ONE. MORE. SLEEP.

Ok, so it's currently like 03:00am on tuesday, and the deadline is tomorrow, I've finally finished EVERYTHING, and I'm now writing my last blog post of year 2! (Infact, i'll probably write a summary tomorrow... hmmm), anyway, I really want to post the list one more time, just for my own self satisfaction :D

- Sprites for the pickup items
- A button for the pickup
- A wheel sprite with spikes on it
- Sprites for spikes
- Speech bubbles for narrative
- A sprite for Arty
- A sprite for Benny
- Carrot checkpoint sprite
- Sock collectibles for Benny's level

OH. YEAHHHHHHHHHHH.

How very inappropriate...

ANYWAY.
That's me done, I'll post the last few things I've done these last few days and talk briefly about them..

I'll start with the spiked wheel sprite...

Awesome ball of death!

If you see one of these in game, you better time you grab just right, if you're extended arms hit anything except that handle, you're a gonner! I wanted to make this with all blood on the spikes, but I think it would seem out of place, since most things in the void are not human, but meh, I think it looks menacing enough!

SPRITES FOR COLLECTABLE

Basically, to active the switch that I posted about some days ago, you need to collect a "ball", and that ball, like everything else, changes depending on your current dimension, so today I came up with some different ideas (3 light objects, 1 heavy), the guys agreed and here we are! I'll explain them then post all pictures below.

Void
For the void, I wanted something weird and sinister, Ryan had the idea of a ball of yarn, but I don't think that made any sense, yarn doesn't get lost often? After thinking of some rounded objects that get lost, I thought "what about a dolls eye!". People seemed to like it, it's light so it won't press the switch (plastic and hollow) and looks creepy! Check it out

A creepy dolls eye!

Doodle
For the doodle, I wasn't really creative, I needed something round (for seamless switching), and something light (so it wouldn't press the switch), and unfortunately, a scrumped up piece of scrap paper just works too well! It's not the most creative, but hell, I still think it looks bad-ass!

Ryan's concept document for our gecko game, haha! 

Future
This is the dimension where the ball gets heavy and that means it had to stand out, the future dimension is the dimension that changes the "ball" to an object that can press the switch down, so I started out with some gray heavy looking kinda ball-n-chain looking balls, but that's not futuristic, then my girlfriend showed  me like a gravity ball from an anime she watched, so with that as inspiration I made a neon-electricity conducting ball, hope it looks as cool as it sounds!

Can't escape the neon pink.

Candy
And finally, one more dimension to explain before I fall into bed and sleep (finally), the candy dimension, well this one was obvious wasn't it? It's just a nice jelly sweet, covered in sugar! Nice and simple, but delicious looking like everything in that dimension! Hope you enjoyed my blog for my second year, adios and goodnight!

No wonder I'm always hungry after working

Just popping in

Just for the sake of it, a really quick post with a small update on how things are going, SO CLOSE TO DEADLINE, ARGHHHH...


- Sprites for the pickup items
- A button for the pickup
- A wheel sprite with spikes on it
- Sprites for spikes
- Speech bubbles for narrative
- A sprite for Arty
- A sprite for Benny
- Carrot checkpoint sprite
- Sock collectibles for Benny's level

That's 3 more things off the list, the button sprite, the spikes and the carrot checkpoint! Feel free to take a look, hope you enjoy them :)

Once you see these, you'll feel relief!

These carrots are basically the checkpoints in game, once you reach a carrot (It will be black and white) and touch it (to which it becomes coloured) you'll automatically begin to respawn at the last carrot, instead of the start of the level, that's the only purpose of these!

Spike sprite

Well, what do you think? Stand on this, you die! ^_^

You need to place an item on here in the future dimension...

...and hey presto!

So yeah, it's a pretty simple but effect two sprites here, the first sprite will show unless you have the right object (the heavy one) on the switch to press the button down, to which you'll active a whole lot of panic... but you'll have to wait for that.

Arty the Artifact & Benny the Socktopus

Little update on my previous to do list, here's how it's looking now!

- Sprites for the pickup items
- A button for the pickup
- A wheel sprite with spikes on it
- Sprites for spikes
- Speech bubbles for narrative
- A sprite for Arty
- A sprite for Benny
- Carrot checkpoint sprite
- Sock collectibles for Benny's level

Let's take a look at what's crossed off so far.

