A little bit of Country, A little bit of Rock n Roll

Over the past week after finally deciding on which game design I was going to produce, that being the one that I designed for the previous year. I decided to go over it with and see what aspects of the game I wasn't completely settled with and what I think wouldn't work well in terms of outcome or the actual possibility of it being made.

Not only that but I also looked over the deadline diary and looked through it to see how I could link these into my overall product in order to make it flow a lot smoother. So with that in mind I decided I would use the assignment for AV Production as an opportunity to create the main character for my game and I thought what would be cooler than having me as the main character in the game seeing as we will be using the FaceGen software and applying our faces to this model that we would be creating for the cutscene.

Then seeing as we are making a Cutscene for our assignment I thought it would be good idea to make a Cutscene for the game as well as making the actual playable level, so as you can see those assignments go hand in hand with each other and will make the actual process a lot smoother. Instead of having to make other assets for other products and having it feel like you're being rushed and not being able to produce high quality work.

Over the past week I have been battling with the idea of how I wan't the game to look. Originally I wanted the game to be a Cell Shaded game but after talking it over with some of my fellow course mates it came apparent that maybe trying to make it a Cell Shaded game would be more taxing on time and resources than I had first considered. From this I decided I would just mention in the game design that Ideally I would like the game to be a Cell Shaded game as I love playing Cell Shaded games as they add another element of fun to the game, not saying that it's the best look for a game but it has that special quality to it. But I do enjoy on the over hand the crisp and rugged look you can get from the standard 3D look.

When I had decided on that I then revised the actual theme of the Game that being the Medieval/Futuristic feel to the game and originally I wanted the game to be very futuristic with medieval qualities but my heart has changed where I want the look and feel of the game to be very Medieval but have a Futuristic back drop, where you can go to other planets and the weapons are energy based. However the architecture and clothing/armour is very medieval, the look of the characters will be highly influenced by the HBO TV Series Game of Thrones as the look for each of the cultures from that show fits perfect to how I want my characters to look.

Now for my final thought and point, the level design because I have made these changes in terms of look and how want the game to look and feel, I had to alter the Level Design of which I'm going to create as I wasn't entirely comfortable with what it was that I had in mind. Because originally I had it so you were going to kill the leader of the opposition but they are aware of your mission and set out to capture you, which then adds a second objective to the level which in turn overrides the first one which is now you must get back to your ship which you don't actually succeed in doing.

Aims for the upcoming week, will be to hopefully come close to a completed draft of my GDD and get started on properly producing my character for the Cutscene, however I do feel that I still need a few more days just messing around with the software just getting to grips on what to do and how I can create what it is I aim to create.

Introduction and Influences

Hello my name is Ross Fielding and I will be creating this blog in order to document my progress as I produce my game for the second year of my course. Not only will I be talking about my thoughts and decisions I hope to see worked out, I will also be demonstrating this with accompanying videos of either me talking or just a quick video which records some of the work whether it's in progress or reaching its final stages. During each week I will note down any thoughts or new decisions after making a weekly plan.

For this first entry I will be covering the game design choice.

To note I have chosen to go with the concept which I designed for the assignment at the end of the first year.

Over the summer I have been debating with myself which design I should do. Although it probably wasn't the design of the game I was more curious about when it came to making up my mind, it was more the story and why it was you were playing the game. Even though I'm not much of a story player when it comes to the games I buy but I do love the story element of the game. This probably because I have a love for story more so in song, film's, history and the present day.

Originally when I was first contemplating the design of my game it was going to be an RTS as I thought it would be interesting to make one using the CryEngine and maybe it would show off some skill. However it would require a lot of knowledge when it comes to programming AI and when I was studying the CryEngine my worst part was learning about how to use AI. So instead of going for the typical FPS game which was hinted to be a not so original choice. From this I decided to make it a 3rd Person shooter which I find adds more flavour to the game as you can actually see the character that you are playing and I think actually makes the player feel more for the character as they can actually see the character.

From this I then chose to go with a visual style that I thought would be interesting to work with and that would be Cell Shaded, now I thought it would look interesting with the actual theme of the game which was a Medieval/Futuristic look, some would say this is a comparison to a steam punk look however the actual thought process was inspired by the game Crackdown even though that's just modern day mixed with futuristic I could still visualise how the game could look and be played out.

When coming up with the story for the game I was very much into my European politics at the time and the huge controversy about how they were going about things not only that but the very strong views and opinions held by certain parties such as UKIP and others with the parliament. Not only that but I would also take influences from how the EU came about especially after the events of WW2. Because I'm very much into these topics it seemed ideal that I could create a story with these two elements of history and current affairs to help mould a universe in the distant future where it felt like I could get across something people might actually be comprehending as an actual possibility in our life time and convey within a game.

However once the assignment had been done with and a few weeks had gone by, I started to get influenced by other things and once again thinking about story ideas, I felt like the idea that I had made for the assignment wasn't that good mainly due to the game element as I was thinking about other stories and how they could played out and because I was in a group over the summer where we were considering on doing an action adventure puzzle game which is something I would never have considered doing before, it definitely made me think when it came to writing a story for it which I actually enjoyed the process and actually came up with a pretty decent story.

As the months went on I actually watched the 2009 Film Avatar for the first time and was truly enchanted by the world that was created and even though people say that the story in Avatar wasn't really original I still felt that it was well told. I've always said that it's not what the story is about, it's how it's told. Not only that but the cast of the film was brilliant.

However that film haunted my mind for the following few weeks and really inspired me to want to make a game with a similar story line to that however there would be no way I could get away with that. Or at least something similar to the basic story line of that film.

Not only that but because I love my history I was seeing this basic story come through in many moments in history and it made me want to take that piece of history and turn into a game, or just take that piece of history and create my own world with influences from those events and convey them in a totally new world with new characters.

This year I want to actually try and get to grasps with soundtrack production because I absolutely love the music within the games that I play and half the time just hearing the amazing music that they have produced for the titles makes me want to play them. For example Rome Total War has been out since 2004 and all it takes is one soundtrack on my iTunes to make me want to go back on it. I truly think that audio really empowers the game and adds that extra layer of excellence.

Even though this has been pretty much a huge ramble I hope this really gets across my thought process when it came to designing my concept and the battling thoughts I had when deciding what I was going to go with.