The final week of the project is almost here and the game Night of the Piñata is in its final stage of polish. The graphics for the game is just about done and the few things that get a new finish are the objects I made over the weeks.
The objects in the game have all been designed to fit with the theme of the festival Dia de los Muertos. They are colorful and festive, but have been mostly static up to this point. I made the few simple animations to help liven up the screen and push the feeling of the game taking place in a festive environment.
Because most of my objects have flowers on them I thought I could make it a theme that they moved, as if a wind was blowing through them. This was not too time consuming, this late in the project, because I did not have to make more than four frames per animation.
I did not have to redraw each frame either, which I doubt I would have had time to do. I simply nudges pieces of my drawing in the direction I envisioned the wind blowing and turned them with the transform or marionette tool (photoshop).
When having completed an animation I saved them in a so called sprite sheet. This is when all frames in the animation are stacked next to each other in the same picture. This allows them to be programed into the game as a full animation.
Above you can see one of the sheets. To this I add a document describing what frame is supposed to play in what order and how big that picture is.
This is all described in pixels as following:
Amount of frames
Placement on x, placement on y, width, height
Placement on x, placement on y, width, height
For the flower pot I wanted the first frame to play three times before the other frames play. Therefore the document looks like this.
6 frames
0, 0, 78, 130
0, 0, 78, 130
0, 0, 78, 130
78, 0, 78, 130
156, 0, 78, 130
234, 0, 78, 130
Besides the objects I also wanted to make the power-ups an animation to make them stand out from the objects on screen, especially now when more things would be moving around it. It was already flatter than the objects, but that was not enough. Therefore I made a floating animation, twelve frames, for it and added glowing in its eyes.
Project finished! Take care!
Matilda Nagy 