask here and the design is simple enough without being too bland. I think I’ll stick with this colour scheme for now and change it further down the line if I need to.

I was actually really pleased with this particular design, but unfortunately it’s far too complicated to animate efficiently in the time I have to complete this project. I think I need to simplify the design quite drastically.

Again, as much I like this design, I feel as though it’s a little too simple. I think that during animation this would fall victim to looking far too flat and paper-like very easily.

 

After many days of frustration and sketching, I’ve settled on this design for my character. I took the rounded muscles from my second design so I could emphasise them with squashing and stretching and coupled them with a relatively simple-shaped body. I think this design will be easy to animate well and efficiently while still retaining a lot of character. A lot of the expression will come from the face but the body will be easy to manipulate into various different shapes to get the ‘slightly-exaggerated’ look that I’m after. Here’s a turnaround sheet of the character:

At this stage of my development I had a critique session with my tutors, who I explained the idea I had for the colouring technique I would be using:

Here are 4 different styles of colouring; flat Flash colour with either cross shading or block shading and 2 variations of a Photoshop-painted style. I initially chose to go with the Photoshop-painted style (without cross-shading) because I thought the clean outline of the character and the sketchy colour on the inside of those lines would give off a really nice ‘boiling paint’ effect. After doing some research into how long it would take to export each frame from Flash to Photoshop and paint them one at a time, I decided that this method would take far too long and take away valuable time which I could be putting into the animations. For now, I’ll animate the characters in black & white and decide which colouring method is best when that’s done since it’s easier to colour in finished animations that it is to animate with colour. Well, in Adobe Flash it is anyway.

Now that I have my final character designed and the turnaround sheet for reference, I can begin the animation process! I’m doing quite well for time according to my schedule, so hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here on out!

The Concept

So, using all of my research from both BA7 and my research report on the successes of mobile gaming, I'm going to take what I feel makes the most addictive and simple mobile games and use them to create a game that fits in with the 'Lucha Libre' theme that I've chosen to go with.

My main goal with the concept is to implement some sort of high-score mechanic since this will leave the game open for tons of variation as the player will always have a different outcome. Another thing I want to focus on is making the game easy to ‘pick-up-and-play’ very quickly since, in my research report, I found that these were the most successful games in terms of gameplay and replay-ability so I’d like to retain that in my concept. How would all of this fit into a fighting game, you ask? Well, let's experiment!

Since the Mexican way of wrestling is a fast, full-contact sport with lots of jumps and movement, I’ll need to think of a mechanic that is both simple enough to play on a touch screen device but is still faithful to the source theme. My main inspiration for making this game in the first place is ‘Punch-Out!!’, a classic game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was an incredibly simple game but it really made the most of the hardware when it was released back in 1987. The player would be standing in one spot while only being able to briefly dodge left and right or punch. Such simple controls, couple with different enemy patterns and weaknesses made this simple control scheme seem perfect for the game.

I think the idea of having the player stand in one place with limited movement is definitely the way to go for my game. Mobile controls aren’t particularly suited to full, precise movements so I can take advantage of that and create something that makes the most of the touch-screen.

I’ve decided to go with having the player swipe in 4 different directions to execute a limited number of moves to attack and defend, since this allows for quick, imprecise gestures to be turned into easily-executable moves. I could incorporate things such as the accelerometer somehow, but I’ll look into that a little further down the line. It’s basics for now!

I also had the idea of having it so the players would throw each other from the ring to get the best score (in distance possible) instead of the traditional 'pin them down' rule. This would make the game a lot more fast-paced and well-suited for mobile play and open up a plethora of new mechanics I can play about with. Obviously there would still need to be a degree of fighting/wrestling involved as I still need to keep it as close to the original theme as I can, but with a twist that really suits the platform. I’ll have some sort of timer attached to the game as to encourage quick, timed play.

So the concept so far is…a 2D fighting game built specifically for mobile touch-screen devices. The goal is to weaken your opponent in a set amount of time before throwing them out of the ring as far as possible for the highest score. I’ve been playing through the game in my head and I can see this idea panning out quite nicely!

Game Design Document

So, let’s get cracking with this Game Design Document (I’ll be referring to this as ‘GDD’ from now on, just so you know). The idea here is to make a document containing every little detail of the game so that if it were given to a team with no prior knowledge of the game, they would still be able to produce to the level of the original vision. I want to keep this as professional as possible so, using the research I did into it in BA7, I’ve made a rough template containing the contents of everything I’ll need to put in the game, with room to add new things as they crop up. To get it to the game industry standard that I want it to be at, I’m going to keep the design of it as simple as possible since, unlike a pitch,  this isn’t trying to sell the game. It’s is primarily just for conveying the information to the development team so fancy visuals are not only unnecessary, but can detract from the GDD.

In the GDD I’ll need to include every detail about my game concept as if it was going to be developed and released. This includes (but isn’t limited to) the game mechanics, characters, rendering, the game world, user interface, game engine, sound design, single player and multiplayer details. Playing the game out in my head during this process is incredibly important as I can pin-point any problems that might occur during gameplay, such as balancing issues and unfair advantages.

…writes GDD…

So, I’ve got the majority of my Game Design Document completed (head over to the submission folder if you’d like a gander!) and I’ve got a pretty solid idea of how the game will play out. Now I can move on to the character designing!

The very beginning...

So, now that BA7's been and done (after many set-backs, anyway!) I can finally begin BA8's production. The aim is to produce a professional-quality game design document, animated 2D character(s) to be presented in a portfolio style and all the details of the production along the way! Using all of the research I've gained from BA7, I'll start by creating and detailing a solid game concept and going from there!