Design Sense

TALKING ABOUT DESIGN. WHY DESIGN?

At one point in time, while talking about game making, someone told me the only safe career pursuit was coding. That the coding was any game's live blood and without programmers you wouldn't have any games. This was brought up because I mentioned I do the writing for a group making games and that I consider myself a game designer, and occasionally artist, who has little to no understanding of coding. Which is why I've had such trouble physically finishing any designs. The chap I was discussing with called writing and design the easiest part. I don't know about that. Now I might be wrong, some things come easier to others so for him they might be the easiest part. He could have his coding down, and a natural grasp of story and the design talent to back it and make functional beautifully thought out interactive experience. But for the most part when people say writing is stupid easy or think that coming up with a game that sells million copies first week is just stupid obvious, are the kind of people that have never done those things. Like, they think writing a best selling novel is really easy because they haven't written much so they don't really know much about writing, and chock up the art as a simple task. They misinterpret the aesthetics, the visible content, for the craft of putting the content together.

Say we're talking about a novel. What makes the novel great is not if it has robots or werewolves in it, or even the grammar. It's the way those things are presented that makes it work, it's the pacing and use of story devises. Understanding how the reader will feel reading the work, what and how they'll think while you introduce characters and elements. It's not solely the characters or elements but the significance in their use. Everyone has read a good book (I hope), and everyone has read a boring or dull book from the same genre. Even if the grammar in both was perfectly fine, if both books had gunslinger good guy, a hot distressed victim, an evil as sin bad guy, with a three act structure, and a hero sacrificed conclusion; the good book would never be compared to the bad. No one who had given either any consideration would confuse the two. When asked what's different, you might hear "This one's just got an awesome hero, he's super cool, and killed like thirty badguys. The other killed a bunch of guys too but he's just kinda lame." We've all had those experiences where a book or film just kinda "tell" us we're suppose to like hero X or think they're the coolest but we're just not into it. You can have as many special effects and good actors in a movie, but if the story is terrible and the character's are compellingly written, the movie will be rated poorly. Now that has nothing to do with someone's sense of grammar or including cool stuff, that's the result of design. Great stories are great by their merits in design and execution. Those two things just cannot be divorced. You can't make a classic book out of great storytelling but bad grammar just like you can't make one out of good grammar but bad storytelling. Personally I feel the great storytelling will help a book/movie more then good technical execution. Poor special effects and filming is something you see everywhere in cult classics, but if the story is soulless and poorly shown you're going to have a harder pressed time finding fans. Look at the 5 dollar bin at your local Walmart.

Bringing this back to games, I'm comparing grammar to coding, and storytelling to design. I agree with the individual that coding is the lifeblood of games, but if that's true then the art is the skin and outside, the story is the animal's temperament, and the design is design of the actual animal. The design is how the internal organs work, the system of how the animal moves, what the animal does. How it frightens it's predators, finds it's food, survives. Think about animals in a design sense. Animals that were well adapted and had a design that was well suited for the environment keep living, others died out because their design wasn't suited for the environment. Sharks are really, really old, they're still around because to today's standards they still do what they need to. Like how classic old games still stand up to today's standards as engaging and fun. 

What's Going On?

I think what's happening typically when consumers or starting up game developers misunderstand and dismiss the term design, it's because they haven't been given a context to really see design as what it is. Like learning English someone points at an apple, says apple, and you think apple just means red fruit. It's more than it's surface material. There's more to writing than just put words on paper and more to drawing than just lines on paper. That's not to say they can't design. It's just they're not as aware of what they're doing. Like people who can sit down and play something ridiculously complex off the top of their head, completely impromptu on the piano without ever taking a lesson. That doesn't prove that musical theory is bunk, it proves that it's something innately appreciated. You don't need to know a think about music to appreciate Queen. You don't need to understand or acknowledge all the little bits of brilliant in a Miyazaki film to be drawn in. None of that's important because design is an invisible art, a soft science even. You enjoy and are drawn to a well designed advertisement without ever knowing it. We're bombarded with thousands of logos and graphic art a day but will still notice a well designed image dispute ourselves. We'll categorize that image and remember it for years to come without giving it a second thought, not because we tried to remember it, but because the designer knew what he was doing. Design is a thing you enjoy effortlessly, good design is something you barely notice. You might internalize a general understanding and design sense by being exposed to a medium, but then might not be able to explain later why something is bad. You'll know it's bad, but you might not be able to exactly articulate why. 

