The artifacts of this week have been plenty, some small and some big. Today I’m going to explain my thoughts behind creating these as well as the licensing research I have done for copyrighted material. Among the things I’ve done this week are the following:
- Redesigning the GUI and HUD
- Finding music for the game
Redesigning the GUI
During the pre-beta playtest we got plenty of useful feedback and requests. One of the
things mentioned was that the use of photos in the
menu caused graphical inconsistency within our project. This made me think a bit about how to improve it, and an awesome idea struck me. Rather than having a photo in the menu I could make use of the HUD. The in-game HUD is inspired entirely from a satellite camera to give the impression that the player is being monitored from afar. Because of that I could further put emphasis on that feeling by having the camera zoom in when you press start. The camera will be hovering above Stockholm and zoom in to Sergel’s square where the game is set. My plan was to use satellite images from google earth, but I soon realized that I might not have the legal rights to use it. Thankfully google also offers an extremely intuitive search engine (who would’ve known that?) which I used to find out if I could use the images. Turns out I’m not the first person to ask, because they had an entire page where they explain the legal rights I have and other conditions I have to follow if I use any picture from google earth. The only thing I had to was to provide a clear reference whenever the picture was in frame.
Finding Music
I consider this part one of the more difficult tasks I’ve had so far. The difficulty lies in finding out what music suits your game and from where you would get it. Either by having somebody in the team creating it themselves or by having contacts create one for you. But before deciding where I would get the music from I had to get inspiration, so I started off by searching the web for similar games. After looking around for a long time, not finding what I was looking for I was ready to give up. That’s when I saw the game “Frozen Synapse” the YouTube recommendations list. I knew that I’ve played this game before, so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. So much that I now want to use that exact music in the game. The only problem is that it is licensed under the game company “Mode7”. I sent them a mail explaining our project and asking if I’m allowed to use the music. I have not yet received an answer so I guess that it’s a huge no slapped in my face. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking 😦
Simon Ströberg 
Malin Runsten Fredriksson, Group 9: First of all, I would just like to say that I can truly relate to the problem with the music search (It’s been hell for me during this project), but I’ll get back to that later. Your blogpost holds up and all the elements are there (What, why, how). Not sure if we should talk about more than one thing per blog, but it’s not something that bothers me personally. It’s good that you brought up that it was the playtesting that made you want to change the menu since it gives other people insight on was kind of feedback you can make good use of when playtesting. The changes turned out pretty good too, though I would’ve liked to see the HUD to compare/see the thing that inspired you.
Now to the music part! My heart goes out to you, ‘cause there’s not a lot of good royalty free music out there. Especially if it has to match the style of your game as well!! There are some in the Youtube audio library or (as I found helpful) you could reach out to people making their own music at sites like “Newgrounds” (though that site’s music probably wouldn’t fit your theme). But keep looking, I’m sure something will come up! 🙂
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Hej!
Det första jag kom och tänka på var att du tar upp två artefakter denna vecka, det är inget fel med det egentligen men då jag kommer ihåg ifrån ett mail stod det att man endast skulle skriva om en artefakt per blogpost. Vet dock inte om detta fortfarande gäller men kan vara bra att veta.
Något jag tänkte på bara textmässigt är att du någon gång skrev ”u” istället för ”you” vilket jag antar är ett slarvfel men något som kanske inte är jättepassande i detta sammanhang då allt annat är väldigt bra skrivet.
Tycker det är väldigt bra att du kollade upp rättigheter för fotona, även om det antagligen inte är ett spel som kommer släppas. Tycker också att det är en superbra idé att ni använder er utav google maps bilder för att få det mer att se ut som att någon kollar på en på ett långt avstånd. Riktigt snyggt. Längtar tills jag får se det i spelet!
Angående musiken till ert spel så tror jag att det kanske går att hitta liknande musik, vet dock inte riktigt hur då jag inte har någon koll på gratismusik. Lyssnade nämligen på musiken och, enligt mig, är det inte jättespeciellt och känns som att det finns ganska många som gör sånt? Jag är ju iförsig inte en vettig musikmänniska så kan ha helt fel. Så det kanske, med massa tur, finns något liknande gratis. Annars så hoppas jag att du får ett svar snart från dem!
// Madeleine
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