Implementing my team's assets [WEEK 24]

Chat bubbles -

This week I implemented some of the assets that Niamh has made, She finalized all of the character sprites within the game as well as made some chat bubble variants to add an extra layer of interest during the chat and videocall scenes. I really like how this just adds an extra layer of emotional context to the scenes and requested Niamh to make some versions of anna if she had time. As a team we agreed this is a great method of showing a character's emotions without having the full sprite on screen.

Below is the first iteration without the anna sprite.

This is the revised version with the Anna sprite. We also decided to have a different bubble for Richie for when he is talking on the videocall, just to differentiate it from the main chat bubbles.

Adding in Willow, Benji and the new character sprites -

Following on from this, the chat bubble idea worked really well to express character's emotions and we decided as a team to have this as a replacement for the main character, meeting in the middle with still having visual cues for the player whilst immersing them within the game. Just for ease on my end, I kept the Sweaters sprite definitions within the game and add in the new sprites on top of this, just so i wouldnt have to scour too much through my code. I do acknowledge this adds a bit more space requirement to our game, however this amount is negligible and if it causes any problems further down the line when we are ready to submit and post our game, I can remove the unnecessary files with relative ease.

Removing the Main character sprite -

This follows on from The previous section and showcases how the game looks without the main character, I also changed a few things within the script to make our game's continuity make more sense. Iris now talks about the party taking place at her house, the character descriptions are more personalized to how each player imagined their character designs, and i also included an introduction for Lottie's character and the second popular girl friend, Willow. These slight changes add to the overall immersive qualities and continuity within the setting.

Dress up Minigame -

Here is a little look at how we re-worked the dress up minigame, Instead of showing the main character, the outfits are now shown with updated descriptions and Richie's comments. We felt that this was a good way to show the different outfits whilst maintaining the immersive qualities that make our game more unique.

Cafeteria background characters -

As Niamh needed some help populating the other two scenes with people, I took on the role of adding in characters matching the style she had done in the first classroom sketch. For these two backgrounds i re-used some of the character's in the classroom scene as well as made some new ones to bring some variety to the backdrops [I also just wanted to have another go at designing character's that fit the style of our game :)]. Although not necessary, I had some extra time and i decided to write up a little profile for these characters to flesh out the world a bit, I think this also serves as good promotional material to place on my Instagram highlight relating to this project [which has gotten quite a few eyes on it already, i am hoping these people will check out our itch.io page when we are ready to publish our game].

This is the little Character profile sheet i made for the two background characters.

This is an In-game screenshot

Here is the alternate view of the classroom scene, I think it's really cute that Niamh hid us in the background of the original so i carried that on in this view, I also added in my friend Francis and one of the character designs I made previously.

This is an in-game screenshot

Party Scenes -

As we are close to the deadline i knew a lot of my team would be working on the toolkit submission and would be quite busy, so just in case they couldnt get the final assets finished i made some ending scenes that we could use just in case. These are the Alone and Anna endings to out game. I tried to make the backgrounds quite simple with only silhouettes of people in the background, but an overall party vibe.

In the end, Pantelis was able to finish the party scenes so i simply put my drawings of the characters over his background. I think his scenes are much more polished and fit better with the overall colour pallet and vibe of our game.

Next steps -

The next steps for this project are getting the day transition screens done, which I will check in with Nathan about on Friday, The two ending scenes which Pantelis is working on, and Amiya should hopefully be sending through the soundtracks in the next few days. Once i have all these assets, I will put them in the game and confirm with my team that they are happy with the final version. If all goes well, I will post our game on Itch.io and continue to promote it's release on Instagram, Discord, and Bluesky [Francis kindly offered to help us promote our game on his socials as I don't really understand how Bluesky works, He has been a huge help to me personally, playtesting our game, giving us continued advice and generally just being really supportive of our game's ideas which is really kind]. I am so proud of our game and our team's effort in bringing it together, I've enjoyed working on it and I hope we have captured the theming of GAD and SAD in young people well.