Enter the real world...

Well i have received my final results and i have passed with a 2:2 BA (Hons), however the only problem i face is that my business cards only have (BA) graduate on them!

So, if you do visit this site, i have a honours degree!

the business cards will be re-edited!

Handed in.

The project was completed as was required and has been handed in, the hand in being the 17th May. The 3rd year Game Designers will now prepare their projects which will be shown for a week starting the 4th June. Lewis and I will touch up the game adding more sound effects, an extra room, markers for room transition as well as lighting effects on the room. The beginning of the game will also have an introduction of the story and the aim of the game.

The critique itself went reasonably well, it could of been better in terms of the game that we actually showed but the feedback we received was good as a fresh set of eyes allowed us to correct mistakes that we could easily have missed.

Upwards and onwards! :)

Tag lines for Character biographies

These tag lines will give us a little information about the characters, even the two that are not involved in the game:

Frank
Frank has always been the loner, the outcast, the unwanted one, the incomplete one...sort of like the Star Wars Prequels he’s just not wanted! After being spat out of the silver screen world Frank now has to contend with the real world, or at least, the Old Cinema of Beverly Hills!

Patches
Patches isn’t one to miss out on fashion, so when he sees a chance to update his mummy bandages anything that wraps becomes his royal garments...including toilet paper....who knew right?! Avoid him in the toilets.

Dog
When Dog wants food, he gets food it’s that simple! You’ll always find him hanging around villages eating! Even here in our own world all you’ll find him doing is picking at the snack stand, falling into the pop corn and if you’re really lucky he’ll probably offer your world class customer service!

Menu Extras Screen and Character Biography Screen

Here is the menu screen for the extras, which is mainly a room with the character portraits which are buttons that transfer you too the biographies of each character.

Each biography is only a few sentences, keeping it simple means less clunky story telling for expansion on this project in the future!

The menu screen.

Here's the title and the menu layout.

I tried to get a light blue outline around the letter but it didnt fit well with the back ground colours, it was a bit too pastel! So the black outline works best, and i tried the word bending as a homage to the old horror movie posters. I also added the 'DEMO' stamp as it shows how the game is only a snippet of what the game could be! nice rubber stamp effect :)

Play will take you to the game, with a quick movie at the beginning, Extra's will take you too the bio's of the original four characters including the janitor and Credit's will take you too the roles that Lewis and myself took upon ourselves as well as Joanne Higginbottoms fantastic input with a musical score and foley!
Lewis will be taking this and implementing it.

Added assets.

Since the last update, I have been working with both Adobe Flash CS4 and Action Script 2.0 as well as Adobe Photoshop CS4. I have been developing assets and set pieces in keeping with the newly founded style that have been implemented into the environment. During the production phase of the assets, i found that many of the rooms seemed bare and boring, with not much in the way of interaction, so i found myself looking for other ways of inputing interaction.
Below are the assets that were imported to this date, these include film reels, sweet boxes, shevles, film posters that can be broken when clicked on, and film shots that have moving eyes that will activate when the player hovers there mouse over the picture. As well as an unlit flaming torch that will light when clicked. A nice little homage to Frankenstein.

New and Improved rooms

After much deliberation of the rooms and their portrayal, these are the final assets to be implemented into Flash CS4. Some of them are bland as the assets will need to be attached to them during the Flash work.
The Rooms themselves are made from A4 coloured card. The assets are drawn on them then cut out, stuck down or placed into position and scanned. Once scanned i took them into Photoshop and cleaned them up.

Rooms (cont.)

The corridor leading off room the lobby, this then links us to the screen room, the projecter/storage room. Due to the maximum background animation Adventure Game Studio's allows us, we will have 4 to 5 interactive animations available! This scene includes interactive wallpaper as well as a bucket of water trying to contain a leak! The leak will also be interactive...so hands off!

Rooms.

I can't believe i've left it so long to update the blog! ARGH! hehe!


Well since handing in the pre-production module, both Lewis and I have been working to push our idea forward in terms of characters and environment going hand in hand. After getting some really good feed back off of Dave it was decided our approach wasn't the correct one, simply because Film Noir angles mixed with black and white do not go with Hollywood monsters!

With our focus now on grey scaled characters fumbling around in a colourful world it is now up to the team to pull our ideas through to the end and put in as much work as possible.

Here are a few of the rooms that i have developed since January:

A bit late i know but its the last ortho's from me

I decided that the cinema also needed posters of the monsters that were bursting from its scenes as well as the projector that will be in the store room / projector room.

Corridor leading into Screen 2/Screen 2 (2)

What will most likely happen during production, is that i will re use scree n2 for the other screens, and the projector room will act as the 3 projector rooms.
Of course the environment will be tweaked, allowing alot of items to be refined so they look more understandable.

One angle of the lobby, 2 sets of corridors, and the other parts of the store room.

The Store room will help the player with instances within the game, it will hold necessary tools and other bits and pieces key to helping the player defeat the Hollywood Monsters throughout the game. This picture shows us the film reels and corner of the store room.

This next one is the main lobby which will connect the player to the rest of the Cineplex. A lot of encounters with Dog will occur here. Mainly because of the Food!


Some corridors connecting us from the lobby to the 3 Cinema screens, the stairwell leading to the store room/projector room, and the downstairs toilets.

MORE TO COME.

Lobby Stand(s)

Lobby stand for all your Black and White food needs! Simple sketches that were tweaked to fit the style of the game. There will be a lot of focus in the lobby, especially when it comes to dealing with the character Dog.

Corridors and Staircase

Corridor leading to staircase which will then lead to the store room. Again no need to jumble up the area, i'll save that for the more "active" moments in the game. :)

Areas of the Cinema 2

Here I have a section of the store room/projection room.

Quite simple, everything is quite still, like you would find in a near abandoned or deserted location.
Again hard shadows and strong silhouettes to present a strong image.
More to come.

Areas in the cinema.

Here we are, a collection of finished assets that show what i am trying to produce in the final production. Im quite happy with the choice to only use Black and White. My method was simply sketching out a rough area in my sketch book, scanning them, pulling them up in photo shop and going over the decided areas with a smooth brush. I then had to work out areas of light and shadow and hopefully i've captuerd a strong look for the final piece. As you can see i took alot of source material from Sin City, Mad World and Citizen Kane...to name a few! Of course these are all of them and there will be plenty more!

play play

toying with new colour palette idea....black and white....just like a 1980's checker board floor tile...
Played with old B&W photos.