New Tiles Screenshots

In this screenshot, you can see my new rocky tiles and how they gradually dissipated into a simpler tile further down. While I’m much happier with the continuity of the pattern compared to before, the transition between the two types of tiles is still much too harsh at this points and should be a much smoother gradient. Being a natural pattern, there shouldn’t be such straight lines and obvious pattern repetition! As a result of my last post, the guys from MiniBoss (who have made Out There Somewhere) have confirmed with me that they infact use a slightly altered tile which is placed infrequently throughout the pattern to avoid overuse of the same tiles.

Here you can see how the same tiles can be applied to things like these floating platforms, although at the moment the edges need some serious refining to better match my original level design plans. The wooden platform has been added for a little variety in platform surface, and in this case I think merges quite well with the rest of the scenery. I’ve used a slightly rocky edge around the platform to make it look like it has been built into the mountain.

This screenshot shows an example of a house made from my new set of building tiles, and how this fits into a similar environment. The wood of the house seems a lot darker than the tiles from the previous building, so I’m considering making these a little lighter. This is relieved slightly by the lighting , which highlights parts of the building and dims out some of the background, so for now it’s probably fine. I’m still using the same light effect for all lights, so I will change the hanging lights soon to vary slightly from the light of the lanterns.
You can also see the blue-tile pattern I made in this screenshot, although it doesn’t blend in nicely like the brick tile did. Feedback I got from this screenshot was that it looked like an explorable area with a blue-tiled background, so I could use it this way in the future.

Loads of things to do this week! Next week’s target is to create a prototype ready enough for testing by other people, so this week is pretty much a preparatory phase to get as much in as possible before hand.

This morning, I applied some of the new tiles I’d made to the game in Game Maker. I created the ground by laying out a random assortment of the rocky/mountainy tiles, and this is how it looked…

My first observation of this technique is firstly that the tile repetition makes the whole scene look horribly boring, and secondly that the square tiles inevitably make the scene look very angular. I noticed that the repetition is not so obvious in places where there is a lot going on. When there is a lot of space and the occasional rock jutting out, the repetition of small details are a lot more emphasised. So my first objective is to limit the amount of plain tiles used throughout the pattern.

For a little insight into how other developers are tackling the problem, I went to the DevLog section of the TIGsource forums and clicked on the first link for a random example. I’m worried that if I keep going back to the same sources, my game will appear to be a mimicry of another game…
By pure coincidence, I landed on a pixel-art style game that uses a similar rocky tileset! The game is called Out There Somewhere, and has recently been finished.

Out There Somewhere

Here, there is only one rocky tile which is regularly repeated throughout. There is a slight variation in some of the edge tiles etc, but the pattern mainly consists of one tile. Towards the bottom of the image, after the tile has been repeated 3 or 4 times, the pattern gradually breaks apart and becomes a simpler pattern, but in an organised way unlike the random pattern I had tried to create. This really helps relieve what could potentially be an over-complicated, messy design, and somehow doesn’t look “blocky”, despite this game also using square tiles.

Out There Somwhere

To resolve my problem, firstly I felt that the rocky tiles should fit together more seamlessly in the first place. I’ve seen a technique used for create seamless surface textures for 3D models which I though would also be appropriate in this situation- I split the rocky tile into 4 and offset the design so I could work on the joining parts in the middle. The result is this, which has been changed very little, but looks a lot more seamless than before:

After feeling happy with this, I went on to create the “middle” tile to connect the rocky tile to the simple, block colour tile. I created one of these tiles for each side of the tile, so it can be used anywhere in the design. I thought about using a lighter colour for this, but preferred the darker colour as it attracts less attention!

I tweaked the slanted tiles slightly, although they didn’t need changing much to fit in with the altered tile design.

There are still a few tiles I need to make to completely eliminate the unnatural-looking square edges, most of these are edge tiles to avoid too many straight lines. I’m also going to create some edge tiles for grass and some random patches of grass growth to dot throughout large areas of the same pattern.

