Environment - the world in which the player inhabits is the subconscious mind of a person who is soon to die, it gives a representation of how the person in question perceives the world and what has happened to mould and shape them into the person that they are at the end of their days. The landscape is constantly changing throughout the game depending on what part of the person the player is exploring, in this instance it is the emotions of someone who has serious problems letting people in, letting people see emotions because of things in their past, a private person who wants it kept that way, they have built a fortress around their heart to stop anything from hurting it, getting to know this person has been described as a proverbial "mine field"
the player is there to try and unlock the reasons behind the massive fortress surrounding the heart, rather than trying to cure it they are just searching for the information they need to give this soon to be deceased the peace and rest they are entitled to after death.
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Mood boards for level
Location & environment
The level will take place in a tower that is set on a floating pillar, the player will begin the level outside the tower walking in and being able to see the scale of the barriers infront of them before they enter.
The level will be set in no particular time period as its set inside of someones subconcious.
I will use the evening red sky dome in udk to give the area an orange glow, inside of the tower it will be well lit and become dimmer by either dimming the lights with colour tints or just havving a sparser number without impeding the players gameplay.
The level will be set in no particular time period as its set inside of someones subconcious.
I will use the evening red sky dome in udk to give the area an orange glow, inside of the tower it will be well lit and become dimmer by either dimming the lights with colour tints or just havving a sparser number without impeding the players gameplay.
Ideas 3 & Purpose
I ended up scrapping the idea of using a side scroller, for the ammount of time i would of spent learning how to do simple mechanics and systems i could of created a better level just using the default camera setting, which is now what i am using.
I like the idea of using my games concept as a premise for this level as it is still quite open and gives me the freedom to do what id like.
The concept of my origional game in a summary: An exploration game, in which the player must learn and empathise with the subconsious of the soon to be deceased and make the correct judgement to send them to their ideal afterlife.
I thought of the idea of creating a level based on a person who would have "barriers" around their personality, emotions or heart and building a physical fort around this concept that the player would have to traverse. After the player has "Broken through the emotional barriers" they woukd be rewarded with the reasons behond the persons emotional barriers etc.
Purpose & Feature
I love the concept of this level being a tower that the player enters, being able to see high up to the top being able to see their goal/objective of the heart at the top and being able to see the segmented tower that they have to climb.
origionally i was thinking of it playing out like a maze level similar to this sketch
I spoke to my tutor about this idea and realised a straight up maze isnt actually good gameplay, its tedious and quite boring, so i decided to change it into a tiered system with diffrent challanges the player would face to give it some good gameplay, i watched my tutor do a run through of his level design workflow using udk as the engine, he used portals to create a deathmatch map and after looking into it, the portals seem a really good way of connecting the tiered levels of the tower without giving too much away to the player about where they actually are in the level, still giving that lost feeling that a maze would achive.
I felt with the subject of the level being barriers around emotions the feeling of being quite lost would play asubstantial role as people with these kind of emotional troubles also tend to have this feeling of being lost, however there are people that keep their emotions in check for a whole array of reasons, this is not me being ignorant to these other types, t just dosent fit what i am trying to go for.
the fact that the tower is tiered aswell links as a clue to the afterlife of the person as i detailed an afterlife in which people strive to better themselves which was depicted by a large tower that can be scaled.
i want the player to empathise and really feel how the person this level symbolises would feel, the corridoors are tall and narrow, i want them to be quick and slightly disorentating which is why i didnt want the player to have too much of an idea where they were in the level, maybe a slight variation as they get closer to the center more deteriorated as it gets closer to the center.
I like the idea of using my games concept as a premise for this level as it is still quite open and gives me the freedom to do what id like.
The concept of my origional game in a summary: An exploration game, in which the player must learn and empathise with the subconsious of the soon to be deceased and make the correct judgement to send them to their ideal afterlife.
I thought of the idea of creating a level based on a person who would have "barriers" around their personality, emotions or heart and building a physical fort around this concept that the player would have to traverse. After the player has "Broken through the emotional barriers" they woukd be rewarded with the reasons behond the persons emotional barriers etc.
Purpose & Feature
I love the concept of this level being a tower that the player enters, being able to see high up to the top being able to see their goal/objective of the heart at the top and being able to see the segmented tower that they have to climb.
origionally i was thinking of it playing out like a maze level similar to this sketch
I spoke to my tutor about this idea and realised a straight up maze isnt actually good gameplay, its tedious and quite boring, so i decided to change it into a tiered system with diffrent challanges the player would face to give it some good gameplay, i watched my tutor do a run through of his level design workflow using udk as the engine, he used portals to create a deathmatch map and after looking into it, the portals seem a really good way of connecting the tiered levels of the tower without giving too much away to the player about where they actually are in the level, still giving that lost feeling that a maze would achive.
