I'm ambivalent about the main character design. Nat came up with a really cute androgynous bunny character that I like more than the girl character I drew on this sketch and I'd be happy to go with that. (My character designs tend to be serious/aloof which is probably not a good thing for a main character that needs to be likable.)
The three things on this sketch I do feel strongly about are the 2 user interface ideas, as well as the sprite perspective. I strongly prefer an isometric perspective over purely top-down perspective, largely because I don't want flat looking graphics.
The rectangle sketch on the top left is an idea for a frame that appears on top of the rest of the game screen during cutscenes or puzzle mini-games. This gives the player the feeling of peeking "into" the forest at what's taking place.
The rectangle sketch near the bottom is my idea for the main UI, specifically the bar of music in the bottom left. That is where the music snippets collected throughout the game will be visually represented and serves as a marker for progress through the game. Right of the music bar would be where currently acquired items are displayed. I don't think the game should be overly complicated with a lot of different items - there should be few enough items that they can fit on the bottom of the screen, and each item should have a relevant use. The diamond on the bottom right is just something I think would be useful if the game is intended for smartphones/tablets. On the upper right corner is where you'd have lives or currency, if we decide to include those aspects in the game. (I don't want it to be a game where you can just keep poking around and eventually succeed; there should be some kind of limit that encourages smart(er) decision making and resource management.)
uguguuuuugugghh i forgot this is gonna be TOUCH SCREEN so we'll need big clunky directional buttons or whatever
ReplyDeleteor wait will we??? or could we like
just poke the screen where we want to go??? if that's possible i think it'd be way more intuitive and save us screen space.
I think the D-pad is something we were planning on. We thought about touching in the direction of where we wanted to go and decided that having your hand consistently in front of the interface would be a bad design decision. While it would save us screen space, the important thing is that the player can see the screen. :)
ReplyDeleteThe controls don't need to be big or clunky---the device we're targeting seems to be pretty sensitive to touch (although there doesn't seem to be any sensitivity to pressure, as you would have on a drawing tablet). Libby and I (and I believe Kyle gave a very definite nod of assent as well) were thinking about setting it just as one of the original GameBoy Advance devices (pic: http://i.imgur.com/PcVl2yg.png).
Thoughts?