Dinosaur Rescue

Jeremy Wasson                             Bitsy

 

1.     The first room has your player at the base of a flaming mountain. They learn they cannot reach the top of the mountain without certain materials. They are prompted to read a sign that tells them where they are and what is happening. This is where an arrow points your character to the next room.

2.     The second room is an underground lab where you learn from a scientist that you have been brought back in time to save the dinosaurs. This is where you received your mission and continue on.

3.     This room is a maze looking forest where you find false items you don’t need. You also meet another town traveler that gives you advice on your mission.

4.     This room is deep in the forest where you find a giant hut looking building in the middle of the forest. This is where you pick up your first item. You then follow a path that takes you to a cave.

5.     In the cave you find the last item that is needed toreador the top of the mountain to stop the eruption and you return it to the locked door to reach the top of the mountain.

6.     This is where you drop off the items and save the dinosaurs.

 

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud refers to abstraction, transition and and time frame. These topics are used in my Bitsy project. For example, McCloud says “If we incorporate language and other icons into the chart, we can begin to build a comprehensive map.” (Pg. 51). That’s how I used Bitsy to build my backgrounds and characters and everything in that matter. I had to map out every single little detail in every little square of the grid. And the more I worked, the more it seemed to piece together room by room, tile by tile. It really did come together like a map as McCloud explained. Especially when I had to piece together the mountain that I built for my first room of the game. It did not look like anything at the start but it came together quite well. The book also described six different types of transitions. For my story I used action to action transitions as well as scene to scene transitions. As the way I made my game layout and how it is played this was the best way for it to fit my game. Chapter four discusses timeframes and says “Between those frozen moments—between those frozen panels— our minds fill in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion.” (Pg. 94). In my game I used some different dialogue depending on how many times a character visits a sprite which creates the illusion of a change in time. Things like this can make your story and or game seem as of time is passing while it is being played.

 

Even though Bitsy is a pixelated not very detailed game. There is still a lot you can do with it to create a sense of a whole new world. I really stressed this when it came to me making my Bitsy world and all of the rooms that my character goes through during their mission to save the dinosaurs. I really wanted to make it feel like the player was back in the old dusty times when the dinosaurs were around which is why I made my tile colors the kind of rusty or rocky look that they are. For example I remember reading about one of the Harry Potter parks and a ride that is involved with it. I believe it was the train ride at the park that is supposed to make the riders feel like they are in London heading to Hogwarts. When reading things like this is what motivates me to take the extra time and detail to try my best and really make the player of the game feel like they really are in that time or era. Like my first room for example, I really wanted to make it look like the mountain was close to erupting which led me to create animations all the way around the entire mountain. The more time I spent on it the more I could really see the bigger picture of where it was going. I probably made a total of 5 versions of the mountain just trying to really give the player the feeling of it being close to eruption.