Main Menu & Intro

I’ve made some changes to the main menu screen already. The background colour that I had chosen was supposed to represent an old paper colour, but after placing the screen in the game I felt that it definitely had to be the same as the menu colours I’ve been using throughout. I’ve also added a flashing “press start” icon which prompts the player to bring up the actual menu, which is something that no game is complete without!

When “start” or “enter” on the keyboard is pressed, the menu box appears. I’ve actually used almost an exact clone of the pause menu for this, with a little added transparency to take away the harsh contrast in colour. Obviously, I’ve changed the options to New Game, Load Game or Quit.

I’m not currently sure about the placement of the menu, however at the moment it rests in the dead centre of the screen, and moving it around makes it seem really oddly positioned! If anything, I’ll move it slightly to the right.

If the player selects “quit”, the game will shut itself down. If the player selects “load game”, the most recent save will automatically be loaded . I didn’t really see any reason to give the player the option to load previous saves or from a list of multiple saves, as the game only really takes between 10 and 20 minutes to play. If the player has not yet started the game but selects to load, a default save will be loaded which takes the player to the beginning of the game. If the player selects “new game”, instead of being taken straight into the game like previously, the player will be shown a slideshow of still images which act as the introduction to the game. These have taken me a few days to draw, as they involve higher resolution characters instead of the smaller sprites and tiles. The point of the images is to tell a brief account of the events that occur just before the game begins, hopefully these are fairly self explanatory:

1. Hana leaves the Hanami celebrations

2. Hana goes to the Ryokan

3. Hana goes to bed

I’m not sure how finished these are, but if I change anything much it will be the last slide. The story was originally that the Ryokan’s lucky cat comes to life to tell Hana about the “Hanami crisis” (in cat noises, as cats do…) I wanted to show a cat’s shadow on the floor as the cat approaches the sleeping Hana, but didn’t manage to draw anything that accurately represented this. My other option is to draw another slide where the cat wakes Hana up, but there’s something nicely concise about having three slides! I’ll get some feedback on these and work out how much more information is needed. A lot of the game is open to interpretation as it is!

にほんごができます

Again, apologies for the offensive way that I try to represent a similarity to kanji… Here I’ve tried to write “Week 15: Nihongo ga dekimasu”, which roughly translates as “I speak Japanese”, which above all else is a lie, although the little bits that I do know have been pretty useful today!

One of the things I realised probably should have been given more attention in the new time plan is a main menu for the game. I realised that before I could really go on to start preparing for physical designs, I had to give the game a real identity, and this is normally seen for the first time in the game’s opening screen/main menu (where there isn’t a physical casing involved!). A while ago I started out planning ideas for the game’s logo, mainly working out typographical layout solutions to combine a simple title with a small hiragana subtitle. So far I’ve been using the typeface Dejavu Sans for pretty much EVERYTHING, from use on this blog and in my devlog videos to in-game typography (although this becomes very distorted with the anti-aliasing off). I picked the font out a while ago for the Pecha Kucha because it was clear and clean, which made it great for the presentation. I felt that it set a neat tone for the game, as I was hoping to avoid creating messy graphics, and it suits contemporary Japanese “Zen minimalism”. So I’ve rolled with the font until now, and I was also planning to use it for the game’s logo, although I did stray a little into wandering what other typefaces would look and feel like…

The one that I felt worked best was probably the first design I made where the hiragana sits on top of the title, although I wasn’t really sure about the placement of any sort of logo or icon like the sakura blossom in the dot of the i.

The other typographical ideas I had were based more on traditional Japanese writing styles. The logo for the Wii game Okami does this very well using traditional black, white and red, where the red is also a representation of the Japanese flag (if only I’d got there first…)

You’ll also notice the little red mark at the end of the text. As far as I’m aware, this is a Japanese Hanko, which is like an official stamp used as a signature in Japan. Where there is handwriting in traditional Japanese texts, you will often see a little red stamp below it to mark who wrote it. The ink used to write was traditionally black, which is why the colour scheme seems so Japanese! I felt as though I should change the Hiragana in my logo to red, and started to experiment with brush-written typefaces to compare the effectiveness in context.