"How was the movie?"

"It was boring."

"Why?"

"Just was."

Everyone who makes anything is practicing a level of design. Anything creative is designed and could have it's merits judged by it's design. Everyone who makes games is at worst and amateur designer. I'm not saying this to make a point about designers being the most important people in game production. No, I'm just saying that what being a designer means isn't what people always think it is. Design isn't an idea, it's the execution of an idea. It's not "Game with werewolves and guns!", at it's simplest it's "tower defense, werewolves", and that's the basic idea you start with. But throughout the production you're making more and more design choices. Level design, deciding what to include or exclude to balance complexity curve, gameplay, the interface, the guns work, the way the enemies work. Yes without coding you wouldn't be able to translate that into a functioning game, but from start to finish design is implemented throughout the game and has direct effects on the game. That theory I have with storytelling and grammar in books is the same with games, how many times do you pick up that great old game you love that has the occasional glitch over the brand new one with the uninteresting gameplay? You never pick up that last one because you traded it in at Gamestop or where-ever. 

Design isn't just 'idea guy', and if you're getting into game making thinking it is, you're in for a sad disappointment. Design is something that every contributor implements in their part aspect of the production, game design means the gameplay and the level design. To me design is all I really care about in a game. If a game has a fantastic story or art but cannot draw me in with it's gameplay I won't care to continue playing. If then the art and story are created perfectly to fit with the gameplay and paced well within the levels, then there's a game I love. 

When I'm working on a game when I feel the most alive is when I have the squares and pre-art bits moving around onscreen in the way I want them too. Transitions, puzzles, effects, controls. In the back of my head I have all the art assets, but those are just the skin, what's really happening in a game happens by design. Of course none of that happens without the rest of production. Squares are nice, but can't always convey a meaningful experience like art and sound can. Think of how iconic game music is, think of how popular sprite art is in gaming culture. Think of well written stories and how that contextualized fight scenes into an epic experience you'd come back to again and again. Then think about how none of that would be possible without lines of code.. complex.. computer language. You can't expect to divorce these elements from each other and weigh one or the other as more important.. well.. actually you can have a game with no sound. And then they have made that one mobile phone game where it's pitch black and you use alone to figure out where you are in the digital world... that's such a cool design. 

OKAY.

You can't dismiss the design side of games any more then you can dismiss the technical side. It'd be like removing the rules of chess from the physical board and pieces, or taking the physical construction and pieces out of the equation and just leaving the idea.. it's just not possible. Either way, you wouldn't have chess. Even if you were to try to image a game of chess you'd need to imagine physical properties to conduct the game. The aesthetics are a softer element of production, but just as vital. Dwarf Fortress depends on it's graphics as much as Minecraft or Super Meat Boy, without their individual aesthetic sense the games wouldn't be as iconic or convey the same experience they do. If you thought Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon could be the same without their musical numbers then you're wrong.  

I know they're old videos and everyone's seen them, but a great study of design in the way it effects game experience is Egorapter's Sequelitis series.        

Pixelstudio Review and Pixel art/animation(a little bit).

Under no circumstances would I want someone to be in a position where they'd need to use Pixelstudio. As far as I could find there are no tutorials on youtube.. probably because everyone would rather use photoshop or whatever else, but still. Don't use it. I don't know if I'm just using it wrong.. but there's no reason it should be that counter intuitive. But as far as I can tell unless you upload an image with color, there isn't a way to change the color scheme past black and white, or any easy way at least. If you cut an image and attempt to move it elsewhere, the dotted line that typically surrounds it will not go away, not easily. And whenever you try to draw while the dotted line is still surrounding your image your drawing will not place. It won't stay. You can't draw. The checkered "see through" background that you typically want to utilize for the edges of your sprites once uncovered, cannot (seemingly) be covered up again. The only way I could figure to fix these problems was by deleting the image I worked on and starting over. This isn't like the program has a million buttons either, it's only a step above mspaint as far as I see, but I couldn't figure these few simply things. Things that should be big and bold obvious fixes for even me. I know this sounds like user error, to a degree I trust it to be, but in school I picked up programs like Illustrator, and Photoshop pretty easily. Heck I had Premier functional in five minutes. Maybe I'm a special kind of dull, but really if programs as intricate as Illustrator/Photoshop and whatever else don't give me this much trouble, I'm just going to write up Pixelstudio as broken. If it's just user error, I'm fine with that, then all that means is the user interface is broken. Or at least it's broken for what we're looking for.

