Enemy creation and Animation

Creating a Character

The players character is Dracula who has come to this western town and has wrecked havoc creating blood shed and death in his wake. Because of this nuisance the resident cowboys are fed up and demand that he face a court to answer for his crimes. It is your job as the player to escape these cowboys and the western village. The cowboys in the game will be armed with guns to shoot the player and cause harm whereas the vampire doesn't have a weapon as he finds this chase to be more of a game than a life or death situation.

So I already decided to use the vampire I drew for the main concept art of the game. So I decided to draw some for the cowboy. I used the reference board I made and created a small chibi version of the cowboy.

This art helped me work out the kind of look I wanted for my enemy to have. I struggled a lot with working so small since I like to add extra details. For some reason I felt extremely confined trying to work on the character in Photoshop so I decided one developing outside of Photoshop. 

I don't think the coat of the cowboy would work seeing as the game is rather muted and it may drown the cowboy out, having too many browns. I tried to use less saturated colours because of the fact that I wanted to set more of a mood with the game and I don't think that having loud colours for everything really works out. 

I originally created many animation states with the cowboy in order for it to have similar frames as the player. However, I couldn't add these due to me not knowing code. 

These animation states I believe wouldn't have worked that well anyways. I find the robotic movement works rather well for the cowboy to be enemy looking. The overall look works better for the enemy so that means that it works better.

Player creation and animation

Animating and Creating the Player

Next I made the vampire and focused on bringing the more realistic illustration I did and changing it to be pixel art. The fact I used so many monochrome tones made the variation of his clothes rather difficult. I think that there is a difference but also a similarity of the sprites so this allows them to look more like they belong together but are also different characters. In the game the vampire also appears more pale. 

For the vampires movement I wanted something a bit more unique so I decided to make his movements as a bat, this also makes sense as he is trying to run away from the cowboy so having the sprite become a bat would mean for faster movement. To help with this I watched a few videos on bats flying in slow motion and this gave me some ideas on how exactly the silhouette would look  for my creation of the bat. I did some brief doodles of the positions of the bat for the animations I would need seeing as the wings would be the most difficult part to illustrate having these little sketches gave me a basic idea on how it should look. 

The first frame of the bats left and right movement was then created and from there the variations were generated.

Here are all the states of the bat. I think having this feature makes the game slightly more unique and helps with the narrative that I wanted. 

I developed some hit animations for each state of the player, I created these by inverting the designs and created animations switching between the hit state and the first state for each animation. 

Creating the environment

Creating the environment

For the first level's environment I wanted to make it within a dessert terrain so that meant a rather bland looking image however I tried to make the desert fleshed out with plants and different't things that may be found within a desert. This allowed me to experiment with different items however I also wanted to have the western village somehow fit within the scene and so I will have to somehow work through to get this.

I originally made my environment to be very open and planned to have lots relating to the wild west but this changed slightly as I made the assets. This is due to me realising such an open world wouldn't really work with the type of game I was designing. The different was

I decided to change the layout of my level to a more maze like design. Because of this I changed my assets for my game to include more collide able objects so that the maze was harder to complete. This will then lead to the door I have created which I am hoping to animate and make lead to another level. This door will hopefully be programmed by me after watching some tutorials on how to complete the task. I wanted to end the first level with entering a saloon that the second level will be based in.

I also included an Easter egg of one of my friends as a raccoon and this can be seen within the first level.

I wanted to create some slight changes with the environment assets and this meant that I had to change up a few things.

Level select and Pause menus

Creation of the level select menu

When creating the level select menu I wanted to do a rather moody image which showed more of the vampire and the setting that he was in. So I figured that drawing a saloon would show off the western setting well and pairing this with a vampire drinking blood at the saloon will make for a more Dracula themed image.

I wanted the level buttons to be separated from the image itself so it gave more of a clean and clear design, I decided to do a more detailed image and to have the level select not be a part of this because of how it may confuse the eyes.

