The Game
Controls
The controls of the game are the classic WASD for movement and space to attack. I was going to have Z be the attack button but most players aren't used to it so I changed it to the conventual Space button.
Interactive Elements
The player can attack enemies by using the sword and can change the difficulty of the game from the main menu
Story
Style & Structure
Tamashi is based in the modern era of Japan more specifically in the 1990s also known as the Lost Decade. I have chosen this time period because of it being recent enough for there to be cities that contain skyscrapers which were the idea for one of my level designs. I also decided this time due to being a downfall in the Japanese economy and thought that I could incorporate references to it this would allow a level of education for the player. The genre of Tamashi is an action adventure which is viewed in a 3/4 top-down perspective. I have chosen this style so I can use tiled assets rather than making complete models.
The structure of the game the player can decide. I have allowed them this power over the game because I want them to choose their own path around Japan and add a feeling of choice although the game shall still stay the same. Along with that after each level, a cutscene shall play which reveals a bit more of the Takeshi's past.
Background Story
Before the game began, the main character killed Minori's father who was the leader of a rival clan. This caused Minori to loathe Takeshi even more than before. With bloodlust in Minori's eyes she lunged at Takeshi, but Takeshi turned and stabbed Minori in the stomach and left er to die on her knees Takeshi (æ¦)(the main character) defeated Minori (里) however, this meant that Minori died with pure hatred and anger towards Takeshi this caused for her to become an OnryÅ. Now Minori follows Takeshi by hiding in his shadow cursing the land which in turn forces the yokai to come out and fight.
Storyline
After every level, the player completes a cutscene plays which has no dialogue which shows Takeshi's past and how Akio ended up becoming an onryÅ. After the first level is completed, the game will show a silhouette of Takeshi slaying Akio's brother, then after that, the game cuts to black and the level select screen is shown.
The next cutscene that plays presents to the player Takeshi and Akio fighting and then after that, the third one that plays shows the defeat of Akio.
Finally, the player gets shown Akio's transformation into the onryÅ. It is at this point that the player is forced into a battle against the onryÅ. When it has been defeated the screen shall go to white and the words "I'm sorry" appear on the screen.
Takeshi
He is 5.68 feet tall with a lean build. In his past, he was a great fighter and was part of a rival clan to Minori's. At some point, he ended up killing Minori's brother and then they had a fierce battle. Takeshi's role in the game is to defeat the yokai that have been forced to attack him. His end plan is to defeat the onryÅ that cursed him and wherever he goes. His story is compelling towards the player due to them finding out a little bit more after each level.
Minori/OnryÅ
Minori's father was killed and her soon after however she was killed with blood-lust in her eyes due to her wanted instant revenge after seeing her father killed right in-front of her. Some point after Midori's death she transformed into an Onryo and cursed Takeshi. Her story is compelling because the player doesn't know that she is the Onryo and how this transformation was coursed by Takeshi.
Kappa
The Kappa is one of the enemies that the player shall find in some of the levels. Their most recognizable for looking like a large turtle on two legs in the game and that they will almost always be found near water. Along with that, they are an owner to a special ability, this special ability is that they can drag the player into the water and drown them as soon as they reach the water. If this happens then a special cutscene shall get played where it shows the player getting drowned to death.
Gashadokuro
The Gashadokuro is a giant skeleton which appears as a mini-boss in one of the levels. It is a sign that the game has just gotten a lot harder. It shall be found in a large field which has little amount of assets. The way it shall fight the player is by slamming its hands down on them, however this leaves it open to attack.
Tsukumogami
A Tsukumogami is a type of yokai that is produced by a tool or inanimate object when it has lived for one hundred years. They are said to have the ability to shapeshift into human form but for simplicity of my game, I'm going to be keeping them as objects.
The way they shall be incorporated into my game is by having them as the base enemy which appear most often. They will attack the player by physically hitting them for example if an umbrella attacks the player it will spin at them.
Some objects that shall be used are umbrellas, shovels, knives, and other kitchen utensils.
