28-05-2020
Today I finished decorating the interior of the diner. I managed to draw a nice looking booth and added it in. I also added some curtains to the windows.
It also turns out that I misunderstood part of the assignment, which is a little unfortunate to be honest, but luckily it’s still fixable without having wasted too much time. I’m not sure whether I want to keep the switch between inside and outside, though. I haven’t really worked on any of the exterior assets yet, and if the other area isn’t necessary, might as well get rid of it. I’ll keep it as it is for now and instead focus on an interior switch first.
For this interior switch, I want to make other versions of the interior assets. When the player switches songs on the jukebox, the interior assets also switch in style. What this other style will be, I’m not sure yet. I’ll come up with some ideas tomorrow and pick the one that speaks to me the most. I also might go back to the moodboard I made and continue working on it to get some inspiration.
29-05-2020
Today I thought of some ideas for the switch in interior design.
- The second interior is in the future and post-apocalyptic (credits to my teacher for this one)
- The second interior is at night
- The second interior is in another color scheme (an easier one because it doesn’t require me to recreate all the assets, I just have to recolor them)
- The second interior is in another resolution ( a harder one because I’ll have to redraw all the assets with another pixel count)
- The second interior is in 3D (pretty much impossible for me as a game artist, but it is a fun one)
- The second interior is in another genre (so the first interior is retro, the second could be western or futuristic)
I personally really like the one my teacher came up with, and I think it’d be fun to combine it with the second idea. So the first interior will be intact during the day (probably at sunset to get the best lighting) and the interior after the switch will be post-apocalyptic during the night.
Another thing that I think would be really cool to do, is keep the exterior and have it switch with the interior. An easy way to do this would be to activate another “go outside” trigger when switching interiors, to then go to an alternative exterior scene where everything is in the same atmosphere as the interior. But for that, I will have to finish the exterior. So for now, I’ll just focus on getting the interior done, and when I’m done with that and still have time left, I’ll add in the exterior. I also shouldn’t forget about some start screen art.
30-05-2020
Today I thought about how I’ll make the interior look post-apocalyptic. I’ve decided I’ll keep the changes fairly simple- I’ll make all the colors look faded and I’ll remove some parts of the assets to make them look broken. I won’t change the entire layout of the diner, but I might add in some extra assets that have been left in the diner over time, or move a chair or two.
I worked a little more on my character sprite, but couldn’t get very far. Since I have a deadline on Monday, I probably won’t be able to work on this project tomorrow. I’ll keep you updated.
31-05-2020
As I already suspected yesterday, I didn’t have time today to work on my game. I spent my entire morning on a 3D model and my entire afternoon on project documentation. Tomorrow I’ll start working on the post-apocalyptic assets and implement them into Unity. I’ll also see if I can get a working switch in the game.
01-06-2020
I implemented the switch in interiors in the game. It wasn’t that hard to do, because past me was smart and put all the interior assets in a folder. The switch, placed on a trigger around the jukebox, will be triggered when the player clicks on it (right now it’s still “Press F” but I’ll change it to a mouse click) and will deactivate the interior 1 folder and activate the interior 2 folder. Each folder has its own trigger and I made two scripts: one for changing from 1 to 2 and one for changing from 2 back to 1. This way, the player can keep switching between the two interiors.
As you can see, I have finished the second interior design. The colors of the assets are faded and most of them are broken. I also switched up my character placeholder with the actual character I’ll be using. It doesn’t have animations yet, but this is less scary to look at.
The next thing on my to-do list is the lighting. I’ll look into that either tomorrow or Wednesday and I’m hoping to get some fixed before next class.
02-06-2020
I didn’t have the time to work on lighting today, so instead I drew a start screen for my game.
I decided to use the same perspective for the start screen as the game itself. This way, I was able to reuse some of the assets I already made. These are also the assets that might not make it into the game, because they’re part of the exterior and I might scrap the exterior, so now they’ve been useful anyway. I did have to create a part of the diner and some curb for this background. If I do decide to keep the exterior in, I can use these assets as well.
03-06-2020
Today I fixed some lighting for my game. I went with a nice sunset for interior 1, and midnight for interior 2.
I might tweak the colors and light intensity later on, but for now I think it looks really pretty. Another thing I did, was add some lighting to the start screen as well. Now, when you hover over start, the background will have the same color scheme as interior 1. When you hover over quit, the background will have the same color scheme as interior 2.
I got a lot of things done this week and I’m super happy with it. Now with the switch implemented and the lighting fixed, I’m already very far with the final assignment. Next week, I want to try and get as much done as possible, so that I might have extra time to also include the exterior in the game. I think it would be really cool if I could get that done as well.
Building Playful Worlds 