coughlinjon

[RELEASE] The Eyes of Luigi

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The Year of Luigi ultimately just being another source of shame and bitterness for him is perfect. This is too good.

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So for whatever reason the thought of a creepy 'The Eyes of Luigi' cover of Sarah McLachlan's 'Arms of an Angel' came up when I was viewing this. I think just because of the similar number of words/body parts in the title? So I googled the lyrics to that song and they are oddly appropriate.

 

In the first verse:
Spend all your time waiting for that second chance 

For the break that will make it ok
There's always some reason to feel not good enough 
And it's hard at the end of the day 

And in the second verse:

So tired of the straight line, and everywhere you turn 
There's vultures and thieves at your back 
The storm keeps on twisting, you keep on building the lies 
That you make up for all that you lack 

 

So there's that.

...anyway, this game looks awesome and meta in the way of TSP, really looking forward to where it ends up.

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Ha, I wish I had time to add Luigi singing to parts of popular songs, replacing key lyrics so they're about himself - the boombox is already it, it would take... another week?

 

We're finishing up the room (or what will exist of it at release day) and then we'll wrap intro/credits/pause/exit around the thing and call it a game. I still have to find time to tune the vacuum/ghosts stuff, too :)

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We're closing in on the final days!!! Here's an updated inventory - that's about as fancy as we have time for ;) And below it is one of the 52 barks I recorded/edited this morning; our Luigi is going to be a talker...

 

post-35123-0-61083800-1463688468_thumb.png

 

LuigiBark_HumStar.mp3

 

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We've added fan mail to the game :) There's a separate thread where you can submit pictures. Since the mail is treated like an inventory, Luigi can steal it...

 

post-35123-0-48722300-1463691898_thumb.gif

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This thread gives us an amazing sense of development trajectory and progression, I'm loving the documentary-like vibe of following the jam here and in the Slack.

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This thread gives us an amazing sense of development trajectory and progression, I'm loving the documentary-like vibe of following the jam here and in the Slack.

 

 

Ha, thanks! I was worried about including too many gifs, but I feel like the game lends itself well to gifs - allowing Luigi to keep and equip Mario's stuff has made him surprisingly expressive. I haven't spoken at all about the technical stuff, and I might elaborate once I've released the game - I didn't do anything new or interesting, but I modified some of my tools enough to streamline adding new assets, and I'm hoping with a little polish I can have myself a suite of FPE tools for future projects (FPE games seem to be the only thing I want to make right now).

 

I'd also love if Steven and/or Travis (art, audio programming) would be willing to add a post about their contributions. Steven's art stands out immediately - it's all really smooth and caricatured and eye-catching. Since I've stuck to gifs nobody has heard any of the audio, but Travis has a Luigi voice who mumbles idle things, emotes, responds to specific items, sings along to music - It's going to have a lot more personality once people can hear Luigi speak :)

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I snapped a pic of our spare bed before I left for work this morning - remnants of last night's development include recording equipment and an empty bourbon glass. Last day! I'll be scrambling to finish intro/game/credits and I still haven't added the key that gets Luigi out of the bedroom

post-35123-0-17739900-1463759412_thumb.jpg

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I'd also love if Steven and/or Travis (art, audio programming) would be willing to add a post about their contributions. 

 

It's a-me!

 

I don't know what to say about the art! I've drawn dumb cartoons since small times so when someone says to me "hey can you draw this", I can generally crank something cartoony out in a few minutes if I'm not too bothered about the quality -- perfect for a game jam. :)

 

Lately I've been trying to develop my "real art" skills by learning semi-realism digital painting techniques.  So, these fast and loose cartoons are a nice break from that...

 

There's not much to the process. If I don't immediately get some sort of mental image from the suggestion, I'll do a Google image search to get some references to look at.  I work at a large size (like 2000x2000 or higher) on my iPad Pro (using the Procreate app and an Apple Pencil) and do thick black and white line art.  I add flat color (and maybe some very simply shadows and highlights) on a layer below that.  I reduce the opacity of the line art layer so it's not fully black, but a darker version of the color underneath.  So basic cartoony cel-shading-y looking stuff.  I export as PNG and they're added to the game and resized as necessary.

 

I felt like the boombox should look like it came from the Mushroom Kingdom rather than real-life, so it has music note speakers inspired by the music note blocks in Mario games.  The line-art kind of reminded me of a pig for some reason, so I colored it pink. (??)

 

Unless I'm forgetting something, this is the first time my art has appeared in a video game, so it's really weird and fun to see it come to life, even though they're just front-facing, perspective-defying flats.  I think I would enjoy someday creating art for a game that I was able to spend a bit more time on.  I'd love to do a whole game of my own from code on up, but I can never seem to come up with a viable story / scenario to build on.

 
(PS: I've also been helping make pixely character sprites for another jam game, World of Blanks.  Sprites and animation are definitely not my forté but it has been a good learning exercise.)

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- Play this version if you must, but I plead with you to wait until Monday night - 

 

Alright, my first Jam build is up. It's totally broken :(

Lots of the systems work in isolation, but right now there are so many bugs that the thing doesn't stand up as a whole. 

I'm excited to have made a full game. I'm really upset that my first build isn't a functional game.

I have to upload now because I'm leaving for the weekend and I can't guarantee that I'll be home in time to submit anything.

 

The gif I have of Luigi retrieving a key from a ghost to unlock the bedroom door (the end state) is apparently too big to load, so you'll have to check the Slack to see it :(

 

This is a dev log, so I'm going to be candid and say that 2 hours ago I was feeling very high - most of the systems were coming together, and I was still in a sort of unit-test mode. The ghosts all have unique barks (recorded and implemented in a sprint tonight) and it seemed that despite missing a credits screen I would have something playable. I'm not sure anymore if this build is playable, and that bums be out, but I'll be back Sunday and after to polish it into something people enjoy.

 

I'm at least happy I put Steven and Travis in the opening credits, because they added most of the charm to the game (Steven all of the good art, Travis the code that makes Luigi talk incessantly). 

 

Here is a link to the game:

https://coughlinjon.itch.io/the-eyes-of-luigi

 

Here is a link to the Ghost recording session, which will give an indication of how excited I was to tie the whole project together:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1p24Mtti2l1amlZenQ3aER2RVk

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Luigi singing along when you put in the tape killed me. I'm sitting here alone laughing audibly. 

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Luigi singing along when you put in the tape killed me. I'm sitting here alone laughing audibly. 

Lol i cannot tell you how happy that makes me! I realized pretty quickly that this was going to be a game about Luigi singing and not a game about anything else I put in it...

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IT'S UP IT'S UP!! I spent the weekend in the woods away from my computer and internet, and I got home with 1 hour to add the Key/Door logic to the game and fix some Boo stuff. The Eyes Of Luigi is now a playable thing :) (though still pretty broken) I'm excited to pick at it over the next couple weeks to polish it into a portfolio piece. I'll write more of a reflection on the 2 weeks later, because right now I want to go spend some time with my wonderfully understanding wife :)

 

This is the last screenshot I took during development.

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This game is hilarious and weird and I love it. The sound and VO work is so funny :) Also nice use of that song. Catchy and well matched to the game.  :)

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