Saturday 10 January 2015

Week 15 - Container City week 1

The first week back after Christmas, we were given our first project for the term; the container city project.  The idea behind the project was that in groups, we would produce a level mostly made out of shipping containers.  The project would mostly focus around level design and creating a path for the player, the two themes we were given to choose from were dystopian and scifi. We were allowed to choose who we worked with; i made sure to work with people i had never worked with before to keep the group work fresh. I decided to work with people that i knew, as it was a short project i wanted to be sure i could work well with them.

Before deciding on a theme or doing any type of real design work, as a group we really thought about the journey the player would go through, this was the most important thing for us. We would plan everything around this route. From the get go we seemed pretty sure we wanted some verticality in the level so the various level designs we came up with always had multiple levels that you can revisit.  Once we had a rough plan we then moved on to the aesthetic of the level.

We started by creating moodboards on pinterest of both scifi and dystopian inspirations to help us choose which to go with, as a team we were all initially drawn towards scifi. However after we put some moodboards together and debated as a team we realised we were actually equally drawn to both; so we decided to do dystopian – science fiction.  The next major task was putting together a playable white box, to do so we needed ground plans; so i started sketching them out quite roughly and made sure my team had plenty of input. Once we had achieved this, I began to think about the mechanics we would include; i knew we would need a key system, doors that open when you get close to them and lights that turn on and off.

I happily put myself forward to do the engine stuff, along with Emily. I had some experience with engine and really felt this project would be good to really get in to the more technical side of engine work. I never really used blueprints in engine but i plan to really learn the basics and hopefully leave this project with a better understanding of how to make functioning game mechanics.

I’m quite happy about this project and i feel that as a group we could really creating something epic and visually impressive. We have a really nice mix of people in the group and we seem to cover all bases.

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