KHI makes a KH game! Discussion #3: Art Direction and Interface Design

[Arkrend]

I guess this sums up the worry I had going into the project, the fear of straying away from what felt comfortable. I'm not suggesting scrapping Keyblades or anything drastic like that, since the project was based on recreating the game, but keeping the original premise the same, which is what the created story did. However, the purpose of this whole project wasn't just making a game, it was researching the whole process itself. Half the purpose of the project is removed when everything is made out of fear from deviating from the original. The "doesn't feel like Kingdom Hearts" reason was suppose to be deconstructed and reconstructed as we saw fit, not the default reason not to pursue change..

The point of this project died a long time ago when the moderators stopped posting. They pretty much just left when they got bored, and left us alone with an idea for a game. So we decided to just make a game.

I mean you were around when this was still hypothetical. When that changed so did everything else.

So the purpose of the project changed when the people running it changed. These threads weren't exactly properly constructed anyway. A better thread idea would have been, "If You Could Change Anything in Kingdom Hearts..." or "How Would You Redefine Kingdom Hearts..."



And we've strayed pretty far from familiar in a lot of things. So... I'm kind of lost at exactly what you're referencing. I get the feeling you're trying to explain, but I'd at least like to know what's causing it.


Can you at least say what you feel is too close to the main series?

Is it the Keyblade transformations?

Is it... I can't even think of anything. The only things that come to mind are things that so basic I don't see why they'd even need to be considered for being redesigned.

I'm dead serious with these questions.


Different worlds?

Final Fantasy characters?

The main characters being anime style?

Party system?

Real time combat?


Is it one of those? Or is it more of some of the specific ideas we've had.

I mean in the gameplay thread, we decided that you can switch control between any of your party members. We also decided you need to keep all of your party members alive or it's game over.

I'm stumped. could you just list what you feel is too close, or decided out of fear. You can't just go and post something like that without at least letting people know exactly what you're talking about. And by that, I mean letting us know which aspects of the game have the uncanny valley affect.

What's done is done though and as I said before, this was more of an evaluation, not a petition for change. I wanted to see what others thought.

I know that, but now I need to know what the heck made you think our game is too similar.

 

[DiceKiller]

It's not really anything specific, but just feeling that I had in general and you proved kinda it. That you don't really want to experiment too much with everything because it might stray to far from the original games. I'm not trying to force people to realize this opinion or anything specific, I just wanted them to think about it and if they felt if it applied to them.

And I don't think just because the mods stopped making the threads, we were suppose to just abandon the thread's purpose, because we were given a basic outline to follow since the very beginning and the mods just thought we could be big boys and handle it on our own. But if everyone else feels the same as you then let me know. I was very interested in the project's original purpose, but if you guys want to make a game with the only purpose of getting the original Kingdom Hearts feeling, then I'm out. Not trying to sound rude or anything, but that wasn't what I was on board for, and it would be best to let others who want the same thing as you do work instead.

 

[king_mickey rule]

I think there's a misconception here on what this project is. I'm not even to sure myself what makes our game too similar to the original series.

Sure, we implement several elements that were already introduced in previous games but with a slight twist. The Heart Grid f.e. Before DDD did this for the Dream Eaters, this was something new for the KH Series.

The new Keyblade Forms (the Keyblade changing into other weapons) is also something that is completely different from what was done before. Of course, it's put into context to fit in (like, TAV could change the form of their Keyblades as well and I'm guessing it'll be something along those lines) but it has this freshness to it, if that makes sense.

We are trying to make a Kingdom Hearts game and that means some things have to stay but at the same time, we introduce a lot of new stuff to make it feel different from the original series.

Few examples are the new Keyblade forms that are relevant to the gameplay, the Heart Grid, 4 protagonists (Keyblade Wielders) and all are playable, KO system (whereas you have to save your party member, or it's game-over), battle animations that change throughout the game to show that the characters change throughout the story + having a different take on several elements that make Kingdom Hearts be Kingdom Hearts (a new way of summoning KH, a new way to connect worlds, a new power to connect worlds with eachother, a new kind of Keyblade etc.)

What I'm trying to say is, yes, we are staying true to what has been established already but only so to keep this game feel like a Kingdom Hearts game BUT there's still room for experimenting. I'd like to see it as taking pre-existing stuff and making it feel fresh while still introducing own material as well.

