Development Video #3 - Shorter, Faster... Better?

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Here's the first of this month's development videos.  It focuses  on a new plant we've added called the 'perennial-screamer', for reasons that will become obvious when you watch the video.

As I mentioned last post we're trying something new, cutting down the length of the  individual videos and posting two development videos a month instead of one.  I also experimented with zooming in and cutting the game footage so that it's hopefully a bit clearer what's going on.   So while it looks pretty chunky and old school the game actually runs at 1024x768.

If you want to see a sharp version of  the new art in this video, I'd recommend checking out the previously mentioned  T.O.Jam posting about the game.  It shows off the over the top statue of General Bauhaus, a perennial-screamer and a useful flower who's identity has yet to be revealed, though fans of obscure flora may notice a certain resemblance to a real life flower.

T.O.Jam preview image.

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The Toronto Games Jam blog has a new post about Guerrilla Gardening  with a brand new image that gives a little sneak peak of some things to come.   If you want to see it you'll have to Click the Link! T.O.Jam is a yearly event where local Toronto programmers, artists, musicians and sound designers meet up, form small teams and try to make finished games in a single weekend.  It's been running for three years and last year's was the second largest game Jam ever and the largest game jam to this day with a dairy based theme.  There are a ton of interesting fun games to check out from all three years, all free to download and play so it's well worth browsing around.  If you are local to Toronto and three days of back breaking game making labour sounds like fun the next T.O.Jam is set for sometime in May.

I'll be posting our next development video up Sunday night right on schedule, unless I'm set upon by wolves (a constant danger in the wastelands of urban Canada).  Based on feedback we're going to try something a little different, next weeks video will be shorter  and I'll be posting a second one half way through the month.  So you'll get the same amount of content as before but more often and in bite sized chunks.

Development Video #2

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A little late but here is this months development video!  Andrew has been busy getting features into the prototype and stomping out bugs so this time I recorded it solo.  Last month all we could do with the prototype was create a simple world with a few people wandering around and almost no interactive elements,  you'll  see we've come a long way and there's a good chunk of simple gameplay working now.

Because YouTube and pixel art aren't friends here's a still shot from the current version. Remember as we mentioned in the first video, we're keeping the art minimal for the prototype, so this doesn't represent what the final game will look like.

Designing the Police.

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The police will be the main enemy in Guerrilla Gardening and outwitting them through distraction and stealth is going to be a key part of the game play.  It's important to me that they are also a visual representation of the military dictatorship you're fighting against so I wanted them to feel imposing and anonymous (or at least as imposing as little pixel art police men can be). My initial design was a rush job, used to illustrate an early design doc I was preparing as part of a grant application. I hid the eyes to add that touch of imposing anonymity and borrowed a lot of design elements from military dress uniforms since dictatorships will often blur the line between the police and military.

police-sprite-01
police-sprite-01

Because it was a rush job I've never been completely happy with this design, so I decided to go back to the drawing board before animating him. To begin redesigning the police I started with a few pencil sketches.

police-sketches
police-sketches

I didn't bother doing any large detailed sketches, since it's easy to get carried away and add details that will never make it into a small sprite. I just wanted to get a good feel for the build and general style.  I also decided that I wanted to experiment with elements from riot police and swat teams in addition to the military dress style since you often see those sorts of uniforms worn by police in modern clashes with protesters.

I then took my original sprite and started editing it. I found the original stance kind of cramped so the first thing I did was make it more broad and open. I then tried a bunch of variations based on the styles I'd chosen.

police-sprite-02
police-sprite-02
police-sprite-03
police-sprite-03

I liked the way these were looking, but decided I should increase the sense of danger by bulking them up. This also had the advantage of giving them a unique silhouette so they'd be easier to distinguish from Molly and the civilians.

When Andrew and I met to work over the weekend I showed him what I had and we decided to go with the swat style design.  We still like some of the other designs and may use them for higher rank enemies in the future.  Before going forward I did some subtle colour edits based on Andrew's feedback.

police-sprite-04
police-sprite-04
police-rotation
police-rotation

At this point I felt he was ready for the 'full revolve'  and drew him in five directions flipping the sprite where I could to make the full eight needed.

He's looking pretty good. There may be some small perspective errors but  it's easier to spot them after the sprite is in the game, so from here I take each of the angles and create a simple walk cycles for them.

We're Back!

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We're back to regularly updating the blog and as you'll notice all the previous post have returned. We're also proud to announce that Guerrilla Gardening has been selected  as recipient of the Ontario Media Developement Corporation: Screen-based Content Initiative (say that ten times fast) which will be providing much of the funding for our early prototype work!

As a small developer trying to  make the shift from contract work to independent projects like Guerrilla Gardening, I can't express how much this is going to help us.  It's fantastic that the province of Ontario is helping support not just Spooky Squid Games but several other small independent game developers at the early development stage, when it is especially difficult to get outside funding.

Anyway I know most of you are here to read about the game and not about the trials and tribulations of funding small game companies.  I'll be posting up an entry about the process of  designing the police sprites in a few minutes and should have the new development video online either tonight or sometime tomorrow depending on how long my 'post life drawing class' coffee buzz lasts.

Okami Style Glitch

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We spent Saturday working on the police sprites and implementing Molly's plant seeding action.   About half way through the day this neat glitch happened where trails of blooming flowers followed Molly as she ran.   It reminded me of the effect in Okami. Here's a little clip of the glitch in action:

Speaking of glitches, if the embedded video has excessive blurring and noise when you play it, just click to view it on the YouTube page. I'll try to figure out why it's doing that.

Development Video #1

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We're starting up the Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution development blog with the first of what will be a regular feature : our series of monthly development videos showing the progress and pitfalls of making the game.  Right now we're prototyping and tool building so what you'll be seeing is very rough and very early but should be of interest to anyone who wants to see the ugly exposed underbelly of game development.

As you can tell YouTube isn't doing us any favours visually so here is a screenshot to give you a better idea of what the prototype currently looks like.

Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

As I mentioned in the video we're keeping the art very minimal right now so we can change it easily.   I also showed an illustration I did for the back cover of the graphic novel Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together. We're using that pixel art as a goal for the final visuals, so here's the high quality version without the video distortion.

Other than these videos what else will we be posting here?   I'll be posting about the art development process with sketches and pixel art. Andrew will be posting about how he's approaching the programming. We'll both be posting about the discoveries we make taking the game from our current design document through prototyping to final game.

We'll also occasionally talk about development on our smaller projects such as Night of The Cephalopods and about some of the other interesting things going on in Toronto's thriving indie games scene.

We want to make sure that we post stuff that you find interesting so feel free to comment or ask questions and tell us what you'd like to see, both on the blog and in the videos.