Good news?

I think

think

my GDD's all done. I might add some more enemies if it seems necessary, but other than that it's all finished.

Thank goodness.

It was kind of fun, but it's still a massive relief to have it out of the way. There really is so much to do, and it's such hard work getting everything to an acceptable standard.

Words Day

I haven't written a blog for a while. I'll start with GDD.

Well, we had to hand in our first document last week. It was story overview, characters and script. Unfortunately, I got carried away with the story and happily rambled on for a solid 9 pages. Some overview. It's cutdownable, but I wish I hadn't waffled so much. I always write too much or too little.

It needs more pictures, but I was able to do a couple of them and all of the writing. I did pages and pages of mechanics, with proper stats and everything. Hopefully the effort will pay off!

I started a new level today: Deluge. It's a water type world, mostly things like sewers and aqueducts. I really want the puzzles to be sort of lateral rather than the typical gamey 'push these buttons in this order' or 'put all the pieces in the right place'. I was looking at Half Life videos for some help. They're really clever; like, what you would do in real life rather than what you'd expect to do in a game puzzle.

I also want puzzles to be solved in different ways if possible. This is really hard to design because it requires not only thinking of a unique puzzle, but thinking of one that has enough depth to it to be doable several times. It's like combining 3 different puzzles into one.

I came up with one puzzle so far. I won't bother trying to describe it now, because without a picture it'll be hard to understand. Basically it's to do with water levels. I hope I can make at least 2 more good puzzles for this world.

... Levels are hard.

Reworking the mechanics

I had some problems with my GDD in that the different tier abilities were too similar. I have found a way around this (I hope) and I've changed one of them.

At the moment, they are as follows:

TIER 1: High-jump/Glide

Similar to the common double-jump, Don can jump several times mid-air and then glide for a limited time. I'm thinking there could be a disadvantage to this, like being exposed to something in the air for too long while gliding will pull you wildly out of control and you'll have to land to be safe.

TIER 2: Gravity change

This one used to be inverting the level, but that would be both too similar to the high-jump in its advantages, and undoable outside. Now, Don can change the gravity, which moves loose objects in the desired direction, though it could hurt you. I think restoring gravity to normal would send all the objects back to their origins.

TIER 3: Corner jump

This needs a better name to describe what it is. Basically, there will be some corners, edges and walls that Don can fit through and travel to the other side. It takes time though, and it can leave him exposed to danger or send him hurtling into it if you don't know what's beyond you.

On a side note, I feel ever so paranoid when people look at the work I've pinned up. It's not dazzling and amazing like some of the stuff people have done and it makes me worry that people are laughing at me behind my back.

sdfsdf

I jsut found out Satoshi Kon - the guy who made Paprika and Paranoia Agent - died recently. I'm not a big anime fan, but I thought they were really good. It's kind of sad to hear that someone who made such beautiful things is gone.
There's so much rubbish out there, yet the person that has made this decent anime ends up dying.
Hm.

I think Futures is coming together nicely. We have to make posters for each topic that are divided into 4 groups: child past, child present, adult past and adult present. Child past is giving me the most trouble. I'm sure there's a lot on it, but it's hard to find pictures of it. Especially for things like nonverbal communication.

We had to do 2 pages of the pitch document for GDD too. I've done them but they're not printed. I tried to make these ones a lot lighter so they wouldn't come out dark.

Eh.

That's pretty much all the news.

The Flat for reals this time

Apparently, the problem with the Maya file was just that I'm using an older version than the one at uni. Luckily Jack has the new one, so I've salvaged some screenshots with his computer:

Green things are 'portals' (Can travel into dreams through them, maybe?), red things can't be used and the purple thing has an unlockable use (alternate outfits).

 

I might put some of these in Photoshop and draw over them to give the intended feel and a little detail I want to include.

The FlatOHWAIT

Well, I found out someone else in my class is doing a game about dreams. Eek. 

Her idea sounds pretty cool: it's about demons that have possessed some children, and a group has come to hijack their dreams and flush the demons out. Hopefully the dream thing won't overlap too much and we'll both have distinct ideas.

After trying and failing to get a good isometric picture of Don's flat, Jack suggested I try making a 3d blockmap. So I did.

...

But Maya, being as brilliant as it usually is, has corrupted the version I had on a memory stick so no screenshots for you today.

Sorry.

Proposal, etc.

I pinned my work up for the GDD nice and early so I got a good spot, derp. Sneaky tactics. I really wanted the DoweyWall (The one near the office) because it's easy to reach and there's plenty of room. I got it, so hooray!

A lot of people only did moodboards for some reason. I guess there was some confusion and people didn't read the email.

Anyway, here's Don and Blackbuck. Aside from future tweaking, this is basically how I want them to come across.

Not much news,

But I felt like I should write something because it's been quite a while.