I felt with the subject of the level being barriers around emotions the feeling of being quite lost would play asubstantial role as people with these kind of emotional troubles also tend to have this feeling of being lost, however there are people that keep their emotions in check for a whole array of reasons, this is not me being ignorant to these other types, t just dosent fit what i am trying to go for.
the fact that the tower is tiered aswell links as a clue to the afterlife of the person as i detailed an afterlife in which people strive to better themselves which was depicted by a large tower that can be scaled.
i want the player to empathise and really feel how the person this level symbolises would feel, the corridoors are tall and narrow, i want them to be quick and slightly disorentating which is why i didnt want the player to have too much of an idea where they were in the level, maybe a slight variation as they get closer to the center more deteriorated as it gets closer to the center.
Monday, 21 January 2013
Ideas_2
After going away and thinking about the game level i relaised i was more focused on the games aestetics and story rather than its core mechanics and design, this module is based around fun and interesting gameplay based upon our theme, mine being whimsical worlds. so ive scrapped my origonal idea of an open exploration game or a maze in favour of something a little diffrent.
i started thinking about how attainable a side scroller would be, after looking on epic games website i found the camera coding. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CameraTechnicalGuide.html#Example Side-Scrolling Camera
which is excellent as i am not a coder this allows me to do it quickly without too much stress.
i started looking into diffrent tutorials to create diffrent things, such as item pick ups, control schemes and physics to make it more interesting.
i even looked at combining the controls of some with diffrent camera andles such as an isometric camera, if it lets me use the isometric camera with the controll schemes (i am about to test this) it seems like a nice loking game design.
_____
The tutorial didnt work as i would of liked it to an error kept occuring that didnt allow me to use a player asset and caused the game to shut down without anything that the player could interact with. i then spoke to my tutor who advised me to check a few other methods and evaluate my skill set and create a game level based on that.
it may be worth me going back to an exploration map and thinking of ways to make it more interesting.
i started thinking about how attainable a side scroller would be, after looking on epic games website i found the camera coding. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CameraTechnicalGuide.html#Example Side-Scrolling Camera
which is excellent as i am not a coder this allows me to do it quickly without too much stress.
i started looking into diffrent tutorials to create diffrent things, such as item pick ups, control schemes and physics to make it more interesting.
i even looked at combining the controls of some with diffrent camera andles such as an isometric camera, if it lets me use the isometric camera with the controll schemes (i am about to test this) it seems like a nice loking game design.
_____
The tutorial didnt work as i would of liked it to an error kept occuring that didnt allow me to use a player asset and caused the game to shut down without anything that the player could interact with. i then spoke to my tutor who advised me to check a few other methods and evaluate my skill set and create a game level based on that.
it may be worth me going back to an exploration map and thinking of ways to make it more interesting.
Monday, 14 January 2013
Level design - Ideas
I have started to think aboutwhat i could do with the level that we have to create for this segment of the module, in this we are creating a functional level in udk that is focused on the design and flow of a level rather than the art assests, it will last between 3-5 minutes and contain no built assets, just udk's own assets and blocks.
my initial idea was to stick to the game idea i had for my games concept at the beginning of the year, using a persons subconsious mind as the basis for the level.
usng this gives me the following information :
after i thought of this i opened up udk to re familiarize myself withthe programme to see what i am actually capable of creating in the 6 weeks given, i found that the place holder assets didnt fit in with what i wanted but i also didnt want to spend ages putting diffrent art styled assets together, it would make it look to jumbled, i did however find this site:
http://udkresources.com/
which has some lovely materials on that i may use instead and just put them over the block brushes to give the level some kind of context rather than just blue and white blocks. ill have to keep thinking of ideas however and keep it within my own capabilities.
my initial idea was to stick to the game idea i had for my games concept at the beginning of the year, using a persons subconsious mind as the basis for the level.
usng this gives me the following information :
- it would be an exploration game
- no enemies
- gives me the freedom to explore what i want in udk
- depending on the persons mind, it could be a happy bright level or a dark one, or an intelligent mixture of the two
- gives me the option of it being a puzzle/exploration game
after i thought of this i opened up udk to re familiarize myself withthe programme to see what i am actually capable of creating in the 6 weeks given, i found that the place holder assets didnt fit in with what i wanted but i also didnt want to spend ages putting diffrent art styled assets together, it would make it look to jumbled, i did however find this site:
http://udkresources.com/
which has some lovely materials on that i may use instead and just put them over the block brushes to give the level some kind of context rather than just blue and white blocks. ill have to keep thinking of ideas however and keep it within my own capabilities.
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