SlothyCreatives

2D first session

Whilst doing the group project on the game devlopment side of things, I'm going to have, for the remainder of the term, another brief concentrated on asset creation.

The group is going to be divided into two classes: one for the 2D development and one for the 3D development, in addition there's the Jack of All Trades route which represents those who will be interested in doing an indie app style of games and, although it can be done in either style of development, it keeps the same brief, which is focused around creating the assets of a mobile app game.

That is the long term goal, in the meantime I decided to follow the 2D classes and during the first session we had to create two concepts in the two hours of the session: one a room and the other a character concept.

The focus of the exercise was to create two concepts in a limited amount of time and also to test our perspective

For the first hour I decided to try the room concept.

Above is the reference we had to follow and below is the concept that I came up with. Since it had been a while since I'd drawn, this exercise was, for me, an ice-breaker with 2D.

After being stuck for a while I came up with the idea of ruins, so that it would be possible to look through walls without having to omit them from the representation.

The other idea that would have made this possible was to use glass walls but it would have probably required more time than I had available.

For the second hour we had to come up with a character idea and for this I couldn't come up with any immediate ideas, so by using the third reference given to us I tried different shapes and silhouettes until I created the one-armed sword wielding scout cyborg on the right.

The idea that i developed as I kept drawing was that the missing arm's place was taken by an additional computing system or power supply.

New Year, New Project

During last year I was concentrating a group project at uni where I was the developer and as such I was organizing and coding the game at the same time. This left me with little time for keeping the blog updated.

After realizing that the blog is a vital component to communication, I decided for a different approach this year, hoping to keep updating at least the blog once every two days.

So here we go.

First session of 2016 we were introduced to our new projects, to which there are not many limits apart from a polygon count set to 300.000 as a maximum and the fact that it has to be a playable game. Also, it is suggested that'd we team up in groups from 2 to 8 people. In the end our group stabilized at 9 people, 1 concept artist, 1 main coder, 2 coders/concept artist and 5 modelers.

To start with, working with eight other people seemed daunting but I believe we can make good use out of the amount of man-power we have. After a first meeting between myself, John, Haydon and Matt (the three coders and concept artist) we established a few key points for our project:

Thematically speaking the two main points we agreed on is that the character will be a wizard, using some sort of progressing spell system, and that he/she will be trying escape from a wizard prison/maze.
Another point of interest regarding the plot is the idea of a tree, or nature-connected-element, that is part of the jail system and sucks out the magic of the protagonist, reason behind his lack of powers. Although this point is still not confirmed but it received enough interest that it's now part of the ideas that are going to be sketched out.
As far as mechanics go it's going to be centered around combat with a third person over the shoulder view and a WASD movement system, possibly with the fights taking place in big environments fighting boss-like enemies.
Other points of interest that were discussed were the idea of a map with fog of war active, showing only the parts that were discovered by the player, allowing the possibility to use a maze-like structure. The other idea was to use a sort of barrier type system, which will determine the progression of the player, by unlocking skills as he/she moves further out from the center.

As for now, I've started creating a mood board for inspiration to sketch out some environments. I'm using Pinterest for it as usual and here it is (direct link):

Follow Alessio's board WizardJail on Pinterest.

I will be updating it and the blog as we get further in the project.