FBAUL-IST GAMING 2018
MONEY GRABBERS
My name is Carolina Pereira and I'm a 3rd year Multimedia Art student at the University of Lisbon.
I've partnered up with a Masters on Game Development group of students from IST who created the concept for a game called Money Grabbers, described on the original pitch as follows:
Imagine you’re walking on the side of the road on a regular day and an armored van transporting money crashes in the middle of the road while all the other cars try to avoid it, very conveniently forming an arena on the middle of the road. As this happens, the trunk opens and a gazillion coins fall to the ground. You cannot let this opportunity pass. Try to grab as many coins as you can while also hitting other players to make them drop theirs.
The team consists of João Genebra, Diogo Gonçalves and Diogo Martins, responsible for coding the game, as well as myself: my role on this interdisciplinary challenge will be designing the visual assets of the game.
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Although our main communication is through the internet, namely through instant messaging, we decided to meet in the last week of March to get to know each other and to prepare one of the assignments required by the IST class, which consisted of developing a physical prototype of the game in order to easily demonstrate its mechanics and showcase it to a predetermined group of people who might represent its target audience.
The initial design of the game as proposed by the IST students
The board intended to demonstrate the game in a workshop
This meeting was also an opportunity to start debating our expectations of the game and building a common ground on the aesthetic that each of us had imagined for it. We decided on a 3⁄4 perspective (commonly used on RPG games) and we began sketching GUI ideas to help us make a list of necessary visual assets:
Main menu (transl. ‘PLAYERS’, ‘PRESS START TO ENTER’)
Upgrade menu between rounds
Ranking menu between rounds (transl. ‘ROUND 1’; ‘COLECTOR’, ‘BULLY’-
placeholder achievements)
We look forward to the flourishing of our relationship as a team so we can pursue to the fullest extent of our abilities the chance to display a fully working, entertaining and visually appealing party
game at MOJO 2018!
March 30th 2018
Hi again!
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After our little get together at Técnico where we exchanged ideas on, among other topics, the visual aspect of the game, I began trying to combine our expectations into a concise look.
Some games that inspired the team.
Moodboard that I put together.
After some research I found out about voxels, which "represent unit[s] on a regular grid in three-dimensional space" (wiki) the same way a pixel does in a two-dimensional grid. I enjoyed the minimalist aesthetic that could be achieved by using this type of graphics while preserving the pixel art feel of retro video games that frequently used a 3/4 perspective such as the one in the original concept of our game. I began modelling some possible characters while keeping in mind the fun and casual direction we wanted for the game and came up with the following two:
Sr. Amílcar.
Clarissa.
But before introducing our new friends to the rest of the team, I couldn't help but giving them suitable names and quickly getting them animated thanks to a tool called Mixamo.
April 15th 2018
Hi! It’s time for another update!
The other members of our team have their own blog (as required by their teacher) which they update weekly as they develop every feature of the game. Since it was created long before I even joined the team, they made their own logo as a header. I wanted to update it in order to reflect the general aesthetic we decided to follow, and the process was as follows:
The original logo from the blog.
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Between all of the different elements from the first logo, I felt that the most important ones were the use of two colors in the font to slightly separate the words in the title for legibility purposes, the choice of a “tech” or “screen” related font, and the bag of money. I presented the following logo to the team, who promptly approved:
I wanted the money bag to reflect the in-game experience.
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Regarding the game itself, I created a few more assets. Now we have the coins the players will be trying to grab (hence the name of the game), a coin bag for them to grab and/or throw, and a treasure chest.
It opens up!
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Until the next post!
April 30th 2018
Hi! This will be the final update.
After a couple of tries I was able to figure out a way of exporting the characters and objects I had been working on. Even though I worked on them as 3D assets, the end purpose was a throwback to older RPG games, so I had to set a point of view and export them as 2D in the correct perspective. This involved making sprite sheets for every movement they performed and in every direction the character might be facing.
Here is our friend Clarissa exemplifying how to walk.
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Since I obtained these by exporting directly from the 3D model, Clarissa has both legs in every image, though it certainly doesn’t seem that way… Maybe perspective needs a little help. Right now, my focus is on making the sprite sheets for the other character, Sr. Amílcar, and a police officer tasked with catching our sticky-fingered friends.
MOJO is almost here and we’re still missing a proper background/set, and I would also like to improve the user interface, i.e., the menus, charts, item information, whatever my teammates managed to implement so far. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to visit them at Tagus Park again and therefore I’m really curious as to how it’s working, but we still have about a week to meet before the showcase.
Hope to see you at MOJO on the 29th of May!
May 15th 2018
