As we started to leave Adrian, our course lecturer decided to come with us so we could fill him in on our recent developments.
As it stands now we scraped the storyboarding process planned for today after having a very productive crit. session with Adrian and realising that it was something we shouldn't be spending a day on.
The topics brought up for debate were:
- Categorising the importance of the games elements
One issue that i was concerned about was our apparent ability to get lost in the clouds when it comes to focusing on what we can actually achieve. We have a numerous amount of neat ideas and grand goals that we'd love to implement. But at the end of the day we are artists with one tech artist.
So, with that said, Adrian was able to format our thought process into a very clear process of developing our game from minimal game play through to a more interactive play.
- Start with the absolute minimum but critical objects, the level and a single character. Show that scale is acurate and the geometry of the world is constant.
- From there you can add things such as visual keys for in game events that would take place if it was a full working game. e.g. Adding a scalable wall that the character "would" climb, and note how it would pan out.
- Adding animations bringing the character to life, and continue adding game elements untill you either run out of time or cant continue due to tech limitations.
- Reigning in all our ideas
- We have a lot of ideas that keep on coming, ideas that we need to bring in and ground a little. We need to be aware of our resources and abilities and not get to caught up in unecessary thinking.
- Note EVERY idea that is mentioned
- The more ideas that come out, the more you forget about the previous ideas. Note down everything and build up a pile of ideas that can later be sifted through for either inspiration or brought back into the light.
- Work on our research
- So far our research ethics have been very seperate and individual to each member, as opposed to a collective effort. Whereas with character design that in itself is an individual research process, we all need to know how the environment portrays visually. As a character designer i ned to be able to fit the character to the world, not the world to the character.
- Getting round implamentation of models that dont fit within the time scale of the current level.
- Originally we were trying to fit the additonal characters into a scripted story within the demo. However with the crit just given to us about focusing on the immediate and critical game elements, it would make more sense to have these extra characters showcased in a seperate room within the world... SIMILAR to the museum level at the end of 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2'.
- Maybe even make it possible to switch playable characters, so its like a cloak room, that way enabling the demostration of the other models made.
The key issue that we all realised was a lack of common understanding for the game world and its aesthetics. We need to create a playground as it were before we can truly develop the project further.
As such, in place of storyboarding we decided to replace it with a strong research session on the worlds environment.
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