AAAAAAaarrrrrrrrrrgh! But more on that later -
We kicked off the day by determining what elements of the game really promoted our concept. This was a really good exercise as it allowed us to streamline the idea and retain the core mechanics as well as mold the players focus around these actions. First and foremost we want everything the player does in the world to be fun.
This will mainly be derived from creating comedy situations using the nudge arrow. Were currently building a list of events so watch out for the live lobster and errant dog!
At this stage it is now really important to make sure we have a strong art style with lots of nice touches that really give the game world its own look and feel. A large part of this will be on the character such as opening of the wings and how he draws the bow etc.
The mechanics of the day / night cycle are out, and whilst they still exist are only there for aesthetics to show off some of our fancy dynamic shadows and nice colored light trails from the arrows. Also gone is the info arrow in favour of the new "spark system". Since the majority of the missions take place outside we thought it would be really nice to see sparks fly when two compatible individuals cross paths. turns out me and Cactus jack arn't so compatible :(
Today rowen knocked up a compatibility prototype, after a brief wrestle with getting simultaneous path generation, of 2 NPC's crossing paths. A compatibility % is then generated by a personality array, which directly affects the intensity / amount of sparks generated. Rich also nailed down the HUD icons and arrow colours and is currently in the process of adding illumination to the arrows which ought to provide some real nice graphical touches.
Art wise Dave worked on some more sketches and started colouring buildings to give us a feel for how the world looks. We imagined it as a very Mediterranean urban area with influences from new countries such as America / Australia. Its amazing how much thought needs to be given to art direction as thats what shapes the look and feel of your world. Ross also began blocking out the game world which was really good as it allowed us to play about with height levels and work out how things would be set up (logically) in the world, as well as building up some of Daves sketches ready for texturing and importing.
We also found out today that the first round of judging is done by the general public, hence the panic. We were initially concerned that with only 5 minutes of play time the user might not get the topic (admittedly the majority of flapping was done by myself). This was really good as it allowed us to evaluate how we are engaging users from the outset and how we are handling our art style to be as inclusive as possible. Ultimately we realized that we don't need to change how our game is progressing to make a relatively small, but vocal hardcore (that may not even be present) influence the way the project looks and plays. An important part will be getting as many playable builds up as possible in our ten weeks to get as much feedback as possible, hopefully we should have our first one before too long for upload ^^
Been a fairly solid day, finished off some adminy stuff such as more contracts to sign as well as confiring names etc for flights to Scotland for Protoplay :). More next week when we will have loads of art, etc as well as a formal weekly update on the dare site as well as news of our personality profiling ! ?! ^^
Friday 8 June 2007
Thursday 7 June 2007
DAY 2 ... Epicness begins
So today we all hooked up at 8:30 and headed off to EA ready to start our first day of work (after loading up on cold pizza and caffeine ^^)
Today was an uber productive day - maybe because twice the monitors = x2 the productivity. After discovering Ross's HDD was a bit defective we sat down to have a meeting to decide how to start the project. First our Gantt chart went out the window as we made a design choice that profoundly affected our game world . We decided to eschew the linear street plan in favor of a small floating city, in a similar manner to a wind waker island. This was primarily because the street model didnt really create the game play we imagined.
We finally managed to determine the kind of scale we would want to work too, as it was hard to balance the sort of small island based world with the kind of population we had in mind. We all really happy now that we have managed to come up with something that is both exciting to make and feasible. We wanted to make sure the Plaza acted as our central play point, acting as a facilitator for NPC's to meet and interact.
We have now nailed down path finding, and realized that building curved paths not as hellish as we anticipated. Rich also added arrow lighting effects and Rowen finalized dynamic shadows with multiple objects.
Oh we also thought it would be awesome to add a crucifix on top of our church to get a cool cross shadow as it turns into night ^_^
The best thing about today was it enabled us to get a really good start on the project and map out how were going to progress over the next 9 weeks. Hopefully (fingers crossed) well have our map extruded tomorrow with basic block buildings, and get something you can walk and shoot arrows round. If we do well try and get it uploaded !
Oh and Rowen "or ill walk" Holts maverick T-pot rampage and Grand Theft Epilepsy were born in the name of progress / science!
