Week Five

This week i have been finalising everything, my modelling and also camera animation which has taken longer than i first expected. The images below are of my introduction to the game where the character follows a 'dinnywig' through water to find that after going extreemly deep it shallows out but once you climb out of it on the other side it is just a puddle. Therefore the game player has to navigate their way through the game back home to avoid becoming part of the statue graveyard, cast in stone forever.


The dinnywig sees the character and hides, after it feels safe it then dives from the rock into the water... where we follow it....

It then swims deeper and deeper, but oddly aftre its got black with the depth it starts to get lighter and shallower. As we reach the surface the dinnywig gets out first.


At the surface we look back and all the body of water is, is a puddle no deeper than your ankles!!

This is where my simulated environment animation begins, as if you had just watched the cut scene to the beginning of the game and stepped out of the puddle.

I have created the scenes to be simple incorperating simple aspects of the whole game play, similarly to the first levels of new games. There are small objects but no creatures to create a threat, only to teach the game player the controllers.

Im quite pleased with the final result although as usual i want to do so much more to it!

Week Four

This week has been entirely modeling and texturing. I have also started to model my character to which you see within the beginning of the game although im not sure if i will have him in the final animation or not yet. Im not sure if i include him i will have time, or rather if i create a character 'bio' with name and details this would be more sucessful for the critique. I have considered the idea that my characters will maybe have a bio appear as a choice option for the gameplayer, maybe with the absence of deatils on occasion to leave the discovery of that creature more exciting. These details could be left from an entirely harmless creature but also one due alot of caution. I feel that this idea could be quite successful.





Im going to cotinue modelling my scene and then try this character bio idea to see if it works when i finish modeling him.

I have also been searching for a name for my game. I know I want it to be slightly ambiguous although give something about the game away, so what I decided to do was to use the ever useful, translate application, from:

http://uk.babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt .......and type in words to do with my game and look for an alternative, yet foreign words.

Unfortunately I was unaware how universal the word, ‘Labyrinth’ was. It seems that pretty much most languages use the same spelling, and when I typed in ‘maze’ the translation into other languages returned the word, ‘Labyrinth!’ argh!

So I also tried: lost, confusion, muddle, and adventure but seemed to find nothing the only word i could find was the Italian translation for lost, which is: perdido which i quite liked. I need to find more words... even synonyms doesn’t seem to be helping, I’m going to have to track down a thesaurus and have a good search i think. (now looking back at ‘Perdido’ its seeming even more appealing – maybe it just needs time?)

Just as ive been writing this i decided to try out a version with my chosen font, and this is what i came up with:



as a very basic trial this ones great!



....back to moedlling now!!!

Week Three

This week has just mainly been modelling my first scene, I have been sourcing appropriate textures, and the best sites I have found so far have been:

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://thief.washboardabs.net/textures/wood/images/wood5.jpg&imgrefurl=http://thief.washboardabs.net/textures/wood/&usg=__mkd6K4djc0nQ8vdF609XsUNAbvY=&h=256&w=256&sz=18&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=aNvQ6b8CpL6ijM:&tbnh=111&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dold%2Bwood%2Btexture%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG


AND


http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/texture/metal_floor_texture-200513-SM.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/texture/scifi_metal_textures-200513.html&usg=__JuHRdC9Im-QhV9RWz7LoKzsjjn8=&h=570&w=570&sz=164&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=39UHs4JCioXRoM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmetal%2Bfloor%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG



Below are a few sample of the textures i have been using....

The TOP site has given me the majority of textures I have been starting to use, and also given me a great base textures to edit and redesign. I have a particular style I want this game to have and so have kept this clearly in mind when searching for these textures.

I have also tried screen shots of my 'glowing spheres' idea and am very happy with the result! I’ve created a short animation with them floating around to see if they would be appropriate and I feel they are.


I must say while modelling I have discovered the need for subtle extras, such a ruins etc, and found after brief research that Aztec style paraphernalia works brilliantly with my scene.

I have set it up to start the first level from, what would be the video introduction to the whole game of how it was you got there. Although you will not see the 'Statue Graveyard' until moving through the first section of the game which is what explains the need to leave, the first section is to familiarise you with the game play and style.

I have also been thinking about my 'many exits' door and i have created some sketches to try to illustate what i mean. To be honest it was mainly to get it clearer in my own mind but i also think its easier to understand visually:

Theses are my storyboards i have drawn up with extra info about where and why certains things are. While i have been modelling some of these things are changing but the basic outline is the same.

These are some of my models so far, the textures are a little immature at the moment as im just trying to see what suits it best, plus i am un sure as to the style of the 'hut' so i may re model this to improve it. As you can see from the spheres the colour and glow works quite well:

MODEL MODEL MODEL!