Also, looking back at my learning agreement I’ve noticed that I mentioned that some sound should be in place by now, which is something I haven’t really considered yet… Like the graphics, I’m OK with using placeholder sounds as this point, as I mainly want to ensure that I get good, working sound throughout this project.

Weekend Update #4

Finished it! Only it covers two pages of A4 paper and won’t fit in my scanner until I bring myself to un-tape it. Next week I’ll start designing level 2.

Other than that, this weekend has been slow. I watched the Japanese Ring 2 last night and still can’t help looking at building details, although this had more of an urban setting which doesn’t apply to my building style! A couple of observations were to do with the space in front of buildings, like porches and balconies. I’ve kinda designed some roofing for these sorts of things, but haven’t come up with a good way to represent them in 2D! I’m going to carry on watching Japanese films throughout this project, but hopefully the next Japanese film I watch won’t be so horrible…

Affordable Housing (and fast food)

I’ve redesigned a few of my existing building tiles to suit non-commercial private homes that don’t need to look quite as extravagant as a B&B or a cafe. I’ve been using this photo as a starting point as I like it humble approach to home-design:

It includes similar looking features to the tiles I already have, my main changes have been to wooden-plank tiles and windows. I drew up this compare and contrast 2D version to work out which tiles to reuse and which to recreate:

Another building I’ve thought up is a mobile noodle/sushi stand. It’s based around small noodle stands that are common to Japan. However in this case I’ve combined the concept of a small noodle bar with a temporary food stall, similar to ones you would find at festivals or special outdoor events. This is mainly so it takes up little space, as its placement in the game is more for decoration than anything else. It won’t be an building that can be entered like the Ryokan or any of the homes throughout the levels. Here’s the kind of thing that gave me the idea:

And a quick sketch up of a design idea. This also combines features from various photos of dumpling stands that I’ve scanned through on flickr:

Building & Environmental Tiles
So, I’ve made good progress with the new building tiles. I haven’t made that many, but it seems that a lot can be pulled over from the set I already have! I’ve combined these here with the old tiles, although I’m not sure how clear my intentions are for their use yet as I haven’t constructed anything from them yet. I’ll probably do this straight in the engine over the top of the old tiles.

I’ve also tried to work on some environmental tiles more, especially after finishing up the level sketch. The most important point about creating these tiles is to make sure they’re not boring, as these are going to be repeated A LOT throughout the level. I used color explorer again to get some good ground colours, based on a Japanese mountainous setting (obviously, Fuji was the first mountain to come to mind at this point…)

My rock colour has ended up being that greyish-purple on the bottom row. It doesn’t seem to clash with the current wood colours and pinky-reds, although I’m toying with the idea of having coloured grass which matches the colour scheme of the level. This may change when I combine all the elements together, I’m not sure if pink grass is a little too much… I’ll be working on this much more over the next week, so expect drastic changes all round!

Level Testing

Building Buildings
Today’s level testing began with constructing the Ryokan in Game Maker using the tiles I already have. For the first time, I connected a room with the inside and a room with the outside of the building through a “warp point” at the door. Using the “warp” function in the Grandma Engine transports the character to a another room at the same XY coordinates, so the door is at the same point in both rooms.

Lighting
Today I tried out the EasyLighting extension with my level for the first time. The system requires two colours- one ambient colour which masks the entire screen, and one light colour which is the colour generated by the light source.

The colours I used in my original text were the colours used in this tutorial, which resulted in a murky/swampy ambience!

Too murky

According to advice given in the tutorial, the ambient colour should be a darker colour and the light colour a contrasting bright colour, unless of course you want to create a light which is darker than your background for whatever reason… For this opening level of Hanami, I felt that a pink scheme would be appropriate. I started off by using hex code reference websites to look for bright shades of pink for the light colour, however weirdly when applied it came up with some weird results. My first attempt turned out these very blue lights:

Too blue

To get the right colours, all I could do was test hex codes until I found a good match.

Good light colour match

Ambient light colour too dark (and purple)

Subtle indoor lighting!