The problem with introducing this style here however is that the rest of the game would be very inconsistent, and I don’t like to use more typefaces than necessary in any one project. I started to like the hand-written look of the title, but decided that I couldn’t really use the same font for the menu’s options without changing fonts throughout the rest of the game. I feel like the hand-painted style typography is more appropriate to the game than the contemporary Dejavu sans, but should be restricted to the main title and not body copy. I found another typeface called Paul’s Kanji which I felt suited the game and had a very hand-written look, so I started to experiment with some new layouts using this font. Without adapting the typeface, the logo started looking more like this:

However, I’ve adapted it slightly for legibility and to keep it simple:

I also tried this font out written vertically, as traditionally Japanese test was often written in columns:

I haven’t managed to find a similar style font for the Japanese Hiragana subtitle here yet, but I may work on drawing over this myself to keep the style going. I will either make it appear in brush strokes or in the style of a Hanko. For in game uses, I’ve created a pixel version of this logo to keep the retro themes running throughout. For the main menu screen, I’ve used a silhouette of one of my Sakura tree designs to emulate a Japanese inked painting and used the vertical style logo at one side. The image below isn’t the finished title screen, but starts to set the basis for the game’s identity which can be applied elsewhere. The spotlight-style circle shape is taken from the still images I have been drawing for the game’s introduction, and I’m planning to use a similar effect where large still images are concerned throughout the game.

When placed in the game, the “main menu” will appear in front of the tree beside the logo, giving the player the options to start, load or quit the game. For the rest of this week I want to finish this and the rest of the game’s introduction slideshow, and from here continue to use the game’s emerging identity for other game elements and physical designs. As the Font River site suggests, I would like to thank Paul for his great work.

Weekend Update #5

My new time plan seems to be working pretty efficiently- I’m almost ahead of where I expected to be, although a couple of the things I’ve crossed off the list are works in progress and will still take some time. I’m still making and placing NPCs into the levels so that five petals can be collected in each level.

One of the characters I’ve worked on is the Monk character who I “pixelised” quite a while ago. I’ve given him a walk animation so that he can pace around. The interesting thing about animating this character was getting the timing of the staff right, although I’m still not sure how I feel about it!

I’ve also re-made the “nap” character I created a while ago, based on Japan’s casual outlook on sleeping anywhere and everywhere! Before, this guy stood up and looked sleepy, but I’ve remade him to sit down with his head against a table. When the player walks past he will stir, but take little notice and continue sleeping.

In terms of the petal system, I’m still currently looking at ways that I can improve this by adding extra animations and stopping all keyboard input to create a dialogue “cutscene” sort of scenario. I will hopefully finish the system in the coming week, as well as working on the game’s physical elements such as disc and box art and the inclusion of the all important game manual.

I’ve purposely left out a lot of instruction throughout the game in order to encourage the use of a physical game manual, and it’s become very apparent to me how vague the objectives of the game are to a player who has had no introduction. So the game manual has two purposes: one is to set the scene of the game in terms of back story and character bios, and the other is to inform the player how to actually play the game, what to look for and how to achieve goals. I haven’t started any designs yet, but I’ve come up with the table of contents:

1. What I’ve referred to as “boring but essential” info- technical stuff and system requirements etc.

2. Story Synopsis- briefly setting the story of the game.

3. Hana and Zashiki Warashi character bios and backstories- I want this to be a double page spread so that the characters are seen side by side. This will take the story further to concentrate on the back-story for each character. None of this is touched on in the game.

4. NPC bios- this will be very brief, mainly displaying a portrait and name info for all of the NPCs.

5. How To play- this will be split into these sections:

5a. Controls – including diagrams with controls for keyboard and controller

5b. Menu Navigation

5c. Understanding the HUD

6. Game Items- a list of items, what they do and how to use them

7 Hints and Tips

8. Credits and thankyous

In terms of art style for imagery in the manual, I am considering continuing to use pixel art instead of using higher definition imagery. I’ve started working on some images that I can potentially use in the game as stills, but could easily adapt these for print. I’ve been thinking of clarifying the setting at the beginning of the game, and introducing Zashiki Warashi early on. I drew this kokeshi-style Za-chan so that the player knows what they’re up against:

I’ve also been working on some still images of events that happen in the hours preceding the game in a similar style. I’m not sure if I will use these, but if I do they will appear as a slideshow when the player starts a new game. None of these images are finished, but I’ve compiled some of the new images of Hana from these here:

Hanami Original Soundtrack

I wrapped up the Hanami soundtrack this morning by adding the finishing touches to the last two tracks, and adding a bonus end track which was pretty unplanned. I noticed that the game needed something to calm itself back down after the boss fight at the end, so I made a simple Final Fantasy inspired epilogue track which is just pretty. The famous “prelude” from the Final Fantasy series appears in almost all of the series’ titles (from one to ten atleast), and sums up the games when played at either the beginning or the end.

