Category Archives: Kanji Adventure

UI for Exploration, Items, NPC, Tiles, Stones and More

January 16, 2018

After a long hiatus in updates there are plenty of new things.

So far the game’s demo only showcased the combat system, but with the addition of new UI elements and a lot of coding the player can now explore the game world outside the combat zone.

Quest Log

Kanji Library

Vendor

With the implementation of a vendor and inventory it was necessary to make items to work with as well. I left the ideas for what they’re going to be for now completely up to Tomáš, after which I made the designs. Some of them turned out better than others, and I’ll have to make sure I keep things at about the same level of quality going further, or the game will eventually start looking as if put together from random pieces.

An NPC was added in multiple places to serve both as a guide for the player as well as to help us solve the technical challenges of the newly implemented systems. Currently the player can interact with it in form of a trader and quest giver.

Before I moved on to another lengthy task, I was asked to draw a wheat or rice field in preparations for a system of resource gathering we have planned for future. Initially, the rice was supposed to grow out of water rather than dirt, but the brown water layer I drew was practically indistinguishable from the mud tile we use, so I discarded the idea. When we eventually get to implementing sound, we can use a wet step SFX to imply the water instead.

I also finally got around to reworking that terrible looking stone we’ve been using as a placeholder all this time. While I was at it, I made a version that covers four tiles and after experimenting with the colors I ended up creating a version to be used in a desert-like environment as well.



And with new locations in mind, I made a new set of sand and stone tiles. There’s never enough of those.


Finally, something I’ll be working on in the future is one of multiple crafting stations we’ll be putting in the game. The design might very well change completely, but for now this is what I sketched out.

Build Comparison

May 10, 2017

January

February

March

April

The Right Type

May 10, 2017

Thinking about kanji characters, one immediatelly associates them with calligraphy. When learning kanji, however, stylized characters, despite their attractive look, are pracitaclly useless due to their at times extremely low legibility.

For the game we were looking for a typeface that would combine the aesthetics of traditional calligraphy with clearity and simplicity of modern digital fonts. The best example of such a typeface is Epson Kaisho. However, because of its licence it may be impossible to use in the game. Therefore we used a “free for commercial use” typeface Yasashisa Gothic.

In the game the characters are displayd as if engraved in stone tables.

Yasashisa Gothic

Epson Kaisho

Designing the UI

May 10, 2017

After figuring out what we wanted the UI to be like, I started working on individual pieces that make up the HUD that is used during the combat phase in the game.

Health bar structure

The spell icons themselves were the result of a collaborative effort, where my friend created the outlines of the shapes, while I redrew them so they fit into the game visually.

Concepts

Finals

In the end for the main bar we decided to use one in the bottom center of the screen. This layout may seem overused, but it’s the most effective and simple one.

Final HUD

UI & Functionality Exploration

May 10, 2017

At first, I was trying out new forms of UI, which I personally liked visually, but unfortunately their functionality suffered in multiple cases, so I decided to instead go for already established designes.

Since the UI contains so many elements it was important to figure out how the design would work accross the entire game while keeping it visually consistent. Our greates inspiration was Dofus, technically a predecessor of Wakfu, which uses stone-like blocks as the framework upon which other elements are placed.

Dofus

The process invovled a lot of sketching to make sure we get all element we want to communicate to the player in there.

Miscellaneous Objects

May 10, 2017

Never really bother asking why, but since the first they my friend and I started working on the game, bunnies were the enemy we were going to fight.

At first the chocolate bunny was just me joking, but my friend liked it and decided to keep it as a rare type of enemy.

When I had some spare time I quickly made grass that could be put on top of tiles to make things a bit more lively.

Tree

March 22, 2017

For a couple of days I was working on a tree sprite for the game. I sketched out a few different tree shapes before I decided to work on one that would only cover one game tile.

I had a hard time figuring out how to draw the leaves and in the end settled for a custom leaf-shaped brush.

Since I wanted to be able to reuse the tree’s assets to make multiple variants of the same type, I made each of the branches individual along with the leaves of that particular branch. That allowed me to try different leaf sizes. The left is the original, the middle is 125%, which is preferable, and the third one is 150%, which feels as too much. In the end, I could also use a combination of these.

Initially, I intended for the trees to be animated in the game. The problem, however, is that each unique tree would need its own set of frames. The size of the game would quickly blow up, and it would take too much time for what it’s worth.

Fence

March 21, 2017

In a spare time I tried drawing a fence, but it somehow doesn’t feel right to me. We probably won’t use it in the final version of the game.

Stones, Mud and More Water

March 21, 2017

I used the stone floor of the water tile and transformed it into an actual stone tile. I also created a completely new tile with only dirt. I then removed some of the stones from the stone tile and made a transition tile between the aforementioned two. To make it all a bit more lively I also made variants with a couple strands of grass.

Since I now had a dirt tile I used it to create an alternate water tile too.

Water Tiles

March 21, 2017

Wanting to add a new type of tile I started with water, which could be used not only for in-land water elements like ponds and rivers but also for the edges of the map.

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