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[ryansumo]

As we slowly inch towards the closed alpha test phase, I'm also slowly establishing a social media presence for Political Party Animals. If you're the type that would be interested in Political Strategy Game for the PC, please feel free to follow/add/etc:

https://twitter.com/heypartyanimals
http://politicalpartyanimals.tumblr.com/
http://blog.heypartyanimals.com/

Any advice on managing multiple social networks and/or layout and presentation of tumblr and twitter accounts would be most appreciated!

[ryansumo]

As we inch ever slowly to a closed Alpha, we’re slowly building up our social media presence.  If you haven’t already, please do follow us and spread the word on Twitter and Tumblr.  We’ve had a pretty good run of bi-weekly testing and for the first time last week the latest version of the game was played by people from outside the team.  The results were encouraging, since both our friends Kyle and Gwen had fun playing (see Gwen's victorious pose), but there were definitely numerous things that we still have to work on.

In the meantime, let me show you my process for the creation and animation of our characters. Previously, I wrote about my decision to stick to frame by frame animation, mostly because it’s what I know best.  Now I’ll go into a little bit more detail in the hopes that you guys might pick up a thing or two from it, or tell me why what I’m doing is terribly wrong.  Let’s get started!

Part 1 : Concept Sketches

With each concept sketch I take an animal, assign its occupation, then make some sketches based on those two factors.  So for example the Crow is meant to be an investigator or reporter that digs up or fabricates dirt on other candidates. I'll usually spend around 10 hours or so first looking at reference material then sketching out concepts  and then coloring them in. If I had the time I would love to spend more time really doing a lot of concepts of each character but as it is I'm squeezing these in after work, which means an hour or two whenever I can find the time.

Part 2: Vectorizing

After the conceptualization is done I pick out my favorite concept animal (this is harder than it looks, and sometimes I have to ask my wife to help me choose) and render it in vector.  This is important in terms of efficiency because once the animal is in rendered this way it becomes much easier to resize it and use it for multiple purposes. It's also important for me to organize it properly in different layer folders.

So let's say for example that I wanted to make a character portrait for the Investigator.  I could just take the body and head part, resize it, and voila! A portrait for the Crow Investigator! It's important for small teams to always keep in mind different ways that they can make work more efficient, which is something I learned having usually worked as the sole artist for many games!

Part 3: Animate!

Now this is the meaty part, the animation!  We have a list of animations that each character has, for example we need animations for move, bribe, etc.  for this one I will show you the move animation for the Invesigator.  The first step is for me to sketch out a very small animation.  I sketch it small so that I don't overthink the details and just try to get a good sense of movement going.  I wanted him to be all sneaky like to fit his ability to fabricate scandals.

Once that's done I take the original vectorized image and then start making frames based on the smaller animation.  If I have time I will go ahead and sketch out larger frame by frame animations as well, but I usually make do with using the small animation as a reference.  This is where having separated the different body parts before is really key, as I can I much more easily pick out the body parts I want to animate and move them around rather than having to look through a whole mess of vector layers.

In about 2-4 hours I will have something like this!  I actually had quite a bit of trouble with this and had to refine the previous quick animation some more before I had an animation I was happy with.

This is an image showing the frame by frame animation within photoshop, so you have a better idea of how many frames I use.

Part 4 : Shrinkage

Once again this is where doing everything in vector pays off, as I can easily shrink the different frames of animations, flatten them, give them an outline an then save them one by one as pngs for use in the game.  We use 2dtoolkit for our animations, which I'm tarting to realize may not be the best for a game with multiple animations.  The file organization for 2dtoolkit seems pretty primitive, and you can easily be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of individual images.  Right now we aleady use 213 sprites, and we're probably at 1/10 of the amount of animations we're planning to do.

And finally here is the Investigator in action in the game!  His special ability is to fabricate a scandal, which if it's revealed in the district will do massive damage to your opponents reputation.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any suggestions about how I can streamline my process without overhauling it entirely I would definitely love to hear from you!  To be one of the first people to try our closed alpha, please sign up for our mailing list:

http://heypartyanimals.us8.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=460bfede6e630535fc2e7f862&id=09725f1de6

[ryansumo]

This is Ka Eldereta.  He is a tribal chieftain that represents the interests of the indigenous people of Summer Island.  His name is a play on words, as “Kalderetang Kambing” is a traditional Filipino stew made with tomatoes, liver paste, carrots, potatoes, and most importantly, goat’s meat.  Filipinos have an almost embarrassing affinity for wordplay and puns, and it’s something that we wholeheartedly embrace.  For example, we have an excel spreadsheet of animal names for Owls that includes “Owlfredo” and “Owlberto”.  If that made you chuckle, then you’re probably going to like our game.

