We decided to go along with the story style of something similar to Limbo where the player is dropped into the world without a clue of what has happened to them or why they are there. They are in search of reason and explanation of why they are in the position they are in and how to escape it.
I came up with an idea of using a shadowy figure to guide the player through the game. They player could interact with items and other objects to reveal his past and piece together what happened to him. In a way we are using the platform of a game to turn the pages of a book in a way, allowing the players to generate and interpret what happened with their own understanding.
I also feel as though the roles are cris-crossing a lot within our group. I thought we have designated a someone to focus on story, programming, modeling, etc. But we always seem to be questioning each other in regards to the story. I think we are always confusing each other by having so much participation in the story itself.
We really need to go back to square one and define the world, then the story, then the game aspects. We always seem to be running around in circles and heading dead ends because we are focusing far too much on the fine details before the overall picture has been concreted into our minds and visualized.
Saturday, 11 August 2012
The story
In the winter wasteland story we came up with the idea to use fire as the symbol of life. The world became so cold an baron after the winter god and the fire god clashed in an epic struggle of dominance over the world. With the fire gods last breath he cast down his essence onto the world in. It is the players job to find these essences and restore life to the world once again.
I liked this idea at first but I feel as though with our capabilities in programming and 3d modelling, we couldn't really make something great out of it. The aspect of fire I feel is far too limiting for the story and corners us into a very tight spot.
I liked this idea at first but I feel as though with our capabilities in programming and 3d modelling, we couldn't really make something great out of it. The aspect of fire I feel is far too limiting for the story and corners us into a very tight spot.
The Winter Wasteland
Winter Wasteland
Here snow blankets the land and the trees are all black with death—strangled by the frost. Here the sun doesn’t smile. The night is eternal. The moon is nothing but an empty shell and the stars don’t sparkle like ours. They’re dull and faint, like stale bread crumbs scattered across the sky.
Fire is a rare gift, but make sure to panic if you see that friendly, warm, yellow light; the dwarves have resorted to cannibalism and they’re not the only ones. Everybody wants to live.
It’s so cold that you can’t even feel your hands. Oh, that’s right. You don’t have hands any more. You had to get mechanical ones because yours froze and broke off years ago.
This is just a concept we came up for within the world. We realized that we needed to define a world before a story which is why we were running around in circles about game mechanics and story line. However in this world, being the 3d modeller, I can imagine a LOT of work that would be needed in order to complete the game. For example with many different factions of characters I would have to model and rig everything which in a semester on my own would be hell.
I drew up a quick piece of concept art in 2 hours to represent how I saw the world.
Here snow blankets the land and the trees are all black with death—strangled by the frost. Here the sun doesn’t smile. The night is eternal. The moon is nothing but an empty shell and the stars don’t sparkle like ours. They’re dull and faint, like stale bread crumbs scattered across the sky.
Fire is a rare gift, but make sure to panic if you see that friendly, warm, yellow light; the dwarves have resorted to cannibalism and they’re not the only ones. Everybody wants to live.
It’s so cold that you can’t even feel your hands. Oh, that’s right. You don’t have hands any more. You had to get mechanical ones because yours froze and broke off years ago.
This is just a concept we came up for within the world. We realized that we needed to define a world before a story which is why we were running around in circles about game mechanics and story line. However in this world, being the 3d modeller, I can imagine a LOT of work that would be needed in order to complete the game. For example with many different factions of characters I would have to model and rig everything which in a semester on my own would be hell.
Meet half way?
l generate a new environment for
the character to interact with. In a sense it combines reading a book
with a game. Pages could be unlocked and joined together to complete the
book bringing a sense of drive to keep playing and unlocking pages.
More so leaning towards the story rather than actualy gameplay. The
animations and interactions don't have to be extremely complex. They
will just be used to help the player visualise the story. I love the
style of machinarium, and this is kinda the style I intrigued by. We
could use the snow environment easily here, (i would imagine digital
painting a lot of scenes in snow would be much easier than darker
shades). I think focusing on the environment and imagery within the game
would really benificial rather than spending heaps of time on the
character because it would help viewers visualise the environment and
world to which the story is based.
We can still incorporate 3d modelling in this concept also for houses, chacaters etc etc even though it is rather 2d.
We can still incorporate 3d modelling in this concept also for houses, chacaters etc etc even though it is rather 2d.
Where to start?
