problem solving.

presentation: click here.

what do you believe your best skills are?

I believe that my best skills in game design is programming because so far I have managed to find a way around problems in the game in order for it to work. For example in my drag ‘n drop game there is a level where instead of having it so the platforms could only move if the play wasn’t on them I made it so once the player touched the platform that platform lost it’s ability to move allowing for more of a challenge.

what is the biggest problem that you have encounter so far?

The biggest problem that I have encountered so far has to be the visuals of a game. The sprites that I make in asprite are nowhere near the quality I would like them to be. My sprites in game are usually ‘blocky’ and that animations I create for them are too long when used in game. For example in my battle arena game there is a tennis ball player and  the attack animation is too long  by the time the player sprite has opened it’s mouth the bullet has already gone.

What is your problem in detail?

My problem consist of multiple things one being that the quality of my sprites is not the quality I would hope for, and the second being that the animations that I create for my player sprites are always too long in the sense of if the sprite is meant to perform a action like a jump then when the jump key is pressed then the player will jump but then the jump animation will follow after the jump action has ben pressed, I believe that tis is also the case in my battle arena game with the tennis ball sprite. A good example of some sprites that don’t meet my standard of quality is my haunted house game. In that game the sprites are ‘blocky’ and not very pleasant to look at. The worst sprite in my opinion is the skeleton because the skeleton is a bunch of rectangles and squares that have been mushed together.t he way I’m going to fix this problem is by  trying to make animations shorter and to practice making  sprites on asprite more.



Research

To Improve my animation speed I will look at popular games and the amount of frames in a characters movement.
Mega man-
Mega man has 3 frames that are used for running. one connection, one passing and another connection but on opposite legs

Mario-
Mario also has 3 frames for his running animation

This research has been very helpful. This tells me that I need to lower the amount of frames I have on each sprite .


Experiment
Applying my research to one of my sprites   

I will be applying what I have learned to the attack animation on my tennis ball sprite for my arena game since the animation is too long.
My results-
The experiment was successful. I managed to lower the frame number down to 2 frames this works much better copied to the previous animation that the sprite had.




Analysis-
What did I do?
I lowered the amount of frames on the sprites attack animation allowing it to attack at the same time the laser beam leaves it’s mouth.
The problem Has improved  thanks to my research.


 Now i am going to see how i can apply this to my other sprites and their different motions.





Reflection-

Since week one my problem of having motion animations that were too long has gotten better since I researched what other games do to make their animations shorter. It turns out that they one use the key frames  but when those frames are played next to each other the player perceives it as one swift movement even though it can be a bit blocky. I will definitely use what i have learnt in future projects . This terms problem solving has been very enlightening and i will now start looking in to designing my sprites to make them more appealing to contribute to the overall ‘game feel’.