26/01/2021-Concepts & Sprites: Grunts & Sprites
How will I be tackling this?
Well, to use sprites in games usually it requires sprite sheets. Sprite sheets are sheets of different frames for an animation in, usually presented in columns so each animation is easy to unfold in-engine.
Enemies in Relation to the imagined world:
Our 3 level spaces are as follows: level 1- the forest, level 2- the sewer, level 3- the beach. Our enemy design will loosely follow those themes in their design, for example: rats will appear in level 1 and 2.
Rats feature in the forest more as a story point, as Crackbeak has a close relation to Captain Vermin and his army, to tie this in better most of the enemies bar a few are within the ranks of Crackbeak’s armada. The sludge is meant to be a sort of natural enemy who has no side.
A look at the levels (All Credit goes to Michael, our environment designer):
Grunt: Bird-Brainz
Bird-Brainz is a pigeon who has been lobotomised and sent into the front lines to slow down the menace that is Bilgert. His design is influenced by the following:
The last image below was drawn by Oliver
The helmet and it’s writing ‘BIRD BRAINZ’ is inspired by the Smith’s album cover above, depicting a soldier with ‘Meat Is Murder’ written on his helmet. The exaggerated eyes and beak are inspired from the game ‘Hay Day’s logo. Finally, Ollie’s own art style was the last of my inspirations.
First Concept:
Animation:
I plan for Bird Brainz to slowly bounce along, his tongue flapping with each step, helmet bouncing on his empty skull. Upon getting hit by Bilgert, Bird-Brainz will be sent flying, and nothing will remain bar his helmet. Attacks will consist of frantic squawking and wing flapping.
12/4/21- Bird Brainz in action!
Luc managed to get Bird Brainz and his animations into Unity, take a look below.
Concept Sheet:
26/01/2021- Health Bar ideas and concept
This is the health bar. The health bar was designed to remind the player of their mission to find Bilgert’s worm, and save it from the greedy clutches of the seagull. When Bilgert takes damage, the worm will shrink.
5/2/21- Knucklehead Idea
I have came up with an idea for a new type of grunt within the game that Oliver seems to like, it is a few steps below a miniboss and functions similarly to Hammer Bro and alike enemies from the Super Mario franchise, annoying but satisfying to defeat with a promising reward.
These enemy types are going to be like what the weakest Elites are to Halo’s enemy heirarchy, outstanding when in comparison to grunts and jackals, or bird brainz and another, weaker enemy type I plan to make, but nothing compared to more powerful grunts or bosses.
I present Knucklehead.
knucklehead is a super soldier variant of the rat, with armour cobbled together from toilet roll cardboard and cheese. Knucklehead needs no weapons, as his powerful charge with speed and force will knock any enemy flying.
As you can see, my plan for the design of the enemy is as follows: upon seeing Bilgert, Knucklehead will have a charge up like a bull, drawing his foot back a few times, before charging at Bilgert. If Bilgert is to stop the charge and not take damage, he must kick at the right time or he will be hit and take some damage. If Bilget defeats Knucklehead, he will be sent flying away and will drop his helmet.
My plan is to possibly have this helmet as a ‘1 hit shield barrier’ so Bilgert can take an extra hit before he starts taking damage again. Depending on how many are in one level, these helmets can stack. Of course, these attacks are able to be avoided by jumping as well, and Knucklehead will crash into the floor, in which he will NOT drop the helmet powerup.
as of the 9th February, I finished the Knucklehead sprite draft. I’m really happy with the way this turned out, I feel like some of the proportions are a little off so this will most likely be shifted around a bit.
on the same day, I also developed the helmet item which will give a 1 hit bonus, whether Luc will be able to implement this or not I’m not sure.
25/03/2021- Redesign and animation frames
I have spent the last two weeks drawing up animation frames and redesigning some aspects of Knucklehead’s design.
Idle animation:
I have made the legs far smaller, and the actual character is no longer fully facing one way, much alike my original sketches the legs are spread and they are looking towards point A on the A-B framework. The idle animation displays Knucklehead huffing and puffing, to symbolise his brutish and grumbling breathing, and the armour plates bounce and shift with the movement so show it isn’t tied down all too well.
The above animation displays Knucklehead’s sprint, eventual trip and fall. I wanted the fall to have his bottom up for comedic effect, to add to the fact that this guy is a brute, he’s tough as nails, dumb as hell, and he’s got buns of steel too.