I was reminded of Ka Eldereta a few days ago because of recent news in the Philippines having to do with indigenous peoples.  I debated for a long time whether or not to write this blog because it felt a little gross to be linking the game to a tragedy, as if we were trying to market the game based on the sufferings of indigenous people.  My internal compromise was that I would not mention the specific incident in this blogpost.  A google search on indigenous people in the Philippines should already give you a wealth of information on the indignities they’ve had to endure under majority rule.

Still, I felt it was it was very timely to talk about it because it reminded me of one of the reasons we wanted to make this game in the first place.  We wanted to tell stories.  Political Party Animals is primarily the story of the player as politician, and the compromises they are forced to make on the campaign trail.  But it’s also the story of citizens engaging with the politician to further their own interests.

Stories from the Campaign Trail

Some of those stories are hilariously mundane.  For example, the aforementioned Owlberto has as idiot of a son named Owlfredo, who needs an internship with a political campaign.  If you take him on you will have one of your staff replaced with notoriously inept Owlfredo, who will bungle up your campaign (in-game translation, -50% to the result of every action he takes).  But the tradeoff is that Owlberto will be your BFF, and as a patron he’ll give you a substantial bonus to your campaigns in his district.

But other stories will highlight the classic struggle between a weak minority and powerful business interests (or when seen from the other side, a respectable business dealing with radical activists).  For example, we see here Ka Eldereta and other activists protesting against mining activities.  If you champion their cause you will gain their trust (and more importantly, their votes!) but you will displease one of the Patrons in the Mining district, who will now make it very hard for you to campaign in the district.  How will you proceed?

Tell us your stories

These are the stories and tradeoffs that make politics an interesting and often infuriating business.  Despite what people might think there often isn’t one right or wrong way to go about things, just a series of tradeoffs that must be weighed against each other.  For now, the events in Party Animals will be based around political stories in the Philippines, but as we move forward in the game we’ll be soliciting stories from people around the world and finding a way to integrate them in the game so we can hopefully tell stories from around the world.

Thanks for reading.  If you'd like to tell us a political campaign story from your side of the word, you can email us at [email protected]. To be one of the first people to try our closed alpha, please sign up for our mailing list!

[nnyei]

I've been following this devlog for a while now and I figured I should finally comment here. I really like the art style and the whole game seems to be coming together nicely. I've signed up for the mailing list and am looking forward to actually playing it!

[Greipur]

Interesting to read about your animation process. Have you considered using 2d bone solutions like Spine? It's perfect for cut-out animation. On my last game Among Ripples I used PS, a sprite sheet exporter and 2D Toolkit and it quickly became cumbersome for me when I had more than 10 frames of animation. But perhaps it works perfectly for you? I will probably avoid sprite sheets like the plague in the future.

[ryansumo]

Interesting to read about your animation process. Have you considered using 2d bone solutions like Spine? It's perfect for cut-out animation. On my last game Among Ripples I used PS, a sprite sheet exporter and 2D Toolkit and it quickly became cumbersome for me when I had more than 10 frames of animation. But perhaps it works perfectly for you? I will probably avoid sprite sheets like the plague in the future.

Yes it's quite a pain.  I have exerimented with Spriter before actually.  But my thinking was that we may have different sizes of characters and also characters who move differently from each other (eg the Investigator moves stealthily) such that the variations would not be conduive to a 2d Bone solution.  Do you think that is actually the case or am I mistaken?  Also it may not be worth it to animate so fussily since these are such small sprites anyway but I just can't help myself!

[ryansumo]

I've been following this devlog for a while now and I figured I should finally comment here. I really like the art style and the whole game seems to be coming together nicely. I've signed up for the mailing list and am looking forward to actually playing it!

Thanks so much!  We really appreciate hearing from you.  The game is a bit of a niche within a niche kind of product so oftentimes we're wondering if there are enough people out there that would actually like the game!

