Week 4/5: The Break Week, and making Progress.

Hey there guys, Adam here again with Angry Ghost Games.
The Magefest team has been apart since our last major post, two weeks ago, and has been hard at work. Everyone has something big to show, and I hope you enjoy what we have in store for you to make up for the lack of post this last week.

Connor has once again shown off his artistic prowess. Firstly, he has been working on the background for our third and final level; the Forest level. The background, which is animated beautifully, is still not quite finished, however this video of the animation in motion shows just how much effort is going into the piece

This video is also a great look at some of Connors in progress art. The finished scene will be posted here as soon as it is ready for you all.

Connor has also created an entire typeface for the game, named Magefont.

The runic lettering will be used within the game, as well as marketing material, and was based on the text from his original Magefest logo. The typeface was needed, as a royalty free font could not be found that suited our needs, and Connor's game logo inspired us all, and gave him a bit more work to do.
Finally, Connor has added trails to the projectiles in game, and they are looking fantastic.

Our attacks are finally more than just colored orbs slowly floating about the stage. Now they're colored orbs slowly floating about the stage, with tails; which is a definite step in the right direction.

Jess has also been hard at work on the art side of Magefest, and has created our first taste of UI for the game, with health bars which are separate from our characters.

The character portraits also change demeanor upon taking enough damage, drooping slightly at half health, and looking about to cry at a quarter. 

Jess has also created a concept for the ticket which the Bobs will be fighting over, which will also heavily feature in much of the rest of Magefest's UI.

The simplicity of the ticket is incredible, and this may be a possible direction for some of our real-world marketing material. Although even if not, the ticket's use in game is already incredible.

For example, Jess has also created a victory screen to come up at the end of a round, which is looking just fantastic, even just as a concept.

In the art department, the game is coming along fantastically, as can be seen. Strides are also being made in other areas of development. Ryan and Josh have both been hard at work in Unity getting everything set up and working. According to Ryan, our character model from last week is in game on his end, but a file size issue is preventing sharing for the time being, so we should be able to show him off next week. As for what else the guys have been working on; Ryan has got controller support implemented, although it is not working perfectly at the moment and will require some fine tuning. Josh on the other hand has been working on implementing the UI into the actual game, as well as continuing work on the menu hierarchy. 

Christina has redone some of the sounds which were not particularly what we were looking for, and seems to have a more concrete idea of where she is going with them. I have posted the playlist of the sounds in game below, allowing you to compare the newer versions with their scrapped predecessors. If you don't feel like looking through the whole thing however, here is the new version of the Ice effect.

FOR PLAYLIST CLICK HERE

Christina has also begun work on an animated introduction for the game based on Connor's game logo from the last post.

Once again fantastic work is being done by all members of our team. As for me, I conducted an interview with Ryan, which you can read HERE. I also created a very WIP version of a business card based on Jess's new ticket concept. 

I have also been working on some formatting ideas for the blog, which should be ready to go by the end of this week. Finally we will be free from white and off white, and onto something a little more exciting. 

Also, we have our final team member Callum (read about him HERE) who will be creating the music for the game.

Overall, this has been an incredibly productive couple of weeks. Most of the outstanding art is nearing completion, and we will soon be able to get the actual game itself out of its very bare bones state, into something more like what we've all been envisioning. Hopefully by next week, I will be able to show you some of the gameplay with our actual character.

Thank you all for reading, we hope you check back in next week.

Adam.