Archive for the ‘Aesthetics’ tag

BADJ Day 15 – When visual helps gamedesign

Hello, Marco here.

Sometimes a drawing can spark an idea for a game or an idea for a character. But this time, the drawing of a character has actually sparked ideas for gameplay and for the whole visual production of the game.

Using drawings for game development works not only to help visualize ideas, but also to create empty worlds which we later fill with our ideas. This first sketch you’ll see made me want to see the other character and what their poses would be, and that gave me ideas for their fighting style, which then gave me ideas about how that would play in the game. “Will this character be able to jump, will he block or will he charge in really fast and strong?” Those questions can be answered by a pencil. It’s also fun to see the characters take a life of their own. At first I’m drawing them, but as they get more and more fleshed out, it is the characters that are drawing themselves. I just provide the pencil.

This video goes a bit into that. On how much a drawing can change your mind about your ideas for a game and also you get to see some new stuff straight from the drawing board.

Take care and I hope your like this,

Marco

BADJ Day 1: The initial thoughts

Hello everyone, Marco here!

This game has been in our plans for quite some time. Initially it was just a platform game, with a lot of  jumping and running, which I like quite a lot, and there are some emerging games coming out with this sort of gameplay. I never thought of a character but one day I was doodling around in my sketch book and came up with an image of Bruce Lee wearing boxing gloves and like a firework of ideas exploded in my head. I could see him punching his enemies, kicking them away, and basically running really fast on the scene.

So after some thoughts I started roughing out an idea of what the gameplay would be like, and what setting would it be, the theme as well as the graphic style. I had some ideas, and the task now was to merge them all together in order to get them to work, and not be a mash of game ideas that really don’t go along at all.

Vlad had that concern when I explained to him the idea. He asked “is it a fighting game or a platform game” and really I didn’t know what to tell him, so I just went “erm… well… the… hum… let me get back to you on that one”. And I didn’t. I waited a bit more to let the idea grow and look like something that was plausible in terms of fighting and also in terms of platforms.

But the platforms weren’t really a gameplay element as much as they were obstacles to gameplay, until Vlad said “you know, if we had some physics in, it would add to the overall experience, if the player could interact with the scenery to progress”. And like the rug on big lebowski, that idea tied the game together.

Bruce Ali, a mix between Bruce Lee and Mohamed Ali, will be able to kick enemies off buildings, make stuff fall on them, and other fun stuff that I don’t want to disclose just yet.

As an appetizer, here’s a bunch of sketches from the Bruce Ali Sketch book.

Design that fits

Make it fit

I have an opinion about what separates the common game from the commercial game, mind as well share it with you.

A commercial game fits. “What on earth is he talking about?” – screams that gentleman over in the background. If he even existed, he would be completely clueless about what I’m talking about. Well, let me tell you a story about this imaginary gentleman.

He created a zombie game where the title screen has a stretched ‘googled’ picture from a movie in the background, pink letters in the buttons with the typical Times New Roman, blood splats made from vector circles and cartoon like characters in the gameplay.

Can you imagine this and see why it doesn’t fit? You don’t even need an example to see how wrong it is I hope.

While we are building our games, we need a design that fits. One that takes into consideration the theme and aesthetics of the game while we make sure that there is no shock between the several parts of the game.

This is a mistake that way too many flash developers make, one that jumps right up to any eye, even the untrained one aka common player.