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Sebastian Nightingale

This is the final design of my character, and I am personally proud of it when I changed a single thing, an extension of the trousers in the middle bottom of the character's coat.

Looking at it now, it feels like such a good design and I am really proud of how it ended up coming out.

In terms of the character animations (the walking and idle animations), they also turned out really well, they feel as realistic as I could make them and from the help of my teachers I was able to tweak them to make them as nice as possible.

Sebastian Nightingale's Backstory:

Sebastian Nightingale is a Victorian era thief, he was raised by his father in poverty and over the course of his life he has been a part of crime. At a young age he was introduced to pickpocketing and joined a small gang with people of similar age to him, over the past 10 years, Sebastian has continued to hone his skills and has become one of the most well known thieves of London. Recently, the lost palace of the greedy King Midas has been unearthed right in the middle of London and  Sebastian has taken it upon himself to prove to other well-known thieves that he truly is the best of the best.

His classic looks sees him wearing jet-black shoes, trousers which are quite a dark shade of grey, a navy blue trench coat featuring a light brown inside, a lighter blue shirt and black fingerless gloves. Sebastian also considers himself to have a rather fabulous moustache which he says he takes pristine care of and he likes to keeps his hair quite short to avoid the hair getting in his eyes for if any heists happened to go wrong.

Sebastian has reportedly had lot’s of close calls with the law, almost landing himself in prison for life for a very dangerous heist he commited a couple of years back, his count for the amount of heists he’s been able to pull of constantly increases as he’s always on the move, although it was last reported that the number was slowly closing into the hundreds with no signs of stopping.

The well-known thief also tends to work alone and normally never works with other thieves as he beliefs if he were to work with other thieves, it would crush his unusually large ego. It has also been reported that whenever he’s able to outrun or outmaneuver the law, he leaves behinds his well-known trademark (Being a very fancy playing card replaced with his initials written in a gold ink) to show he was once again successful with his heist.

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King Midas's Palace and the Tileset

Here it is, the (possibly) finished tileset.

I am really proud of the outcome of this and I feel like it's been a great journey, although stressful at times, I pulled through and created what I set out to create.

I feel like I might have also made more than I actually expected, Although some of these are recreated or flipped, they can all still be used as separate pieces of a tilemap for future levels.

This is the long lost Palace of King Midas himself, originally thought to be lost to the sands of time, yet here it stands, almost as if it had never been lost. The wallpapers, the pillars, the windows, the stairs and the wooden panels all appear to the player as completely unscathed and untouched despite it being lost for over a hundred years.

The tileset for the grand palace contains three different versions of chequered floors, going from a normal floor, stairs, and a floating platform that appears more darker as it’s on it’s own and has a visible end to it. There are two wallpapers seen in the tilemap image, one having a royal green and the other having a dark and grand tint of blue, next is the pillars, they come in three different pieces, the top, the middle and the bottom, this was done to make it easier for me to make a longer pillar like shown in the image of the palace.

Another piece of the tileset is the windows, I decided to make the windows 4 different tiles so that I can be flexible with how I want to place them, a neat trick I also did was place the top of the wooden panel beneath it, attached to the bottom left and right tiles of the windows so that it gives that feeling that the windows are actually above the wooden panels and not just there. There is also a floating two piece chequered floor that can be seen on the top right corner of the palace image, while not chequered, I decided to reuse the tops of the lone chequered floor to create a new lone floor. Finally, there is the wall lamp, the final piece I made for the tileset, it has a mainly black base with two different shades of gold to represent the the shades that would be cast in the room, I also decided as a last minute idea to add a light inside of the lamp to bring it to life a little bit more.

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Inspiration for the chequered floor and stairs for my tileset

Here are a few images that I took inspiration from when creating the floors and stairs of my chequered floors/stairs.

By using some shading and a slow build of the chequered appearance, I was able to create something that I believed looked really well done and felt went along well with the other assets of my tileset.

