Burning Steel – Menu Concepting 2015-05-05

Today I’ve been working on concepting the menus for Burning Steel. I want to achieve a menu system that is easy to use with both gamepads and mouse and keyboard.
Starting with the main menu the screen will contain only the necessary options: Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Options, Credits, and Exit. All of these options should be quite self-explanatory.

MainMenu

The planet in the background represents the planet in the game (for now) and will rotate in the finished product.

I also tested how the menu would look in Unity.

It’s a bit buggy as of now as this was put together in the timespan of ten minutes.

Selecting Multiplayer will (obviously) take you to the Multiplayer screen where the players will be presented with a “join screen.”

MultiplayerSelectPressing the A button on the controller will add the player to the game. When 2-4 players have joined they may proceed to the vehicle (Beast) select screen. All players will be presented a choice of four Beasts (in the future I’m hoping to have a total of 30 Beasts in the game) all with different stats to suit different kinds of play styles. All players may drive the same Beast if they like.

VehicleSelect

There’s more content to come but this is all I will leave you with for now.

Signing Out

Cyberclops_Logo

Burning Steel – Four weeks in and a whole lot more to come

The Big Game Project has past its fourth week and Burning Steel is far from done. What we have so far is something that is sort of playable; two player splitscreen racing with a win state and a somewhat working respawn system. What the current version is lacking is the gravity system fully implemented and all of the feedback.

In the coming week our dear programmer will focus on the gravity system and the energy system. Our lovely 3D artists will focus on making new designs for the vehicles as well as re-designing the level to give the players more player-to-player contact. I will start designing the user interface and figuring alternative controller layouts out.

To keep yourself more up-to-date with the project follow us on Twitter via @Burning_Steel and @SwedishCheese. We also have a Twitch channel where we’ll stream from time to time.

Run, Mr Kimble. Run!

As I felt that making character sprites wasn’t really my thing I passed that task on to Viktor and proceeded making projectile sprites. There are four different main projectiles; the sponge which is the standard projectile for the main character, the mud ball which some of the children throws towards the player. Then there is the water balloon which can thrown using the Nubb Tubb and the water stream which is launched using the water thrower. I drew a few suggestions for the water stream and the mud ball since we are not sure how we want those sprites to look.
Projectiles

My major task for this week was animation. Now, animation is something I have only scratched the surface of before and never really gone in to properly. I gave animating the male main character’s legs a shot and sat for about 2 hours trying to figure this thing out. The result ended up being pretty good, not super smooth but good none the less. Now, the legs are not completely done yet, I will let Viktor put some shadows and lighting on them so that they goes together with the torso better.

This running animation is six frames long using two different leg models. For the left side the models have been flipped and I added some lines to show his right thigh/butt cheek in order to avoid the leg just completely disappearing as it moves forward.

Sprite2male2
I will continue making running animations for all the characters’ in the game as Viktor provides me with more sprites. I am currently trying to make a good looking animation for the Trike Kid’s pedal cycle, I do not have anything to show at this moment but I will work my ass off tomorrow and try to get a smaller blog post out to show more animations.
As for the Alpha presentation tomorrow I am feeling quite confident about everything. Robin will take the responsibility of presenting the Alpha to everyone. The game has taking shape this week, we have implemented several new features this week like the Dirt-meter which works as a health-bar, the Overheat-meter which sort of works like an ammo-bar but instead of using a set number of “bullets” it builds up heat and when it reaches max the gun will jam and you will not be able to shoot again until the meter has gone down to zero again. We have also implemented a background for the game, so, now you will walk around in a playground instead of a blue void.

That’s all! Signing off!

Watergun Alien

This week I have put focus on drawing sprites. As I have not really done top-down sprites before, I had to learn some new techniques. I googled around to find some reference images for top-down sprites and stumbled upon the classic title Alien Breed for the Amiga.
Alien Breed 2
Alien Breed’s player sprites’ has served well as references but I felt like it would look weird  if the player character had the weapon straight in front of the face. I mean; who the heck holds a rifle like that?! The result looks pretty good. It is far from flawless but I am still quite satisfied with it.

The first player sprite I made was a bit dark and grey as you can see in this gif (I do not have the original image left):

This particular sprite was made to serve as a place holder as our coders’ wanted a place holder that actually resembled the final product.

I have re-worked the sprite and have changed the weapon in to something that more or less resembled a water gun. By giving the rifle more rounded shapes and adding bright colors like green and yellow I have created a more plastic feel to it and lowered the tone of ‘serious combat’.
FemalePlayer
Still it is far from flawless. My next step will be adding a little bit more depth to the character by adding shadows and reflections.

I have also made a sprite for the slow kids but it is currently serving as place holder.
SlowChild
Not all my focus has gone in to making sprites as I have the producer role this week it is my responsibility to fix the remaining problems with our SCRUM-document i.e. I have to redo the deadline section of the product backlog. This will consume some of the time I could have put on the sprites but it has to be done and I will not rest until everything is done. No, wait, I should probably rest at some point or else nothing will be done.

Before the week is over I will have to fix the SCRUM, make idle sprites for all the enemies and the male player character, and start animating the player characters’. This will be a busy weekend but it will be worth it because I have a good feeling about our game and I trust that everyone else on the team are doing their part.

Charging! … Clear!

Wow! I’m really bad at updating this blog… Well, lets try reviving this lovely piece of ass with some freshly baked content.

The past month has been nothing but pen on paper. The 2D-Graphics course has been main focus and I have learned more this month than what I ever did in the aesthetic  courses during elementary- and high school. And, boy, has it been fun. I love this course. Even though I want to put my focus on level design I really enjoy drawing characters. I have never been a particularly good character artist so I really feel like I have done great progress in the subject.

I’m working on several character concepts but the one I’ve put down most energy and “class time” in is my Cyclopes concept.
http://swedishcheese.deviantart.com/art/Cyclopes-Head-Concept-416024483
http://swedishcheese.deviantart.com/art/Cyclopes-Concept-Turn-Around-418162352

I’m also working on a concept of Carl XII as a super soldier. More on that in the future 😉

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace (shooters)

Since our assignment Mayes gave us for this week was to play Space Shooters I decided to look up some retro shooters. I have been playing a whole bunch of games like Asteroids, Captain Skyhawk, Dragon Spirit and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. I must say that I really liked the 2.5D isometric graphic style of Captain Skyhawk. Captain Planet and the Planeteers had a nice mechanic which let you turn around and fly back a short distance for taking out enemies you have missed.

This have given me a few ideas for new games and has also given me some ideas of how to draw good-looking sprites. Now I’m curious to see what words me and my new group will get, and what new ideas these words will give birth to.