[ryansumo]

Election fever is starting to hit our home country of the Philippines, so I thought the time was ripe for a quick devblog about the candidates of Party Animals.  Each candidate has a specific set of bonuses that will nudge players towards a specific play style and ties in to their personal history.  We only have three candidates for now, although we have more candidates down the line, and ideally we'll be able to let players customize the candidate of their choice.  With that said, let's meet the candidates!

Mousilita Ereñeta

Mousey is representative of everyone who is frustrated with the inefficiencies and bureaucracy.  She got a taste of this firsthand as a low level government bureaucrat who eventually got fed up with how the system works.  She believes in democratic system so she's decided that the best way to change things is to run for election!  Inspired by her grandfather that walked barepawed to public school and eventually served in government, Mousey's platform is based on Education and Healthcare for all.

For a very long time we pondered how to make Mousey, who is ostensibly the good or "clean" character, a viable candidate since the game was skewed towards players who engaged in "scandalous behaviour.  It was only later on when our game designer Tristan decided to add a Command Points system that we had a eureka moment.  Mousey's only possible advantage over her more well known and moneyed opponents would be to work harder and more efficiently than either of them.  Giving Mousey more Command Points would allow her to move staff farther away from her and allow her campaign team to have a wider impact than the other candidates, who would be forced to keep their  staff close by. 

Crocopio Imperial

Crocopio is the stand-in for the moneyed elite that populate local government.  As the son of elected officials, Croccy alsp stands for the political dynasties that are so prevalent in immature democracies. Filipinos may get a kick out of the fact that he's a crocodile, given that "Buwaya" (Filipino for crocodile) is a term commonly used to describe corrupt public officials.

Given his position of privilege, Croccy has access to vast sums of wealth and uses that liberally during the campaign.  He will get a bonus to funds that he can use to boost the effectivity of his rallies, bribes, and all sorts of other things.  Croccy's campaigns based on Law and Order because he's a huge fan of the TV show but also because he knows having the law on his side can only be a good thing.  He also supports Public Works because he likes to spend on lavish infrastructure projects that he truly believes will help the animals of Summer Island, and it doesn't hurt that he can put his name on them too!

Rooisito Espilorde

Young democracies are prone to popularity politics, and Ruey is representative of that.  Be they celebrities or sports animals, many animals have taken to politics in the twilight of their career to put their lifetime investment in the limelight to good use.  The well-meaning Luey promises to knock out crime and corruption in politics just as he did in the cockfighting arena, but there's very little substance to his campaign.

Ruey is the last of the candidates that we've thought of (If I'm being honest, we only had the idea to make him a candidate last week) so his design is the weakest at this point.  His bonus will definitely have something to do with his popularity though, so either he gets a bonus when dealing with patrons, or maybe he starts off with some reputation throughout Summer Island.

Stereotypes, not Specifics

Party Animals, while loosely based on Philippine Politics, was always meant for an international audience, and so we're careful to make sure that these characters are stereotypes and not modeled after specific people.  While an international audience generally knows enough about US politics to want to play a game about it, the same does not hold true for the Philippines.  Stereotypes make it easier for anyone around the world and say "Oh hey, that's like (this person) from (my country)!" and we (desperately) hope that will make it attractive to game players around the world.  Lastly, while as individuals we will have to decide who we're voting for in the elections, we want to make the game about the experience of  a candidate on campaign and not about supporting any specific candidate.

[ryansumo]

Taking another stab and the main screen UI.  Any feedback would be appreciated!

[Greipur]

Looking at your UI from August you've shrunk stuff, right? I think it works fine. Still curious to see if the pop-ups works better for the BG now though.

[and]

It's certainly a visually appealing screen. Are you adding in pop ups on mouse over to make it easier to navigate for new users?

Played something the other day with a 2 stage pop up - you got the simple version for a few seconds and then it expanded up to give a bit more detail. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but it really helped A LOT.

What was the game..........

...I'll get back to you when I remember.

[ryansumo]

I'm back with some more UI stuff.  I recently discovered mockup webapp Invision and used to to prototype our UI.  I'm hoping that this will be a better tool for testing the UI since it's interactive.  The cool thing about this is you can also comment live and specify onscreen where your comment will appear so you don't have to take a long time explaining the part of the UI you are commenting on.