Here you can see the stairs and the floors of my chequered floors/stairs, I felt that also shading the tops of the stairs gave it more life and made it so it didn't stand out, this way it feels like it has a realistic feeling to it and that is exactly what I have been trying to accomplish with this tileset.

With this version of the chequered floor, It is made to be a stand alone platform since my assets are for a 2D side scrolling platformer, I added shading to not only the top of the floors, but also the end sides and the bottom of it to really give it more pow and make it standout infront of other assets.

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Inspiration for interior lamp for tileset

While thinking of other types of interior items to add to my tileset, I thought a good idea would be to add side hanging interior lamps.

I thought this would be a good idea because it would be something to bring the place more alive than it already is, I had previously already planned to make a interior lamp for my tileset, but I didn't know how to go about it.

I was finally able to discover and research about what a good lamp could look like and still fit into my Victorian vibe that I was originally going for.

These two images here I believe are really good as the design they also have underneath the actual lamp itself seemed like a good idea to create aswell as it it seemed more vibrant.

Here is the design I came up with, As you can see, I used the vibrant design as seen on the lamps above, but I also tried to give the actual lamp a bit of a change, although it appears similar, I wanted to try straw away from completely trying to copy it and slightly edit it to my own liking and preference.

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Test Tilemap Completion

After I was able to fix the problems with my tile set, I thought a good idea would be to finish off the test tilemap to see what It would look like.

Considering this is a test, I thought I might as well play around with all of my available assets within the tileset, this way I could discover if there was anything else wrong with my tileset, and see what a finished tilemap for a possible level would look like.

Here is what the test tilemap currently looks like, I personally am really pleased with the outcome and look of the look of this level and how it appears after the fixes and improvements I made to the tileset.

Unseen from the previous post about the fixing of the tileset, I also have extra chequered floor pieces to create a floating platform, I also used the top of the floating platform to make an even smaller floating platform just to add something more.

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Problem Solving - Tile Set/Map

The problem:

When finally adding my tileset to unreal for a test, it was there that I discovered the problems that I did not know of before hand.

Problem 1. The first problem I discovered had two things wrong; the first part of the problem being the fact the windows were touching the wooden panel, this is a problem because it didn't convey a realistic feel to where a window would be in comparison to the panel. The second part of this problem was, when I added the windows to the tilemap, I discovered that the wooden panel was also actually missing the top of it to convey a more realistic and complete feel to this.

Problem 2. The second problem with my tileset at the time was the fact that the windows were a singular layer, and were also way too close together, this, when added to the tilemap, was instantly a problem I noticed, and it also removed the realism that I had to try to go for whilst building the tilemap.

The solution:

So, I went back to the original tileset that I had and tweaked it, and on this tilemap the changes that I made , especially the windows, are very obvious.

Solution 1. Looking back at the distance between the windows, I realized how close they were, unless I was making a joint window, which would also have a connection instead of a slight slit between the two, I increased the distance between the windows by a bit, this in turn has made a massive improvement to how they look and give them more a realistic look and feel about them.

Solution 2. The selection solution was a pretty quick fix, to bring the wooden panels to life a little more, I decided to add a top to them, this way it feels more complete and it separates the wall paper and the panels and gives it a more realistic feel to the tilemap.

I think that going onto unreal and making a test run of the actual tileset and turning it into a tilemap was a really good idea in terms of problem solving, it helped me realize that even if something is slightly off, it can change and even ruin an entire tile and cause you to have to change what you've done, this has been good for me since I was able to go back and fix problems that I originally was not aware of.

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Problem Solving - Sprite Sheet

When creating my sprite sheet, I originally did not use guides or grids to help me effectively line up the distance between every frame of my character's walking animation, shown in the image above.

Whenever I exported it, it would look like this, and if I were to release this onto itch.io or something that would contain my character and his animations, it would not look good and people obviously would not want to correct the obvious mistakes.

In this image, you can see that the distance between my character's movement sprites are much more accurate and well coordinated, this makes for a more well rewarding end result.

In this image, you can see the guilds and the grid I used to make an accurate distance between each sprite, by specifically putting the guide one right of the left eye, it keeps a constant moving animation that looks correct unless in one sprite the head intentionally moves.

