Progress Devlog 4 - Presentation / Graphics

Presentation + Graphics Improvements

Stage 1: Graphics
My first instinct was to go for a pixel art style game, and it all started with my  main character, Snugglepuss. As can be seen in the game concept devlog, there were several different character styles i was choosing from. Once I decided on the main character, I build everything else around it to match the aesthetic. 
This was all done using A.I. (Open AI's Dall-E 3). Every character, background, plant, object, weapon was all generated using prompts. 
This took some trial and error to get the kinds of images I wanted. 

An example of a successful prompt I used is:

"Make me a 2d pixel art sprite of a firefighting cat. Sprite must be high quality with shading. Must have transparent background. Fit the entire sprite into the image. Do not crop the sides."

However, these were.... not always successful.

(Image: A not so succesful A.I. generated image. I told you to make me a transparent background!!!) 

(Image: It's a beautiful chair, but..... I need it to be flat!

Here is also a quick summary of some of the positives and negatives I encountered whilst making other images:
- Weapons were very succesful, and I found them easy to implement. 
- Objects were mixed... sometimes good, sometimes not so good! A problem I would often have is that images would be made in an isometric style.
- Backgrounds were good, but very difficult to  get a symmetrical sided background that can extend infinitely. This was even more challenging vertically. 
- Trees and plants were generallly very good, but difficult sometimes to match the style and keep consistency. Also often had trouble providing transparent backgrounds.
- Most images required some level of modification before they could be used in the game.

(Image: Demonstration of some of the weapon images used in the game. These generally worked out very well)

(Image: Demonstrating the use of A.I. generated background, tree and plant sprites)

Stage 2:  Creating Player and object animations
One of the first things I did in the game was making player movement, and I wanted some animations to match this. 
I started with some idle movements such as blinking, and tail wagging.

Whilst the campfire animation was implemented later, it's a good opportunity to demonstrate it here too.

(Gif: Warming tail by the fire)

Creating player animations (and also ducking and looking up) required splitting the character into multiple parts. This was demonstrated earlier in the player movement devlog. I also made an animation for when the player is killed and dies before respawning.


(Gif: Player dying animation)

As can be seen above, there's still more work to do in creating enemy animations!

Stage 3: UI and menu system
A recent development this week was implementing a UI and home menu system. There is also a menu system now available during the game as well.


(Image: Start menu for the game)

Stage 4: Other tweaks / small additions
- Fading in and out of scenes. This actually took a long time to get working!
- Fading in and out of menus, so it doesn't look too abrupt.
- Positioning held objects so that they look more natural when held.
- Cutting out cabin walls to make it possible to enter them.
- Placing extra objects such as furnishings, crates, vases etc.

Feedback improvements:
- No feedback this week!

Final comments:
- As mentioned, all original sprites and images for this game were created using Open AI's DALL-E 3 software (https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3/).