Been working a little on the mood boards for Jo and thinking about the character related stuff. So far, we`re only really set on a "Doctor" character as the main antagonist, along with the setting of Victorian-age (1800s?) and Steampunk in nature. So with that, I did a few sketches and stuff, pretty generic stuff not really thrilled with it as a character design, but I think it goes well as a moody piece. (for my mood board, get it?)
Anyway, here was the first sketch I did:
Was sort of roughly based on the doctor character, sketches on the desk were meant to be early designs which would later become his labyrinth maze thing. I think the point of this character was meant to be he is at his wits end with his research, mentally and physically exhausted. I wanted this to be a little obvious in the character although I didn't think I did a very good job of it, ha.
Will be redrawing this guy and thinking outside the box a little, hopefully next time you will get a little more of a vibe from him rather than generic man in suit.
Regardless of that however, I wanted to play around with it in Photoshop and it eventually turned into this chap:
There is a chair, its just the same colour as the background...
Keeping in mind everything I didn't like about the initial sketch (generic-ness) I wanted to stop the idea from being a generic man in a suit. So, to combat this problem, I added a bow-tie and he became a well dressed generic man in a tuxedo. Which I think says alot more about the character....
No, whilst his attire I don't think was very Doctor / Super Villain / Mad Scientist, I did think his pose and expression did what I wanted it to, although Ill let you be the judge. Regardless, this was work slightly related to Futureworks so I feel its bloggable.
Oh and before any smug git points it out, yes, I have noticed this:
Sad Keanu would look better in a tuxedo.
FML.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Fez
So I have something to post about that is both interesting an relevant to Design research (woo) and what that is, is a game called Fez.
I've wanted to write about this game since my friend Taro pointed it out to me and I checked up the PAX11 videos and releases, it still hurts my head a little to watch the game; it defies my concept of reality and actually gives me a little headache too.
At first glance, Fez seems like any other 2D Platformer, we have floating blocks, collectibles and the like, with the only seemingly thing interesting being the games unique visual style.
Oh, but then this shit happens:
Oh...my...
I cant really explain the feeling I received when I saw this for the first time, it was pretty incredible. This is the first time I've seen a game toy with the players concept of perspective in such a unique and interesting way, something which sticks in your mind and helps cement Fez to memory as, "that weird game that's both 2D and 3D". What a title to hold. I seem to remember a Mario game on the Wii not long ago attempt a similar perspective shift to Fez, however it always felt a little gimmicky to me. Fez seems to have the need to shift perspective built into the core gameplay, allowing the player to search all 4 sides of the block like structures and find hidden passageways and collectibles; essentially multiplying by a factor of 4 the amount of fun you could have with a simple 2D platform game.
Fez reminds me of the video game equivalent to a prototype gaming project I saw at a museum once in Liverpool. The basic concept of this, was 3 real life cubes each with 6 sides, coloured differently and individually. The used needed to rotate and fiddle with the cubes, stacking them and moving them to navigate an avatar to the finish, displayed on a projector screen above the cubes.
When the player changed a cube to face a different side, a small camera would not the change and update the onscreen projector changing the room the players avatar was standing in; likewise adjoining cubes together allowed the character to move between cubes (and therefore access new rooms). Its all very confusing. (but I hear apple is working on something similar to release as an actual gaming console / platform, probably called the iCube (lol)).
Thankfully, it looks like Fez has managed to achieve this same concept inside the virtual world. It looks visually stimulating and genuinely interesting as a puzzle and platform game. It remains to be seen if the perspective shift has been worked well enough into the gameplay to keep the game fun throughout, however first impressions are everything.
In any case, Fez has done an amazing job of grabbing my attention simply with this core mechanic alone. Merging the line between 2D and 3D has shown just how far innovation goes rather than a big budget and big studios.
Polytron, the Indy company behind the game consist of just 2 guys. That's all. It says something when 2 guys can grab hold of and keep my attention for longer than studios like Activision, (whom I hear are releasing a new game in November?)
This game has only strengthened my desire to create a two-dimensional game of my own and hopefully spurred my ideas on-wards to become more thought provoking and engaging for the end user. We are at a time now, graphically and technologically, when games in this format are no longer confined to Flash websites and last longer than a throwaway 5 minutes during a long lunch-break at the office, now we have games that hold the same weight as "the next Call of Duty". We have games that turn heads and get people talking, not just about the games big budget, not because of the studio behind it, not because its a sequel to a sequel but down to the one core thing most big video game companies seem to overlook; because it looks like a fucking awesome idea.
The "dawn of 2D" is certainly upon us and with formats like XBLA and Steam at our disposal, I really think its time we joined the bandwagon folks...
The pages, they look so bare...First blog post can be semi related to Futureworks with some screenshots of Dead Wood! That's right.
Dead Wood
For those of you who don't know, Dead Wood was the rough as hell game build I created for the 2nd Assignment during my Programming module. The game was written in C# and compiled with XnA and based somewhat off an idea I had in college. Additionally the Art (if you can call it that) was created by me, although I did steal the music....
The rough idea was to create a survival style game with a variable number of spawning enemies that would attack the player. This idea then spiraled and I was able to add some form of theme under the horror / zombie genre, as well as extra game-play mechanics.
Enemies attempt to surround the player, spawning from of screen.
As the night progresses and the sun sets, the forest becomes increasingly darker bringing with it advancing numbers of zombies to slaughter. Late into the night the player is pitted against vast numbers of enemies increasing in number and difficulty. Whilst ammo is infinite, timing reloads is key; making the wrong choice could leave the player vulnerable to an attack.
Dogs are faster enemy types, although are much easier to kill.
Health and Weapon pick ups allow the player to replenish health reserves aswell as have access to unlimted ammo stocks for a short period of time. The ultimate goal of the game is to survive the night, beginning at 7PM and ending at sun rise.
The players final score is calculated.
Finally, the players High Score is calculated if either death occurs or the player survives to sunrise. The score takes into consideration the amount of hours survived as well as the amount of kills the player has attained.
The Game was built with what little coding I and the class picked up over the short introduction to C#, its not a "finished" game, but it is something you can play from start to finish and it does have some form of challenge in the way of the score modifier. I would like to ideally continue with this project and add some more features such as weapons, levels as well as more enemy types and maybe even characters; all possibilities although are very time consuming.
I hear the programmers will be designing a 2D engine to run a class wide Assignment project this term, which is exciting. I would think it better to hold off any form of recreational game design or programming until I am deep into college orientated work; partially to allow time to work on college assignments however also to attempt an improvement in my programming ability; assuming that`s a possibility. We`ll see how it goes, however this post looks like I actually had some content to add to my blog! If this is anything like my last college blog, in the coming weeks it will be filled with horribly worded research into game and film media as well as a multitude of complaints and moans about life; and stuff.