I’ve compiled each track into this video, in the order the tracks appear in the game.

Updates and Remodels

I spent a bit of time reworking the inventory again today, to make it more efficient and informative. I felt the whole thing needed rearranging after I started adding things like keys to the game, which are held in the inventory but don’t have a set space.

I’ve replaced the section labelled “Petals” with a section labelled “Items”, which covers petals, keys and the kokeshi doll acquired at the end of the game. I was very happy with the previous petal indicator, so I’ve simply shuffled this over to the side to allow room for the new indicators:

I’ve left the spacing of the sushi indicators roughly the same, but I’ve added a number next to each icon which tells the player how many of each sushi they are carrying. This is something I haven’t done up until now because I was going to limit the player to one of each, but after watching people play I feel that was a little harsh. The player can now carry an unlimited amount of sushi!

Instead of only displaying the blossoms collected for the current level, I’ve changed the last line of the inventory to display the collected blossoms for all levels. This way, when the player gets to the last level and realises that they can’t continue without 60 blossoms, they can see which level they need to concentrate on most. Altogether, the new menu looks like this:

Except on the last level, where I’ve covered up the petal collection icon so that the player knows they don’t have to collect blossoms in this level.

To conclude the work I’ve been putting into the game’s music recently, I’ve added some new sound effects to the game with the help of SFXR and LabChirp, so the inventory now plays a lot of little blip sounds when selecting, using or cancelling items.

Five Petals

A couple of the new tracks I’ve been working on are sounding pretty close to being finished, although at the moment there is a definite drop in quality from the first track. The “bamboo” track I’ve been trying to make has been taking the longest to finish, as it’s the most different. I’ve also started working on the boss theme, which has been fun. For this piece of music, I’m ignoring most of the rules I’ve read about pentatonic scales and traditional Japanese percussion, and simply tried to keep the themes running through the instruments I’m using and the way I’m using them. The Boss Theme is a little homage to Final Fantasy in a lot of ways, as I’ve taken inspiration from multiple Final Fantasy battle themes for the intro and from the Shinra theme from FFVII for the main drum rhythm.

As the pieces are coming together, I’ve made myself a system in Game Maker to describe which background music to play in which room. Instead of stating the music that should be playing in every single individual room (as I have done for other things…) I’ve started the music playing in each main part of the level, and simply made sure it keeps playing even if buildings and caves are entered. To do this, I’ve made a basic script which is called when the player enters the main stage of each level called soundInit:

This states that if the music is not already playing, the music should play on a continual loop. This script also sets the global variable music from true to false, meaning that the music cannot be changed. When the player leaves the level, I’ve reset the variable to true so that a new piece of music can be played after the previous one has stopped! When this script is called in the level’s creation code, both of the arguments are defined. For example, in the first level the arguments are defined as:

The other thing I’ve been working on today is the game’s petal system. I came up with this idea before I had any idea how to program it, so I’ve left it out until now. I’ve learned a lot from making the game’s menus and inventory systems, and this is basically an addition to the inventory system I’ve made so far. The idea is that each of the game’s characters gives you a petal that they have found, and five petals makes a whole blossom, which is added to the game score. I’ve had a space in the inventory for this for ages, which I’ve recently revamped to make it nicer:

To test the system, I started using the Priest character, as he was the first character I made. I’ve renamed him Bura-san in the GDD. I’ve created two different variables that depict whether or not the character can give the player a petal, shown either as flower_give = true or flower_give = false. If the character’s petal hasn’t yet been added to the itemList DS list, then flower_give is true.

When the player talks to the character by pressing the X button, this activates the petal given by the character and changes the variable to false:

The petal given appears at the top of the screen, and can be seen in the petals section of the inventory.

I’ve created three new global variables called “petalscore” 1, 2 and 3 – one for each level that the player can receive petals. When a petal is received, the petalscore value will increase by one depending on which room the player is in.

This is then drawn into the inventory, so the player will only be able to see their petal progress for the level they are currently in. When the petalscore reaches 5, one blossom will be added to that level’s gamescore, so in order for the player to collect all 30 blossoms, they will also have to collect all five petals in each level. However, the system still needs a lot of work, as my NPC characters currently don’t do very much. Ultimately, I would like to slow the whole process down so that when each character is spoken to, an animation plays where the character takes out a petal and holds it until the player takes it. This way the whole system seems a lot more obvious, as at the moment a petal simply pops up at the top of the screen without any explanation. I’m still working on the AI for most of my current characters too. Bura-san doesn’t move about, so he was easy to try out the system on. “Kaze” who I’ve renamed “Kyo” constantly moves away from the character, but currently gets stuck to walls…

The Panda character that I recently put in runs about frantically, but again sometimes seems to get stuck on uneven terrain. I like this character because there is no way of catching up with him, you have to chance running into him and pressing X at the right moment!