Firstly, the speech bubbles, well, these took around 5 mins each, and i'm not one bit happy with them, but there's so much to do, and I feel these just aren't important enough to waste time on, but anyway, here's how they look;

Benny narrative (no socks)

Benny narrative (SOCKS!)

Arty narrative

They're definitely simple, but since they won't appear too much, I think they'll serve their purpose just fine! Moving onto the sprites themselves. Arty. He's Hops little mechanical companion, who helps Hop navigate around the world of the void and other dimensions like it, however, in-game, we didn't feel like he needed a special sprite, but instead, a navi role (we all love ocarina of time, right?), so I decided to have him as a little glow light following you around.

Arty the artifact.

This next character is Benny, he's the best character ever, a socktopus! And personal favorite of James Burtons :) so I had to do him proud, I had a lot of fun making Benny because he's just so vacant minded and simple, I hope you like the sprites!

Benny the socktopus has lost all his socks!

Just a quick note, Dimension Hops third level will consist of the players helping Benny find his 6 missing socks, to which I gave different designs (From my own actual socks!), here's a look at them;

Sock 1

Sock 2

Sock 3

Sock 4

Sock 5

Sock 6

^_^ And after you collect all the socks, let's not forget the reward, making Benny happy once more! This one's for you Mr.Burton!!

Benny reunited with his precious socks

6 Weeks till final...

Another long break from blogging, but again, we handed in the vertical slice after some hard work and last minuet changes, and now we're only 6 weeks away from the end of the year, how time has flown! It's really weird to think back to when Dimension Hop was just an idea we had about a gecko in the jungle haha! It's been a really cool experience, although I'm just sad I didn't work on anything I wanted to this year, I took a hit for the team and have been doing art work for the last 5 months and will do until the end, This has party been a wasted year for me, my photoshop skills are now over 9000, but I don't want anything to do with art, ever again, and i'll refuse to do art next year haha!

Well, here's my final few weeks checklist of things to do!

- Sprites for the pickup items
- A button for the pickup
- A wheel sprite with spikes on it
- Sprites for spikes
- Speech bubbles for narrative
- A sprite for Arty
- A sprite for Benny
- Carrot checkpoint sprite
- Sock collectibles for Benny's level

Watch this space >_>

New Tiles #4 - The Future Dimension

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd the last dimension.

Do note; although I'm quickly posting in game screenshots of the tiles, instead of individual tiles, to save time and give a better picture, please remember, each wall (i.e the ruler) is about 4/5 different tiles with it's own detail, I just don't want to spam blogger with a vertical slideshow of random bits and bobs!

Old future tiles (was mechanical dimension when these were made)

Old floor tile

Old floating tile

Old wall tile

Now, I may have purposely saved these ones till last, because personally, I just think they're the best by a long shot, I hope you like them too!

Tron, eat your heart out.

These are obviously, the floor/wall/floating tiles, all in one screenshot, I was inspired by a design I will find and post, of a futuristic city building, either way, I think these will look amazing in the final build of the game!!

New Tiles #3 - The Doodle Dimension

Same again, old first :)

Old floor tile

Old floating tile

Old wall tile

Same stuff again really, boring, no detail, not worthy of a release game!
New tiles...

Ok, so it's all in one this time :D Folder binder for the floor tiles, Rubber floating tiles, and see through rules for walls! (Notice the awesome shadows!)

New Tiles #2 - The Void Dimension

I'm just going to hammer these out.

Old floor tile

Old wall tile

Yep. That's it, the entire void was these two tiles spammed everywhere, It looked all uneven and patchy, I'm not even going to show it!

New tiles....

New floating tile examples

New walls and floor tiles

Runed wall tile (to indicate teleport use)

I posted these a little different, It's pretty tedious to see all the seperate tiles, so you can see in the grid how many tiles go into just one wall, instead of one tile spammed, I've made several, and it's taken me ages!!

New Tiles #1 - The Candy Dimension

I'm going to post these one after another, since I've forgotten to update regularly, I'll post 4 different entries, one for each dimension.

A short pre-note, We got our feedback for the previous hand in and we got a 1st! I'm super happy about it, and it kind of made the art worth it, kind of...! But hey, all that hard work paid off, SWEET!

Anyway, here are the old tiles from the candy dimension; ( I won't upload them all, there's FAR TOO MANY) but i'll just give some nice examples!