Generally speaking, what is unclear or is there any information that you think is missing?

Please give the UI Mockup a try and let us know what you think?

[ryansumo]

Looking at your UI from August you've shrunk stuff, right? I think it works fine. Still curious to see if the pop-ups works better for the BG now though.

Yeah I stripped it down to the bare minimum so I wouldn't have to think about it too much.  I feel happier with it now.

I hate to say this but I forgot what we were talking about when discussing pop-ups?

[ryansumo]

It's certainly a visually appealing screen. Are you adding in pop ups on mouse over to make it easier to navigate for new users?

Played something the other day with a 2 stage pop up - you got the simple version for a few seconds and then it expanded up to give a bit more detail. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but it really helped A LOT.

What was the game..........

...I'll get back to you when I remember.

Two-stage pop ups on hover are interesting.  I wonder if we'd need to do that and how complex it might be?  Hope you can remember the game!

[Greipur]

I hate to say this but I forgot what we were talking about when discussing pop-ups?

No problem. Earlier I said that I thought that the GUI's colour was too close to the BG so they didn't stand out from one another. This is the image I commented. It seems you've changed the shape language and have more colour on them (white, red, blue and grey instead of just steel blue and white). I think it works better than before, but they still blur together somewhat to me.


The link to the prototype you mention above doesn't seem to lead to the thing you wanted to show. This is where I come when I click it: http://www.bbcode.org/.

[ryansumo]

Crap! That'll teach me to try to update this devblog at midnight when I'm sleep.

Thanks for the feedback on the GUI colors.  I did change the color scheme somewhat and added a little shadow to the windows to make them "pop" a little more, but it could use some tweaking.

I've updated the original post and reposting the UI Mockup here in case anyone wants to give it a shot.

[nnyei]

I'm with Greipur; the UI blurs too much together with the BG in my opinion, too. You have very saturated colors on top of and next to very saturated colors, and that makes for a visually overstimulating UI. The elements aren't distinctly separate at a glance due to the color scheme, and I actually feel a precursor of eyestrain when I look at it for a minute or two. I liked the one mockup better where you darkened the BG so the UI was much more clearer. You don't necessarily have to go that route in particular, but I think you have to do something similar with the colors so it isn't so visually homogeneous and eyestrain-y anymore.

As for the information itself, I think the UI is doing a good job. Except for the green button with the yellow star in it. I'm sure I could find out what it stands for if I read through this devlog properly, but it's not clear to me just from looking at it. But if that's explained within the game, then my point of critique is completely moot.

[ryansumo]

I'm with Greipur; the UI blurs too much together with the BG in my opinion, too. You have very saturated colors on top of and next to very saturated colors, and that makes for a visually overstimulating UI. The elements aren't distinctly separate at a glance due to the color scheme, and I actually feel a precursor of eyestrain when I look at it for a minute or two. I liked the one mockup better where you darkened the BG so the UI was much more clearer. You don't necessarily have to go that route in particular, but I think you have to do something similar with the colors so it isn't so visually homogeneous and eyestrain-y anymore.

As for the information itself, I think the UI is doing a good job. Except for the green button with the yellow star in it. I'm sure I could find out what it stands for if I read through this devlog properly, but it's not clear to me just from looking at it. But if that's explained within the game, then my point of critique is completely moot.

No critique is moot!  You're right that the star button coul dbe more descriptive.  That was a bit of a rush job.

Thanks for the input.  I'm still not happy about where the design at this point so I took another crack at it.  I'm pretty much at my wit's end so I'm hoping I'm coming close to something usable here.  In terms of separating the UI from the background, I htink that worst case I'll just "cheat" and do some sort of color overlay on the screen when necessary.

[and]

Perhaps a little desaturation of the main colours might help? Or possibly some kind of desaturation feature of the irrelevent info when you mouse over the UI?

Also, I could not remember that game with the 2 step tooltips. I perhaps imagined it in some kind of crazy fever dream.

[Franklin's Ghost]

A political campaign game with animals is a great concept.

The design and colours of everything is looking really nice but I do agree with others in that maybe the background sections that aren't important to the popped up ui could be desaturated or darkened in someway so as to not distract from what is important at that point. Looking great though and I'll definitely be following.

Also liked your post of the breakdown of your animation technique.