The Straightjacket Project PPJ

Senior Project is officially over. We've finished our game as much as possible, presented it to the public, and gloriously depantsed ourselves on stage. Hundreds of pictures are sure to surface and haunt us for the rest of our professional careers. Thanks to anyone who has followed the Cash Money AllStars during this 6+ month span. Play our game at: http://www.thepantaloon.com

we are victorious!

And we are PANTLESS!

“The old guard is dead!”
“The old guard is dead!”
“The old guard is dead; I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”

So instead of paying attention in art history, i wrote up a prelimary gameplan for our totally new presentation. i quickly realized we can simply run through our demo 1st level and cover all aspects of our presentation in one continuous linear fashion. lets totally scrap the old presentation file. heres how i see it:
downloadable version

Outline

• Introduction: Names, Cash Money, presenting The Pantaloon, our adventure game. Introduce trailer animation.
  • visual: old intro screen with title & main character detailed face.. clicking ’start’ launches trailer.
• Trailer: lets see what we can do here. make this look as cinematic/clean as possible. overhaul?
• What is the game: most simple terms. a side scrolling click based adventure game (ala Myst/Monkey Island/Samarost. Show these 3 examples.) based in steam punk era (describe and show examples)
• after trailer, now show game in action. (link to a seperate html/swf… but not a new window)
  • Mechanics: Show how we’ve incorporated these influences (describe visuals & BASIC gameplay mechanics)
    • visual: start game in cell with old man… move around, dont talk to him yet
  • Story: Tell story of pantaloon. stuck in asylum, looping day structure. pants. old man. belts. escape using belts, acquired throughout game from 5 belt keepers (plus your own).
    • visual: click on old man. his text goes with story. recieve old mans belt.
  • Setting: Describe sanitarium. Layout. how things relate (ie. cell hall > main hall> elevators connect 5 floors + roof access & basement)
    • visual: walk round environment. move from cell room to cell hall to hallway.
  • Exploration: often chain of events required to solve puzzles/advance.
    • visual: see door is blocked, get wrench from ground, burst pipe, now can enter locker room and get shaving cream/razor.. (tell but dont show–>) chain continues as you use these items on seperate floors to: get mustache > gain audience with punchington > get belt > etc.
  • Mental States: show pill counters… one upper one downer. changes environment and character interaction. gibberish/coherent depending on state.
    • visual: walk back to cell hall… use Robot Orderly and Tippy Toes as examples. Robot gives hints when insane, Tippy Toes trades pills/advances game when insane.
  • Mini Games: how to get medication. challenging. distraction. user must manipulate games to their advantage. games appear at scheduled times throughout day. replay every game each day. only describe/show rorschach, but kiosk has 3 minigames to play.
    • visual: timer runs out, character dragged away, advances to Rorschach
      
• Conclusion: Wrap up key points. Something like: “So in conclusion, The Pantaloon is a challenging adventure game based on classics like Myst and Monkey Island with several new innovations such as a looping day structure, minigames, and user controlled levels of sanity. Feel free to visit us at thepantaloon.com or try out the demo and several minigames at our Kiosk after the show. thank you for your time”

so as our last weekend ends, heres a wrapup of events.

Chris – touched up trailer animation
Phil – gathered presentation assets & touched up virus game graphics
Lang – fixed up Rorschach game graphics & code
Dave – continued to polish our sandbox/demo for the public box at senior show. created an actionscript timer and HUD display. new levels/minigames are triggered automatically. 

still left: meet later today, polish the presentation, and rally the troops. cash money.

-dave

The theme for the day is "work it like if you don't, you won't graduate" and Cashmoney is hearing it loud and clear. Like you can see from Dave's post, we still have a good deal to do, however we are looking good and regardless what tomorrow brings, the sun will shine on a day created for some smooth pimpin' project making fools

I have been primarily working on the physical presentation for tomorrow – designing the presentation with dave and writing what our physical speeches will be. While they still need some priming, I've got some of our major points down but if CHRIS or TED are READING THIS – WRITE US BACK AND TELL US WHAT YOU THINK WE SHOULD CHANGE.

Along with this my other major duty in defending a cashmoney future is designing the intro trailer movie. This is a take on the original trailer Dave/Chris made, but with a lot changed. The timing is still bad and it is far from done, but there ain't nothing wrong with it that 14 hours in front of a computer can't fix (and they said it would be like Eazy e).

Aside from that I have been reliquinshied to various other duties as need be. Did some animation – namely the "item get" scene, the injection intro scene (in development), and some other tweaks.

lots has been done, I will post the new and improved minigames tommorow with new art as well as winning conditions and all the programing complete, dare i say they are finished. For now however i will just post the still i created for the opening.

opening still

pdizzy

Here is what we still have to do… Our battle is to be fought on two fronts: The game and the presentation. Some of these are more important than others, and a few arent even completely necessary. Updates will be posted as comments on this post.
The Game

• Characters: List where each character is. Implement them in the game. Create dialogue .fla's and actionscript. Triggering flags and debelting animations. Trigger animations (jumping into robot,punching,etc). Script becoming a robot/controlling him instead of main character.
• Items: List where each item is. Implement them in game (attach & detach script). If possible, script custom cursor for using items (mouse.hide(); wrenchCursor._x=_xmouse; etc)
• Main character walk script and interactions for each room. Add scaling in perspective to the walk script.
• Finish environments (lab & pants king) and tie into game. Also, how does boiler/steam mini game/gondola work??
• Implement time code & create clock item to place in environments.
• Finish game art for each minigame. win conditions?
• Lay down ambient music track
• Create launch screen
• Fix bugs:
  • Preloader not always working. Somehow load all files in the background?
  • Insane camera: messes up when switching rooms & when zoomed in.

The Presentation:

• Script
  • Distill game & concepts into simple explanation
  • What did we plan to accomplish? our goals? our inspiration?
  • Break into pieces. Script each of these word for word and gather screenshot examples. Early Concepts. Environments. Minigames. Characters.
• Trailer
  • Refine and lengthen trailer. Smoother/slower pans, more environments, better convey the story. Show clips from beginning to end. Key scenes.

-dave

So I got a game timer running at 12 hour clock that will trigger a minigame every 3 hours and start a new day after 12. Right now in the posted example, 10 seconds of real time = 1 hour of game time. For the game, we'll have 10 minutes = 1 hour of game time, which means you get a minigame every half hour and a new day after 2 hours. This may be too long, we'll have to test it out to see what feels right. Check out the clock running here.

–RSL 

So the lab is done, except for some background animations(flame for the burner, bubbles and bodies bobbing in the tanks). Check it out here.

–RSL