Sword
The sword is the player's main weapon of choice. It has two types of attacks, the first being a simple jab which hit the enemy directly in front of the player and the other being a swing attack which attacks multiple enemies that are in front rather than just one. to stop the swing attack from being used all the time the animation shall be two to five frames slower than the jab and it will deal slightly less damage.
Throwing Star
The throwing star is the players ranged weapon it does very little damage but it can be fired quickly so this makes up for the low damage. When thrown the weapon shall move in a straight line for a few seconds and then disappear unless it hits an object before hand. It shall also move quite fast and it would be the fasted attack animation. Although the fast attack speeds may make this weapon over powered.
Roll
If the player is in a pinch they can roll out of the way of an attack. This could be used to dodge or just to move around the level quickly. The way it would work is that as soon as you start to roll you become immune to all attacks, however, you cannot attack back so if anything the roll is just a way to survive for that little bit longer.
Art (visuals & animation)
This is a 3D model of my character
These are possible ideas of what my enemies and main character might look like.
Style
The game's graphics shall be a 16-bit pixel art style, this has been chosen so the assets aren't memory heavy and so they are easier to make. The mood of this style shall be dark with a few bright colours although they have been dulled down to match the mood. The colours that shall be used are greys, blacks, and browns, however dark blues, greens, and reds will be used as well.
The graphical style shall be somewhat similar to "A Link To The Past". This is because the animations in that game work well and look nice to the eye.
World
The game shall feature several levels each with a different setting.
One of the levels shall be based upon Hokkaido in Japan, this means that there shall be mountains and cliffs which are covered in snow along with hills and plains which also have snow on. Because most of the level shall be white I am going to add trees, fences, patches of grass, rocks that are sticking out of the ground, and some buildings.
Tokyo is also a place where I have designed a level over. This means the player shall have to find their way around the city's skyscrapers and large buildings. Something that won't be featured in this level though is civilians. This is because I would have to add AI which I don't have the time to do due to their AI being different to the enemies.
Okinawa is the next location that a level was based on. The part of Okinawa that it is being based on is its beaches. This will mean the game shall be featuring lots of yellow and blue.
I am also creating a level to look like a field, however, the time of day is different because it is going to be at night. This will mean that the player shall feel a different atmosphere.
And finally, I shall be designing the boss level on Mount Fuji. This is because it is something that Japan is known for with it being a major landmark.
Characters
Takeshi's design is very similar to Link is "A Link to the past." He has four directions and 20 sprites in total.
These are the three stages of the boss in my game. They are a lot larger than the player and most of the other assets in my game. This is so the player knows that this is a special enemy. They also have a much smoother style that the player this was because I wanted it to have more detail and because it was when making the hair I found my way of drawing and creating assets on Piskel.
The kappa is basically a retexture of the player with a few minor differences for one the ponytail has been taken out.
Other Assets
These assets are all featured in my game, however, the grass I only used the centre of it in my game. I also used a grey square to make the fog inside the game.
Music & Sounds
The music and sounds for the game shall be very similar to the ones found in "A Link To The Past" this is because it has a similar art style to Tamashi so a similar sound and music style will fit my game as well.
World
The background music throughout the game shall be eerie yet calming to create a spooky atmosphere. This is to keep the player alert and to make them want to keep playing.
It features rumbling that was used in "A Link to the past" this was because I am not skilled in sound design and so I could not create or edit any sound for my game.
Characters
When the player gets hurt they will grunt to show their pain. If they get hurt enough though then beeping sounds shall appear to show that the player is near death. When the player attacks the game shall produce a small short beep.
The enemies will most likely have the same sounds as Takeshi to save on memory and time.
Technical Aspects
I shall be using Piskel to create and animate most of the assets. This is because the software has been designed for pixel art. Along with Piskel, I shall also be using Photoshop and Krita to animate anything I cannot do in Piskel. This will most likely happen if I need something rotated at a certain angle.