What we're looking for is something that's accessible from the start, that has multiple frame possibilities, and that's popular enough that anyone wanting to know more about the program for whatever reason can find what they're looking for in a five minute Google search. And as much as I'd have preferred if this was it, Pixelstudio is defiantly not that. For me at least. And what happens then is you fall back on what you know, regardless of how counter intuitive it might be.

So for now I've fallen back onto my old friend, MMF2's inbuilt sprite editor. Which is more then functional for my needs. It's completely economic for me, it's something I already have and know. Just sounds a bit odd. 

"Oh I'm making this game in AGS, it's really art asset heavy so I spend a bunch of time doing pixel art... No.. actually I use this sprite editor from a completely different game making program... Why aren't I making the game in that other program then? ... Because.. Because I like this editor."

So until I am as familiar with another program I'm just going to use this. 

Looks simple right? That's because it is. Unfortunately this isn't one of those free programs. Really sorry everyone. Honestly though, just use paint and remember to save as a png. That served me just fine for quite a while.. but, for me, with this I can instantly make a new frame with this one instead of saving, then drawing over, then re-saving. So for now I'm just going to work with this one. If anyone's interested in me looking into any of the other free paint programs or do help/tutorial bits on them, I'd love to. But for now I'm going to keep on task, plus no one reads this anyhow. :P

First I had this awesome idea for a gif. But then I realized... I don't even have an avatar for my profile in the forums.. That's sad. Heck, I don't have a personalized avatar anywhere. I just like my pictures of Koalas. God knows there's nothing wrong with that. Bless those little toxic rabid bunny bears.

So that's my first project. 120x120, animated, and see if I can get the level of artz that I see in my head for this project.

(I'll upload the original photo later)

So I messed around with my phone taking selfies, and feeling crap about myself the whole way...mostly because I was aware of myself taking selfies and that I'd have to divulge that fact to the world later here. And ended up with something I didn't quite hate. Then I decided to crop it in the image to leave out my nose. I like the placement of the head, the glasses going off the bottom. And now I just need to do a whole lot more work. This is kind of the first step. Thinking on it now, what I should have do is create a new frame every time I draw a new line/edited it. Then when I'm done I'll have a gif that captures the entire process, the journey is always so much more impressive then the actual finished product. As you can see on the left corner of the subject's brow I attempted crosshatching for the first time with pixels. Not actually bad from a distance, i'll have to experiment more. Bringing that up you can see that the light is actually oriented on both sides from behind the suspect, stronger on one side then the other. Also the eyes look slightly crooked, this is actually just my face being off. One ear is higher than the other so not only do my glasses sit on my face a little crooked, but I tend to hold my head on a slight angle.

My aim at the end of this is to have a realistic(ish) shading, get better at this crosshatch thing(because my project goes for a comic book aesthetics)...

My glasses actually aren't that massive, there about a size or two down in diameter. So.. like maybe three of four pixels smaller in diameter. And they're a little more oval. I have old person glasses, I find them classy. 

On that note I think I captured the distortion from the lens pretty well, it looks like that was what I was trying to do an not just me being bad at art. 

Anywho by the end of this I'd like to have a fully rendered face with some animation. Possibly a bit of background, or not. No, that'd be terrible. I'd like to mention very quickly that this stream of consciousness writing is for the soul purpose of the reader's benefit. My purpose is to show the process. And the process of every work --world changing or seemingly insignificant-- is a great deal of second guessing and consideration, it's also a great deal of, "yeah this is what I got.. it's not great right now, but I'm going to do more." and then doing all of that more until it's finished. It's be prepared to look unsure of youself, and less qualified to be speaking then others, and ignorant, and incompetent. It's being prepared to be sure in yourself enough to let go and show all of that fear and self doubt. To just go all out with what you love regardless of how it looks. Does a blind man dance for others or for himself?

... 

Alright, that's a little out there, what I mean is when you do something that's about creating, and having fun, and self therapy, other people watching you do it shouldn't even be on your mind. I'm not saying ignore people who enjoy your work or don't consider constructive criticism seriously, but don't loose the heart of the thing you love in the idea of others, they don't matter so much for you to have your favorite thing ruined.