So we have decided on a game, but the question remains as to how we are going to create it. We orginally wanted to use unity however I thought it would be best to explore other avenues before deciding so I did a bit of research on other game engines such as ex2D, DarkBasic, Blitz3d, GameStudio, Ogre, and CrystalSpace. But first things first, we needed to decide if we were going to design a 2d game or a 3d game. A 2d game would be a lot simpler however this simplicity might take away from the story that we wanted to tell. Most 2d games in todays world have a very simple objective such as 'save the queen.' We wanted to do something more complex and outside the box than that.
Although we wanted to do a 2d game at first, we decided to do a 3d game instead for a few reasons: 1) Tim had experience with 3d within unity.
2) We knew the programming language to an extent.
3) Unity is not great for 2d games and 2d animations which is what we originally going to use.
4) Players would be more immersed in a 3d environment rather than a cartoonist world
We LOVED the art style of Limbo and Botanicula in the way the 2d environment was transformed into something almost 3d through the use of background blurs and layers of texture which gave the game depth. The story of Botanicula wasn't all that impressive, on the other hand Limbo was extremely interesting to us. I had a very atmospheric world and art style of actually being stuck in limbo, the story itself was not dictated to the player, instead the player was left to interpret the story in their own way. Just like great books such as The Great Gatsby, the viewer is left to interpret their own meanings from the story. At the end of Limbo you actually are left wondering, "was I bad? or was i good?" This ambiguity is something that we really want to incorporate in our own game as it is an aspect of story telling that is not commonly used in a game format.
Although we wanted to do a 2d game at first, we decided to do a 3d game instead for a few reasons: 1) Tim had experience with 3d within unity.
2) We knew the programming language to an extent.
3) Unity is not great for 2d games and 2d animations which is what we originally going to use.
4) Players would be more immersed in a 3d environment rather than a cartoonist world
We LOVED the art style of Limbo and Botanicula in the way the 2d environment was transformed into something almost 3d through the use of background blurs and layers of texture which gave the game depth. The story of Botanicula wasn't all that impressive, on the other hand Limbo was extremely interesting to us. I had a very atmospheric world and art style of actually being stuck in limbo, the story itself was not dictated to the player, instead the player was left to interpret the story in their own way. Just like great books such as The Great Gatsby, the viewer is left to interpret their own meanings from the story. At the end of Limbo you actually are left wondering, "was I bad? or was i good?" This ambiguity is something that we really want to incorporate in our own game as it is an aspect of story telling that is not commonly used in a game format.
The Game
In the starting weeks we dedicated ourselves roles to generating the game and having a solid workflow. I was specialising in the 3d modelling aspect of the game mainly the character and its animations. I personally have always been very interested in this which is why i jumped at the opportunity to design a game. In the first week we mainly spent most of our time researching game such as bastion, Journey, Botanicula and many others. We were intrigued by these games because not only were they fun to play but they told a story in a different way to most games. Journey for example is a very open ended game full of exploration and virtually no dialogue. The story itself is derived from the players curiosity to travel and progress. Bastian is the complete polar opposite of this due to the fact that the story is dictated in a very narrow way via a narrator telling the story over the top of the game as you reach key points.
From a gaming most of my life I have realized that every game has repetition, however what makes a good story and a good game is the way the creators hide this repetition from the player. I am scared that our skills may not be developed enough by the end of the semester in order to hide the the games flaws. We only have a small amount of time to actually create a game from start to finish which is worrying, however I am all too willing to give it a try and take the risk.
From a gaming most of my life I have realized that every game has repetition, however what makes a good story and a good game is the way the creators hide this repetition from the player. I am scared that our skills may not be developed enough by the end of the semester in order to hide the the games flaws. We only have a small amount of time to actually create a game from start to finish which is worrying, however I am all too willing to give it a try and take the risk.
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
EDITING and SPECIAL EFFECTS
The team originally wanted to submit just a plain video however from the beginning I knew that editing would play a major role in fine tuning our project. A lot of our footage was quite bare and I felt did not convey what we wanted to show as strongly as I would have wanted it to. I really wanted to learn after effects as I never had the opportunity before so I nominated myself the lead of effects. It was only at this time in the project that we began to go our separate ways and isolate our workload on different areas of the film. I felt as though I did my absolute best in after effects, spending almost every waking hour of the week and a half designing and animating interfaces, however I cant help but feel I could have done more than just motion track. If I had dedicated all my time over the semester to after effects I could have constructed a masterpiece instead of squabbling with the group pointlessly over concepts.