To create the game I shall be using Construct 2. This is due to it being particularly simple to use and code. When at home, however, I have a 100 event limit which means when I am over that I can only make my game in college.
Kung Fury
Although the film was created in 2015, it is based on the 80's and how chaotic the films were back then.
I have watched the entire video the is displayed above and I have come to the conclusion that this film won't present to me any helpful research for my game. Due to this, I shall not be using this film to help me with developing my game.
Shoguns Ninja
This film has provided me with more reliable information and knowledge on Shoguns and ninjas than Kung Fury did due to this film being made in Japan. Along with that, I managed to find an English dubbed version of the film. This allowed me to understand what was happening, however, due to the odd editing and story, I still struggled to understand what was happening in the film completely. I watched about half an hour into the film and all that has been shown that can help me with the combat side of my game in hand to hand combat and attacking from the shadows. Both of these I shall not be using in my game due to melee is had enough to code as it is and it will mean id have to create more animations and allowing the player to deal extra damage when hidden will take lots of time as well to code and it wouldn't be obvious to the player where they would be hidden. Although according to my survey some people wanted me to add human enemies to my game I have decided not to add them as it would ruin the educational side of my game. However, if I were to add any I would most likely look back at this film to base the human enemies on.
The Great Yokai War
When watching the film I swiftly started to understand less and less about what was happening or what the characters were. This was due to it being a Japanese film and it not being English subbed or English dubbed. Because I couldn't figure out what the characters were meant to be, this means I can't use this to help me design characters for my game.
The Grudge
I never actually watched this scene or any part of the movie mostly because I am not a fan of horror movies of any kind. However, I can still use reviews on the film and the plot to do research on this film. The reason this film is important for me to research is that the main antagonist is the same type of yokai that my boss is. This means I can get ideas on the visual and audial aspects of my boss, along with how it could attack the player.
The Ninja
This is a game that is addicting due to it not having a save function so when you run out of lives you have to play from the beginning.
Construct 2
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCR955dujboBxEN2VJlZwJw
This is the link to the homepage of the youtube channel i shall be using to learn how to code the harder sections of my game.
I haven't used this video yet it was just there as an example of what I might use in the future.
I used this video by ScrirraVideos to help code level 1 of my game I go into more detail about this in making the game section more specifically the level 1 section of it.
Knights and Bikes
K and B is a hand-drawn 3D game with excellent, simple animations and a very child-friendly art style. The plot of the game revolves around the imagination of two girls named Nessa and Demelza, who cycle around the in-game world saving the adults and fighting "undead knights". The developers based their game on SNES games like Mother (Earthbound) and Secret of Mana. Along with this, the style of the environment of the game was inspired by their childhood and the popular movie "The Goonies". Sadly I can't use any of this game to help in my research for my game due to them being completely different from each other.
Who helped me?
When creating the finale boss for the game, I had Tom help me create the arms and the upper torso. This was because whenever I tried to make the arms they ended up looking like penguin wings or wings of some planes. However, due to limited time since he helped me near the end of the lesson he couldn't create the hand. In the end I didn't add hands.
The arm and torso before Toms help The arm and torso after Toms help
Once again I asked for Toms help to make the boss's face on her finale form similer to the face on the other forms. This was because her face was almost twice the size when it came to the width. A slight problem I encountered after Tom changed the face of my boss was that the hair now no longer connected so i had to cut out most of the hair. This in-turn made the hair shorter in height and width.
The face and hair before Tom helped The face and hair after Tom helped
One Sheet
Mind Map
Reference list
My reference list contains all of the links (that I remembered to get) to websites and images that I used or went on.
Asset List
Gantt Chart
Proposal
Pitch
Although it looks incomplete when I was pitching my idea I spoke about about it and the images and words on the power point was to show concepts and to remind me of what to say
Boss becoming female
When creating my boss I couldn't find any images of Onryo that were clearly male, because of this i decided to make my boss a female so i can base it off of what is considered the majority of Onryo. Along with this i had to change the back story and name of the boss' name when it was human. I decided to change its name from Akio to Minori which means truth. I chose this name because it creates the same feeling as Akio which means glorious hero. The feeling that is created is that it shows that the player isn't as much of a good guy as he seems.