Today was an uber productive day - maybe because twice the monitors = x2 the productivity. After discovering Ross's HDD was a bit defective we sat down to have a meeting to decide how to start the project. First our Gantt chart went out the window as we made a design choice that profoundly affected our game world . We decided to eschew the linear street plan in favor of a small floating city, in a similar manner to a wind waker island. This was primarily because the street model didnt really create the game play we imagined.
We finally managed to determine the kind of scale we would want to work too, as it was hard to balance the sort of small island based world with the kind of population we had in mind. We all really happy now that we have managed to come up with something that is both exciting to make and feasible. We wanted to make sure the Plaza acted as our central play point, acting as a facilitator for NPC's to meet and interact.
We also started an NPC and modeled our church which represents the focal point and starting area for the game, and decided it should be relatively isolated. The top of the church represents the height ceiling for the player character to ensure that people cant just fly in a straight line and are forced to navigate the world. Flight time from one side of the other should be about 1 minute to keep the time to fun short.
All this helped us determined floor heights and max building scales as well as enabling us to make a finalized map with building layouts (we took the opportunity to give ourselves an office on our new island opposite the pub :) ) and decided that most NPC interaction with the environment will take place outside.
We have now nailed down path finding, and realized that building curved paths not as hellish as we anticipated. Rich also added arrow lighting effects and Rowen finalized dynamic shadows with multiple objects.
Oh we also thought it would be awesome to add a crucifix on top of our church to get a cool cross shadow as it turns into night ^_^
The best thing about today was it enabled us to get a really good start on the project and map out how were going to progress over the next 9 weeks. Hopefully (fingers crossed) well have our map extruded tomorrow with basic block buildings, and get something you can walk and shoot arrows round. If we do well try and get it uploaded !
Oh and Rowen "or ill walk" Holts maverick T-pot rampage and Grand Theft Epilepsy were born in the name of progress / science!
DAY 1
Wow- where to start!
Yesterday was the first day of Dare. Ill try to give you an account of what happened but by the end of the day all our minds were pretty much mush.
We all met up at the station and headed over to our uni accommodation to dump the stuff. Its pretty nice rooms with some really nice views and possibly the thinnest doors ever conceived by man. We've got a communal eating area / kitchen so its all pretty nice and functional. We got time to speak to the other teams and the Dare staff while we waited before heading off to EA.
So we all met up and got in - signed some contracts and went through general security procedures before we assembled for team photos. Busted out some of our best boy band poses as the guy took reams and reams of photos. Little did we know it was going to be a long camera heavy day and soon after we headed up stairs for a massive group photo. Ill have to try and find some copies - i'm pretty sure they will be going up on the Dare site.
http://www.daretobedigital.com/news/news_image.php?storyno=229&pic=2
After this we went through our induction - signing more paperwork and getting all our kit tested. The workstations we have set up are amazing! I'll see if were allowed to take photos to show you guys. Every one has a dual monitor set up with brand new PC's courtesy of AMD. Being in EA it means we have everything we need kit wise and some of the most pimping chairs ever weighing in at £600 a pop ^_^
Cant really describe how epic the day was really. After lunch we had more photo / video calls recreating our failed attempt to enter the building first time that resulted in a 20 geek stack outside the building. After riding the escalator 3 or 4 times in what were sure was some kind of MIB aptitude test we were pretty much free to start getting to grips with our workstations. Being team #1 has its benefits as well s its curses, in this case being the prime victim for the Film guy.
Already imposing due the Sarlac like lens he had on his beast camera, its hard to maintain any kind of cool when your told its going to be a channel 4 documentary, considering it had already been an early morning and pretty mind blowingly intense day. So we did a few interviews and got to meet all our mentors for the next 10 weeks. They're all really cool, especially considering they do it all voluntarily around their other work, usually in lunch breaks or outside of office hours.
