Ideas, Ideas, Ideas!

This week in the race to completing our game we sat around and thought about our theme. What objects we will use, how can we make our game have the right feel? Going through pictures of objects we would like to use we came to the conclusion that the style of our environment would be Victorian. We created a video blog this week however due to some technicalities it is still in the works of being setup for viewing.

The first level will be a basement, it will have the look and feel that frightens the players. It will look like a Saw torture area. This is where the character wakes up and breaks out of his bonds.

Saw Torture Room Example

The second level is two floors of the house, it will be placed in the main floor (including the kitchen, sitting room and dining room.) It will look like a very neat old grandmother house, this will allow it to have a very creepy and suspenseful feel to the game. The second part of the level will be the second floor. The player will walk up the wooden stairs as it creeks and cracks. The player will see a long corridor with many doors. The doors that can be accessed will be different torture rooms, each with its own unique design.

Dining Table Example, will add small teddy bears and other creepy objects.

Finally, the last level will be outside where the player confronts the killer. It will be at night and a thunder storm will be constantly occurring. Dead vegetation will be around the perimeter of the house and a single dead tree will be near the killer.

Scary House Example

Video Blog

Part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRck1YYie10

Part2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzkjgkNoNX0

Deceptus!

Here we go; right back into school time like if the freedom of summer was a thing of the past. My group, Team Smash (earlier known as Team Lightning but due to some difficulties the team was separated and we felt it was not right to keep the name) got together and wrote a commitment determining what each of our obligations to the game will be. We also had a very long and detailed brainstorming session where we came up with our game idea. 

In my previous post I had mentioned a ninja game with the main character being a small ninja with a big temper however after hearing the themes that our game must be characterized under I felt that the game I first had in mind wouldn’t be suitable. After talking for a while we came to the conclusion of basing our theme on fear. We created a game that has a feel of an interactive experience. The player is a character that is tied up in the basement and must find his way to escape out of a house to save his life. 

The game is called Deceptus (trapped in Latin). The first scene the player sees a man digging a grave in the rain and then the player is sent back in time couple hours before the grave scene. The player wakes up in a dark and frightening room, the walls are covered in blood and there is torture equipment all around him. You must escape your bonds and find items to use to pick the lock of the basement and try to make it to the next level. This will be timed and if you cannot make it within the time you die and have to start over. The second level the player must escape the house but the only exit is locked with eight keys. The player must explore the frightful house, this including the main floor and the second floor which includes doors that cannot be opened and other victims screaming for their life. The third level the player makes it outside to find the killer digging a hole for his body, they get into a fight and the player kills the killer. 

The mechanics of the game will be a first person interactive experience, placed in a three dimensional environment the player must look for clues, pick them up and use them in order to open doors. While opening a door a quick button selection will appear and the player must follow the button sequence to complete it properly. Fast button sequences will also appear the player must act quickly to stop something from falling or dodging falling objects.  

Brainstorming Our Ideas

Back To The Grind

First week back to the hard work and the ups and downs of game development. Learning from my mistakes from last year I will try to create a new game with my team. I would like to start early and have some ideas as to what I would like to produce. The first step is to brainstorm.

Brainstorming our ideas is a good way to see what we want and what ideas we want to bring to the table. Since this is the first week we are all getting settled and trying to get back into the rush of things. My idea that I will pitch to my group is a Ninja based game. The main character is a short ninja that was picked on all his life. One day his village gets attacked and all their secret scrolls are stolen, only the mini ninja can get them back.

Gameplay -
I would want it to be a three dimensional role playing game. I would want the player to be heavily involved in the game making decisions that would change the outcome of the game. His main weapon would be a sword and for the projectile weapon a sling-shot. I want to make the colour scheme very vibrant to stand out from other ninja games.

This is just an idea I have come up with and I will post a drawing of the ninja I would like to use as a main character in a few days. With the readings and knowledge that I have gained from courses I have previously taken I believe we can complete a respectable game if we start early.

The Completion of the Our Game!!!!!!!

YES! We (by we I mean Team Lightning (the group I am a part of)) have completed a game we are working on. As discussed in previous posts the game is a 2.5D fast paced vehicular racing game. We will be presenting our game and all our ideas that we put forth into it on a upcoming day.

We are very proud of it as it is our first game we have created. It is not the game we intended to create when we first thought about making a racing game. Our ideas were to large at this point in time and we took on to much at one time. Our team believes that now that we have the basic structure and a working game. We can now add more on top of it and after a period of time we will have made the game we first thought of.