Original text
Akio, like Takeshi, was also a great fighter. Along with this,
they fought together as greatest friends and allies. However, when his brother
was killed a darkness started brewing inside him. After he got defeated he
transformed into an onryÅ and cursed
Takeshi. His story is compelling because the player doesn't know that the onryÅ used to be Akio (Takeshi's old best friend
turned enemy)
In the game, the onryÅ hides in the player's shadow until they
have completed each of the levels and unlocked the backstory to Takeshi and
Akio. Along with this, the onryÅ
breaks Takeshi's sword causing the final battle to become a lot harder.
Takeshi's ranged weapon
Originally the player's ranged weapon was going to be a bow. This was because I could add features like charge up time and how different charges could result in different damage and range. However, I have decided that this would be too complicated to code and very annoying to animate and it would mean I'd have to create my main character holding the bow. The bows replacement is a throwing star that shall go forward for a few seconds and then disappear, so it is much simpler to code and animate since I could either make it so it spins or doesn't spin.
The original description of the bow was... The bow is the player's ranged weapon it deals nowhere near as much damage as the sword but it allows the player to stay away from the enemy while still dealing damage. Also, another balancing feature to the bow is that it needs to charge up before it can be shot.
I've changed the ranged weapon again but this time it is major, i hav desided to remove the mechanic entirely. This is because the weapon was overpowered to the point you could kill the boss without getting hurt by staying out of range of the boss
The difficulty
Instead of having the game have one difficulty that is fairly challenging (I cant beat it, however) I have decided to add an easy mode and an impossible mode (which won't be impossible just very hard, you'll get one shot.) I also made it so the boss was easier on the first and second stage because it was to difficult for other people to get past it with enough health. I ended up changing the sine magnitude and period to a lower and higher value respectively.
Takeshi's ability
Originally I had planned for the player to be able to roll out of the way of attacks however it would be a pain to make the animation for the four directions.
Enemies
I never added two of the wanted enemies into my game the first being the Tsukumogami this is because I wanted I couldn't figure out how they would work in my game as there would be different types of them.
The second is a mini-boss the Gashadokuro the reason I never added this into the game was that I didn't know how to make a skeleton in pixel art or how I would present it to the player in the game.
Although the kappa made it into the game I never made them very special like I wanted them to be in my ideas. All they do is run at the player and if they hit then the player shall take damage. I believe the reason I never added the drowning and dragging was because it would have been too much effort and consume too much time to create the assets and the code.
Even the boss of my game lost some potential. I ended up creating a projectile for it but never added it due to lack of time and I also never added the cutscenes of the bosses past.
Levels
At first, I planned for an ambitious task of creating several levels not realising how long this would take. As you can guess I didn't create multiple levels even to the extent of the boss room being in the same area as the only level I made.
Main Menu
The main menu is the simplest stage to create and code, this is because it has the least amount of code to deal with.
I ended up adding and changing the code a lot this was so I could add different difficulties to my game and let the player know what is a button. I also put the controls on this page because I couldn't add any more events into my game due to me using the free version at home.
