Idea Building for Live Client Project

With my baseline research together with reference images and ideas beginning to formulate, the time came to get out the trusty pencils and pen and put those ideas on paper. My ideas for this game were starting to formulate around a multi room puzzle game, each room presenting a element of skill and problem solving applied in a different way to progress to the next stage or room. For this kind of idea for the game to work I had to get lots of ideas down as possibilities as potential problems and challenges I could build using the games engines systems I had most understanding of. The sketches below show some of my ideas I bashed out as preliminary ideas.



Now I had some preliminary ideas down it was time to take a quick break from them to consider which ideas were going to work best in the game. In this break I cracked out some rough designs on designs of items that could be made to go in and stylize the game. These designs are shown below.

Live Client Project: Initial Research

As with all projects its good to start at seeing what other people have produced on the subject area I will be making things for. As the theme set out by the brief is Atlantian, here are some of the images I looked at that other artists have done on conceptualising the Atlantis style.

Looking at the different conceptual designs it was clear to see most people had used either Roman or Aztecan style architecture as a base to build on their concepts. From this I went and searched into images on Roman and Aztec structures and buildings. Here are a few of the research images on their areas.

With these images as a reference point, I could now start to think about how I wanted the level to feel and also how I am going to go about structuring the puzzle and skill games that were going to be built into the overall game.

Live Client Project: Brief

For one of my projects in my final year I have to gain a client that works in the industry to over see the working progress of a project, that could in theory be used by them professionally. After much searching for a client, I finally got a brief that I could work to that is outlined below.

Brief description of the business need.

Design, build and construct a working computer game level.

The theme that will run throughout the game will be based on Atlantian Ruins

The aim of the project is to create a original map based on either a new game or pre-existing game.

The map can be of any style of play or design.

The level should be geared to target audience ages 12 and above, including intuitive design features that will challenge a player's in problem solving.

Design elements must be conservative to accommodate for medium spec computers to produce minimum lag.

A development diary must be kept to show the clear choice of design and development for the theme in achieving the best possible feel to the game.

Pre-existing assets (that have permission to be used) can be used but must be made up of mostly original assets.

Brief description of the multimedia products to be produced. E.g. website with database or broadcast quality format video or 3d animation of 30 seconds length etc.

Working model that can be played on hand in on disk at submission .

Full design diary or blog submitted with final product showing conceptualisation, design flow and problem solving throughout the project.

This pretty much sums up what I will be working to for the next 10 term time weeks. This should help people who are following my blog see what I am working to =)

Life Drawing and random sketches

As the title suggests I've been doing some work outside my course to keeping my drawing skills up. Here are some of the images. Enjoy =)

simulated client project and summer work continued post 3, story boards

As a supplement to the visual and audio aids inside the level I have designed I thought with a strong story line to work alongside the game it would push the moral understanding further than if the game just stood by itself. Here are a few story boards that I produced to give a preliminary introduction before the level that's a prologue for the main story, before it brings the player to the present with the present time. Please excuse the dramatic writing as I am by no means a script writer. The images are pre-existing images pulled off the internet to give a round about idea to the visuals that would be used in the cinematic, not as an overall representation, as most are just Google searched.

Opening Cinematic



Ending cinematic



I thought that with the aid of these cinematics the player would really get a sense that through playing the level and ignoring what the facility, protecting the corperation's hard work; they could really get a feeling that what they have done was wrong, in turn supplementing the subconscious learning aspect to the level.

simulated client project and summer work continued

continuing for the last post and the concept map drawing, I began to build my map from scratch. after a few teething problems with ut3 editor I transferred my work to UDK editor, I began sculpting the map terrain. I already had the idea for a hidden base in a jungle environment to make it see, like the corporations hiding the software were going to large lengths to protect their software, but also thought it controversial as a representation of all the treasure Britain still retains from other cultures that we are slowly giving back over time to the country's of origin taken at the times of the British empire. The route to the base was going to be quite linear so to make orientation though out the level pretty one way to the objective.


