Industry Practice: Final Assets and Group meeting
Industry Practice: Final Assets and Group meeting
Before the session on 02/05/2025, I designed the background for my character that will be used in their memory sequence. We discussed the possibility of making these backgrounds a different room from each other to add to the variety in the situations of each character. For me, I think the bedroom would be most fitting. To fit with the colour scheme we all agreed on, I made it mostly greyscale and drowned out. This brings more attention to the characters.
This is the original concept for the background I created a while ago.
And below is the final version of the background I created. I added small doodles of the characters to the backgrounds to represent that they all originated from a friend group, and added a sense of dirtiness to the scene with the cracks on the walls, rubbish on the floor and the unmade bed. I feel like all these elements represent the jester as a character well, especially as someone who suffers with depression.
My group really liked this background, so I sent it in the usual format (1920 x 1080) so it was ready for the game.
On Fridays session, besides testing each others games, we also discussed the list of things we had left and assigned them to each other. Below is the list of things our director, Sam, assigned to me.
The first thing I did when I got back was immediately update my dialogue tree so each option had an assigned sprite. This was because Damian asked me.
Here is the dialogue tree now.
Overall progress on our game was coming along really well, most of the coding is done, with the odd asset missing. The only thing we are really lacking are the sounds, which we have organised now. Before I get to the sounds and music, I wanted to finish off the assets I have left.
Firstly, I created a portrait to be used in the credits. These could be our own style, but to not depart from the games style too much, I drew it in a similar one.
Next I started working on the Title screen. before doing this, I asked Damian to send me the format for the main menu screen so that I could line it up properly with the background.
This is the first version of the background I drew. The left side is completely blank due to that being where the border is placed in-game.
This is the feedback I got:
I also spoke to the others, who asked for a picture of a cat, a guide book and a little bear figure. I think this completes the look overall to create a more cosy atmosphere.
With the feedback, I fixed the overall layout, and sent the file to my group.
This was a conversation we had in regard to this screen and any additional screens related to it. In my opinion, I think having a single trigger warning screen like this is ok, but I did say that either way I believe it will properly mention the themes of the game.
Moving onto the sounds, I had a few things to look for. What is important is that all the sounds we were going to use were needed to be royalty free, since that means that we were free to use the sounds without any monetary loss/debt.
Firstly I began looking for a bad end sound. After asking Sam in class, this just needed to be something like the hum of a room and a light flickering sound. Sam as the director also showed me the website Pixabay, which I could use for all the royalty free sounds, which is the website I used.
For the room ambience of the bad ending, I found two possible sounds, and asked my team what they would think is best.
The team was happy with the second sound, and started talking about ideas to do involving it. The next thing I looked for was the music that would play during the good ending. The original plan was to make this, but I wanted to first look for a song that would fit nicely. This would speed up the production of the game with no real loss to the overall quality of it.
I found one that I thought fit really well, so I showed my team it.
I also explained my reasoning for picking this song. The team seemed to like this choice, so I moved onto the next thing: the specific, smaller sound effects played during a specific choice or character moment.
Starting with the other sound effects, I started with the bad choice sound, which the group also seemed very happy with. I feel like this gives bad choices impact, making the player feel like they did something wrong.
For each of the individual characters, I looked at the sound effects that I thought would most make sense for them. For example for the jester I looked for a honking sound, for the hound I looked for a writing sound etc.
I feel like by focusing on communication with my team, I was able to complete the sound-related tasks in an efficient and quick manner, allowing my team to also continue with production of the game faster.
Now moving onto the final few things. Firstly, I just sorted out what bonus art could potentially be used - For this, I used concept art and thumbnails from production. The games we used as reference did this, so we were more than happy to do the same. It comes at no cost to time and adds some more depth to the art with the players being able to see early designs for assets. There was more work I could use for this bonus art, but I wanted to have my best concept work be presented. This is so we can fit into the 10 minute runtime still, and still be happy with the artwork within the game.
This was the character sheet for the final version of the Jester.
This was an early concept of his room..
This was the earliest finished character sheet for the Jester, where he had a much creepier appearance and didn't fit well into the game.
These are both thumbnail sheets I showed my group to do with different features of his appearance early in production.
This was also an early design, this was about midway through production. I still think he looked too creepy here, so I toned it down again for the final design.
Next, I needed to finish the Jesters story that plays within the game in a memory sequence. There was no single right way to do this. When I discussed it with the director of the team, Sam, they said that it was best to just have the patient themself be the main character of their memory, and have the therapist occasionally narrate on what they see or feel.
This was my first version. I wrote it to be long enough to be substantial, but short enough to be within a 10 minute long game.
I asked for feedback in the team chat.
My group was very happy with this version of the story overall. This is a screenshot of Katie, who is in charge of the story giving her opinions on the game. With this finished, I moved onto the final thing I had left to do, which was what I was credited for.
For this I just made a list, and sent it to my team. The list consisted of:
- The Jester design, sprites and background
- Jester memory sequence and dialogue
- Sourcing the sound effects
With this done, I was finished with my final assets and contributions for the game overall. This brings me into the end of the project. Damian will be submitting the link for the game.
Pixabay [online]. Available at: https://pixabay.com [Accessed 8 May 2025]
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