Hi guys!
This week has been a hectic one. One of my graphics teammates decided during the weekend, that she would no longer participate in anything that had anything at all to do with this course. This meant that I all of the sudden had twice as much work to do for the final two weeks. And unfortunately the pressure has led to a slight decrease in quality of the things I have produced this week.
This week’s post will be about the asset that as of now, I am most pleased with, the thunderstorm.
So when I started out the only restrictions I had was that the duration of the animation would have to be 10 seconds and that it had to be 1920px wide.
My former teammate had already started on this obstacle last week, but since I did not have access to her files I just tried to remember what and how she had done it. And I remembered that she did the clouds in three different layers to add depth.
So with that in mind I started sketching out some clouds at random which didn’t really look good. That was when I realized that we had this really awesome concept art for it that our lead programmer drew. (He should be lead art instead)
So basically I used that picture as a template and started to draw something as similar to it as possible. I could keep the shapes of the clouds pretty similar to the concept, same for the colors, but when it came to the lightning I had to make some changes.
For starters they were not allowed to hit the train. This because the player has to have a flying chance to fly under it without being hurt. So in my first sketches (which I forgot to save for this purpose) the obstacle where 600px high, when the lightning reached its peak. And that was too high. My programmers did not have a good answer as to which height it should have, so for now it is 485px.
So after drawing out the lightning’s a bit more for every frame until they peaked, I played the animation and realized that it was a bit stiff. So I made the clouds rumble a little bit and it helped. However, the programmers have fixed it so that the entire camera in the game will shake as well, to give you an even bigger feel of being in a storm.
So what I have left now is to extend/adjust the animation so that it can play for 10 seconds. I will also have to render out each lightning as a separate sprite sheet so that they can have individual hitboxes.
That’s all for now!
theasofiafalkenmark 
Hey, Thea!
Sorry to hear about the extra workload you’ve had this week. I like your lightning though, it’s a cool gameplay feature that forces the player to move around a bit more which works well with the narrative. The lightning extends down like real lightning would, even though lightning always connects with the ground in some way, I see why that wouldn’t work in your game though, so that can be excused I think.
I was thinking about how the clouds would be stiff which you talked about, and I think you making them rumble helped a bit. The main problem with them I think is that they look to solid and that it looks like they just spawn there, not like they swoop in. I think you made the edges of the clouds to hard. Clouds are difficult to draw though, maybe try some different brushes with softer edges next time.
There is one wierd thing where there is a purple line behind the clouds just before they materialize. I guess they determine what height the bolts form from and isn’t going to be there in the final animation, but I thought it looked wierd.
Also I’d like to comment on the paragraph where you talk about the height of the lightning in pixels. It wasn’t very clear. I don’t know the difference between 600 and 485px. You didn’t have to be so specific.
Oh well, there isn’t much time to go until deadline, I hope everything works out even though you had a drop out.
Good luck!
Svante
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Tjena Thea, nu fick du två kommentarer från min grupp för att jag inte kunde hitta er tredje grafikers senaste blogginlägg.
Tråkigt att ert problem inom gruppen ska hända så extremt nära tills att allt ska vara klart. Men det hade väl kunna varit värre antar jag?
Det är en fin animation tycker jag, du förklarar tydligt vad du skulle göra och hur du skulle göra. En sak som hur många pixlar ner blixtarna ska gå är väl en sådan sak man får pröva sig fram på. Jag är dock lite osäker på om du, precis som din gruppkamrat ritade tre lager moln eller bara två. Jag kan nämligen bara tydligt se två olika lager. Det kan hända att jag eventuellt ser ett tredje lager moln, men jag är inte helt säker.
Men för övrigt ser åskmolnet och blixtarna bra ut. Jag gillar att det tar tid innan blixtarna når lägsta punkten, så att spelaren har tid att reagera innan den blir träffad av dem.
Om jag minns ert spel rätt så har ni även hinder på själva tåget, då blir kan det bli utmanande för spelaren att ducka blixtarna och samtidigt undvika hindrena på tåget. Vilket jag tycker är jättebra. Eventuellt att blixtarna är lite snabbare och molnen dyker upp lite tidigare, animationen kan ta lika lång tid bara att blixtarna är lite snabbare. Jag vet dock inte riktigt hur den kommer se ut om den ska hålla på i tio sekunder. Nu är det väl kanske också jag som försöker komma med någon form av konstruktiv feedback, men jag bara tänkte att eftersom blixtar är äckligt snabba så kanske det kan vara nåt att tänka på iallafall.
Jag måste bara säga att av det jag minns från betavisningen var att alla Trowl- spel var väldigt coola. Och det var dem spelen som såg roligast ut att spela.
Tack för mig.
/Rasmus Mattsson
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