As you can see, this animation is much much better than the original one and actually looks like a sprite animation, I am glad I was able to fix this problem with the help of the guides and grids I also used in my tilemap.

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Inspiration for windows for my tilemap

These two images of Victorian style windows were a big inspiration for the windows I ended up making for my tilemap, I decided it would be a good idea for me to make two types of windows since I felt making only one wouldn't be as rewarding as making more.

I took a rather large inspiration from the first image of the rectangular window and slowly tweaked the other window to make it have that curved top like in the second image.

Before the windows were as detailed as they appeared now, I wasn't quite sure how to give them more depth and bring them to life more, from the help of my teacher he was able to help me added different shades of the base colour to add shading and almost give it that feeling of a sliding window in pixel-art, thanks to this, I was also able to adapt that knowledge to the circular window and give that one more depth aswell. I am not quite sure what I plan to do for a background for the windows, I will build upon this and see what I can come up with after.

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Inspiration for pillar for my tilemap

Whilst I was designing my pillar for my tilemap, I took some inspiration from the internet with different types of Victorian pillars, obviously since I still wanted a Victorian type of area for my palace, I took the time to see what different types of things a Victorian household have.

The first image of my selection of pillars ended up being my main inspiration for what my final outcome was.

As you can see, I tried my best to try replicate the look off the first pillar, with help from my teacher I was also able to reuse other colours and parts of my tilemap to mix and match it to work with the other pieces I made.

I particularly liked the design of the top and bottom of the pillar, and whilst it is not quite the same, I tweaked it and made it more of something I liked myself.

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Inspiration for Tilemap

When thinking of how to actually build a level using my tileset, I had to seek for inspiration, as my game is a more Victorian era, It only made sense to do something fancy considering it belongs to King Midas.

So I turned to Castlevania's level design, as you can see it's also in a palace/castle so I thought taking inspiration from here would make sense.

This is where I got my inspiration to make smaller platforms, stand alone platforms and also slopped platforms to really bring my tilemap to life.

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The Two Week Plan: 16/04/24-24/04/24

In my proposal said I would be able to get character designs, walking/running animations and tilemaps done, unfortunately due to the limited amount of time, I will mainly be focusing on making a final decision on my character and making a walk/run cycle, and IF I can, I will try to make one tile piece

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Plan for this week: 25/03/2024-27/03/2024

For this entire week, I plan to get everything done on the 1-2-1 meeting document, on top of that, I also plan to get my character's design experimented with, I plan to try different coats, trousers, facial hairs and to see which one ends up fitting the best.

Another thing I plan to try get started this week is the creation of backgrounds and tilemaps for my asset pack. If I don't end up getting that started this week, it will then become part of priority with the character animations during the Easter Break.

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Why I've decided to pick a middle ground

In the previous post, I explained how I wanted my character to have a middle ground between what the types of clothing worn by the High and Working class was. In this post, I want to explain specifically why I chose to do this.

A couple of weeks ago, near to when I started this project, I knew that my game was going to be about a thief, however, when I had a discussion with my teacher a week later, I truly dove into where I wanted this to be set. I chose the Victorian Era because of the popular and well known stories of pick-pockets, like the people in Oliver Twist, So I decided it would make a lot of sense to have my character be from the Victorian Era.

Why I decided to make a middle ground between high and worker class is because of the fact I wanted my character to be more than just the simple pick-pocketer, I wanted him to be a con-artist, and considering the entire point of a con-artist is to trick their target while, most of the time, looking like a professional businessman, having my character look somewhat fancy and high class made more sense than just giving the character a worker-class level of clothing.

I thought that making a con-artist would make for more of an interesting character than a basic pick-pocketer trying to steal from Midas's Palace, it also made more sense since they would have some tips and tricks unlike the common pick-pocketer.

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Victorian Clothing Pinterest Mood Board & A more in-depth Character Design Research

During my MoSCoW talk with my teacher, One of the things that I'm working towards today is looking more in-depth into designs for my character for when I truly decide on what they will look like.

