Ambient Pressure – Last Blog

As we lack a lot of work to do, for us who aren’t programmers, I have been set to work on my project raport. As such, I have little to speak about in the manner of work I have done, as I have returned to look through my last raport for how we are supposed to write it, and I have started setting up for it. As well as looking through our documentation and my blog for what to write in said raport.

Due to this, I have noticed I really need to write down somewhere when an assignment start and ends, as I have little memory when it comes to dates. And that could prove highly inconvenient, especially when writing a thing like a project raport. However, with scrum, the documentation of our group have improved a little. Not by a generous amount, but I have a greater clue of what we did during what week during this project than I had with our last project, as that documentation was not truly time-stamped and slowly faded of into oblivion. Which means that this little improvement is better than absolutely no improvement.

Not that I am truly harsh at my group, as we have an excellent communication. It is a fun group to be a part of, but it’s shortcoming is definatly just documentation, even if we are learning. Slowly.

But, as there is little I can think of to write about me writing my project report using my old one as a guide line, let me instead finish this blog entry by talking a little about the game, from my perspective. I have done plenty of odd-jobs around this project, from screens to level design and documentation.

I love working with the group I have worked with during this project, given how we have, as previously noted, an excellent communication.

The game seems deceptively simple to me, being harder to pull off than it may appear to be. But at the same time, once we found that we needed to focus at things in order rather than being all over the place. We also had plenty of stretch goals, that are unlikely to make it into the game. Aesthetic stretch goals, and what would have been a boss. We had to remove doors and hatches from our plans, and the more open access to in which order you play the levels.

With this I leave you, to return to writing my project raport.

Level Design Part 3

As I have the ever pleasant assignment to look over and manage the tasktraker this week, and the sudden problems with the Internet, I will continue where I left off about last weeks levels. It also allows me to tell you about a few things taken up in the comments.

We are three that, in theory, makes the maps complete. I make suggestions for the layouts, our main level designer makes the layouts better – along with placements of enemies and samples, while our main artists makes the art for the maps. After those steps the map goes to the coders.

As for my thought process, I mainly go with what I feel like could work. My goals are to make them easy to navigate, and not very confusing, to make simple basic level overviews.

This particular level is rather linear, but has one big, open space that could be possible to be a bit creative with. Perhaps one of our lurking, tricky fishes – which name I’m currently forgetting – to be placed in an upper place to trick the player up there.

A very symmetric map with great large spaces. It is rather simplistic, and could also possibly be used lying down. Possibly I could have made a few walls jutting inwards as well, or some platform for samples.

This map is rather complicated, and I’m not sure if it could be utilized – it could possibly be a late-game map. Lots of possibility to get lost, but no dead ends. Rome rooms could be removed to make it an easier map to navigate. I might have overdone it on this map.

This is a decietful map in that it looks and feels more simple than it would be. Platforms could be added in the big rooms, for additional room for samples and power ups. It is rather big, and you could easily get lost in such open spaces.

To end this little display, as these were all the last maps, I must say I can’t give better descriptions as I do not have my thoughts while building them fresh in mind. My insperation, borrowed from looking at parts of dungeon maps mostly, ran out at the last map. But after making ten maps, I’d say it was rather to be expected.

As for this weeks work, I really must start working directly, because I had serious complications when I was going to start working, that I had to go to the help desk for help with.

Ambient Pressure Level Design part 2

As the art of the game is nearly completely done, I have once again been roped into making suggestions for level design. Given I also did level design last week, I didn’t need to do nearly as much brainstorming to come up with ideas this week, instead focusing at making plenty of level design suggestions.

As of today, I currently have ten new level suggestions.

The main issue with this remains the same as the last week – the levels need to be simple, while still being challanging. The fog of war the game contains makes it tricky to know if they will fuction well without testing, but that will be done with the more final level designs rather than these suggestion levels. This time I did attempt to avoid dead ends like the ones in my first four designs.

This level is very simple, and could either be an early level or part of a bigger one. It is simplistic, with three rooms connected with corridors, the top part being more of an entrance or an exit than a potential place for danger. The potential problem could lie in the fact it is very symmetric and could be easy to get lost in if the art doesn’t help.

This level is very straight forward, and the slicht jacks in the tunnles giving more space for dangers, or samples, to be placed, without ending up a dead end you didn’t know of. Possibly an early level, given the simplicity.

Another rather risky one. Akin to a level from my last week, nearly all rooms are connected to eachother, but similar to the first example level this week, it is very symmetric. It possibly needs a lot of help of art to keep the player from getting lost and keeping the rooms from being identical.

This level is a series of big and small connecting rooms, rather linear and possible a part of the fade-over to the more complicated maps. All potentinal dead ends are wide to try to keep the player from being cornered by the fish.

A straightforward, possibly easier level than the example level just before it, this is a linear and simple level of several large rooms connected by short corridors. Big, open spaces like this might not be the biggest challange to navigate, but finding things would be a bit more difficult, and the challange would rely mainly on the fish. Possibly a very early level?

A slightly more complicated level, this one has it’s fair bit of dead end rooms, and it could potentinally be possible to turn and still avoid a fish if chased into them. It is, however, a fair bit more difficult to navigate with the fog of war and big rooms.

There are another four levels I’d like to go over, but time is running short to get this up. As such, I will leave you with that it would not be possible to do guess work on how good these would function, and they need to be tested – preferably by several people – to know how wll they would work.