I progressively started building up the level bit by bit. adding different variations of static meshes making the environment more believable as I went.the working process is represented below in chronological order of photos.




so after all the static meshes had gone I worked on the lighting and special fx of the level and this pretty much brings me up to date with where I am ..... few lol




I'm currently working on new static meshes to go into my map so im sure there will be a new post about that soon. cheers =)

simulated client project and summer work

So final year begins and im not going to hide that im scared as hell! summer was a fun filled experience being back in my time warp town of which the people get older but don't move on much. Moving away from the drama and drabness ill start with my work over summer.
Over summer with the long hours of work trying to earn back some of my student overdraft I managed to draft up a sketch of a level design and build the geometry in unreal tournament 3 editor. this was based off a similar drawing but was revised to a design i thought would better work to help the movement about the map. as the only map really i have made was more of a way to show off my skill set in using the tool set I wanted to make a playable level this time. Here was the sketch of the revised level from top view.


The original design was based on a one floor approach where moving from room to room in a lateral sense was how you orientated the level. I felt that could be a bit restricting on the design over all so I devised this rough multilevel to encourage a high level of movement and ultimately more intense game play. This however was a very rough sketch, and as all rough sketches they always change in the process in the attempt to make it a more successful test project.
the images below show the build process of the level and the relevant changes in top, side, front and perspective views.


As you can see from the pictures of the top view they no longer really look like the original design. As i was following some of my ideas from the original idea I saw ways to utilize the space to give a freer flow of movement to the player. I started to apply materials and textures to the walls before static meshes but it came to the time of going back to uni so everything holted to pack move an settle in in my new fantastic flat! (good student digs are always a must)

First lecture in and a new project is set and with a four week turn around to boot. Time to start the ball rolling to how I will be in the rest of this year head down engrossed in work. as much as student can be I suppose =)

Our brief is to tackle the issue of/or informing about piracy, such as digital piracy in what every way we want. A pretty open project as we could choose to go pro or against piracy. Leaving this decision to students to make that kind of decision may have been a mean one as in little more than 6 months we will be looking for jobs it may be frowned upon if we decided to back piracy.....
So naturally my thought process was to incorporate being a digital pirate into a game (lets see how that works out for me =S).

I have never really had to think about a set story line into my games before as I have never really considered the idea of being a games story boarder and most of my experience was in the death match multiplayer area of games. There are probably too many multi player map designers coming out into industry so i thought i would try and push the boundairys a bit and design a objective style map where a player works towards a finish point getting collectables enabling the finish point after a certain number are collected.

Considering my brief I was working to in all of this, keeping in context its piracy nature, I went about setting some kind of storyline to work to before I went about the whole design. I am still amazed even to this day the learning potential of games as a whole. I find in enthralling that a child of 5 to 7 can have such a intricate knowledge base through playing games learning things that maybe a child that didn't play games would not. Most computer game playing children have a extensive knowledge of weapons in first person shooters that are real life weapons today, they also know about ancient civilizations that they explore that they may not learn about until older or studying history of cultures. Just through the interaction of the game they can learn so much about any era of subject matter the game is based on.

Taking things a bit more out of concept, Disney films old and new play on moral teaching to enhance their storyline, such as love and hate and good overcoming evil. Even though the child isn't actually engaging with the film for the moral understanding, me as a kid never watched it for the morals but more the interesting characters an animation, but the engagement causes a subconscious knowledge of right and wrong or what ever the films message was about.

In a similar way to the learning process of computer games and moral understanding in the subconscious I thought that I would put the player in the persona of the pirate trying to steal a piece of software, but through out game play informing players of consequence of what their damage their actions of stealing are causing through sound lighting and visuals.

I had a idea of a story building movie setting the scene of a money starved culture where stealing in any sense was become more prevalent. police were now becoming less powerful as they are now stretched capacity. corporations realising the instability's start moving underground to protect themselves and their products. piracy for many is a very tempting outcome of the modern society, making lifestyle cheaper and rich with accessibility, but not without great risk. The player is a pirate that has come to a far out and hidden facility so steal software for money, but finds that the consequences of his actions causes more instability to society causing corporations to go into liquidation, causing humanity to go into regression. Ultimately the player would move towards becoming a saviour by taking back from pirates what they stole and returning the vital developments back to the corperations to atone for his sins.

Being realistic a game of that much intensity isn't what i could do start to finish in 4 weeks so i wanted to do like the prologue where the pirate steals the software sucsessfully whilst playing through the level I was to design and sends the world into chaos, as this holds the most weighting morally of the game.

few now that the explanation of my thought process is over now to some of the designs. =D
this is a top down view of my original design of the map lay out