I had a rough idea of what I wanted to place over the top of the film from the very beginning of the project. I wanted to implement I kind of interface that followed the money around highlighting the emotions of the people who interacted with the money. Once again, I felt this was important due to the fact that our film did not do our concept justice. The problem was that I had a week and a half to learn to the program before the due date. I was sure that I could use a program called Boujou to motion track for me however the footage we took was far too shaky for this program. It was very precise for slow moving footage. Evidently this shattered my hopes however I worked around this problem by using the inbult adobe motion tracker instead. It was not perfect but it did the job just fine. And probably saved me a lot of time looking back. I started off making simple interfaces and slowly learnt how to animate them better over time.
I slowly worked out a workflow within the program and simply rinsed and repeated the same pattern over and over. I tried not to reuse anything from prior clips just to keep things interesting. However I got to the point where I needed to do further research to discover a new range of designs. Minority report was a perfect example where I took out elements and combined them with others. Originally I planned only to have the effects at the interactions where the money was transferred but I chose to challenge myself and try animate as many scenes as possible with the interface without taking the attention away from the footage itself.
The interface follows the money around from person to person highlighting emotions as it travels its journey. It shows that no matter where or who you are, emotional attachments to money will always exist. There is no escaping the system that you are trapped within. I wanted to show not only emotions but also other aspects of money such as the way that people view you in society based on your worth. For example when the drug addict is walking through the tunnel with strangers staring at him, I highlighted words such as 'ignore, shock, and disgust.' This was done so show how people may in fact view someone differently based on their place in society and ultimately this can be connected back to money. I also wanted to show how money has very different meanings to people. An example of this is the juxtaposition between for example the mugger and the mother. The mugger mugged someone for 'street cred' as shown in the interface where as the mother put all here hope into a lotto ticket to pay off her excessive bills in order to support her family.
I also played a major role in the editing of the film in regards to removing certain unwanted elements and also learning Boris FX to insert the animated transitions between videos within adobe premier.
Overall I feel that we as a group accomplished a lot in the past few weeks. All it took was a little bit of pressure to kick us into gear. If only we could have found this drive earlier in the semester.
I had a rough idea of what I wanted to place over the top of the film from the very beginning of the project. I wanted to implement I kind of interface that followed the money around highlighting the emotions of the people who interacted with the money. Once again, I felt this was important due to the fact that our film did not do our concept justice. The problem was that I had a week and a half to learn to the program before the due date. I was sure that I could use a program called Boujou to motion track for me however the footage we took was far too shaky for this program. It was very precise for slow moving footage. Evidently this shattered my hopes however I worked around this problem by using the inbult adobe motion tracker instead. It was not perfect but it did the job just fine. And probably saved me a lot of time looking back. I started off making simple interfaces and slowly learnt how to animate them better over time.
I slowly worked out a workflow within the program and simply rinsed and repeated the same pattern over and over. I tried not to reuse anything from prior clips just to keep things interesting. However I got to the point where I needed to do further research to discover a new range of designs. Minority report was a perfect example where I took out elements and combined them with others. Originally I planned only to have the effects at the interactions where the money was transferred but I chose to challenge myself and try animate as many scenes as possible with the interface without taking the attention away from the footage itself.
The interface follows the money around from person to person highlighting emotions as it travels its journey. It shows that no matter where or who you are, emotional attachments to money will always exist. There is no escaping the system that you are trapped within. I wanted to show not only emotions but also other aspects of money such as the way that people view you in society based on your worth. For example when the drug addict is walking through the tunnel with strangers staring at him, I highlighted words such as 'ignore, shock, and disgust.' This was done so show how people may in fact view someone differently based on their place in society and ultimately this can be connected back to money. I also wanted to show how money has very different meanings to people. An example of this is the juxtaposition between for example the mugger and the mother. The mugger mugged someone for 'street cred' as shown in the interface where as the mother put all here hope into a lotto ticket to pay off her excessive bills in order to support her family.
I also played a major role in the editing of the film in regards to removing certain unwanted elements and also learning Boris FX to insert the animated transitions between videos within adobe premier.
Overall I feel that we as a group accomplished a lot in the past few weeks. All it took was a little bit of pressure to kick us into gear. If only we could have found this drive earlier in the semester.
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