Team Lightning's OverDrive is a high paced racing game. A player must dodge obstacles to reach the end of the level, once completing the level a cut scene will occur and then its on to the next level. The cut scenes are a comic book style where as there are images on the screen and they are laid out by panels. The dialogue is heard of what is going on and then the player must continue in order to complete the story and win the game! I really enjoy the story for the game, when we first thought of our game we sat down and brainstormed all ideas of how we should make it and what our main idea of the game should be. After we went right into the story breaking down our main idea into parts (what was needed in the story and game-play) that would make the idea a success. We thought this was the best way to go so that we would not miss any crucial or even minor parts we would like to implement in the story and therefore the game. After chaining all that together to we realized, "wow, this is some crazy stuff we're looking at here." Then began the making of the game, at first we were very courageous (best suited word) in trying to do everything. Even though we wanted to implement so many things we did not stop and say we should cut some stuff back and try approaching it another way. (Remember, first time doing this) So we started on an insane journey and after reoccurring roadblocks our courageous and valiant efforts came to an abrupt stop, the hope for making OverDrive started to fade away and Team Lightning was slowing giving up. A major issue we could not overcome was implementing models into the game, they would either work in the code but crash the program or the error in the code was insane to fix.
Side note* This game was created for a school project and needed certain aspects in the game to be evaluated.
After a bumpy first huge milestone (the ending of first semester) we barely dragged our beat up bodies from the barely existing OverDrive and even more, the faith and hope we had for the glamorous OverDrive  cease to exist. After taking a break from the game we headed into second semester. A new criteria and a new set of motivations, we started right away and this time we had more of a grasp on the situation. We created what was possible this time and our concept designs were broken down into plausible and impossible instead of what we wanted to do and what we did not like. This time since implementing models was not a part of the criteria we could avoid that for now (work on it after we get all other requirements met) and work on what we needed to be done. It was not a walk in the park but we stuck through it got help when we needed it. Implementing sound and textures were exhausting but we overcame the struggle, documenting everything was not to hard but very tedious, especially when we changed something in the game, that meant we had to go back and change something.We (team Lightning) tried our best and gained a lot of experience and knowledge from the events that have taken place within the year and now we can move on with this knowledge in our pocket. 

Visual StoryBoard!

This week my teammate and I went to the gaming lab to try and create a visual storyboard. After spending couple hours in trying to figure out how to hook up all the equipment we began our process in creating the storyboard.

The game we decided to describe was God of War 3 for PS3. We played about an hour of gameplay before stopping the recording device. It captured all the things we went through during our gameplay... even our loses. The game was extremely slow and hard to play because the devices hooked up to our laptop, because the game was so slow to pick up our controls it was hard to play the game, but we got through it! After playing the game we had realized that God of War had a lot of aspects we did not look at before. This assignment let us look at the actual mechanics of the game and what they used in order for it to be smooth. The orbs obtained (red, green and blue) and the save point was a good example of particles and the close ups on Kratos showed good examples of light effects.

God of War 3 for PS3

The storyboard we create will describe all movements and main scenes in the game-play we went through. We will try to be as descriptive as possible as each part of the board will have a different aspect of the game.

Game-play of Kratos about to go into a save point

Another interesting part we looked at was the menu systems in the game. Simply but very descriptive and easy to use. The menu system also had scrolling system which took the player into different menus, some that upgraded the weapons and some with status updates. All menus were interesting and crucial to the game's mechanics and dynamics.

Menu before starting the game

Homeworking!!

For one of the assignments we need to complete, we need to play and analyze an art game. The art game is used to to create beautiful images and to make the player have a mesmerizing experience. It is not very strong in the story aspect.

The game I decided to critique was FlOw for the Playstation 3. It is an art game that can be purchased on the Playstation Network.

FlOw for PS3

The game starts off with mellow music and a simple set of instructions on how to play the game. after realizing that there are only two different types of movement the player can do he or she can move onto the next screen. The game title appears and the player immediately starts the game swimming around as a single cell organism trying to eat other things in order to grow larger and into more beautiful looking species. After eating certain objects the once single cell organism will have grown into a large organism and then the game will move deeper into the world starting off as a new single cell creature and growing into a different type of artistic being by devouring things around it. This process of eating and evolving continues for six levels. (meaning there are six main single organisms that transform into amazing creatures.) The game is very interesting but I find that art games are not for me. I need a story and other key parts that are in regular games. Even though I do admire the art and graphics in a game I cannot get into a game with just art and amazing music. Overall it was an interesting play and I would recommend it to people that love to draw and have a lot of appreciation towards art and how a game can make use of all its elements.

Game-play for FlOw 

The Gaming Continues!!

Today is our milestone for our game that we are working on. Today our prototyping code should be done and our finished art. We have our preliminary code and basic menus completed. The art is completed and it is in our design documentation. The game is being completed slowly and we believe we can accomplish it within the time.

The coding aspect of our game is being dealt with by other people within our group so most of the milestone that is due is being dealt with by my teammates. In our game we will be using four main levels, this will have four main texture maps. One is for Egypt, Antarctica, New York City and one is used for the Grand Canyon, this will allow players to feel that he or she is actually in the driver seat in the location where the character is at the time.

The game will also include roadblocks and other obstacles that will restrict the player from driving through the level with ease. The roadblocks will push the the vehicle back slowing it down. The obstacles in the game will create a challenge making the user keeping wanting to play until he or she completes the level.

The trailer for our game is below, we believe that if we show the game-play and a cinematic we can drag the attention of gamers to come and try our intense racing action game.