Author: ben2020

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Major Project Proposal

Blog 2: Research For Major Project

Group Inspiration

The group has been heavily inspired by many games that share different features that we pulled into our own game. Below is a list of these games with the different features below them, and a small explanation to where they’re used within our game.

The Return of the Obra Dinn

The curse of the Obra Dinn helped us come up with the idea of deduction, use of the journal for taking notes and ideas. This also helped us with the idea of setting out game on a boat.

A Hand with Many Fingers

A Hand with Many Fingers further assisted us with deduction as well as the evidence board that we created where you can add evidence to and check over everything currently known.

L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire helped us with the inspiration for the Aquisition of clues system in our game. It also assisted in creating the dialouge system so that we can interact with all the NPCs aswell as interogate them too.

Batman Arkham

Batman Arkham helped the team with the UI elements of the game, it also helped us with the idea that exploration assists in finding clues and that the more you explore, the more clues to solve the murder you’ll find.

Mafia 2

Mafia 2 helped us decide on the aesthetic style of the game including approximate time period (early 20th century), and also the type of characters that are in the game.

How to make a good detective game – Game Maker’s Toolkit (YouTube Video)

This YouTube video helped the team create the right game mechanics for the game, Aswell as helping us decide what to include in our game such as evidence, clues, suspects etc.

Sin City (Film)

The Sin City film helped the team decide on the red highlights for blood, and also helped us decide on the final visual style of the game.

Personal Inspiration

Personally, for my individual work on the game, I was inspired by a couple of games these are listed below.

Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption helped me create a rough idea for the paddle steamer, this is because in the game there is a mission where you explore a paddle steamer, this helped me visualize what I needed to create, Aswell as it helping me to decide the style of paddle steamer itself.

Mafia 1

Similar to that of Mafia 2, Mafia 1 helps pinpoint to a further degree of the design that I want with my specific models, such as paddle steamers and general aesthetic of the time period.

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Major Project Proposal

Blog 1: Major project Proposal

My Role.

In my team major project, I am the environmental 3d modeller. My job is to create the environmental models for our game that we are making as a group.

In addition to this i am creating multiple concept art pieces, this is to help the group grasp which direction we are going in regarding my models.

Overview of the story.

The main overview of our group project is that it is an early 20th century murder mystery game set on a boat. To solve the murder onboard, the player must traverse around the ship, looking for clues and interviewing witnesses and guests on board.

After finding different bits of evidence the player can interrogate any person that they see fit to be the suspect.

Genre

The genre of the game will be a noir detective thriller, this is because the game is majority played in black and white with slight colour depending on the circumstances at play.

Setting of the game

The setting of the game is on a paddle steamer named the SS Arctic that is travelling in the misty swamps of New Orleans.

Story

While the SS Arctic is travelling down the Mississippi river the main character, Detective CC Tisnley, finds himself amongst a reunion of sorts between a group of old friends when the host of the reunion is found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Detective Tinsley is then tasked by the ship’s captain to discover the root of this and to catch the murderer.

Characters

  • CC Tinsley 
  • Captain Luce (American)
  • William Eubanks (American)
  • Fernand Lacroix (French)
  • David Kirkwood (British)
  • Irene McAllister (British)
  • Lillian Brown (American)
  • Mr Watanabe (Japanese)
  • Franz Haber (Prussian)

Gameplay Mechanics

⦁ Movement

The game will feature a first-person perspective for when the player is walking around the ship looking for clues and evidence. The player can also crouch to possibly get into hard to access areas.

⦁ Interrogation/conversation

The player can choose several different dialogue options when talking or interrogating NPCs, this can depend on what evidence has been found and can change the outcome of the conversation or interrogation based on that.

⦁ Evidence gathering

The player can inspect different pieces of evidence by picking the pieces up and moving them around to check all sides of it. They can also pin the pieces of evidence to the evidence board so that they can keep a track of everything they find without the possibility of losing it.

⦁ Evidence board/deduction

The player can view the evidence board at any time during their playthrough and can make conclusions based on what evidence they have at any time, some evidence may incriminate people, other evidence can prove their innocence.

⦁ Journal/notes

The player will be able to make notes on a built-in journal which they can look back on at any time to see if anything written down can apply to different bits of evidence they may be looking at,

⦁ Puzzles for extra info (Not a priority)

The player may be able to crack open different safes throughout the game, this can give them extra evidence which they can add to the evidence wall, and it might help expand their knowledge on who may be the murderer, the player could also re-arrange paintings for extra evidence/clues too.

