An example of a background character and the frames of motion that he will have. Below is an example of how that motion will tween within flash:
http://megaswf.com/view/d185d4ad34748ce8784fb633bee4ef98.html
In dicussion with Steph we decided, due to the showy nature of the upcoming Ludo fest, we had to do something with the art style to differentiate ourselves from every other flash game out there. We decided to go for a black and white almost film noir look to not only add a unique aspect to the project but further concrete the murder mystery experience.
Similar to Madworld
Added GPS Functionality because I forgot about it and saw it in the trailer Steph was producing
Hey guys! Just posting up the first prototype of the HUD for a demonstration! It’s pretty rapid so it is missing specific elements but there are placeholders for them!
Assets as of the 18th of May have mainly been improvements on existing assets. The gallery is displayed below.
Firstly, the main character of the female detective has reached its final iteration and garments are being designed for the user to chop and change between in anticipation of a gameplay mechanic we will hopefully be implementing, whereby the user has to choose the correct garments to suit (obvious) situations in order for her to maintain cover (i.e. word undercover), which will allow her to gather crucial information to advance the storyline.
Secondly, the first scene has been polished and, to my knowledge, will be the scene used in final presentation of first deliverable. The front of the mothers house and the boots have also been polished
Lastly, new assets include the mother’s room, a crucial scene within the game as, behind all the mess, the mother is the eventual culprit; as well as a new phone design (I’m pretty sure it’s based on a Nokia phone, which handset im not entirely sure, refer Steph 
)
Hullo people! It occurred to me today that it was probably erroneous of me to pop pictures and scenes up (assets) and describing them with a vague, but satisfying “mmmm… shiny.” So it has fallen to me to describe what these assets are for, why are they so and how they came to see the light of… your tetchy LCD screen.
These are in no way, shape or form in any sort of order. In fact, it behooves me as to what order they initially came out. It’s the issue of what came first…. The chicken or the egg? They were all created with Adobe Illustrator though (Steph has no idea how to use Photoshop apparently but I don’t believe her)
First is the Dopod, which will not be called as such in the game (as you can see its inspiration is derived from an iMate Dopod) but it will be, nonetheless, just as important. Named or not. It is designed to allow the player (playing as the main character) to receive and send emails (which are essentially part of the gameplay as prompts or hints) and receive messages, which are essential in driving the story.
The Dopod came out during one of our many and haphazard (and somewhat wildly hazardous) brainstorming sessions, when during our storyboarding of our introduction (that reminds me… we did put down a finished introduction as part of our deliverables… I wonder if we have started that yet… JOKES (??)) it occurred to us that, in a time of ubiquitous technology use, our main character should have a PDA of some kind to receive and send emails and generally fart about. Seeing as our main character had a peculiar likeliness to our assets creator, Steph (…hmmm… If you squint your eyes and blur the image it looks almost like Jessica Alba… But hotter… That’s what happens when your pissed as a fart), we decided to go with the mobile design she had at the time… Her Dopod (now deceased, unfortunately).
As you can probably see (if you again, squint quite hard and blur your vision… No, it still looks like Jessica Alba, scratch that) the way that Steph came about with the asset was to literally (ok, well, that is a mild form of plagiarism, she copied it with artistic liberty) outline the entirety of the little device before adding shading and creating a believably lifelike rendition of what the interface would look like (phew… I have like a gazillion assets to go, that gazillion with 86430 zero’s – according to Greg: http://www.gregology.net/Gazillion/).
Next, we have this girl. Apparently she will be our main character. You will control where she goes, what she does and who she talks to. However, you do not have control of her bodily functions (she sneaks away when you’re not looking), her sexual desires, not do you have control of how many times she brushes her teeth and pushes up her boobs (which is, understandably, many times).
This character was created by Steph (and, strangely enough, also resembles Steph. For those of you who don’t know Steph, this is a good enough rendition… No, it is not interactive… No, you cannot see it’s panties). It is created in layers so, a suggestion we had during one of our hedonistic brainstorming sessions of doing a convoluted dressup, whereby in order to succeed at being undercover you had to correctly choose the main characters outfit out of a range of ridiculous clothing, the character has a nudy layer, a pants layer and finally a garment layer (what you (generally) see). It makes editing what shes wearing and how her hair will sit very easy (see the cleavage? I suggested that when we were incredibly bored, nice to see my suggestion slip through).
This is a wine bottle. You may not think much of it, in fact, you probably think less than not much of it due to the cheaply and horribly printed font on its label, but it is one of the most important assets of the game.
This wine bottle will link the murder of Geoff (or is it Jeff) to Dimitri’s mother, because the glass and the wine is rare. The wine was only sold to very few clients, fermented on an individual basis, so it can be traced to at least Dimitri. The glass however, is a family heirloom, marked with Dimitri’s family crest and only found in his mothers house. Mmmm. What a cougar.
Steph has had a long history of creating wine bottles and glasses and popping them into virtual scenes. While she herself does not drink wine, she is a closet wino. She must have racks of the stuff under her house or something and she must regularly go downstairs and gloat at them, because she has done a brilliant likeness of a wine bottle and glass without actually referring to them.
This is the scene in which you will (or, more correctly, the character you control) be first involved in, the murder scene. It will be the final deliverable scene for this semesters work, but the whole game hinges on it. It is where all the evidence is and it is where you will start your investigations. Missing in this scene is the murder weapon (which, as I understand, is currently being worked on) a bloody axe, as well as footprints and some hidden boots (in the fish tank… OOOOOHHHH, I DESTROYED THE SUSPENSE!!! SPOILER!!!). The fishes are now moving and the television flashing in the latest prototypes but, essentially, it is the same scene.
The assets were created by Steph and implemented by Sonia into the game via Flash. The papers on the ground hold important information you will later use to access Geoff’s work computer (via your internet connection… HAHA ARG AT WORK… Look it up, augmented reality gaming… Its really cool!) .
If you have yet to realize who the dead body is… Two things: 1.) It is Geoff 2.) You are stupid, stop looking at this blog, you will fail at comprehending this game.
Finally, this is the mother’s house… The culprit of it all… The evil, evil, plotting cougar she is (Steph, remember to make her reasonably hot, otherwise, how would she have pulled so many guys). Again created in Illustrator, Steph used a reference image from Google to do this. It is an extra asset at the moment and we have yet to decide what to do with it… But it is cool none the less.
Anyways, enough typing for now, I’ve almost topped 1100 words.
Ciao!
Chum
More to come later, yeh?
Oooooh! Theres 1100 Words! Booyah!
