And so, we come crashing to the end of our production, or as much of it we could safely complete with being sent to an infirmary. At the end of a hectic last 6 months of our officially required undergraduate studies we have emerged from the dark tunnel of education with a 90 second trailer, proof of concept flash game demonstration and a redrawn Prototype from semester one.
(Remember this scene kids?)
So. Interested readers out there. I suppose you are wondering:
a.) Why did it take 6 months to create approximately 5 minutes of gameplay with approximately about a third of that being interesting?
b.) Why did we decide to have a dramatic art direction swerve
c.) What has this to do with the heading
To answer these three FAQ’s firstly, in reality, we were probably only effectively working for about 2 months considering we threw out or redrew the majority of the assets when (and this leads onto answering the next question) we decided to go film noire black and white. The reason for the change in art direction was mainly, despite the effect created with the existing art, due to two factors, including the creation of the original trailer entirely in Flash, as well as a brainspark I had while outlining all the art assets. The resultant ambiance can, we believe, can create tension all by itself.
Lastly, the heading has everything to do with our production cycle. Firstly, due to the fact that we no longer were relying on production gateways (Christian! That was a terrific idea! Do it again!) attention skipped from the project to sometimes more or less pressing matters in other subjects and our day to day lives (Steph has a notoriously busy work schedule), and, probably most dastardly, the implementation of ActionScript 3, we often spent long nights either at home or living in the library basement pulling our hair over Flash CS4. For the love of god! ActionScript 3! What were we thinking?! Although I was previously comfortable working in Flash, despite it’s moronically often hiccups, ActionScript 3 threw a whole new curveball at us and required us to learn what was essentially a complex programming language in a month (we didn’t actually start putting assets within a canvas until the latter half of the semester), coupled by the fact that our ex-programmer was out of action with respiratory issues, it was mighty slow going (OMG! Stop saying Error #1009, it gives me no idea what is going wrong!!).
Subsequently, tonight, (mainly) I ran out of coffee, and, after opening and closing the same cupboard several times just to make sure I hadn’t missed it, I had to settle for weak green tea (how’s that going to keep me up). This doesn’t help trying to coax two massive flash project files to merge together, with all the added cursing (I found out that it was something wrong with Flash itself later, i.e. I had to restart flash and there was nothing wrong with the files =_=)
To tie in with the last thing in the heading, I was singing along to mellow music simultaneously to keep me from completely blowing my top (you know… when you’re in the shower or home alone and absent mindedly singing… What… You don’t do it as well… OK now I feel stupid)
So, comes the hand in deadline, a slight respite and then the finalizing of our Pecha Kucha speech for the Friday presentation. 6 minutes right?
P.S. I hope to never see Flash again, but common sense is telling me some idiot will make me use it again. Also, Steph sends her regards for Friday due to personal matters.
This is CHUM signing out for, possibly the last time.
(Unless I decide to place the Pecha Kucha speech online as well as something a little more coherent to finish the documentation for the semester… Hm… Time for a post mortem? let’s lay this thing to RIP)