Placeholder Tiles
I made these quick tiles to act as placeholder for the rest of the level. They probably won’t make the final design, but they add a little variety to the design while it’s in its early stages! Unlike my “black-block” test level, this tileset contains sloping tiles and add gradients to the level.

Combining this with the building set makes the level design seem much clearer, especially where buildings and caves are concerned. The pink line down the middle is made of my flag tile and represents the waterfall!

This level is now completely playable as it is. For now I’m carrying on the visual design on paper by tracing the mock-up, while I’m working on creating some of the gameplay functions digitally! My first objective is to create a points system when flowers are collected. Here’s where my tracing is up to so far:

First Try 2D Level Design

I started off today by drawing this artist’s impression of the outside of my Ryokan for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to work out what the landscape around the building looked like, and secondly I wanted to try to practice a slightly neater style of drawing that I can use for tidy, accurate level design! As it turned out, the building took up most of the page and I didn’t manage to get many surrounding objects in! But I think my tidy lines worked out much better. I have a tendency to scribble, and my designs are often indecipherable except by me!

I watched the Japanese Ring last night by coincidence. For those who aren’t familiar with the series, half of the story of Ring takes place in a holiday resort in the country called Hakone Pacific Land, which I always imagined was similar to Centre Parcs! In the Japanese film version, there is a big wooden sign at the entrance to the resort, which inspired the wooden sign next to my Ryokan. A little homage to one of my favourite Japanese novels! Whilst watching the film, I couldn’t help but analyse building structures. The film constantly moves about from city apartments to country inns, so there’s a variety of sources to go by. One notable feature of the Hakone Pacific Land cabins were that they were raised from the ground, with steps leading up to the entrance. I’m not sure if this is just a reason to hide a well under one of the buildings or whether this is a typical Japanese feature, but kind of reminded me of the part in My Neighbour Totoro where Mei peers underneath her large country house to look for a small spirit being who is hiding there. Personally, I’ve never had a house that I could look under! And I would be very worried if I could…

The house was actually recreated for the Expo 2005, which will be a really great model to design from for future buildings!

If anything, this morning’s Ryokan sketch got me thinking about the difference between the playable level background and the inactive, distant background. This will probably be mountainous, which is a backdrop which came up in Ring a few times, and makes a good background because it takes up a lot of space, is huge and consists of dull colours which won’t detract from the playable level. There may be a little sky and some clouds too.

To give myself another starting point, I started to think about level shapes. Personally, I think it’s easy to work inside a set space than design random pathways with no real structure. Just as an experiment, I looked at the shapes of some Japanese colour Kanji, as each of my levels will have their own distinct colour schemes.

The colour scheme for the first level is pink, or rose-coloured– “momoiro” in Japanese! I double checked all the kana in case the internet was playing practical jokes, I’ve heard stories of people accidentally getting “soup” tattooed onto themselves when they wanted “dragon” for example! Pink is also sometimes referred to as peach-coloured, but apart from that I think I’m safe to use this symbol.
From this, I tried to build rocky structures with buildings and other features, although I still found it difficult to arrange an entire level off the top of my head. I think my safest bet for now is to keep drawing it and adapting it until it becomes clear. I’ve also found that it’s easier to concentrate on a smaller area at once, so I may split the map into four and work on a corner at a time, starting with the top-left corner where the Ryokan is situated. Here are some of my very early scribbles, you’ll see what I mean about them being fairly difficult to read! I know what they mean though.

This is the first step in level design, according to Peter McClory who posted his really great insight into his design technique on his Blog. This was his initial level design for a game currently in development:

I’m glad to read that he favours the scrap paper approach to initial design! My original Ryokan interior design was drawn on the back of an envelope! I think it’s important to get an idea down on paper before it fades or changes, so sometimes it’s necessary to grab whatever is closest and draw.

With this design down, McClory moved onto squared paper to get a scale and accurate version of the level. He explains how important this is, because it must be designed to the constraints of the character who will be moving through the level.

Once this was complete, McClory moved into tracing paper and drew in the small details of the level, traced from the basic structure on the squared paper. The result is a wonderful pencil sketch, which I could only hope to equal! Tracing paper is currently top of my shopping list.