23/02/2021
I have began work on concept for a new sprite for the rat. The rat will functionally work almost exactly like Bird Brainz, slowly walking towards the player and being easily defeated.
This will most likely be finished soon.
Finished the rat design a few days ago, forgot to add to blog. The rat grunt is very similar in design to Bird Brainz, and will function almost entirely similar, perhaps maybe even faster. I think to have a wider enemy sandbox we should make the rat faster than bird brainz and make bird brainz have a stronger attack and the rat a weaker one, so we can have them in the same levels without issue.
The rat will be present in level 1 and level 2, and will completely replace bird brainz in the secondary level. Third level is TBD.
19/03/2020- Rat animation slides
I have created some early rat movement slides for the MVP. The rat will move much alike rats in the real world, and will have a short attack frame of biting at Bilgert.
Walk:
Attack:
16/4/2021- Rat animation redesign and overhaul
I wasn’t too happy with some of the animation frames for the rat so when it came to having to redo them for the sprite sheet, I made some new ones.
As you can see for the above walking animation, nothing has changed stylistically or even how the rat was originally intended to move. What has changed is the number of frames and the overall cleanliness of the movement, all frames, unlike previous, flow together very nicely.
For the attack, instead of having the rat just simply jump, it now kicks its front legs to look as if it is scratching Bilgert.
Originally I wanted to have the rat behave and act similar to the radroaches from Fallout Shelter, where they nod their head up to attack nd walk back slightly, but I have since revised my vision with the help of Luc.
2/02/2021- Flopper
Flopper will serve as the Bird Brainz of level 2, a somewhat miniscule problem for the player, designed to do minimal damage and just slow them down to lengthen playtime. Flopper will be used alongside the rat and a sludge monster. Flopper will be fired out of Fishgut’s Flopper launcher as well, to spawn grunts during the boss battle.
Doing frame-by-frame myself on this one.
I have finished the entire animation cycle for the fish enemy.
Flopper will act almost identically to the rat and bird brainz, therefore I see no reason to make a concept sheet as it would entail the same details.
The Sludge- 5/03/2020-08/03/2020
I have had the idea for a level 2 supergrunt for a while now, meant to be similar to Knucklehead but with a different strategy. The sludge is a big pile of goo which resides in the sewers, it moves incredibly slowly and comes off fairly easy to defeat. That is until you begin to fight it, the sludge’s health will be slightly beefier than usual, and will compromise for the slow pace. Upon defeat, the sludge will split into two smaller, faster, weaker sludge’s to take Bilgert by surprise.
This idea was mainly taken from the Minecraft slimes, which depending on their size, can split into smaller slimes upon death.
Sprite:
The sludge will move by placing its excess mass from the top of the body and spreading it across the floor, the sucking it back in to reverse the frames.
20/04/2021-
Michael has now undertaken his role as a sound designer as well, and he has developed a disgusting, squelchy sound for the sludge which I think will fit very well into the game.
20/04/2021- Most grunts/supergrunts with animations in game!
Level 3 Grunts:
16/4/21 Concept:
I have developed these concepts later than I should have, as we weren’t exactly sure on how many enemies or levels we were going to have until later in the pre-production phase.
As you can see, the final two grunts of the game will be a crab and a dwarf/mini seagull, not to be confused with Crackbeak– the ‘Bowser’ to our game. The seagull is a small, buff character who similarly to the crab and the final boss will punch at you as an attack. He is also wearing an aviator hat, signifying–you know, that he’s a bird.
The crab on the other hand is an even smaller version of the enemy detailed above; with a snipping attack as his way of inflicting damage to the player, he will also move quite slowly.
29/4/21- Crab sprite sheets
As depicted above, the crab is going to carry himself like he’s the toughest enemy in the game when in reality… he is nothing compared to some others.
His attack also may be the most frame-heavy animation I have done for the game bar the cheese throw for what remains (for now) a cut attack for captain vermin. The sheet displays the crab jumping to turn sideways, raising his arms and snapping at the player. I wanted to make sure that the crab is one of the most angry looking sprites in the entire game, too.
4/5/2021- May The Force Be With You
Seagull Sprite Sheets
Behaving similar to the boss of the same species, the aviator seagull punches heavy and carries themselves like a true strong bird… although being half the size or smaller than Bilgert.
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