My latest character is called Koto, and is the game’s instrumentalist. She appears in the first three levels, and sits by her koto playing each level’s music. This character was originally going to be male and called Camui after the Japanese singer Camui Gackt, but when I checked on the internet for a character basis it seemed that koto players were generally women. I found a lot of images of koto players dressed in traditional Japanese kimonos, so my koto player is also dressed very traditionally.

And in her pixel form:

All of these characters are placed in all three levels, but I’m hoping to create one unique character for each level to make up for the fifth petal.

More Music Inspiration

It’s been a busy (and long) Easter weekend, so I’ve only managed to get little bits done here and there. When I’ve had the chance I’ve been working on some new tracks so that each level can have its own background music, and I’ve now got the beginnings of two more tracks on the way. The more I think about it, the more I hear similar tracks in my head that I can take inspiration from, some from existing video games and some just from the general world of music:

Chrono Trigger: Corridor of Time by Yasunori Mitsuda

This is one of my favourite tracks from the SNES game Chrono Trigger, the tone is so mystic and relaxing, I’ve had a difficult time stopping myself from simply just ripping this off. The instruments and the tone of the piece are exactly what I’m looking to create with my tracks.

Spryo 3 Year of the Dragon: Bamboo Terrace by Stewart Copeland

This track is much more fast-paced, resulting in something much less calm and relaxed. What I like about this piece is its constant change in tone and layering of instruments. For level two of Hanami which uses bamboo in its background throughout, I want to create a similar rhythmic style with a subtle bamboo flute layered in patches!

Aqueous Transmissions by Incubus

This track consists of almost all traditional Japanese instruments, and sets a VERY relaxed scene. The backing track (and the vocals, to a large extent) are very repetitive, especially the Pipa riff which repeats throughout the track. This underlying repetition is something I’ve been doing without really thinking about it, as it provides a solid base for all other instruments to follow.

As well as being inspired by the relaxing tones of the tracks above, I’ve been trying to think of ways of making a much harsher sound for the final Boss theme. I can’t seem to think of any games that use traditional Japanese instruments in their boss theme music, so it will be interesting to take a generic sounding boss theme tune and replace the normal instruments with those similar to the tracks above!

In the BRILLIANT video below, you can hear a collection of all the boss themes from the Final Fantasy series. Composer Nobuo Uematsu really knows how to capture the tension of the moment with epic battle music…

Produce Your Magic Key…

This morning I put the lock and key system in place in level 4, so that the final Boss stage can only be accessed when enough blossoms have been found. I was originally going to suggest 80 as a possible amount of blossoms needed for the second door to open (only 10 blossoms not discovered throughout all three levels…) But after a little volunteer play-testing I’ve decided to reduce this to 60. The player only needs to collect 45 blossoms to advance to the last stage, so my participants ended up with between 50 and 60 blossoms in their inventory by the time they got this far. That leaves thirty undiscovered blossoms throughout the game, which I will probably allow the player to collect later.

If the player doesn’t have a total of 60 blossoms, they will be confronted with this when they enter the house in level 4:

In this instance, they will have to go backwards through the game and try to collect more! All the doors that the player has previously opened will remain opened indefinitely, so the player can travel backwards and forwards through the levels as much as they like at this stage. If they have managed to collect 60 blossoms, the door will be open:

The player can then go into the next room and grab the key, which then appears at the top of the screen in the same way as the sushi and other collectable items. As I don’t have a space for it in the inventory (yet…) the key is visible just above the inventory to assure the player that they are carrying it!

In order for the key to work, I’ve created two new states which describe whether or not the player has acquired the key. To begin with, global.key is set to false, meaning that the back door will not open. When the player collides with the key object and presses the X button, the object is added to the itemList DS list and global.key is set to true, so as long as the key is part of the itemList datastructure global.key will always remain true. If the player presses X when near the lock object, this will deactivate the object and activate another new state, global.door. This draws an open door sprite over the top of the closed door tile, and allows the player passage.