Tile Changes

After creating some very square tiles, I started to think about ways that I could adapt some of the building aspects and objects to suit the game’s visual style better. What I’ve got so far is something very generic, which could be applied to any game. What I want is something more reflective of the concept art for the game (so far still mainly character designs!)
If you break down any game character, they consist of two contrasting halves. The top half of the character is made up entirely of a large oval-shaped head, which is more or less an equal length to the body, which is straight and thin. In fact, both of these sections were equal until I added some extra length to the legs:

The first thing I knew I wanted to change was the lucky cat statue, as this effectively counts as a game character. Before I had seen it as an object, ad hadn’t given much thought to where it fit into the game’s visual style.

Secondly, I felt as though I should add some more curvature to the building structure somehow, to create this oval shape within the structure somewhere. The most likely place for curves was in the guttering/roof edge, which previously consisted of a tiny little flick and was bound to one tile space.

My first idea was to extend this to cross two tiles, so that I could create a more oval-shape with the curve:

This looked really weird because there was no build up to it. It’s probably also structurally unsound, and would break off of you threw a tennis ball it… So I ended up with a think, sturdy, curvy structure which works really well.

For future buildings, I’m going to start sketching the outside before working on the inside as I have done with this example. As the beginning of the game, the inside is probably more important in this case. Most of the game is likely to be played outside of buildings.
As well as changing and adapting my previous tiles, I’ve added window frame tiles, porch tiles, patio tiles and outdoor objects like potted plants, which seem to be a regularity outside Japanese accommodation! As a business sign, I’ve made a fabric banner, similar to the wall scroll from inside the building. It says Ryokan in Japanese hiragana. Here’s my current tileset for the entire building, inside and out:

And how the building now looks in Game Maker:

Ryokan Construction

I’ve spent today remaking the Ryokan which I designed before as a mock-up in Photoshop. I already had the main wooden structure, made from this small set of tiles:

A lot of the objects which I previously mocked up have stayed pretty much the same, but in some cases I’ve re-sized, simplified and re-coloured objects to match the colour scheme and for better proportions.

In this screenshot you can see that I’ve remodelled the bunk-beds again so that the tiles work without having to have an outer frame, and recoloured décor like the curtains and light shade. You can probably also tell that I’ve simplified the wall pattern hugely, as I felt it looked messy and didn’t give the right impression of a smooth surface. The floor upstairs has been carpeted, and the decorative beams at the top of the wall on the floor below have been pushed further apart to draw less attention.
Although its small and fairly illegible, the symbol on the lantern-style light shade is a low-res version of the Japanese kanji for “Sakura”, consisting of a combination of the symbols for tree, decoration and woman.

I filled in the rest of the building without the use of too many more tiles. This example shows the bare building, before any of the objects or furniture has been placed:

There are some quite odd looking dark bits which are supposed to show shadows and depth, however I think I made these a little too dark! After making this I brightened these squares a little. This image came together from this expanding set of tiles:

After finishing the main building, I started to think about the sort of objects you would find in a Japanese Ryokan, especially one consisting of Western and traditional Japanese floors. I already have a lot of the furniture, now made and remodelled, but the rooms needed filling up more. I wrote a list which I split into decorative and Japanese items and guest convenience items.

Japanese:
• Bowl Decoration
• Orb Decoration
• Vase Decoration
• Fan Decoration
• Tea Pots
• Tea Cups

Guest:
• Phone
• Computer
• Microwave
• Kettle
• TV & DVD Player

NOT

Kitchen white good or anything bathroom related. It is a well known fact that game-characters never need to eat, sleep or use a toilet in order to survive. In many games these things are beneficial, but not essential.

Bearing in mind the colour scheme, I added some of these things to my tileset, although it wasn’t until I applied them to the building that I realised how strange some of the items had been scaled! Hopefully from the image you can see what I was getting at with some of a stranger items on the list…

From this I was also able to create the outside of the building, using similar tiles. I tried to keep the shape exactly the same, so that when the character enters the building, the transition gives the illusion of the building being chopped in half for the player to see inside! I got some of the corners in the wrong place, as you can probably see if you look close enough!

