BA2a - Week 4 Summary

This week I made my character tileset for the animations of the dog, and then put them into Unreal to animate them in flipbook. I tried to keep the animations simple, changing only small elements and keeping the shape clear. For the jumping (bottom line) I decided to use only the middle drawing as it makes it cleaner and easier to animate in flipbook. 

I also started to code the game so that the dog would move, and look, how I wanted.

Also further animated the ball in Maya to make it bounce and move at the same time.

BA2a - Week 3 Summary

This week I decided that I'm going to make the game in pixels, instead of using Hexels. This is because I am more experienced in pixels and can do more with it, and would have to essentially start from scratch with Hexels. Its going to be a game about a lost dog who needs to find its owner in the forest. The theme that we have to base the game on is inference, so I thought that if the dog had to follow clues like footprints or smells to find their owner again, the player would have to infer which path to take. 

Below is the pixel design of the dog. Its pink and round and has a simple design so its easier to animate. 

I also decided to try start the design for the tilemap with a simple tileset design below from (x) before I start making my own tiles.

BA2a Indie Dev Game Design

When looking into my game design, my friend suggested i look into hexels. I started with the dog, and really liked the idea so went to try out the background as seen below. I started off with a small canvas, and then expanded it to allow for more detail. I also removed the clouds so that if I did make a game out of hexels, I could make different layers of the background move at different rates. I'm thinking of it being a 2D sidescrolling game.

BA2a - Week 2 Summary

Recently we started learning more about animation inside of Maya, and we learnt how to animate a ball and how to make it bounce realistically with different functions.

We also looked at blueprints inside of UE4, how to animate a character ourselves and make it do things like jump and crouch. 
I also went to a drawing drop in session, and started looking more deeply into my game idea. What came out of it was the dog + owner below. I was thinking that i wanted to do something involving animals finding paths using scent/eyesight etc.