Ambient Pressure Level Design

Due to the art of the game now having little for me to do, I was tasked with helping our level designer by coming up with a few level designs this week. As such, I spent a lot of the week brainstorming, and having little to show for my work.

However, as today rolled in, I had enough to do a few level suggestions.

The main issue with designing levels for this game is the fact that the levels have to be simple, but they can’t be too simple as they would not pose a challange if it was so. Being my first try at designing levels for a game like this, I did some playing around.

First example was my first design, and was based around the same straight line, which I then made extentions of. Might be possible to remove some extentions and add a couple more entries and exits to rooms, the dead ends would potentially be very bad if chased by one of the fish.

The second example is a lot more simplistic, perhaps too simplistic in fact. It has two rooms and a ”round” section in the middle, It is rather genetic, and at the very least would not be too difficult to navigate even with the limited vision of the game.

Example three is, perhaps, the level I am feeling the most attatchment to, with it’s many paths that lead the same way, big open areas and hallways. Less linear than the others, but perhaps a bit too dificult to navigate in darkness. If there were time, it could be tested too see if it is too difficult to navigate. The paths leading to the same rooms and between rooms accessable though another room could either make it easier to navigate, or more difficult and leave the player swimming in circles. While I quite like this level, I am not certain it will function in the game.

Example four also has the issue with a dead end. Perhaps adding further paths to it, either up or down, could help this level, as it is otherwise rather simple. Perhaps another room should be added to it, to help against it’s simplicity, or perhaps it would do fine as a starting level with the dead end connected to somewhere.

All in all, what took time in this assignment was to find the ideas, and a good idea would be to leave levels be a few hours to later look upon them with a fresh eye to spot the flaws and see if you can remedy them. Something to think about.

Ambient Pressure Buttons

I spent this week making the buttons for all of the menus and maintaining the Scrum Backlog. As I cannot find 400 words to write about the later, I simply will have to try with the former.

The main issue with the buttons has been to find a suitable font, as well as the changes in what exactly the buttons say. After a couple of times rewriting the buttons – changing font, changing actual words – the buttons have finally settled down at a final look.

There were two requirements we placed upon the font we should use: 1, It needs to be readable on the screen, and 2, it needs to be free for comercial use. Mentally I added a third condition, that it would suit the game. For the additional third condition, I only looked for suitable fonts on dafont.coms categories Eroded, Distorted, and Destroy. Among the fonts I found that I thought suited the games ambiance, only one was free for comercial use. As such it was chosen for the buttons.

That I later noticed that it was the font originally used by the group who built the concept of Ambient Pressure was an unexpected but pleasant discovery.

The pick of the font was originally because it reminded me of the first groups font, and the fact it seems to be dissolving – something certain things does when submerged in water, and thus I thought it would suit the underwater ambiance.

As I was making the buttons, I was also tasked with making sure they can change colour once moused over, which, while done simply by changing text colour, had to be visible on all of the possible places for them to be placed on the game screens. Going from black to a very bright blue was an easy pick – partly for it to be obvious, but also partly to keep to water-y colours.

Due to the choice in colours having to be visible, I decided the best placement for them to be on the lower part of the background, with only the two first buttons on the menu above the middle line. This makes them appear far down, so they don’t take over the screen, and gives a lot of empty space on the screen. The buttons were placed at the right side of the screen due to the suggestion of the level designer.

The buttons remains fairly simple, text-only buttons to melt together with the background a bit – though not too much – and blend in with the otherwise simplistic style of it.

Ambient Pressure Screens Background

I spent a 40 minutes an evening looking up ways to create an underwater picture, before settling on a simple method only utilizing six PhotoShop tools.

A blue and black gradient is the biggest part of the background.

I then used white and black to render clouds – after that, I used the filter gallery to turn a plastic wrap filter (settings being Highlight Stregth 12, Detail 9, Smoothness 7) on, followed by adding linear dodge to make it blend in with the background. Free Transform was then used to make it form the water surface. Using a mask to remove the edges, making it more natrual and help it blending in, I then dublicated the layer and used Free Transform to turn the second layer upside down. I proceeded with moving it to the bottom of the background. Changing linear dodge to colour dodge to make it melt into the much darker background, and then I lowered the opacity to about 70%.

After I finished with that I could fix the light, to really get the underwater look and hiding the gradiant, rendering black and white clouds once again, this time without turning on the plastic wrap filter – instead using a Radial Blur (settings being Zoom, Amount 100, best quality), and then adding linear dodge for it to not literally cover the rest of my work. After that it was just the matter of stretching it so it covers the entire scene and using a mask I to make use of a black and white gradiant to stop it from being overpowering.

It took three to four tries to get perfect, instead of small flaws everywhere.

This was to create a background that could give the player a sense of being underwater. It has a very simplistic style, looks pretty good, and is relatively simple to create with decent knowledge of PhotoShop tools.

Worth noting is that using black and blue is not an excellent idea when rendering clouds, the effect doesn’t seem to turn out as good when doing that. You can’t render clouds at a too small surface either, it is better to go big than to go small. And the picture does not look complete without the shadow at the bottom. Don’t forget to use the mask to not leave the light a bit too overpowering, and it really doesn’t work without the light either as it will be obvious the background is just a gradiant.