With this nearly complete tileset, I was able to reconstruct the building in Game Maker. I saved the set as it was as a PNG to retain transparencies. This was then imported to Game Maker as a background. GM gives you the option for any background image to become a set of tiles, you simply set the size of the tiles and the program breaks the whole image for you:

And here are the tiles reconstructed into a building in the room editor:

Whole tiles can be snapped into a 16×16 grid, which made applying the lowest layer very easy! It was easier to turn snapping off for smaller objects that had to reason to align. It was important to un-check the “delete underlying” box so that some tiles could be placed on top of each other!

Tilesets From Roof Tiles

I’ve been doing a little research into Japanese roof design! It’s amazing what you can find on the internet, for example articles like this one explaining the history of the Japanese roof. Originally, the Japanese got the idea for roof tiles from the Koreans. However, these tiles consisted not only of flat tiles, but tubular tiles too and were fairly expensive. They were placed mainly on top of important buildings and shrines etc. This later devolved into the wave shaped tiles which are a common site in Japan, being much cheaper but almost as nice to look at. I’m not sure what the practicalities are of having waved tiles rather than flat ones, but if I was given the opportunity to have a roof that nearly resembled that of a Japanese temple I guess I wouldn’t pass it up. The image below is of a more ornate example, although there are obviously those that are more simple and others that are much more complex.

For my Ryokan roof, I originally fancied the original roof (as demonstrated at the top of this post!) But not only is it unlikely that a B&B would have such an ornate roof, it doesn’t seem to come out well in 2D form. Despite my gradient-effect efforts, the tile simply appeared to be flat.

The most left red tile is my attempt at the tube tile, abandoned fairly on for the wave tile which just works brilliantly. You can imagine the tile sloping at a 45 degree angle, even from a straight on perspective like this one. Being tiles, they repeat effortlessly. All I had to ensure was that they aligned evenly.
The colour of the roof has changed from blue to pinky-red, this is due to the out-doors colours scheme I’m currently conjuring. For the first level of the game at least, I want to use a lot of pinks and reds- similar colours to the Sakura blossom object. This is my way of saying “you’re in Sakura country now, Player1!” Plus, I want the outdoor world of Hanami to accurately represent a Japanese spring time.

After applying the new red tiles to the roof, I re-worked the wooden frame of the building using a new set of flexible tiles. Wood is a traditional building material which can still be seen today, especially in Kyoto which used to be the capital of Japan. They tend not to exist these days in many urban and even in rural areas, however I’ve chosen to create a tileset for wooden houses because it is a symbol of something that is traditionally Japanese.

I haven’t tried to accurately represent the layout of wood in a wooden Japanese house with my tiles, but give an impression of a wooden structure which has been cross-sectioned for the inside view of the Ryokan. To give you an idea of the scale of the building, I’ve placed Hana in the middle of this newly constructed space:

Kyoto Machiya.com is a great resource for images of traditional Machiya (Japanese wooden house), specifically Kyomachia which are Machiya located in Kyoto! The site’s galleries include photos of inside and outside various famous Machiya, which will be useful for the next step of the Ryokan construction, which will be to build its walls and inside!

Japanese Accommodation

Apart from perhaps a short opening sequence consisting of images or a short animations, Hanami begins in a small country bed & breakfast style building in a small village somewhere in Japan. These types of accommodation are called Ryokan. They are usually situated in more rural areas rather than large cities, and provide a cheap place to stay for travellers. Cons of cheap accommodation mean that rooms and facilities must be shared with other guests, but at the same time this opens up opportunities to meet people and share a truly Japanese living experience. Personally I prefer “private”, but beggars can’t be choosers!

I refer to a stay at a Ryokan as a “truly Japanese living experience” because one common characteristic of the Ryokan is its traditional Japanese features. The owners of this sort of establishment encourage guests to turn Japanese during their stay, by sleeping on futons, sitting at low tables, and usually eating the provided Japanese meals.

