Extended Practice Designing and Developing the Collectibles

Now that I had the final design to my own level it was time to start design the extra thing that were needed for the overall design to the game. We split up the tasks pretty equally and Sophie will be designing the Relic for her own level, the pause menu and the start menu for the game. I then will be designing the health bar and extra life token, the Relic for my own level, the designs for the eucalyptus leaves and the design for the energy power up.

I started with the design for the health bar as I already had a basic idea of what I wanted it to look like. I knew that I wanted it to be simple and not distract the player from the rest of the screen and I wanted it to be small, something that could be tucked away in the top corner so that it was only necessary to look at when the player needed to. I started by looking at some existing health bars as this was the best way to get inspiration and found some great ones just by looking through my games library. I them came up with 3 initial ideas that used some of the games for inspiration and found that the 3 hearts worked out the best. This is a great way to show that once the player is hit they loose a heart - showing them that they can only get hit 3 times on one level before dying.

I then took this further, thinking about how I could develop the look at tried putting the characters design next to it, tried moving them around so they where going down and then tried combining it with the power up meter. This seemed to be working and eventually I combined a longer power meter and the face of the character into one design to create the health bar shown below in the final design. I then showed what it would look like on the screen and think that it works incredibly well, not in your face, but large enough for children to be able to understand what the hearts mean and how much of the power up is left.

I then moved onto creating the Relic that would appear on my Egyptian level at the end. I first started by looking at lots of different relics and ancient objects that where associated with Ancient Egypt so that I could get a range of different designs together. I wanted to go with a design that was simple but had a lot of design to it, so in the end chose the Ankh over the canopic jars and the tablet. I felt that it had potential to have a number of different designs and I looked at developing it further. In the end I did like the thicker design that I started off with and the one that had space in the middle to add in a symbol. I took this design and looked at the hieroglyphics I had developed earlier and put them on the design in a creative way, filling in spaces and keeping the palette similar to the rest of the level, but still adding in that last element of blue that really brings the whole design together.

I then moved onto designing the eucalyptus leaves that would be the collectible on each level. We had already decided together that we would be using the leaves as this was something special to a koala and would work well in every environment. I quickly did some research into existing games that used collectibles in a really nice way and found that I was mainly inspired by Spyro the Dragon and Mario as they used them in a different but productive way. I then studied the leaves themselves and came up with three different designs that I liked. I decided to take the bottom one forward as it was taller than the others and it would work best in the level altogether. I wanted to experiment with colour further but felt that the original green worked well enough not to need to be changed so I went with that to create the final look.

I then moved onto looking at how I could design the extra life that you have the chance to pick up on every level. This was rather difficult to think about as when trying to find games that use this system proves difficult. The most famous obviously being Spyro that uses the dragon token to grant you one, Crash Bandicoot that uses a cartoon image of his face, and the famous Mario 1 up. This gave me food for thought and decided that the best way to approach it would be going with a coin/token idea and putting an image of value to the character onto it, which is why I have come up with these 3 designs below. I started by looking at how the characters face could be put on a coin and think this idea works well. It matches the health bar creating a connection between the two. I then thought of two more looking at putting his backpack on one and then a big heart on the other, again to match with the health bar, but these ideas just didn't work and didn't seem right.

I then finally looked at designing the energy power up that he will collect throughout the course of the game that will allow him to generate more movement and be able to jump further and react to traps quicker and without taking damage. I again found this element rather difficult to create and it was tough trying to think of something that was going to be used to generate this power up. I had a couple of options to go with, the first being the most obvious, pop. This is something that we have always liked the idea of and it seems only right to make this his defining feature as it's something we have always envisioned. I did have a look at some others items, like the ice cream and the box of cookies but in the end it seemed like the right idea to develop the design of the pop brand further. This then produced the final design which I think works well. It is a made up brand for our universe and it would have been the brand that he would have drank in the zoo, making it more personal to him as well in the end.