At least, that's how I see this project. I mean, we're still going for the same thing as the threads were for in the very beginning. The mods wanted to see how we, the fans, would handle a Kingdom Hearts game. How would we make it. Knowing all of us working on it now are fans, it's still how we as fans would make a Kingdom Hearts game.

I'd say this project is about: don't fix what's broken but make it better/fresh and add more things to make the experience better. And for me, we succeeded. Take a look at the gameplay system. The Heart Grid alone feels really fresh to me.

Again, not saying this really is what the project is all about, just my opinion.

 

[Arkrend]

What KMR said. I think the problem here is that you're not being very clear by what you mean as being "Kingdom Hearts"

When I say Kingdom Hearts I mean Keyblades, and Disney movies. Literally everything else is interchangable. As long as the combat isn't turn based I'm fine, and honestly... our game, as I've said before, has already veered away from things you'd expect for a KH title.


I'm having trouble figuring out what you mean you say we're making choices out of fear of deviating too far.


The completely revamped party system was deviating pretty far. I don't remember any KH games were you could play as your party members whenever you wanted by clicking a button.


We got rid of Disney summons. Something that's very Kingdom Heartish. Instead we replaced them with Keyblade summons.


Some things we came up with are completely original, but were inspired by the concept of Kingdom Hearts. Things like the Heart Grid. I mean I'm pretty sure you were still around when the Heart Grid was suggested. Though it is going to look different now. Basically the center will be the playable character's Station of Awakening, and they'll be surrounded by the Stations of Awakenings of all of their party members they've met throughout the game.


I mean the Keyblade turn into a bow now! That's more than deviating! That's borderline fan fiction like. Though a design was posted back, and it looks like it can work. I'm still iffy about claws. We'll just need to make some designs first. I mean we could just give Brand hidden blades, like Ezio, except they're not hidden... and they're magic.



Also, for the record. A while back the moderators came back to these threads to ban someone. When told that this project was still going one of the moderators responded with, "How did they survive without us?"

They weren't expecting it to last this long. You can tell. They're surprised we're still going.

 

[DiceKiller]

Like I said before, I'm not trying to point out specific things that are wrong. I said what I did to see what people's reaction was. As in, see what their self-evaluation was in response to what I said, that's it. If you don't get understand what I said, that show's that you yourself see nothing wrong with the project.

Well if you want to do away with half the original purpose was for the project simply because the mods didn't think it would make it this far, then that really is shame. Not like there's anything I can do about it~

 

[king_mickey rule]

Like I said before, I'm not trying to point out specific things that are wrong. I said what I did to see what people's reaction was. As in, see what their self-evaluation was in response to what I said, that's it. If you don't get understand what I said, that show's that you yourself see nothing wrong with the project.

Well if you want to do away with half the original purpose was for the project simply because the mods didn't think it would make it this far, then that really is shame. Not like there's anything I can do about it~

The orginal purpose of the project wasn't even making an actual game so yeah

It's not really to say that we don't want to go with that because the mods aren't around anymore. It's just that it worked for us this way. We didn't really think like 'the mods are gone, let's do it differently'. It just happened without even thinking about it, and even then, it's not like we choose things so we can keep the Kingdom Hearts feeling. The only time I can remember actually 'changing' things to preserve the Kingdom Hearts feeling is in the story development.

But in terms of gameplay and such, we keep an open mind imo.

Don't get us wrong, we understand that you're not trying to make us change the whole project. You're just stating your opinion and that's perfectly fine but (like you already pointed out), we're already okay with what we have now because we already strayed off of the Kingdom Hearts formula.

Just gonna say it once again, almost everything that has been decided just happened. We don't think like 'that's not fit for Kingdom Hearts, let's not do that'. There are situations when that does happen but those things just wouldn't feel right at all.

 

[Arkrend]

Well if you want to do away with half the original purpose was for the project simply because the mods didn't think it would make it this far, then that really is shame. Not like there's anything I can do about it~

It has nothing to do with the mods no longer supporting the project. This isn't the same project as the one Shamdeo proposed. It's a new project that spawned when the old one died.

We're just trying to make a game. People just gradually got tired of just working on a hypothetical game, and little by little people just started discussing things a little more realistically as if we could actually make this game.