Visual style

The style of the game will be different to that of normal games, in the group project the main focus will be to make the game black and white, this fits in with the noir detective style I mentioned earlier.

However, in comparison to the harsh colour scheme of black and white, we plan on adding certain things that appear in colour, for example items of importance or blood, blood being a very noticeable red that stands out against anything.

Audio Considerations:

In the game there will be many different sounds, below are a list of some that will be included.

⦁ Ocean sounds/rain

⦁ Crowd muttering 

⦁ Boat sounds, engine, creaking etc.

⦁ Footsteps

⦁ Murdered victim weapon

⦁ Character voices/mumbling 

⦁ Jazz or appropriate music

Categories
Digital Storytelling

Script Draft

Scene 1: Soldiers Standing guard.

Soldier POV

Camera tilts down towards gun that the character is holding. Camera then pans across to fellow soldier who is also standing guard of the building accompanied by 2 vehicles, a tank and an anti-air missile system.

Other soldier acknowledges POV soldier, and both give each other a nod of the head.

Soldiers then hear a vehicle coming down the road, and both then look towards it, camera POV pans back to the original location and views the oncoming armored vehicle.

Armored vehicle progresses up the road towards the camera.

Soldier who is inside the armored vehicle waves towards the camera as the vehicle passes the two soldiers and continues on.

Camera continues looking around observing the environment.

Loud explosion occurs and camera shakes violently, soldier then moves his gun to the upright position. and looks around.

Camera pans left towards the second soldier, who has now turned to the left and is witnessing the explosion go off in the background.

The light from the explosion gets extremely bright and the soldier where the camera is located raises his hand to cover his eyes as it gets too bright.

Screen then goes white, explosion consumes the location.

Scene 2: Soldiers discovered many years later.

Scene begins with a white screen left over from the previous scene, the words “30 Years Later” appear in the center.

White screen fades into the same area but it now looks destroyed and beaten down.

First person view showing the body of the soldier previously used as the POV for the previous scene. Time has passed therefore the soldier has a skull in place of his face.

The POV character moves his arms around moving the body of the soldier, lifting arms up and removing rubble from under the soldiers arm.

Camera pans to the right where it shows the other man in a poncho inspecting the other soldiers’ body Infront of the destroyed building.

Camera then changes to a wide shot of the whole area; this includes the destroyed vehicles previously seen intact. The wind is very strong in this area, and can be heard clearly throughout the wideshot.

Both men in ponchos in wide shot continue rummaging around the area where the soldiers are and after 10-15 seconds the scene fades out slowly.

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Digital Storytelling

Prototypes

I have created several prototypes for my animation, in this blog post I will go through some that I have made and have descriptions about them.

Vehicle Movement

In this video I am testing the movement animation for the vehicle I want to use, in the final piece this will be in the start of the animation, driving towards the main camera.

Intro to animation

In this video, the beginning of the animation is shown in its prototype phase with blockout assets for some of the models and no textures visible, this is so i can get a mainly complete idea produced quickly before I refine, model and combine everything together to create the final piece.

Intro to animation 2

After i made the initial prototype to the animation start, i carried on working on it, adding new animations and features to it, below are 2 versions that I made, the first being without textures, and the second having textures as it’s a test render.

I made this rendered and textured prototype because I wanted to make sure that it is all viable and works well together and that nothing sticks out over anything else, I also made it to make sure that I was able to create different versions of prototypes with varying level of quality/ completion.

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Digital Storytelling

World Building

My digital storytelling piece is set in a mountainous region of eastern Europe. It is very grassy despite being in the mountains and has a lot of snow due to the altitude.

The year of my piece is split between 2025 and 2055, a 30-year gap separating both parts.

The story has multiple humans in it, it begins with soldiers in 2025 and ends in 2025 with people who are similar to cavemen, forgoing off of the ground for berries and searching for animals to eat.

Theme

My story is about a group of soldiers which are in a nuclear strike against their location in WW3 before it switches to many years later when primitive inspired people come across them wearing animal fur ponchos and trousers Aswell as them holding bows and sticks.

My story is really an interpretation of Einstein’s famous quote about World War 3 and 4, where he doesn’t know what World War 3 will be fought with, however World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones. In addition to this it’s also about the fact that nuclear war will not be good for anyone or anything and that it would doom humanity.