Old floor tile

Old crack tile

Old floating platform (left)

Old floating platform (middle)

Old wall tile

As you can see for yourself, there's little to no detail in any of these, and the background just trumps these boring designs, so much to my own dismay, here are the redone tiles.

New floor tile

New float tile

New wall tile

And of course, a quick preview of the level as a whole...

The Candy Dimension (In-Game!)

I think this looks, just, well, 1 million times better, with the floating chocolate bars and the nougat floors, I'm damn proud of this.

Hello blogger my old friend.

Whoops, so once again, I've totally neglected this blog. Last time I posted was hours away from our tech proto type demo, and also all documentation, one which I thought Harry would never finish. Alas, all went well! A few problems here and there, but with the backgrounds, the tiles, and the HUD I did in the last few hours really made a great visual upgrade since the last time we displayed the game, and people noticed!

So, what now? Now we're in full on production mode, no more designing the game, only making it, our next deadline is to produce a vertical slice, this means to have at least one part of the game totally perfect, just one section, with all mechanics working, perfect art, perfect animation (which after nearly 2 months, we've still seen nothing!) perfect everything, as in, like the game could be released in such a state.. Oh god!

Although this seems a ways off right now, i'm sure we'll pull together and get it done. Me personally, I've not written a line of code in about 3 months due to the fact I've been doing nothing but art, and this really is NOT why i'm here studying, although our game is looking nice and starting to come together, I feel I have not progressed in my chosen discipline at all this year, and I feel pretty damn bad about it, and I'm so far behind with all the code and the deadlines are so strict I'm finding it impossible to get back into it. 

So for now, the game looks great, but ONCE again, one part of the art looks bad, and that's the tiles, so I'm going to re-do all of them, for every dimension... Sigh.

Making a HUD

I'm currently sat here, in early, waiting for the presentation, and it's been thrown at me in the last second to throw a HUD together in time for today's presentation! Oh the joys. So, I've made some simple sprites to show the player buttons and made a coin* collectable, I'll post them below (might be long!)

A simple UI to show controls (Y changes depending on dimension)

I threw this together pretty quickly, Since I don't have much time until the presentation, but I think it looks perfectly fine.

Well that post looks ugly, but hey! They game is fast paced, and switching dimensions might get confusing, so in the top left corner of the HUD we will have these icons displaying with buttons (on an Xbox pad) switches you into which dimension.

It's been a while!

It's been nearly a month since I last posted on this blog, that's mainly because I've been working my bum off trying to get these backgrounds done in time for the next deadline, which is just over a week away..Yikes!

We have since changed (slightly) the dimensions to refine them a little better, these are reflected, naturally, in the backgrounds! So, since my last post I have managed to get all 4 finished, they're a lot different to how the concepts look, but I think I've done a good job and deserve a long rest from art! Hint Hint...

This was the original concepts (We wanted a centre piece in each dimension (the ship/box/house/factory)

Anyway, I'll post the new backgrounds and talk a little about them.

THE VOID DIMENSION

The Void Dimension

Ok, let me talk a little about this dimension, I always imaged it purple, don't know why, I just did! So I've drawn a vortex in the background, as a means in and out of the void, that's how Hop got there! The center piece for this background is the huge floating rock oozing out goo, Ryan has put goo on the tiles, so I just made it fit, I've also added goo into various places where other things will turn up in the other dimensions, and cracks too! You'll see what I mean with the others.

THE CANDY DIMENSION

The Candy Dimension

Formerly known as the biscuit dimension, we decided that it limited us too much, so we just made it all things confectionery. In the place of the floating rock we have a huge lollipop, instead of cracks, we have jelly beans, and a nice piece of cake instead of nasty goo! When you switch between these dimensions in game, It seems like objects that are in place never go away, they just change shape!

THE DOODLE DIMENSION

The Doodle Dimension

Formerly known as the paper dimension, we decided that this dimension needed more story, so instead, it's a dimension made up of children's doodles. With a sun center piece and paper hills, I think this fits quite nicely with the sprites and tiles. Notice the changes again? Some flowers and crayons! (and a cute tree!)

THE FUTURE DIMENSION

The Future Dimension

Formerly known as the metal dimension, well... There's just nothing cool or special about metal is there?! So I decided to spruce it up, and then some! Now that Hop is a half toy, half cyborg, I decided to make this dimension futuristic, with a tron inspired theme! The big tower is the new center piece and the neon tubes and old grinding cogs make up the rest, I'm really in love with this dimension as a whole!