Animated Assets 001

I'm finally carrying on with the second assignment for Team Sprout which is to build animated assets for our game. I told the team last week that we should aim to have a final style as well as a colour palette for our environment by ...today HA. We've all been quite busy, but now that it's the holidays, we can get a crack on with this assignment.

Today I'll paint up some mushrooms and have a look at colours. We're also going for a water colour look which is going to look really beautiful (it will because Team Sprout have amazing artists). I imagine there to be a white outline around the assets as well as the environment, as if you've cut out the image from a book and it has a border. At least this is what I imagined when Team Sprout were having the meeting. I'll give it a go and see if the team like it :)

On another note, I've been looking at some art from Winnie the Pooh and Peter Rabbit. I had an idea where the start of the game where the forest is burnt down, could be simply black and white and as the game progresses, colour is brought back as life is put back into the environment. This would be a mission to carry out, but it's just an idea for now :)

I like the how the image isn't fully coloured in. There's negative space surrounding the image of the characters Pooh and Piglet which I reckon would be neat to try out for our environment.
I really like the desaturated colours as well.

For Peter Rabbit, I like the fainter outlines as well as the colour being slightly more vibrant in different areas. The elements in the background are faded more than the elements in the foreground which I find very interesting. It helps the viewer focus towards the foreground which would be an advantage to our game. 

References:
http://cartoonsandcereal.breannaperrelli.com/winnie-the-pooh-and-vinni-pukh/
https://lit4334goldenage.wordpress.com/category/books/winnie-the-pooh/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/beatrix-potter-peter-rabbit/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Peter_Rabbit

Animated Assets

Team Sprout
Our new summative is to create 2 environment assets and animate them as sprites. We had a meeting today & Jo is typing the minutes up. We went through assets that would potentially be in our environment as well as animals & bugs. After that we picked what we would chose to draw up & further develop.
Yesterday I already had in mind what I wanted to contribute which are mushrooms & flowers. I drew up a few concepts for each & will ask the group what concept they like the best so I can start developing them into a polished asset.
We each have more than one asset that we will draw concepts of. I will also be drawing up sprouts & other plants. I will look more into native NZ plants also.

References:

Mushrooms
http://www.100thmonkeymushrooms.com/learn/growing-instructions-2/mushroom-box/
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-400393507/stock-vector-different-kinds-of-mushroom-different-types-of-mushrooms-isolated-on-white-background-edible.html
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-different-types-mushrooms-illustration-white-background-image44512924
http://www.gmushrooms.com/motif/
Flowers
http://aljoschathielen.deviantart.com/art/Pink-Flower-371399795
http://zombiedip.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-17824788
http://maw123.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-59649468http://extraoridnarygirl.deviantart.com/art/flowers-101897724
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-473654876
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zantedeschia

WEEK 5 Game Analysis

 How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?

When I played the telltale adventure game The Wolf Among Us (2013), I would make choices that would go against my morals, but then I'd jump back to doing the right thing again. I planned on making some jerk choices like throwing the fable out of the window in the first sequence and staying silent at the wrong times, but then I feel bad, not just for Bigby, but because I'd be going against my morals - I wouldn't really throw someone out the window if they got on my bad side.
This did influence the choices I made at times as the character Bigby isn't liked by many characters and is 'the big bad wolf' and I felt sorry for him, I wanted to make good decisions and choices that would benefit him and others around him. Especially playing as a once villain, I wanted to make choices that would perhaps go with his true morals. Colin the pig said to Bigby that he likes to be seen as a lone wolf, which might not be the case.

The game does allow me to get into the character of someone else as it gives me multiple options on what to say to another character. This makes me feel like I really am the character, so I feel like I need to stick with my morals to help Bigby out.

One thing that did take me off guard was when a note in the top corner of the screen would say 'Colin will remember that'. This also influenced me to make moral based decisions and made me guilty for making a bad decision.
In 'Ethical Dilemmas and Dominant Moral Strategies In Games' , Brandon Perdue said "The model that rewards certain choices over others, or different choices in different ways, tends to functionally make the choices for the players; the player will be more successful at the game if he picks the optimal choice for his strategy." In Bigby's case, making the optimal choice definitely benefited his reputation. This is proven when I would choose the right dialogue or action to help others and it was greatly appreciated by the other characters.
In the gaming world morality does at times slip away, but eventually comes back. I can't say this for everyone's case, but this does apply to me when I played this game.

WEEK 2 Game Analysis

The game Facade does make user input feel meaningful in terms of story direction and progression as the story direction is decided on what the player says.

I played the games a few times and each time I played, I would either come off as happy to see the characters Grace and Trip or grumpy - like I didn't want to be there. Although these different methods still progressed to a similar outcome. Grace and Trip would always fight and the player would be stuck in the middle whether they're trying to help or stay out of it.

The beginning and end of the narrative in Facade are set depending which path the player decides to take. If I made ill-mannered comments, Grace or Trip would snap at me while fighting or kick me out. When I tried to be kind and patient with them, they still fought, but Grace ended up leaving. In the beginning I am invited to Grace and Trip's apartment and at the end, a character leaves and everyone is unhappy. The fight between the married couple is inevitable and rather depressing. The user input is definitely meaningful in this game as it helps progress the narrative.

Although some things I say aren't always processed properly. I told Grace and Trip that I'm not taking sides then Trip tells me to quit taking sides (shown in the image below, I chose the name Amy). With this, I don't have the expected response from what I say sometimes which can be annoying.