Level 1
Now when I was creating the first level in college I decided to use angles of momentum to decide which way the player would go. It was this part that was fine and went well, well except for the part where my origin points were in the wrong place but that was fixed with a simple right click in the right place, at the player's feet. Even when I was adding the transformation between the idle animations and the walking ones I experienced little amount of problems and all of the problems I did encounter were because of the origin points. Now you can see how I created the movement in the image above (ignore everything on line 12, for now, I beg you), also you have probably noticed that I used a movement box actor this was so I could move and rotate that without having to add extra code to tell the player not to rotate. Something you cannot see is how I've done my idle animations, this was probably the second simplest part of the script (getting the player to follow the box was the easiest) all I have done here is told the computer that whenever either W, A, S, or D buttons are released then it should change the animation to the idle animation of that buttons direction. Now for the part that I want to forget about, for now, the sword mechanic. I was told before I started putting ideas into concrete that making swords work in construct 2 is difficult and it would be easier if I were to just use a ranged weapon in my game. However, I decided that since this was the final MAJOR project I would try and do something a bit more challenging. I already knew how to change the animation because I have done that for the previous to sections of the script but I wasn't too sure on how I would make a hitbox appear and for when the animation is over for it to change back to the correct idle animation. In this attempt I tried to make a hitbox appear where the sword for being positioned but I couldn't figure out how to make it do that so, in the end, I left it at 0,0 as that would give me a nice idea on where it spawns for when I try to tweak other aspects of the sword. As you can see I managed to make it so after 0.1 seconds the sword hitbox would get destroyed and then you go back to the south facing idle direction. It was here that I got stuck and just in time as well since I didn't have any more time left in the lesson.
Some of the key differences between what I did in college and at home are that there is now a purple box following the player (that is the camera) a red box (the movement box) and every aspect of the code is different basically.
About half 9 in the afternoon I decided to attempt to fix the sword so I looked on youtube and found this account called ScirraVideos who post tutorials for construct 2. I managed to find one that was for a beat 'em up and just to my luck it is for a guy with an axe (it was a side-scroller but I just had to change a few things around.) I decided that I should reset the script and asset properties. In the end, I basically copied all the steps the person in the video takes except a few because they only applied to side-scrollers and not top downs. Thanks to the video i managed to create better working movement which now only allow 4 directions, create a script that allows me to tell the game to remember what way the player was facing before they are attacking, a camera that feels more natural for the type of game I am creating and other stuff all of which are in the video. BUT, there are major problems that I encountered with this video, it has two parts, the part I got didn't explain weapon hitboxes for within animations, the video was published in 2015 and there hasn't been a new video since. This has meant that I shall now need to find help somewhere else if I wasn't to add melee to my game.
I ended up figuring out how to make my sword work and have a hitbox that disappears at the right time I've also made it so the player cant attack and move at the same time. At first, I tried to use a wait event but that meant the player could attack constantly and while moving. I then used the on animation finished event you can see above this allowed it to work but the player could move and attack which is not what I wanted to fix this I added a variable called state which changes from idle to attacking and back again.
At some point, I started to create the ranged attack for the player this was simple since I figured out how to make the sword work. I used the same idea of the state change to the player couldn't move while using it. I also used the bullet events to allow the weapon to fly across the screen. However, as you can see I have disabled all of this due to it making the game way too easy since you can stand out of range of the boss and kill it without getting hurt.
The kappa was annoying as I couldn't figure out how to make it follow the player without going diagonally, however, I ended up making it so the pathfinding only moved the kappa horizontally then vertically although this means you can exploit how they move to get past them it works very well.
The boss has 15 hitpoints 5 for each form I decided to do this because it would mean it is completely different from the other enemies in my game and it means there are 3 stages to the boss fight which seems to be the norm when it comes to boss fights. The boss also has a health bar wiht goes down by 10 pixels each time this is so the player knows how they are doing ini the boss fight.
Making the boss change forms was very stressful for me as so many things went wrong when it would change to its second form about 20 or more would spawn in and when they took damage they would disappear rather than spawning the asset that it changes form behind. I realised this was because I had a wait event in the wrong place although I don't understand why that would make it multiple of the boss. when coding the second form change the asset that appears to let the boss change for wouldn't appear this was because it was spawning on the boss that was\off screen the way I fixed this was on the start of the layout it would destroy that asset.
This is the code that allowed the boss to hurt the player if the player got to close to the boss a purple aura would appear around the player dealing one damage and would stop the player from moving for a while.
On the boss's finale form every 10-12 seconds a particle effect would spawn on the left and right of the player (this also appears when the player is walking to the boss fight) if the player hits these 5 times it will lower their health by one.