Other than this, I’ve spent most of my day today tidying up messy pieces of code. The play-testing revealed to me a couple of things that were eventually quite detrimental to the performance of the game when played from beginning to end! For instance, I’ve realised how important it is to place lines of code in the right event. Most of my objects consist of at least two events, create and step. Code placed in the create event is called once, and consists of things like speed settings which are consistent while the instance exists. Code placed in the step event is called every “step”, which basically equates to frames per second. Hanami runs at 60 FPS, so each step event is called 60 times a second, and can reduce the FPS if overloaded! I’ve spent a lot of time shuffling code around so that all functions are called properly, and I seem to get a consistent 60 FPS, but I won’t be sure until I have another play-through in debug.

I’ve also been trying to remedy my screen view to account for varying monitor shapes and sizes, as I’ve now started running the game on other computers and notice some significant differences, mainly where GUI such as the HUD and inventory are involved. I’ve discovered that there is a built-in Game Maker function which can determine the display size it is playing on, but after a while of trying to apply this I haven’t had much luck in getting anything that runs as smoothly as it currently does now. So I may try to find another way around this.

Lastly, I’ve created a second new Sakura Tree object to replace one of my older designs. I’ve placed this very sparsely through the levels, as a rarity and a treat. It looks a lot nicer in smaller doses, so I’ve left the main tree background to my Bonsai and Bamboo objects.

Boss Stage

Today I’ve been planning out and creating parts for the final level of Hanami which is essentially an extended “Boss Stage”. There are no more items to collect, simply a path to unlock to the final boss.

This morning I sketched out some ideas on how the building in this level differs from the buildings throughout the rest of the game. I’d already planned the scale of the building, which was already larger than anything else I’ve made so far. The building in level 4 is the abandoned home of the Zashiki Warashi spirit, so my main focus was on making it look run down. I scribbled over the top of my building plans to work out interesting vine and weed formations, and work out where there would be cracks and blemishes on the building.

The result makes the overall picture look a lot less messy due to the distortion of all my straight lines! In this case however I’m happy for the image to look a little rough… I haven’t really worked on the background or decided on a background colour yet, I’ve been concentrating on the foreground for now!

Inside, the building looks a lot less derelict, but it is much more empty that most of the other buildings in the game. Because there are no items to collect in this level and exploration could be pretty boring, I’m planning on having a locked door which can only be opened when a key is acquired. The key is in an upstairs room, behind a door that will only open if a certain amount of blossoms are found (as a placeholder door I’ve decided that the player should have 80 blossoms, but I’ll probably reduce this if I come to code for this part of the game). Inside the building there are three upstairs rooms. The first can be entered under all circumstances, the middle door can only be opened if the specified amount of blossoms are found and the final door is sealed.

As a teaser and to prompt the player to collect more flowers if they haven’t already, all of the upstairs rooms are part of the same space, so by entering one door you can see into all of the rooms. By entering the first door you can see that you must enter the second door to acquire the key in the third room, accessible by a hole in the top of the wall.

The locked door leads to the last area in the game, where the boss battle will commence! I’ve designed this to have a small flat stage where Za-chan runs around, and two “safe areas” either side where the player can temporarily avoid attacks. I’ve drawn up a couple of new assets for this level, including a new version of the Sakura Tree which I might now use as a background element for earlier levels. This is simply a re-vamp of one of my previous designs, where I’ve made the branches a little more curvy and reduced the size of the blossoms growing on it. It looks a lot less cluttered than my previous designs, and will hopefully fit in better one the proper background is in place.

The other two new assets are stone statues which guard the “safe areas” by dissolving attacks on collision. The first Guardian is a Tanuki statue, which is commonly seen around Japan in restaurants, temples and homes. The Tanuki is seen as a sign of good luck similar to the Maneki Neko Lucky Cat, and is generally loved for being tubby and smiley! Statues are often colourful and remind me a little of garden gnomes, like this:

My statue is a carved stone statue, and looks more like this:

The second guardian of the safe zone is a Kitsune statue, a fox which is believed to have supernatural powers and immense intelligence. Both the Tanuki and Kitsune were once believed to have shape-shifting powers, and were almost worshipped for the powers they possessed. Kitsune statues vary in style, but are usually a similar shape of a fox sat upright:

And my carved stone Kitsune statue:

Like the other screenshots of this level, there are a lot of background elements missing! Here’s what it looks like so far:

The final change I have made is to Za-chan’s attack object, which was previously a piece of sushi. I’ve changed this to a small ball of light, however I’m not currently sure whether I’ll keep this or try to think of something more relevant later.

Midori Moods

Midori is the Japanese word for Green, and Hamani’s level 4 is certainly that…