New direction for visuals, the nighthawk and new planets

After struggling to make Jimmy's ships look realistic I thought about why this was. Due to the fact that we both have different art styles, mine being quite realistic and his being very cartoony, there was an imediate problem with the contrast of ships to planets. It would be almost impossible for me to render the ships to match the style of the planets without redrawing Jimmy's ships. Since that would be rude and more work than I had intended I am now vectorising and image tracing the planets using 16 color schemes to create more cartoony ships. This new direction has sparked more excitement in the game as there is no need to worry about trying to get everything spot on. Now we can relax a little bit and just make a really good game.

Introducing the NightHawk (the rocket fuel ship).

The nightHawk was drawn and designed by Jimmy and rendered by myself.

Test

 

And now that I have traced the previous 6 planets and added 3 more I thought I would post them up.

Desert_planet_2
(download)

243 Planets and Menu

First few planets are coming along nicely. We all decided to try our hand at making the game quite realistic looking. This could come out really nice or really ugly but we shall have to see.

Planet_1_-_clouds
Gas_planet_1
I have also whipped up a work in progress menu prototype. The idea is to have the 'camera' zooming past each world which will act as menu icons.

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231 Third Experiment

My third experiment was again attempting to invoke a more safe/comfortable environment by looking at how people interact with the content of a horror film when alone and when with friends.

I got Ben to watch another horror scene and looked at how he sat and how he responded to the film. This was all taken place inside and in a dark room to enhance the films effects.

I then got him to watch another scene from the same film but this time with Bevan and Ryan in the same room. All three of them watched the scene. The tension of the room seemed to vanish and it was a less intense experience.

(download)
Although the results were not as extreme as my second experiment they still had a positive effect. I had hoped that the boys would talk about the scene and lose all immersion but apart from a few comments about certain things they liked it was still a pretty tense environment. Especially when the scene became extremely suspenceful everyone was totally silent and still as Ben was before joined.

231 Second Experiment

My second experiment was looking at how the environment can change someones experience when watching horror films.

My friend Johnny was happy to help out. I first made him watch a horror scene insided the house with all the lights off and curtains/doors closed. I then made him watch it outside in the sunshine with the wind blowing. I was hoping to discover that he found it harder to become immersed when he was outside.

(download)

Johnny said the following things after the experiment:

The dark setting of the scene mimicked his surroundings which helped make him feel like he was there as well. The suspense of the scene was accented by the darkness.

The sunshine and wind detracted from his experience and almost made it impossible to be immersed by the scene. He noticed that his mind occasionally wandered away from the film and that he always knew where he was. He felt more safer outside and less 'frightened' by the scenes.