I’ve been trying to get as much of the tree done as possible, but had to take a break after a long period of looking at the same image. Hopefully this will give me time to reflect on the image-style and tweak it slightly if it really needs changing. Whilst taking a tree break, I’ve been working on the game’s playable character, who is currently referred to as Little Dude. I’ve given him a pixel form, and animated his static pose to make it look like he’s either breathing or just fidgety. I also created a sequence that allows him to sit down if no controls are pressed for a while. None of this has taken a lot of time, which is good given that the tree is so lacking in form at the moment…
I’m really happy to be able to use this man as part of my inspiration process, because he’s pretty much my favourite fantasy illustrator ever. I first discovered Brian Froud through his work with Jim Henson on his films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth– in both cases his images almost entirely translated to scale models in every detail. His drawing history goes way back before these films however, since he started drawing creatures from his imagination based on the Devon country around him. Froud specialises in forest-dwelling beings who resemble part human/part plant creatures, which is why I immediately thought of him when it came to designing a character for my game.
My character is based on the plant it was born from, combined with “human” attributes such as eyes, arms and legs. I was inspired to add long flowing ears and a tail after seeing this little guy:
The ears of my creation essentially act as a kind of umbilical cord, which connects the being to the flower but eventually breaks to release the creature once its developed (I wanted to avoid using this analogy because its a bit gross, but it works better than anything else I can think of…) The tail resembles a long flower stigma, where the creature was once the centre of the flower. Unfortunately, my creation won’t be as elaborate or detailed as Froud’s drawings, but it would seem a wasted effort to try as the usually size for a pixel-art character sprite is usuall around 32X32 pixels-not leaving much room for detail!
A main character is developing in the background at my bedroom development studio! While my main emphasis has been on creating the setting and level, I haven’t forgotten that a game always needs a playable character (even though this is debatable within the games theorist community, most argue that even games like Tetris use “characters”). A lot of my character designs are still in scribble form, but the evolution is quite clear. I started off designing things that which seemed to have a lot of human qualities, but wanted to steer away from something “human.” According to the GDD, these are the aspects my character must have:
Gender
Initially, I was looking at a very female character. I don’t know why, it just seemed appropriate. As the game started to develop, I felt like the whole thing was starting to become quite feminine. Being female, this was fine by me, but I felt this might prove off-putting for male players. As I don’t want the game to be targeted at any specific group, I felt dropping the female character would help make the game appeal to everyone. The character will not be male, but should appear to be genderless.
An early rag-doll style character creation
Colour
The colour-scheme so far is a little desaturated- there are no really bright or light colours, and so far the colour choices are a quite unnatural for the objects they are representing. This should apply to the main character. At the moment I’ve worked on a very dark blue character, but am still considering white/light grey, inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s interpretation of Japanese Kodamas.
A simple ghost-style character creation
Physical Attributes
There are two main thins which the character must be able to do and will therefore affect the size and shape of the small being. Firstly, the character is born from a tree. So far I’ve come up with two ideas about how this is possible. Either the character is born standing up or hanging from its arms or ears, in either instance the character will have some physical attribute which represents its once belonging to a plant.
Secondly, the character must be a good climber! It must first climb down the tree it was born from, the climb around the large world it’s born into. As the character is quite small in relation to its world, A good way to resolve this issue would be to give it long arms and legs, but I don’t want to do this. Instead I just want to add a certain amount of flexibility to the character’s shape so it can move around easily.
Physical Appearance
As well as looking at Kodamas, I’ve been looking at creations such as Brian Froud‘s goblins and Cicely Mary Barker‘s Flower Fairies: both representations of beings which are born and live in forests. The creature I’m creating is alive yet part of a plant, so it has to represent both conscious animals and look like its parent tree.
Developments on character influences
So far, I’m stuck for what to do after developing this kind of shape and size:
To me, this little guy looks a lot like something Pokemon, but has all the simplistic attributes I want. A colour change maybe in order, and some reshaping!
I think I’m finally getting somewhere with the final realisation of the look of the tree, I’ve finished drawing the outline and have started adding some detail from the top down. I’m using a mid grey for the main tree colour, then two shades of light and dark greys to highlight light and dark parts. I want the tree to look simple, and might end up deleting areas of too high detail later…
To test the tree so far, I’ve added really simple leaves on a layer behind and in front of the main tree. I saved the area highlighted to import to Game Maker to check how well the layers are working. Before importing the lowest layer, I added a slight blur in Photoshop to give it a depth of field effect (although it currently looks like the image has been badly upscaled, so my options are increase the blur or drop it entirely.) The top layer of leaves has a 50% transparency so that the character can always be seen behind the main foreground.