The afternoon ended up with a sort of icebreaker event with mountains of free pizza and beer, followed up with a trip to the pub. Got to speak with the guys who interviewed us in a bit more detail (alot of talking about Syndiate to loads of ex-bullfrog guys) and get to talk about loads of interesting stuff with members of EA. It was great to talk to people about our concept and it was encouraging to hear they had all heard about "the love game"- to be honest I think we were all a taken aback with how much enthusiasm, time and effort the EA and Dare team have put in for us and so now were really keen to get on an make something awesome :D
Lucid Dreams
Yesterday was the first day of Dare. Ill try to give you an account of what happened but by the end of the day all our minds were pretty much mush.
We all met up at the station and headed over to our uni accommodation to dump the stuff. Its pretty nice rooms with some really nice views and possibly the thinnest doors ever conceived by man. We've got a communal eating area / kitchen so its all pretty nice and functional. We got time to speak to the other teams and the Dare staff while we waited before heading off to EA.
So we all met up and got in - signed some contracts and went through general security procedures before we assembled for team photos. Busted out some of our best boy band poses as the guy took reams and reams of photos. Little did we know it was going to be a long camera heavy day and soon after we headed up stairs for a massive group photo. Ill have to try and find some copies - i'm pretty sure they will be going up on the Dare site.
http://www.daretobedigital.com/news/news_image.php?storyno=229&pic=2
After this we went through our induction - signing more paperwork and getting all our kit tested. The workstations we have set up are amazing! I'll see if were allowed to take photos to show you guys. Every one has a dual monitor set up with brand new PC's courtesy of AMD. Being in EA it means we have everything we need kit wise and some of the most pimping chairs ever weighing in at £600 a pop ^_^
Cant really describe how epic the day was really. After lunch we had more photo / video calls recreating our failed attempt to enter the building first time that resulted in a 20 geek stack outside the building. After riding the escalator 3 or 4 times in what were sure was some kind of MIB aptitude test we were pretty much free to start getting to grips with our workstations. Being team #1 has its benefits as well s its curses, in this case being the prime victim for the Film guy.
Already imposing due the Sarlac like lens he had on his beast camera, its hard to maintain any kind of cool when your told its going to be a channel 4 documentary, considering it had already been an early morning and pretty mind blowingly intense day. So we did a few interviews and got to meet all our mentors for the next 10 weeks. They're all really cool, especially considering they do it all voluntarily around their other work, usually in lunch breaks or outside of office hours.
The afternoon ended up with a sort of icebreaker event with mountains of free pizza and beer, followed up with a trip to the pub. Got to speak with the guys who interviewed us in a bit more detail (alot of talking about Syndiate to loads of ex-bullfrog guys) and get to talk about loads of interesting stuff with members of EA. It was great to talk to people about our concept and it was encouraging to hear they had all heard about "the love game"- to be honest I think we were all a taken aback with how much enthusiasm, time and effort the EA and Dare team have put in for us and so now were really keen to get on an make something awesome :D
Lucid Dreams
Monday 4 June 2007
Desire FX
So what is our game I hear you cry ?!
Well to give you a brief idea, you play the role of cupid in a kind of contemporary idealistic setting. its your job to navigate the world and set people up in happy couples. Heres some artwork to whet your appetite!
Gameplay wise its a heady mix of a few well know genres / mechanics (very post modern!) think the free roaming environments of GTA meets the ethereal power of Black and White, with the personalities of a Sims title.
Of course you have a range of angelic abilities to help you including flight, and most importantly 4 types of magical arrows that affect the inhabitants of Green Bay Valley.
Hopefully this will give you an idea of what were going for - comments section is enabled so if this sparks your imagination or you have any feed back we'd love hear your thoughts!
^^
Lucid Dream Team
Well to give you a brief idea, you play the role of cupid in a kind of contemporary idealistic setting. its your job to navigate the world and set people up in happy couples. Heres some artwork to whet your appetite!
Gameplay wise its a heady mix of a few well know genres / mechanics (very post modern!) think the free roaming environments of GTA meets the ethereal power of Black and White, with the personalities of a Sims title.
Of course you have a range of angelic abilities to help you including flight, and most importantly 4 types of magical arrows that affect the inhabitants of Green Bay Valley.
Hopefully this will give you an idea of what were going for - comments section is enabled so if this sparks your imagination or you have any feed back we'd love hear your thoughts!
^^
Lucid Dream Team
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