I chose to illustrate the same vampire from the concept art I made as I felt he suited the feel of the game well and having a constant look of that vampire will be good for my game as I am thinking of making the player the same vampire.

This was the original idea I had in terms of placement and the image itself.

When designing the main image I came across a few snags in terms of the illustration of the vampire with pixel art I struggled to create his features and make them look like a humans so I decided to make less as more and just used a few pixels to make his features as I felt this would work best for the image.

     Here are some work in progress shots of the level select backdrop.

This week I also created a focus on the level select buttons. Since all my font is hand-drawn I felt that having text as well as the number on the button would be too much and so I decided to just complete the numbers to make them more clear and understandable.

For the background of the button, I wanted something to make them stand out more against the background they were on but also help it work with the image so I tried to make some that were rounded rectangles and to outline these with white so that they would fit the theme of the font and the other menu buttons.

For the pause menus I kept to the same font but made it slightly longer and thinner, for the pause menu I made a resume, menu and quit button. The menu button I also used within the level select screen to save time and to have that link from the level select screen to the menu for ease of access for the player.

Next week I will focus on character creation and asset creation as all my menus are now complete!

Name creation and more assets.

High Doom

While designing my assets I finally came up with a name for my game. 

'High Doom.' I felt this went well with the plot for my game about a vampire who has infiltrated a town in the wild west and went on a killing spree. Since 'High noon' is considered something relating to cowboys I felt making a pun of this could work. 

The assets I have made so I far I believe will be in the kind of style I want for my game. I will continue this as I make more assets. I mainly focused on some things that you could find in a western scene taking inspiration from the mood board I created. I also thought about the fact that these would be vampire-Esque seeing as you play a vampire trying to take over a western town. I plan to create some more assets after focusing on my menus.

Making the Menus

MENU CREATION

After deciding what exactly my style would be in terms of pixel art I decided to venture into the creation of my menus and select screens.
I first started with the creation of my logo. I wanted something that would explain the game before even playing it. I originally intended the logo to be completely horizontal. I also intended to use a font for the logo. I decided against this, however, because I felt that I could get the result I wanted.

                                                      This is my initial sketch of the logo. 

I translated this into a pixel art form, adding some mid-tone grey around the letters to add some slight dimension I decided to remove the blood as I felt it made the logo rather corny and a bit too into the vampire scene.

I feel that the finished logo represents the aesthetic of the game well and helps detail the game without spelling out the obvious too much.

I decided to use a similar font for my menu options as it will help tie the game together more. These menu options were put together at a similar time to the logo.

I also designed the menu background. For this, I wanted something to show the western look but also something that wasn't very detailed and showed the menu options up well. I felt that a typical western-inspired swinging door would look good to lay the menu options out on.

From doing this menu I believe that when I start working on my level select screen I will be more understanding of how exactly I want them to turn out.

The start of the project.

So It Begins. 

Hello, welcome to the start of the blog about my first 2D pixel game.
This game has a theme of Dracula in the wild west.

 I am currently thinking of a name for the game but I collated some images into a mood board in order to demonstrate the imagery that I want to occur in the game. Along with visuals from other games that hold the kind of aesthetic I want with my pixel art. I wanted to go for a more deserted look with the vampire being the outsider who has come in and culled all of the cowboys.

From this mood board that I created I designed a brief conceptual piece to show the kind of feel I want my game to have. I feel like having a more bland colour palette and then focusing the most saturation with the vampire would be better suited.

After creating this concept piece I decided to focus on creating more pixel art versions of the characters which I want to include.

The main character the vampire, I tried to make his appearance similar to that of the concept vampire. Once I find out how to make a more detailed pixel art counterpart I feel that this design would work out. Compared to the basic look I plan to give the cowboys the vampires appearance will help him stand out.









I hoped for the cowboy to have a more basic appearance so wanted to give them a rather bland colour palette to contrast with the vampire. Similarly I feel a more detailed look will be more suitable for the kind of art style I plan for the other assets in the game.














As well as these characters I also designed some health pickups. These don't really look the way I want at the moment but they are a good start.