This is the code for the particles and the player's death it is all very simple and all reused from other parts of my code so I don't have to talk much about it.
Win and Lose
If the player wins they get shown the boss slowly evaporating and getting smaller, whereas...
if they lose they get shown this, it is the player's sword in some dirt broken and rusted.
The code for these is basically the same except on one you have to click restart while the other is just click.
Level 1 Easy
Everything is the same for the easy version except the boss has less health and it doesn't have its third form. Along with that, the player gets double the health.
Evaluation
Research:
I mostly researched other products as that allowed me to get an insight into what worked and what doesn't. I did, however, realise that I set up too many products to research and that took up too much of my time so I ended up having to cut a few products out of my research list. I could have improved my research by looking at fewer products but putting more effort into researching them rather than having more items to look at and in turn gave each of them less time. Something that went well was what that since I looked at lots of products it meant I had different perspectives and ideas for my game.
Pre-Production:
in my pre-production, I made many assets (some of which I didn't use) this was because I was going to use tiled sprites so I could use them sprites over and over again to make different buildings and backgrounds while not having to make new assets. However, I ended up not doing this as each of the tiles looked tacky and I felt like if I continued making them I would end up making a mistake and the tiles would not link together correctly. Although that was probably the key decision I made during this stage of production to switch from tiled sprites to compleat sprites, I could have skipped this decision if I made compleat models from the beginning. Doing this I could have had much more time which I could have used for more helpful things. Something that did go well though was my mood board which I enjoyed making this is because I got to present in it the possible ideas I could have gone with for my game. Something I would do next time is probably asking other people if they thought a certain art style would be too time-consuming for the scale of the project and ask for more help with things my skillset does not contain.
Production:
In my production, I mainly focused on creating my game as I planned for three levels and a boss stage, this, however, did not happen due to me not creating enough backgrounds for them. In the end, I only had one level split into two the first part was a forest section that you had to get through and then you would enter the boss area. Because of the game only having one level I wanted to make it feel longer than it was. I accomplished this by making the boss a three-stage boss fight (two stage on easy difficulty.) I found many bugs while trying to make the boss like this though, I talk about these in more detail on my section on making the game. Other than these bugs the major challenge was getting the player and the normal enemies to not move diagonally, once I got that working my next big challenge was actually beating my own game to make sure all was working, up to this point I had a friend play my game to test it but not wanting to stop him from doing his work I decided to add an easy mode with at first gave the player more hearts. this worked and I could beat it and I slowly managed to beat it on normal difficulty. Rather than scraping the easy mode though I decided to keep it and take out the final boss stage. Now that I have finished production I believe that my game is extremely suitable for my audience which was set to age twelve and up now due to features that I couldn't add my game is more of a PEGI seven. Sadly, however, my game is very much not how I dreamt it to be in my initial ideas. This is due to lack of assets, time and over-ambitious idea. My production could have been improved if I changed the perspective of my game and how the player moves from a classic legend of Zelda style movent to something similar to Soul Knight. If I got to do this project again I would completely change the game this time making it similar to Knights of Pen and Paper where the player is playing DnD. This would have meant I would have had to make one large asset that would take up most of the room and there would be no movement everything would be animations, so a lot of asset creation.
Conclusion:
overall the main thing I learnt in this project is don't be over ambitious as this means I'll end up with a lot of cut ideas and many parts of the game being axed from production. My favourite part of the project would have to of been making the game although it was very stressful when things didn't work, I still found it the most rewarding and best part. I found making all of my assets very challenging since I am not the most artistically skilled person, however, I was able to get help when making some assets and I found an easy way for me to digitally draw so that should help me in the future. In the future, I will try not to load my self with so many tasks at one time since in this project I was flicking between on asset to another when deish=gning then due to me wanting to them done quickly due to the large number of tasks I had to compleat. Like I said earlier I would also not plan a large project as this means I will struggle with deadlines and if the game plan is small it means if I have enough time I can add more as I go on to make it a larger project that planned for.