Art Assets and Sound

So one of the main tasks that I've taken for "Germinators" is that of putting the art assets into the game. Basically, our excellent artist scans his inked drawings and sends them to me. I crop out the inked version of the drawings and set them on a transparent background. After this I scale the images to the size they need to be for the game, and then I give them the texture they need to have for the game. When I took on this responsibility I was not aware of how time consuming it would be. It takes quite a bit more time then I expected. To the left you can see our main character.

I have, however, been able to put quite a few more assets into the game. Our Producer sketched up a level for us and I went ahead and put it into the game and added masking (this is what lets the sprites or characters know where the floor, wall, ceiling, platforms, etc... are) so that we could start testing the placement of platforms and other objects. We also now have four "normal" germs and the "Boss" inside of the level. I also created a "super-form" for our main character. He assumes this form when he hits a power-up. To be honest I created the form using already existing art from our artist. Yep, crop, copy, and paste are my friends. The power-up form is on the left. Our character becomes "Super-soap boy".

We also have some music and sound. I imported the files that our Producer produced and set them to play at the appropriate times. There is the normal level music, the power-up music, and the end-boss fight music. in game so far. I still need to place some of the other sounds we have. These are just general effects like taking damage and collecting items.

I've also been involved in setting up the way the game functions. I'm mainly responsible for the main character and the end-boss. Originally we were going to have our character get "sick" when he touched a germ. At this point his health would steadily decrease until he succumbed to his illness or he washed his hands. Unfortunately we have not been able to find this functionality in PGF. We have decided that the character will just have lives for now as that endeavor was taking up too much time.

Another obstacle that we found was getting the "Super-form" to function properly. The already created power-up in PGF only makes it so that the character isn't harmed while in that form. We wanted it to act more like the "star" in "Super Mario Brothers" where he killed everything by touching them. Unlike other areas of PGF the power-up item cannot have its attributes edited. I was finally able to get the functionality that we wanted by creating a "hotspot" in the game that activated a script that would change the character to the "super-form" for a certain amount of time and then change back. So now we every power-up item in the game is encapsulated in a "hotspot" box. This way when the power-up is collected the script is initiated and the desired effect is seen.

I've also worked out the Boss' characteristics and how it fights. The boss is initially in the form to the left. When enough bars of soap are thrown at it it transforms to another form that also needs to be beaten. I've got all of that working now and the first incarnation of the boss is pretty good. I need to work on the logic for fighting the second form of the boss now. I may put up that image later.

The game is gong quite nicely. I think what we have now would make a pretty decent prototype as is, but as we have more time we are going to continue improving the game.