A traditional style Japanese breakfast:

Features of a traditional Style Japanese room or Washitsu:

Tatami Floors
These a woven floor coverings, aligned as a series of mats.

Shoji Sliding Doors
These structures, made from wood and paper, act as room dividers but slide to become doors.

Tokonoma
This is a small alcoved area where hanging scrolls and decorative items are placed. This areas is not entered, but enjoyed.

Zabuton
Flat cushions (sometimes with a back-rest) placed on the floor around a low Japanese table.

For my Ryokan, I’ve taken most of these elements and aspects from other traveller’s hostels. Cheap hostels are similar to Ryokan, but not as traditional. To make better use of space for example, hostels will often house guests in shared rooms with bunk-beds. In the most extreme circumstances, guests stay in their own tiny capsule, consisting of a bed, shelf and TV! These are much more common in urban areas.

In terms of 2D tile creation, bunk-beds make a lot more sense that low, flat futons! So I’ve built my Ryokan on three floors. The hotel has a Western-style bunkbed room at the top, and gets progressively more Japanese as it goes down. Bear in mind that this is a test mock-up, I can hardly even call this finished! I’m still trying to work out some of the tile issues.

If you click on the image above, you can start to get a feel for the real scale of the game. At the moment, I’m thinking of up-scaling the game to 300% during play, although this is something I haven’t decided for sure yet.

Roof Tiles

One thing I haven’t quite worked out yet is how to cross-section a Japanese roof to create a 2D tile. The blue around the edges of the image are supposed to be blue roof tiles, but these aren’t quite finished yet. The wooden part underneath is representative of traditional ceiling beams, although I’m not sure how well this comes across in cross-section form either…

You can probably tell from the image that I’ve also had a few problems rotating my roof tiles, and there are plenty of inconsistencies to be found…

Guest Room

I’ve resized the bunk-beds from before so that they are more human sized, and cleverly pushed two together so that the obscene length doesn’t seem out of place! The bunk-bed tiles probably won’t need too much attention from now on, as there isn’t much to them and not much that can be changed. The window is a set of four tiles, which can be lengthened width-ways if I should need to! I’m fairly happy with the result of the window, I just know I should be cautious with frame outside the four-square area. The little draws are just one tile, and can be stacked or duplicated length ways easily. I’ve tried to keep all wood-colours consistent.

Wall Ties
These were looking very plain and boring, so I tried to add a certain amount of texture to them. I’m worried that now they border on the messy side, and will hopefully be tweaking these.

Sofa Area

This is part of the shared “communal floor”. The proportions seem like less of a problem on this floor, I’ve created a sofa from two tiles and halved the draws to create an end-table which is only half a tile high (the red strip on top represents the place the Maneki Neko likes to sit!). The chairs to the right of this screenshot are the same height as the sofa, although I’ve made sure that this emphasises the lowness of the table.

You can also see from this screenshot where I’ve tried to add shading under the roof tiles using “floating” semi-transparent tiles which adjust the tiles beneath them.

Ladders
With this sort of perspective, drawing staircases are a bit of an issue. I’m not sure Ryokan even have first or second floors, but I think it would be understandable in this kind of situation to have to climb a ladder! In my opinion, this doesn’t look out of place, but if I make a successful staircase then I will replace the ladder.

Downstairs

Here you can see all the traditional aspects of a Japanese Washitsu that I’ve just mentioned, although I still have some not-quite-aligning elements which may need re-scaling in order to fit better into the grid. I’m also not sure I’m happy with the wood-strip detail on the wall. I think it detracts from the room’s important details.

Tatami Floor
The ground floor tiles are supposed to look like Tatami, although I’m not sure they really do. It somehow doesn’t look much like a floor at all, probably because it is too square and therefore quite similar to the sliding doors above it. In fact, the sliding doors and the floor could do with a better indication of depth, to separate themselves from each other.

At the moment, the image covers a few layers in a Photoshop document. What I need to concentrate on, is creating a tile set rather than a flat image that looks like it has been made from tiles!