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Categories
Digital Storytelling

Character Overviews

In my Digital Storytelling piece there are not many characters, and only two types of characters, the first being soldiers, and the second being primitive inspired humans. Below is a rough overview of both types of characters and what they do in my animation.

Soldiers

The soldiers in my story are from a private military company, they have soviet era vehicles and have multiple outposts in the area that my animation is set in. They are quite ruthless and always get the job, whatever it is, done. They wear green uniforms with green helmets, and often balaclavas to cover their identities.

Primative people

The people who discover the soldiers after the nuclear blast are inspired by prehistoric humans with fur clothes and big boots, they have stick weapons and bows just so that it sticks with the theme of the story. These people have lived off the land ever since WW3 happened and they have very long hair because nobody cuts hair anymore at that point in time.

Categories
Digital Storytelling

Asset List

For my digital storytelling piece i will have a wide selection of assets that will be used, below is a list of the assets that I will be using throughout my animation and whether or not I made them.

Building (Destroyed and intact)- Self-made.

Soldier- Already made.

Weapon- Already made.

Mountains- Self-made.

Signs- Self-made.

Vehicles- Already made.

Nuclear Explosion- Self-made.

Primitive inspired humans- Already made humans, self-made clothes.

Spears and bow and arrows- Self-made.

Skeleton skull- Already made.

Sounds (wind, explosion etc)- Already made/creative commons.

References

Sketchfab.com (2022), (human skull). Available online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/human-skull-47cc028cf6754cd8914e80447b94b39b Accessed online [2/11/22]

Quixel.com (2022), Environmental assets, Available online: Quixel Bridge – Manage 3D content and export with one click Accessed online [29/10/22]

Steam.com (2022), Weapons, vehicles & soldier assets, Available online: https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/ Accessed online [28/10/22]

Categories
Digital Storytelling

Ideas For Digital Storytelling

Idea 1

Digital Environment of a past battle between Japanese warriors, smoke billowing from half destroyed Japanese shrines. Samurais litter the country side with swords, and carts scattered around them.

Idea 2

Short animation in a digital environment where 2 primative human inspired people overlook the bodies of very futuristic soldiers with futuristic weapons laying around them and destroyed buildings with exposed insides stand behind them. This is inspired by Albert Einstein’s famous quote, “I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”

The animation includes the primative inspired people wearing ponchos and animal Skin outfits that keep them warm while the soldiers wear camouflaged uniforms that fully conceals their bodies as well as helmets. The cavemen bend down to inspect the soldiers.

There is also multiple sounds within this, such as strong wind sounds that indicate the wind is quite strong, and possibly a hum. The environment will have a yellow or an off colour hue to demonstrate that nukes went off and that the world is still recovering from such a war. The environment will also include snow which is off colour too. I also intend to include a Geiger counter on one of the soldiers with the sound playing throughout the animation to indicate the radio activeness of the scene.

Idea 3

The final idea I have for this is an updated variant of idea 2, instead of futuristic soldiers, I wish to have modern looking soldiers. I also plan to have an intro section which includes the soldiers while they are alive, before nuclear war occurs and before this specific nuke goes off in the area of the story.

After I have this intro done then I will have a mostly similar layout to idea 2 with the primitive humans in ponchos looking at and searching the soldiers.

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Prof Practice Team Project Professional practice

Team project video

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Prof Practice Dev Log Professional practice

Professional practice dev blog 5: Reflection

Throughout the creation process of this project I learnt a lot of things, these ranged from modeling skills, to texturing skills, to working as a group and being able to work smoothly without too many problems occuring.

Firstly when it came to modeling my assets, I learnt a lot because I needed to make multiple high quality models and in a short amount of time, I learnt how to quickly make them so that I didn’t impede on the overall team progression of the project. I also learnt how to make them look good even if the meshes themselves weren’t the best, this was through texturing with substance painter and realistic textures/ materials.

Another part of the project that I had to learn a lot for was the pre vis animation that I created, this was because I had never done one of these types of animations before and I wanted to learn how to do it to improve the overall quality of the final cutscene for the project, looking back on it now, I think I did a good job as in my opinion it was the perfect reference material for the team member who created the cutscene.

A final big learning point for the project was GitHub. GitHub was important as it brought all team members together in a single place where we could put all of our assets, materials and code together so that the 2 team members making blueprints and the environment could create the game and make it playable. I think using this was a great idea for the reasons mentioned above.

Overall I think, for me, the project went quite well, I learnt a lot of new techniques and skills when creating a project like this, and also improved upon other things that I have already tried out before hand.