Then the programming thread was made, an I joined and introduced an engine we could use to make the game... and that's just how it happened.

No one really cared that the mods were gone. It just happened to happen not long after they left. The threads stop being made, and we just decided we wanted to take the story we came up with and try to see if we can come up with a game based around it.


We don't base our ideas on what's Kingdom Hearts. We base our ideas around the four main characters, and the concept of the four of them working together as a team.

At this point it seems that what you're actually talking about is that we're making an actual game now instead of keeping it hypothetical.

 

[king_mickey rule]

Alrighty guys, I think we all got our points across here so let's not derail this thread any further.

About the menus, I think we should do a different take on the one of the original series. Days did this as well and it made it feel different so I'm suggesting something different (different colors, symbols etc.) but making it feel similar to the ones of KH 1, 2 and BBS (making it feel both fresh and familiar).

I also think it would be fun starting on the visuals of the Heart Grid.

 

[Arkrend]

Alrighty guys, I think we all got our points across here so let's not derail this thread any further.

About the menus, I think we should do a different take on the one of the original series. Days did this as well and it made it feel different so I'm suggesting something different (different colors, symbols etc.) but making it feel similar to the ones of KH 1, 2 and BBS (making it feel both fresh and familiar).

I also think it would be fun starting on the visuals of the Heart Grid.

I'll start on some Station of Awakenings to used for the examples.

 

[D.D.D]

Dunno if this has already been suggested (sorry if it has), but maybe you guys could create different menu items for each of the fab4? Like, make Ciel's air/mountain/cloud themed. Brand's could have fire and smoke. Raine would have his relate to water and waves. Linnea's could be filled up with flowers, vines, and leaves.
And then to personalize their pause menu, the option buttons could keep those same themes.

 

[DarkRiku-12]

Dunno if this has already been suggested (sorry if it has), but maybe you guys could create different menu items for each of the fab4? Like, make Ciel's air/mountain/cloud themed. Brand's could have fire and smoke. Raine would have his relate to water and waves. Linnea's could be filled up with flowers, vines, and leaves.
And then to personalize their pause menu, the option buttons could keep those same themes.

That would actually be really cool Depending on which character you play as, the pause menu changes a little bit. I like it!

About the menus, I think we should do a different take on the one of the original series. Days did this as well and it made it feel different so I'm suggesting something different (different colors, symbols etc.) but making it feel similar to the ones of KH 1, 2 and BBS (making it feel both fresh and familiar).

I think I have an idea for the menu... I'll post it later.

 

[king_mickey rule]

Dunno if this has already been suggested (sorry if it has), but maybe you guys could create different menu items for each of the fab4? Like, make Ciel's air/mountain/cloud themed. Brand's could have fire and smoke. Raine would have his relate to water and waves. Linnea's could be filled up with flowers, vines, and leaves.
And then to personalize their pause menu, the option buttons could keep those same themes.

I actually like this as well and I don't think it's that hard to do! I think that's one of those " 'If' something 'Then' something else codes". I think we should definately try this out!

And can't wait to see your idea DarkRiku!

 

[Flutebringer]

KH - YouTube

 

[king_mickey rule]

KH - YouTube

... You made that?

 

[Flutebringer]

Yes, but I shouldn't have taken YouTube's 'Lighting' suggestion upon upload.

 

[king_mickey rule]

Yes, but I shouldn't have taken YouTube's 'Lighting' suggestion upon upload.

Haha . How did you make that if I may ask? It looks really good btw!

 

[Flutebringer]

In any graphics editing program, you just have to design the elements and animate them. You could use Photoshop to build the layout then transfer the document to Adobe After Effects for animation. Or you could do it in either program exclusively (for Photoshop, it would be best done using the extended version).

I want to hear more about the Heart Grid though. Maybe I can help map out an image.

 

[king_mickey rule]

I want to hear more about the Heart Grid though. Maybe I can help map out an image.

Well, like I said, not much has been decided on that.

Basically, you'd have the main grid in the center, being the character's Station of Awakening (so that one will have the character on it). That would be the biggest one. The colors should be based on the character's element. In other words:

Linnea: Light brown (have some green in it as well + some colors you'd find in a forest during Autumn Earth/Plants)
Ciel: Green (like Ven's)
Raine Blue (like Aqua's, maybe with a bit more darker blue)
Brand: Red (with orange and maybe some purplish colors, representing Darkness and Fire)

The grids around it would have Disney characters on it and the colors would obviously be based on the world and the character as well.

