Week Summary

This is the first week back since being off from university for two weeks. On Monday, we had a lecture which our tutor gave us details on what to expect this term. We were given our first project which is to make a game in the next coming weeks in a team of 5 (Olivia,Ben L,Ben R, Curtis). Our polished game will then be playable at the Norwich gaming festival for the public to play at the end of May to June. I managed to make a team quickly, we are a good mix of concept artists, environment and character artists,3D modellers, blueprinting and level design, I am happy with the team. We decided after Mondays lecture to go to a pub and go over some ideas for our game. In the end, we decided to set the game theme in a rain forest/Jungle we also decided to not do a first-person game but a 3D top down game instead. We had a few ideas on Monday but nothing was set in stone.

On Tuesday, me and the team all got together to go over our game idea a little more, after this meeting we had our idea which we have stuck with. Our game is going to be called 'Treasure Trials' (This could change). The aim of the game is that you play as a treasure hunter who has crash landed in a rain forest island, you will need to collect as many pieces of treasure to get a high score but there will be a time limit. The player will need to find their way to a boat that has been called to rescue you. We aim to place in obstacles to such as tribe people that will block your way and stop you collecting their treasure, traps will also be added like spear walls, pits you can fall in and others. In the game, also we were thinking of making the game set in darkness and only a torch is to guide you around this will give the game a creepy atmosphere and to give a challenge for the player.

On Wednesday, we had a Contextual studies lecture 'Creating your own quest'. We looked at how to structure academic writing. A 1000-word written research report will need to be written and submitted at the end of term. This is themed on what my dissertation will be written about. At this moment of time I am still unsure on what this will be.

On Thursday, we had a group crit we were discussing ideas that we may have in mind for our research report and our collaboration game project.

In the week I put together a mood board for the game for what the characters and the style they may be. I took this task as my main focus is character design.

 Some references for the main character (Treasure hunter).

 These are some references for the tribe people.

These image show some different styles that our game could be, we wanted to go with a cartoon like theme.

During the week I drew some character concept pieces for the game. Below are some rough head designs for the main character and body silhouettes for the tribe character, also I drew two final concepts for the two character types.

 As a team we decided to go with design number 5.

 As a team we decided to go with design number 1/3.

Main character final, we wanted to go with the typical dark haired male inspired by Uncharted video game character 'Nathan Drake'. 

 This is the tribe character final design, these character will try to stop you during game play.

Others on the team worked on other pieces for the game. We also set up a Trello account this is very handy for as we now can keep updated with what we are all doing and it keeps the tasks for the game organize. (https://trello.com/b/cHqTftv9/treasure-trial).

 Our Trello.

During the week Ben R offered to do the pitch document and put it together, me and Olivia gave him some concept art to work with to place on the sell sheet, As a team we didn't have much involvement with this. 



The concept piece in the background of our pitch document was drawn by Olivia, as she will focus on concept environmental pieces for our game below is the original drawing.

 This piece gives us a idea of how we would like the environment to look for our game.

During the week Ben L modeled and textured a torch for the game and Curtis had done the blueprints to get the torch working during game play. It works well. Alt to turn torch on and off. Curtis also done some blueprints for character movement.

This is the torch in Substance designer, ready to be placed into the game.

 This image shows the torch in it's final state all textured, placed in the hand of the character.

This image shows the torch working in game.

This image shows the blueprints that Curtis had done for character movement.