Story Scene Design Documentation - UQdeco2800/2021-studio-6 GitHub Wiki

Rationale

The story scenes (prologue/epilogue) are imperitive to the atmosphere and user immersion of the game. Following similar design styles from the title screen and gameplay, these scenes act as the connection between these features. Without the story scenes, the player would be thrown into an unknown story without the chance of immersion and emotional connection to the character and the adventure they're faced with. In the future, if cutscenes or level-break scenes were to be created, they would have to adhere to the standards and design concepts discussed in this document.

The Style

Following the style of the main game and it's assets, the story scenes are all in pixel art style with influences from the existing title screen design and the game's overall style influences. Using a muted colour palette and a dark theme, the scenes assist in the dark aesthetic and enivornment of the game story. Throughout the scenes, the colours of the Safe Haven glow from the title screen is consistently used when referring to the glow or other light sources glowing. In contrast, the darkness uses a similar style of the fading tonality, however it is black being tinted ever so slightly. This contrast is utilised throughout the scenes to depict the battle between light and dark and the impending doom of the darkness looming.

Inspiration

The Glow

This is the colour palette that was taken from the title screen's glowing light. This was used throughout the story scenes.

Prologue

The prologue plays an important role in the immersion of the player in the game story and it's theme. Therefore, the art style and consistency with the game art direction was vital.

Storyboarding

based on the story overview, the prologue had to inform the player on the backstory of the gameplay - how the world came to be the way it is and why they are doing what they're doing. A basic script for the prologue was created and this storyboard was designed to follow alongside:

Inspiration

As mentioned earlier, the glowing elements of the prologue scenes all take inspiration from the title screen glow, using the same colour palette and similar shading technique. Hopefully in the future, these glows can also be animated to pulse or shift, similar to the title screen.

The lamps in the first scene of the prologue were inspired and derived from the lamp from the title screen, using a flame as the lighting element, and adding the light glow colours from earlier to depict the glowing light, which then gets taken away. Title Screen Design

These are some of the scenes and layers that were inspired and derived from the title screen designs:

Software

All pixel art visuals for the prologue were created using pixilart.com in 160x90 pixels, following the 16:9 aspect ratio used for the title screen artwork. This editor allowed for multiple layers to be created in one visual, which meant for easy designing and exporting of individual layers whilst keeping a consistent final visual.

Future Direction

The prologue although a solid starting feature for the gameplay currently, still has room for improvement. In future sprints it would be beneficial to add a more dynamic immersion through animations and fades for scenes. For example, the scenes that include the 'cloud' of darkness could have it animated to cross over the scene, possibly also slowly getting more opaque. Another animation that would be beneificial to include is the pulsating lights throughout the scenes - through changing opacities or shifting pixels (similar to the title screen). For the users to graps a better understanding of the fireflies' purpose - leaving safe houses and lights - that specific scene could include a simple animation of the safe houses appearing one-by-one towards the light. All these animations would enhance the story already being told by the prologue scenes to allow for a better immersion of the user with the character and the storyworld created.

It was also discussed in the initial art style brainstorm to use the parallax effect in the game to add more depth to the gameplay and the visuals. This could be incorporated into the current prologue scenes with many scenes already having multiple layers. These could include the cityscape in the final scene having the buildings split into layers that then move using the parallax effect style.

Designer Reflection

The prologue visual designs adhere to the game art direction determined by the studio and help enhance the game's storyworld and user immersion. These visuals act as a connection between the title screen feature and the gameplay visuals through the colours, stylisation and thematic focus. There is obviously some room for detail improvement in some scenes and redesigning in terms of matching some assets to designs created in other features as some prologue design assets had to be designed without a true reference from the gameplay elements - such as the safehouses and trees. This is due to some elements being designed/redesigned during the sprint by other designers or they weren't designed in time for the prologue's milestones. In the future, it would be beneficial to get an idea of what these assets would be from their resepective designers. Overall however, the prologue story scene designs blend into the game story and art style smoothly and create a greater storytelling experience.

Epilogue

The Epilogue determines a major aspect of the story, as the user from the start of the gameplay is taken on a highly anticipated journey to 'The Glow', not knowing what is on the other side. The epilogue decides whether the user experience would end in a cliff-hanger or a happy ending. After feedback from the studio, the Epilogue is staged after the player defeats the so-called 'Mother', the overlord of the shadow crawlers.

Storyboarding

The Epilogue scenes were designed around the Story Overview and as mentioned is staged after the Climax. The Epilogue starts with the player reaching the lonely boat stranded by the water. As the sail advances towards the glow and in hope of the game finally ending in a happy - yet curious fashion. The scene builds an added layer of mystery and fear when the sailboat starts rocking and another mighty shadow is spotted around the boat indicating that 'It isn't over yet'.

Attached below is the drafting process of the final epilogue scene design.

Inspiration

The Glow to which the sailboat is seen sailing towards is derived from the title screen glow. The boat is seen sailing towards the glow in a picturesque manner as if one was sailing towards the sunset with reflections in the water that was designed using the same color palette as the glow. This approach was done to temporarily induce a feeling/emotion of happiness to the player as to finally be sailing towards 'The Glow' which in the story has been described as the Safe Haven. The inspiration for the design for the shadow rocking the boat was although not finalized, a tentacle monster from the sea was an idea that was heavily popular among different teams. Therefore the design for the shadow monster was made to be rather very gruesome and unsettling with space for improvement hopefully in the later sprints. The color palette was as mentioned inspired from the Title Screen with some added shades for newly introduced, water, clouds, sea, sailboat silhouette.

Software

The software used for the illustrations in Adobe Photoshop with all the pixel art being manually designed to fit in a 16:10 aspect ratio. With pixel-sized grid view turned on (gridline every 1 pixel), it was convenient to design the graphics with each stroke filling one individual pixel at a time. With image interpolation set to 'Nearest Neighbor', this helped preserve the hard edges and limit the blurriness that occurs when exporting pixel art and zooming in. This is a style that is used to create many popular pixel art games like Mario, Stardew Valley to name. a few.

Future Direction

Since the epilogue uses newly introduced game elements like the sailboat and a supposed overlord shadow that rocks the boat. These entities were designed in a manner that has space for lots of improvement. Since the story treads in a manner that induces temporary emotion of achievement and satisfaction and is immediately followed by the discovery of yet another monster before the game ends in a cliffhanger, background music for these scenes is something worth looking at in the future. Music can assist the visuals in giving the user a more immersive and shocking feeling of realizing that it isn't over yet.

Again in later sprints where the final level for the game is designed, and the enemy overlord monster is fully illustrated it could be worth basing the final shadow to visually look similar to the monster that the player just defeated. These are certainly major areas of discussion for later sprints.