In game with my added place-holder character, the background image looks a bit like this. The scale has been greatly improved since last time, partly because I reduced the size of the background image as well as a lot of the proportions. Although I’ve managed to add a little sense of depth using blurs and layers, I came across a method called Parallax Scrolling for further effect. This is where the background layers move at different speeds to suggest that slower backgrounds are further away. Wikipedia uses this example to show how depth can be added to a 2D game:
In my example, the main playing field must remain beneath the feet of the character, so the only layers allowed to move are the lowest and highest layers. In the character objects step event, this is achieved using:
background_x[0] = view_xview[0] * -.02
background_x[4] = view_xview[0] * .02
background_y[0] = view_yview[0] * -.02
background_y[4] = view_yview[0] * .02
Each layer is given a reference number, in this case the top and bottom layers are referenced “0” and “4”. I’ve accelerated/decelerated the movement speed by the tiny value of 0.02 for a very subtle movement, as anything more would pull the tree apart!
Today’s work has been improving the quality of the Pixel Tree by decreasing the size of the squares used to create the image. I’m currently still working on the outline- it may be an understatement to say that the process is proving time-consuming! Here’s a portion of my progress from today:
Once the outline is in place, I’m also considering re-proportioning some of the thicker branches, to make them more interesting. This can easily be done by dragging pieces of the outline around:
As a comparison, here are both images together:
After presenting the Pecha Kucha this morning, the emphasis of my afternoon was to get creating something which would actually appear in the finished demo. I’ve begun with the tree, as this is the most developed element so far. I pasted the image into a Graphics Gale document and traced a pixel image over the top using a large grid as a guideline.
The tree demake process:
The resulting image definitely suites the style I’m approaching, but currently cannot be used as a playable level. The square blocks used to create the image are actually 8×8 pixels in size, which is too big to create edges smooth enough to traverse as a character. I’ve now started work on a new image which uses 2×2 pixel blocks and appears much smoother. Adding detail may take quite a while as the image is 3500 pixels wide!
I’ve also been thinking about layers that can be added to the image once in the engine. So far, I’ve only been using three layers of imagery and a background. The layers can also be used to apply a things like a lighting overlay in the foreground and moving objects in the background, so things like clouds can be added which consistently scroll across the screen. Tomorrow hopefully should see the tree finished, all on the correct layers, ready to be imported to Game Maker.
On Thursday I will be presenting my project so far Pecha Kucha style, which requires me to create 20 quick slides to show what it is that I’m doing. Here’s what I’m hoping to present:
Trees appear often in mythology, throughout history they have been a pivotal part of peoples’ livelihood and as a result have been revered for a number of reasons. They are often believed to have consciousnesses, usually wise and knowledgeable, probably due to the age trees can reach. They are also seen to be protectors, or to be protected by gods and spirits who dwell in forests. Here is a very quick look at trees in mythology:
The picture above is a depiction of a Kodama from the game Lord of Vermilion. This is interesting to compare to the well-known spirit creatures from Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, where Kodamas are depicted as small, gentle ghost-like beings.
I like the idea of small spirit beings who live in trees, as this fits the description of the main character for my game which I have yet to finalize.
^Image:
Where The Kodamas Live, my own depiction of the Kodamas that inhabit Bournemouth!
There’s a surprising amount of online help for finding interesting tree characters in video games. Apparently, trees are a sure hit! Before starting development on the actual tree that will be used in my game, I thought I’d take a look at the most successful examples of trees in games.
A quick brainstorm of the famous trees of the videogames world.
1. The Iife Tree ~ Final Fantasy IX
The Iifa Tree in Final Fantasy IX was planted by the ruler of another planet, who intended to use it as a means of channelling the planet’s souls to his home planet, which was left in ruins after a failed planetary fusion. Although it appears to be a tree on the surface, the actually tree exists deep under ground, with roots which appear to create a tree-shape above. The roots appear at many locations throughout the world, discharging a constant mist which is a byproduct of a soul-filtering process.
2. The Great Deku Tree ~ Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Deku trees and various Deku objects make several appearances in the Legend Of Zelda series. In Ocarina of Time, the Deku tree receives a curse which leads him to send Navi the fairy to ask for Link’s assistance in removing the curse. Link cannot save the tree, but learns of a greater quest in the process of trying.
3. Harold ~ Fallout 3
Harold was originally a human, who was exposed to a Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) which generally caused mutations in human beings. After a while however he finds a that unique type of tree begins to grow from his head, which eventually overwhelms him and he becomes rooted to the ground, bearing little resemblance to the human being he used to be.
4. The Mana Tree ~ Secret of Mana
In the Mana series, the Mana Tree acts as the focal point of the world’s life energy and is the greatest power. The seeds of the tree contain magical powers which are intended for the protection of the planet, though in an atempt to combat an evil power, the tree itself acts as the main threat to the world. The Mana Tree was also once a human woman, who was married to a knight.
Main Image: Cherry Tree from Okami
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