I spoke with Rhoda about the GDD today and I definitely get to do ViDys (hooray!) so there will be more from that, and not so much anything on the other two. I do like some ideas from them though, especially the glitch one. I'm thinking of adding a mechanic that's inspired from both a dream and a common glitch. In some levels, Don might be able to jump through particular corners or walls to progress. I think it'd be fun watching him inexplicably squeeze through an impossible space.

Though that may be too hard to do visually.

For example, here's a video from Donkey Kong 64 of corner-jumping:

I'm getting on a little better with my Futures, though I'm really finding the non-verbal part hard. I'm not finding that much on it other than a lot of people saying that humans use it a lot. IP is especially hard.

I think one problem is that all three topics are similar and there's a lot of stuff that crosses over. I'm not really sure what to put where. After all, representing colour with emotion and using symbols are both forms of nonverbal communication.I think I should focus more on the body language side than simply the umbrella term of "non-verbal communication".

Inspirations

The concept of dreams is so unique to each person that there's probably an abundance of good research material out there. Unfortunately a lot of it can be fairly generic, but these are 3 films that I thought were better than Inception by miles really great at capturing elements of dreams.

Paprika

I was quite surprised with this one considering what most anime is like. It's visually stunning and very creative. Basically, it's about a woman who can enter the dreams of other people using a sort-of alter-ego. It's more of a bright, exciting representation, and it makes for some really wonderful scenes.

Science of Sleep

This one is much more relaxed but is more happy and warming. It's about a man who gets his dreams confused with reality and is trying to win the heart of the woman living in the flat next door. It's a bit unusual, but it's very sweet. There's lovely moments where he's able to rewind time, make clouds of cotton wool and attack the people in his office with giant hands. It really gets across the fuzzy surrealism of dreams while putting in really bizarre ideas in a nonchalant way.

Waking Life

This one is a very difficult (and probably pretentious) film and, while it does have dreams in it, is more based around philosophy than anything else. It's set out sort of like a documentary in parts, but is completely rotoscoped. It looks very strange, but it's also very beautiful. It's about a guy who feels stuck in a never-ending dream and meets loads of people along the way who impart their wisdom. It's really nice in its changing appearance, and again portrays that almost intangible 'oddness' that dreams have.

A Little bit of Character History

I've been doing a little more work on my honours characters - mainly Western Fantasy Assassin - but I did it in my sketchbook and I don't have any camera batteries so the upload will have to wait.

For now though, I'll just put down some history for 2 characters for the GDD.

Don

Donovan Joseph Sheppard - Don for short - is a designer living in a city flat with his girlfriend Becca Garrett. He doesn't make a great deal of money doing what he does, but he gets by. However, he suddenly finds himself especially burnt out with work as he struggles to keep on top of it. Problems with Becca also start to wear him down until he begins to lose sleep.

When realising the risk he could be causing to himself, Becca sends him to a doctor for help. He is prescribed sleeping pills. However, he chooses not to take them.

These pills also may be used as a mechanic when Don inadvertantly eats them when sleepwalking, sending him into a deeper state.

The name of Don isn't too elaborate, and there isn't any history behind his surname (which will probably be changed later). Basically, Donovan Joseph can be shortened to Don Jo. This is a spoonerism for Jon Do, i.e. John Doe. This is meant to reflect him losing his sense of self during the game.

Blackbuck

Another name that will probably change later. I was considering using animal names for the dream characters but I'm not so sure anymore (If you don't know what a blackbuck looks like, look them up now because they're so darn cool). I wanted this character to be the main entity that Don encounters and the most helpful one. Blackbuck is meant to be genderless, but I'll probably just say "he" for sake of ease.

Blackbuck appears to be almost child-like but is distinctly not so. His bizarre facial features make him seem more alien than human, and he tends to speak in a way that shows him to be wise and thoughtful.

Generally, he's meant to represent Don's ego in several ways:

1) He holds the knowledge of Don's dreams that Don himself believes he doesn't know. However, as Blackbuck is just a conjuring of his imagination, it is knowledge that he unwittingly carries himself.

2) While Don wanders through his dreams, directionless and confused, Blackbuck seems able to guide him through when he is lost. His wide eyes represent the clarity and knowledge he possesses - in other words, it's sort of a literal way of showing that his eyes are open to the world around him.

3) In the way that he seems like sort of like a spirit guide, and the duality of the dreams that Don is in, Blackbuck is also meant to reflect the Soul and the Ego - like God and the Devil (The latter more linked to principles like LaVeyan Satanism than evil hellish things). I wanted to show Blackbuck as inhuman, possibly spiritual, so I looked to Byzantine depictions of Jesus as inspiration. His face - the large eyes, long, thin nose and small mouth - are characteristic of that sort of work and were fitting to the sort of feel that Blackbuck would have.