I went onto Pinterest and searched up "Victorian Clothing" and pinned a total of 20 different images that I thought would be good as I wanted to try separate the research between what the High Class and Worker Class people of the Victorian Era wore.

As my character is more of a con-artist, I wanted my character to have a middle ground between the high and worker class to confuse the people he's conning.

I feel possibly being able to fuse these two types of clothing together will really be able to show that I'm trying to make a Victorian con-artist. Someone who appears well-off and wealthy, but truly is simply a pick-pocketer trying to score a big prize.

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MoSCoW

After looking at Asset Packs, I am now able to get a clear idea of what I need to produce for my project.

For my project, I have made this MoSCoW blog post to help myself see what I MUST have, what I SHOULD have, what I COULD have and what I possibly WON'T have

Must have:

Character design - Walking cycle - Jump animation

Tile set

Backgrounds

Should have:

Attacking animation

Collectibles - Treasure/Coins (For points) - Health pickup

Could have:

Dodging animation - rolling/sliding animation

Parallax Background

NPCs/Enemies

Won't have:

HUD design

Projectiles

Going through this MoSCoW with my teacher has made me realize what I need to do to make this a good project, I feel now that I have a list of things that I can slowly work towards, it has given me a more beneficial insight instead of me constantly reminding myself what I need to do in my head.

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Asset Packs - Revisited

Like before, I was looking at different types of asset packs which I think would be beneficial to help me develop my own type of tile set. I am mainly looking for a more Victorian-like type of asset pack and background.

Although unfortunately not very Victorian, the inside of a palace would have some older looking walls and stairs to the newly made Victorian houses, this Dungeon is something that I believe was somewhat close to Victorian times, unfortunately there is not many asset packs greatly resembling Victorian buildings or interior. I could possibly be able to take some sort of inspiration since I plan to make purely interior tiles.

I decided to try focus on finding more Victorian-like asset packs, I thought a good idea was to try actually searching up "Victorian asset pack", and luckily I was able to come across this Victorian Interior Asset Pack.

A good thing about this is I wanted to focus on making interior tiles, so this is a great way for me to gain an insight of what to make when I come to making the tiles.

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My Project Proposal

The Rationale:

In my previous projects I have focused on the mechanical aspects of games design, whilst this has been successful with games such as “The Slaughter’s Final Frontier” and “Time Shadows”, these two games were really focused on mechanics.

For this project I want to focus more on the assets and visuals in combination with the technical production because I want to be able to say I can branch from one single key creative part.

I feel like being able to prove that I can focus on making a more asset sided project will help me for the future and open a new branch of ideas if I so choose it.

The Project Concept:

For my project I plan to design an asset pack for my game. This will consist of a 2D pixel-art tile sets and sprites.

The game that the assets will be designed for will be a Metroidvania style 2D side scrolling platformer in which the player takes on the role of a thief where they must go through various biomes to collect treasure in which they will bring back to a base.

The game would be set in a Victorian period as this allows me plenty of opportunities to explore areas of society throughout Victorian Britain to inspire my designs.

For further inspiration on the setting, I am going to look into Bloodbourne, Lies of P, Call of Cthulhu, then for the artwork, I plan to look at Blasphemous 2 and Castlevania.

I plan to use a main character with a set of animations, a couple of enemies and NPC’s, and a few tile sets for different biomes.

For the equipment, I plan to use Photoshop, previously I have used it to make and test with different types of character sprites and also it will be useful for creating gifs to represent for my sprites like jumping and walking.

The Evaluation:

I evaluate that this project of mine will be a bigger success than the other projects. I really hope that I can truly use things I’ve learnt from the past to hopefully make a better and well created final project that also deviates away from what I am normally used to making like mechanic sided projects.

Hopefully with this project I can prove that I have a decently good understanding of pixel-art and that I can also be able to prove to myself that I can make more projects that don’t have to entirely focus on mechanics.

Although this FMP is also sort of an experiment for me, I am still positive I can make a decently well made project to present as my final project for this course.