Weekend Update #2

Just a recap of the goals for the week just gone:

Continue to create and gather any conceptual work including a Game Design Document (GDD). Experiment with the Grandma Engine in order to configure it for the game. Research software add-ons and extensions which will be useful.

So…how am I doing?
I’ve managed to write and maintain my GDD pretty successfully, but “conceptual work” is currently mainly limited to character designs. Over the coming week I’ll hopefully work up a good amount of level & item designs to being some game assets, as well as continuing to work on the in-game characters. I’ve experimented with the engine to a degree, however I still haven’t worked out things like my physics settings which must be arranged soon before I start any real level design! I don’t want to design any immense jumps only to have a character who can’t reach them… As for add-ons, I’ve previously researched things like lighting engines and sound dlls, which will come in useful, however I can’t say this for sure yet! I’ll have to re-schedule this research for next week.

So what have I been doing?
Whilst avoiding doing any really ambitious game development, I’ve been working on a few more character designs. I started off by thinking about a template for male in-game characters, as so far my character-cast is looking very feminine…

The guy on the left is my “generic man” character. He probably won’t appear in the game, but is the “standard model” for all male characters to be made to (The kanji symbol means “man”). After drawing him, he got me thinking about Japanese hairstyles. In photos, you can probably tell Japanese guys from Western guys just from the tops of their hair. Japanese styles tend to be longer and frame the face, whereas the normal Western man tends to avoid this, probably because it looks quite feminine. The epitome of androgynous hairstyles is demonstrated by Japanese pop/rock-star Gackt, who inspired the hairstyle in the top right. But as well as long, straight styles, I’ve noticed that Japanese males pull off spiky styles really well! This is either the symptom or the cause of many spiky-haired anime characters, famously including Akira Toriyama’s Goku from the Dragon Ball series. However, the first example of epic spiky hair that popped into mind was Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Although not a real person, there is no match in the competition for awesome spiky hair.

From this short study on hairstyles, I moved onto my first male character…who has no hair. His working title name is Kannushi, based on the name of Japanese Shinto Priests. I’ve tried to write an extremely brief bio on all my characters in the GDD, mainly explaining why they didn’t suffer the same fate as the village locals (although details of this incident are a little hazy at best. I’m thinking of changing my original idea…) For my final GDD I’m hoping to write up a bit more on the characters, including useless information like favourite food etc.

Kannushi:
a Shinto priest who was immune to the curse, and prompts Hana on her journey.

He’s dressed in a traditional Kariginu, with traditional hat and ceremonial wand at the ready. Although he acts as Hana’s main guide throughout the game, I want him to be a silent and mysterious character, who appears and vanishes without warning. On top of this, one of my objectives is to create indecipherable dialogue between all characters, as Western and Eastern characters naturally have language restraints…

The second character I started to work on was a Maneki Neko or Lucky Cat character. I think I originally said that Hana would have a pet cat, as I didn’t want her to be entirely alone. I realised this was silly, as you probably wouldn’t take your cat on this sort of “holiday”. So the cat’s ownership has changed. Maneki Neko now belongs to the owner of the hostel which Hana temporarily stays at. Another mysterious character, at the very start of the game Maneki Neko resembles a Lucky Cat figurine. It isn’t until the “Hanami Crisis” that the cat jumps to action and leads Hana to Kannushi. Whilst not saving the villagers, Maneki Neko enjoys snoozing and dreaming of fish.

As well as this, I’ve done a little bit of graphics development, just trying to figure out how to make tiles that work. I haven’t really started any official research into Japanese buildings, but just from the research I’ve been doing so far I’m starting to get a feel for them! I made this small little Photoshop mock-up of a Japanese hostel room strictly using tiles only. It doesn’t work as a room as it has no access and no space for movement, but it only uses repeated tiles so I’ve made minor progress here.

It has however brought to my attention more proportion issues. These bunk-beds for example are 64 pixels long, which is 4x as long as my character sprites, so this little tester probably wouldn’t be suitable for a game asset.