I don't have a picture of Don (again, the camera thing), but I have a doodle of Blackbuck I did when I didn't have my graphics tablet.

Clear Delusion

+Sanity, -Sanity.

Piercing Loss

Today has been really bad work-wise. For the majority of it I was completely lacking ideas and motivation and was pretty much just staring at a blank sheet of paper. Thankfully I finally got something done. It's only a minor change, but... It's something.

Instead of choosing from a selection of items to determine stats, Don chooses from pictures. I think that'll make it easier to design something a) less cryptic and potentially hard to understand, and b) a lot less tacky. I mean, what does he choose for a speed boost? Trainers??

Anyway, I've made a start on them, which should set me up for getting them done smoothly. Here are the ones for +Attack and -Attack. They're pretty messy, but this early on I don't think I need to have it spangly and perfect. Just a draft for a concept will do.

Long Post leads to BoreDom

Naming Mechanic

I wanted to make the game feel personal to each player; to give it something unique to make it special. So, I came up with the idea of a sort of file naming system. Each game playthrough has its own adjective and noun randomly assigned to it (for example, "Crappy Blog" or "Pointless Mechanic") that the player keeps through the game. If they start a new file, they get a different combination. It serves as a way to keep track of which file's which, as well as making it feel like you have your own special name.

This comes into play when Don looks at his sketchbook after waking up. it basically looks something like this.

Blankety Blank

leads to

ViDys

I thought about giving each word a stat too. Allow me to demonstrate it in the most exciting way possible: A CHART

For example, if your 'name' is Piercing Decay (i.e. 'Piercing Decay leads to ViDys'), Don will have +Attack and -Stealth. If it's Fleeting Loss, he will have +Speed and -Attack. In the case of getting two of the same stat - such as Clear Delusion (+ and - Sanity), they cancel eachother out and Don is unchanged.

This system was going to be random, but I asked Jack and he said he hates when the player doesn't get to choose such things. So, there will be some sort of area in which the player chooses 2 of 12 items - one they like and one they dislike. They will be asked a question, such as "Would you say you're quick-witted (+Speed) but reckless (-Defense)?" or "Would you say you're balanced (+-)?" If they say yes, they keep their stats. If they say no, they can choose different items.

As for the Special words, these will only be unlocked after completing the game. When the player is at the item select area, there will be a bang at the door (or something similar). If the player picks the items as normal, the same rules apply. However, if they go to the door and open it, they are automatically assigned the words "Vigil's Dysphoria". This is pretty much just unlocking Hard Mode. However, you get the bonus of an extra enemy:

This is meant to be the physical representation of the vigil's dysphoria: Don's confusing and distressing entrapment in both reality and dreams. If you stay near this guy for too long, the scene tends to fill with black. If it completely fills, you die - so run away!

He won't be around too often - lest the game become too difficult - so just think of him as a little bonus.

Vigil's Dysphoria

Well, I spent pretty much all of yesterday learning to centre-align the header of the blog (Seriously, why is that so hard??) so I'm gonna try to do a bit more work today. Right now I'm going to run over the name "Vidys" and its meaning, and later today I'll write a looooong post about a small mechanic and a character to accompany it.

So, Vidys.

It's basically a word that I found Jack had written down but couldn't remember what it meant. I looked it up but it doesn't seem to be anything. I thought it was a nice looking word though - sort of elegant and cryptic. I reverse-developed it to have meaning: Vigil's Dysphoria - Vigil being a period of wakefulness and Dysphoria being... well, the opposite of euphoria.

So long story short, Vidys is meant to represent the suffering Don feels through his constant not-quite-awake-not-quite-asleep state.

Initial Outline

Alright, just a bit of info on what I'm hoping to do for each project.

Vidys

This is a games document about dreams and the subconscious which I hope to make surreal and kinda trippy. The protagonist Don has been suffering from insomnia and stress to the point where he falls into a confused state of neither proper wakefulness or sleep. He begins searching for meaning behind the seemingly nonsense word "Vidys" that he hopes will end the delusions and various other problems he has.

Troupe

For my honours, I'm doing a whole bunch of characters from different genres. I'm going to try doing as much varied work as possible without giving myself too much to do. I spoke with Josh and Rhoda about it today and they gave me the neat idea of assigning set ranks to certain characters - kind of like in Team Fortress - to show that I can take a guideline (tank, for example) and make a fitting character out of it for different themes.

Futures

For future technology, I'm going to be doing about interactivity and motion sensitivity, especially in regards to emotion. It sounds confusing but there's probably a much simpler way to explain it.

Basically, it's like the way that people react when playing video games and how to immerse them deeper by playing off the way they feel - for example, if your pulse increases, you're probably feeling excited or scared. If your eyesight's being tracked, the system would know where you're looking and, if it thinks you're spending too long looking at the left of the screen, it could throw some enemies in on the right.

Stuff like that.

... If that makes sense?