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Overview

The implementation of this weapon was based off the idea of creating a new projectile weapon within the game.

Final Design

Stats

• Damage: 20
• Cooldown: 0.5 seconds
• Attack Type: Ranged
• Level: 2
• Craftable: Yes
• Materials: 1x Wood, 1x Toilet Paper

Background Research

The design idea behind this sprint was to create a weapon that incorporated a ranged weapon. Going off contemporary movies, we see that there is almost always a symbolic weapon that is associated with a character. For example, in the movie Aquaman, the trident is the symbolic weapon. As such, we also wish to mimic this idealogy to provide more dept to the story play. As well as this, incorporating a ranged/ projectile weapon into the game would allow for a multitude of different play styles to players.

Design Inspirations

After conducting initial background research into plunger bows, a few items of inspiration were sourced and taken as the basis of what would form our pixel image.

Inspiration Name	Image	Reason
Inspiration One		The inspiration gathered from this image was the design pattern of the bow. As seen, the ends of the bow are rather unique compared to that of a typical bow drawing.
Inspiration Two		The inspiration gathered here was to replace the arrow head with a plunger. This would allow for a more intuned topic as set by the story team.
Inspiration Three		The inspiration gathered from this image was the different colours that could be utilised when creating the drawing.

Phase 1: Sketching

Multiple sketches were done to get an idea of how the final pixel drawings may look like. As seen within the image, there were multiple bow sketches. Originally a brown bow was drawn to represent the wood texture, however, after completing the drawing, it was realised that the bow and the plunger did not have enough contrast. As such a, new orange-coloured bow was created. In addition to this, the original bow drawings were also created to get an understanding on how different each bows were.

In relation to the plungers, inspiration was taken off the plunger drawing created in sprint two. This was to maintain consistency between the design of the plunger as user testing had already been done. Furthermore, there is a golden plunger drawn as an inspiration for the 'boss weapon' as well as the symbolic weapon for this game. This golden plunger is just an iteration of the regular plunger but can only be created at a certain point of the game.

Phase 2: User Testing

During the user testing phase, we were wanting to find answers regarding whether the initial drawing of the bow plunger actually looked like what users expected it to be. Furthermore, we also questioned on what improvements could be made to the bow so that it could enhance the game experience. Questions regarding the 'boss weapon' AKA, golden plunger bow, were also asked to understand whether this weapon was even needed and if so, the stats for this weapon.

The overall feedback from users had 62.5% of users agreeing that the design created seemed like what they expected of the plunger bow apart from some minor alterations that could have been made.

Note: User feedback is discussed within the below iterative table and the raw data can be found here.

Phase 3: Weapon Pixel Drawing

Iteration Name	Image	Changes
Original Drawing		N/A
Iteration One		Originally, we intended the end of the bow to look like a toilet paper. However, there was a comment saying that it still looked like a feather. As such, we iterated the design to make the toilet paper more obvious through extending the roll as well as making the shadings of the underside slightly darker to provide more contrast.
Iteration Two		Users were also commenting that the bow string seemed to have an outline that was a bit jarring. The concept of having a black outline was so that it could distinguish between the string and the bow itself. In order to iterate on this design, we dampened the colour of the outline as seen in this iteration.
Iteration Three		User feedback suggested that the bow was too 'orange' or that it seemed to look like a fire-themed bow. This was not the intension we were going for and as such, we iterated the design to make the bow have more of a neutral colour.
Final Design		Within this iteration, the handle for the bow was changed from black to a dark brown in order for it to 'fit in' to the bow design without being so outstanding.

Future Directions For Static Bow Image

As discussed within the above sections, a future direction would be to fully implement the golden bow plunger as the 'boss weapon' which would be symbolic to this game. This would allow for a deeper gameplay story as players would may need to speak to NPCs to attain the material to craft the weapon. Alternatively, this weapon stats of the bow could be made to be a 'boss weapon' to assist individuals in killing their enemies.

Weapon Attack Animation

After the creation of this weapon, we proceeded to create the animation for it. In order for the design of this weapon animation to be integrated, sketches were drawn before the creation of the weapon swing.

Design Inspirations

Inspiration Number	Image	Explanation
Inspiration 1		The inspiration taken from this design was the way the bow was swung. We wanted to implement a bow with a natural shooting pattern and this was what was followed.

Sketching

Due to the nature of the bow animation, we split it into two different sections - a project and a bow animation.

Bow Animation

Bow Projectile

Pixel Art Animation

Iteration Name	Sprite Sheet	Gif
Original
Iteration 1
Final Design

As it was deemed that the only major section of the animation was seen within the bow which would be overlayed over the player, the following arrow head projectile was not user-tested as in-depth as the bow.

Iteration Name	Sprite Sheet	Gif
Original
Iteration 1

User Feedback

After the weapon swing animations were created, they went for user testing. The goal of user testing was to see if users could identify whether the swing/ shooting pattern of the bow was natural and acceptable. User feedback can be seen within the Weapon Animation User Testing.

As for the default animation swing, we note that the majority of individuals found the standard acceptable without needing anything to be changed. There was one comment which stated that the bow animation seemed a little unrealistic in terms of when the bow shoots out the projectiles. The user commented on how the bow should bend at the ends when the string was drawn back. As such, this was what formed the iterative design for the bow animation.

As for the projectile animation, information user testing was done with users giving a very brief summary of what they thought of it. The majority of individuals asked replied with the comment of how they 'misunderstood' where the poop was originally coming from. As such, the projectile was iterated and made in such a way that incorporated the poop coming out of the plunger and onto the toilet paper rather than flying out of nowhere.

Future Directions Animation

In terms of the future directions for the animations, further iterations can be made on the projectile as well as the bow animation to suit the direction of where the player is currently facing. This would allow for a more realistic gameplay.

Golden Bow Plunger

Overview

As per the future directions of the bow plunger, during this sprint, we implement the process for the creation of the golden bow plunger. Inspirations and sketches were drawn from the regular bow plunger with the exception and change of the colour scheme seen in the finalised golden bow plunger image below.

Final Design

Stats:

• Damage: 70
• Cooldown: 5 seconds
• Weight: 2
• Attack type: Ranged
• Level: Unknown
• Craftable? Yes
• Materials: Toilet Paper: 1, Golden Poop: 1

User Testing and Feedback

Within sprint 3 user testing for the creation of the plunger bow, users were keen on seeing a 'boss weapon' that could be crafted to assist individuals with the gameplay. Within this sprint, we have adhered to the newly created 'boss weapon' called the golden bow plunger. Its damage is significantly higher than that of any other weapon within the game but is compensated by the long cooldown associated with it as seen above statistics information.

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Author

• Caleb Ang (@PurrplePandaa) (Caleb Ang)