.. what the heck was I talking about.

Oh right. I'm going to stick with the gray or similar simple background as a means to draw focus to the character, the animation in the fact of moving will not need help drawing focus. In design simplicity is kings. And the thirds rule is queen. And form over color and text. But be careful around graphic designers with that. We're a very opinionated people. Honestly though, it's form. Design an image like you're colorblind and can't read, focus on form, then add color.. and honestly I don't even know why they have text separately, technically the font is just picking shapes that will go on a page, that falls under the form.. Whatever, I only studied graphic design for a year at school, that's half the program at most, I'm not a real graphic designer. 

Now in my opinion as a stationary image and one that will be on a loop and animated avatar should have a circular animation rather then one that breaks. What I mean by that is say that I used the large empty space to the left of the subject's face and had a hand slowly raising a steaming mug of coffee, have it come to rest briefly, then go down below the screen. My issue with this that visually it's going from a "off" to a "on" position. Mug up->Mug down (repeat)

It's easily distinguishable and feels slightly fractured, it's not a complete smooth continuation of motion, the start and stop nature of it makes it distracting in the corner of the eye.. and to me irritating. It's like watching two bored slow children on a sea-saw, they don't care for it, it's boring, they're just doing it because they can. 

Now say the animation was the mug slowly raising from the bottom, coming to the middle resting for a brief moment, then the animation rest, the mug slowly coming from the bottom again. We see this commonly with reaction gifs. This have definitive ends to the animation and are more synonymous with visual jokes or a punch line. It's a visual sentence.. that gets repeated forever. In the forums this is typically fine behavior, and interesting subject. Banter creates humorous context between two people in a manner that's typically referred to later as "you had to be there" but than an image or emote that's typically mutually understood is used to embody the physical body language, and room dynamic, that might not otherwise exist on a text-form of communication. Text alone is nearly without context in comparison to the other forms of communication we're use to. So the gif can be a punchline for a joke in which you're always there for... unless you don't understand the reference that is. I think if you're introduced to the idea of gifs as part of everyday netchat you have enough context to understand it's (otherwise seemingly arbitrary) placement as a joke. Like you don't get the reference but typically you can see the humor regardless.

Like So

The difference here is that gifs are normally very quick and continue back into themselves instantly. As it is a continual flow of motion it is in a manner creating a visual circle. Bit of an awkward one --like a oval-- but circular non the less. The importance of having a circular animation is creating something that can remain stationary, continue moving, and still look natural. I'll go more into this later but the point is to have something that is dynamic and interesting while fading into the background. This is hugely important with designing idle stances for characters and for animated backgrounds (see I had a point all this time). You animate your background to make an ordinary room more dynamic or control the flow of transitions in room changes or event triggers.  But  you don't want to pull the player out of the experience or draw their attention away from the avatar in game. "Would you look at that, the lighting flashes from that same spot ever two minutes." The background should be just that, a background(unless it's a plot event) animated backgrounds when done well are fantastic, they aid the illusion of depth to your world and aid your player's sense of autonomy within that world. The player walks through a bush and that bush shakes as they pass, giving the player the sense their avatar is has mass and taking the shortcut through the bush instead of walking around was an actual choice and that the choice was meaningful. The best way a designer could emphasize the choice of going through the bush as different than walking around could be in lowering the avatar's speed as they pass through. Or if they pass through while running instead of walking, lower the speed while taking a small amount of damage. This all adds to the player's sense of autonomy, running or walking and where they run or walk is a choice that has repercussions. This sense of allowing the player autonomy while balancing games is what leads to a structure that allows the player to devise strategy and tactics. If a zombie was running at you, you might take the long way through the bushes slowly instead of running around so-that the zombie would follow you, taking damage and coming out of the bushes slowly giving you time on the other end to hack away at the undead mob. In starcraft steam vents shield units from radar, certain obstacles need to be attacked to be broken down, and ledges cannot be jumped. All of these make those elements of the world more real, and together form a tangible environment for the player.

I'm not animating my avatar because it's in a game though, I'm just doing it because it makes it look better, I don't have prior experience making gifs, and .. yeah. Night everyone. ^^

Good luck with your projects.