Week Two

This week has mainly been getting a finalised idea of what it is that I am going to create in Maya. I drew up some sketches of what I want to include in my final piece, and took a realistic look at the time scale and the amount I needed to create. I also finalised my storyboard and came up with a complete story as in the beginning I had slightly missed the need to leave my game. I had established that you would end up in a strange world and would have to work your way out as if you had found yourself inside a labyrinth although I hadn’t established the need. As Phil mentioned the game play may seem like to much of a preferable environment and 'why would anyone want to leave.' This was a point I had totally missed! To sort out this problem I established that in order to leave certain sections there would be tasks you would have to complete on a time based system, of course as the game offers an entirety of alternate options if the player does get stuck they do have the option to try an alternate route but offering bonus's and clues in the forms of maps may lead the game player to persist. More back to the point, the need to get out of the game is the fact that 'The Statues Graveyard', which is within the first level of the game is where you would end up if you did not leave in time. If the game an taks are not completed in time you will be cast in stone forever stuck, unable to leave.
Another aspect i have established is that there will be no gun/sword violence within it - for the sole reason that i feel it would be unappropriate for the asthetics of this idea. I would like the need to escape from creatures within the game to be the cause for fleeing and not retaliation as like the scene from 'Pan's Labyrinth.' This clip illustrates alot of i deas i have for this game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9YD2PFF31E

After looking at all of my pre-vis work I decided that I was going to create a mock up of the introduction to my game, as if you had just started it for the first time and include the main aspects of my game theme. I’ve decided that there will be only one or two points at which the camera and environmental aspects will alter to reveal the theme of the entire game, but I need to decide the best way to this, as in the final thing it runs the risk of being more confusing than exciting.

What I intend to do, is using my given image, is have it as if it were real but then move and reveal that it was not the landscape but rather an image of a landscape set out to deceive you. From this hopefully the viewer or game player will be able to grasp the idea that not everything is as it seems in this game.

I also hope to be able to animate door to show the endless possibilities for the game. For instance I would like to be able to show it opening normally, and then opening by sliding down the wall and on to the floor, and then once re-opened reveals a concealed door.

Overall I want my game to be totally interactive but also very possible for the game player to take an entirely different route from another. If I had a group of people working on it with me and well as the time and the funds, I could see this game being totally different from most others and with the extra people, would enable it these almost endless possibilities. I guess as with most design work it comes down to, 'if I had......' and in this instance I don’t, so I’m going to have to try to illustrate what’s in my mind, onto paper - fingers crossed it works!!

I have been thinking about the 'narration' of the game, not in a literal sense but I feel there needs to be some way to add intrigues to certain parts of the game as the game player could feel lost and frustrated or may miss something intended to be seen, and so I have come up with this; an assortment of coloured spheres floating in the air with a glow coming from them. These can float from and to certain areas or hover over aspects that may be important to the game, they will not be visible for the entire game, and in fact the time at which you would probably see them most would be at the beginning when there are new things to learn. They would double up as almost the sidekick/friend, although they would be entirely VISUAL and nothing else.

I have also been designing my main character who is going to be around throughout the entire game. He is also the character that appears at the beginning of the game enticing the main character to follow....hence the journey begins. Below are my final 2D design. Looking at it now im very pleased although i had a horrible 'seen it beofre' moment, when i was thinking about 'Monsters Inc' i have to say now that i didnt copy it however similar it looks (how annoying!)

Name: DINNYWIG

Size: 50cm

Strength: 100x its own weight

Week one

An introduction to GAMING ENVIRONMENTS

For this project once again we were given brown envelopes with an image, each one different from everyone else’s in every way.

They were all images taken from pieces of artwork created by famous arts, and mine was by an artist called MAX ERNST.


- 'Europe after the war - 1940 to 1942

I have included some further works of Ernst below to give a slightly more in depth feel for his style:

- Men shall know nothing of this

At a first glance I could see similarities to things that I have seen in films and illustrations before.

They were:

• Brian Froud
• The Labyrinth
• The Dark Crystal
• The Clash Of The Titans
• Salvador Dali and other similar surrelist artists
  

The themes that I feel the image has, is fantasy and adventure and bleow i have put in some images from the listed artistic similarities above. I do this on a much larger scale on my own pc at home creating files upon files of images almost creating my own scrap book. It allows me to become completely absorbed in the style and understand the themes around it. Also on a larger scale i can see repitition easier, colours and stroke styles and included imagry all stand out more when you have documentation of 100 images rather than just a few.

'THE LABYRINTH' imagry

- The castle beyond the Labyrinth

- Hoggle (one of the main characters)

- Ludo (a second main character)




BRIAN FROUD imagry





'THE DARK CRYSTAL' imagry


-Skessis

- Podlings

It was these strange second world environments that started to get my imagination going. These worlds that I have listed above are quite similar to that which we live in although they have a particular aspect that makes them surreal and that is that nothing is as it seems. Objects can be people, scenery can be fake and anything is possible. The thing that makes this surreal is that they are so similar BUT not quite the same. I like this idea that nothing is as it seems. The uneasy felling, you get is due to the environments being strangely similar, uncannily similar in fact.

SALVADOR DALI imagry

-Metamorphosis Of Narcissus

I also liked the idea that you could close a door once and open it and the second time it leads to somewhere entirely new, as demonstrated in the film, ‘The Labyrinth’. I am going to re watch these films documenting the thoughts and feelings they invoked and also taking note of particular aspects that may be possible ideas for development in a game.

I need to work out what exactly is my audience, their age and particular interests and so on as I am discovering my possible themes and storyboards for this game.