The symbols of the attacks etc.

Spells = Magician's hat
Physical attacks = Sword or Keyblade
Abilities = 3 small stars
Health Boost = Green orb
Attack Boost = Red orb
Defense Boost = Blue orb
Magic Boost = Bright purple orb (leaning towards bordeaux)
Magic Resistance Boost (not sure if we're gonna have that though) = Darker purple orb (a more blue-ish color)

Like I said in the other thread, maybe the paths/routes that the characters follow (showing how much the player already unlocked) could also be colored in blue, red, green or brown depending on what character's Heart Grid you're on.

The different Grids could be connected with stairs. Like in this video around 4:05

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpGzb-TSi4I[/video]

These are all just ideas though.

 

[Arkrend]

There are only three things drastically wrong with that menu.

1) It's animated = I'm not talking about the actual buttons. I'm talking about those sparkles in the button part of the menu. Animated images can't be put into the game's engine. They have to be static. If we want to create the illusion of animation then we'd need to have still images of the animation at different points, and then program the GUI to flip through them to make it look animated.

2) It's altogether = When a GUI is made in the game engine is needs to be put together in the actual engine. The moving hand, the different buttons for different sections, the panels on the button, etc. They'd all need to be separate images when put into the engine.

3) The words = Text is also something that is made in engine. That way when the player earns munny the menu won't constantly tell them they have 0 or 60. If it's a variable it needs to be made in the engine. Having a custom font, AKA the KH font, would also have to be done in the engine.

Though those are all things you'd only know about if you knew the technical aspect of designing this stuff. I'm sure few people actually know a game's menu are a bunch of separate images held together by a script. Thanks for the menu though, I'm going to start breaking it apart into separate images right now. I did the same thing for Cassidy's HUD, but I haven't posted the links on this site yet. I'll do that soon.

 

[Flutebringer]

There's nothing 'drastically' wrong with the menu as you seem to suggest.

There are only three things drastically wrong with that menu.

1) It's animated = I'm not talking about the actual buttons. I'm talking about those sparkles in the button part of the menu. Animated images can't be put into the game's engine. They have to be static. If we want to create the illusion of animation then we'd need to have still images of the animation at different points, and then program the GUI to flip through them to make it look animated.

This is inaccurate especially in terms of which game engine the developer/team is using. Software Engineers/Technical Artists are hired for this exact reason to build plug-ins that will assist the Artists/Designers on the team with obstructions. Animation can be approached in many ways and using a collection of static images IS the foundation of all animation. It would be as simple as exporting each frame and having it play as any regular video.

If you're managing the workflow all of this, then you can disregard the majority of what I said above since...we'd be following yours of course. It's not as though the they were randomly generated.

2) It's altogether = When a GUI is made in the game engine is needs to be put together in the actual engine. The moving hand, the different buttons for different sections, the panels on the button, etc. They'd all need to be separate images when put into the engine.

This doesn't tell me anything I don't already know and the workflow varies with the developer beyond this point. All images/elements must be separated is basic knowledge of interface designing. I could build everything in Photoshop and export them to the game engine. Nothing new there since that's also the basis of layers in Photoshop.

3) The words = Text is also something that is made in engine. That way when the player earns munny the menu won't constantly tell them they have 0 or 60. If it's a variable it needs to be made in the engine. Having a custom font, AKA the KH font, would also have to be done in the engine.

Though those are all things you'd only know about if you knew the technical aspect of designing this stuff. I'm sure few people actually know a game's menu are a bunch of separate images held together by a script. Thanks for the menu though, I'm going to start breaking it apart into separate images right now. I did the same thing for Cassidy's HUD, but I haven't posted the links on this site yet. I'll do that soon.

Yes, text is usually rendered using the engine. I have uppercase A-Z glyphs, 0-9, and '!' done already. The .PSD file will be handed over on request.

Regarding the menu altogether, please don't 'break' it up. I have the .PSD file with all the assets (or layers) you'd ever need, but take note that it's not final. I only posted that video to get this thread going again.