Documentation

Documentation is the recording of the development of a game from the conceptual stage all the way to the final product. It covers everything from gameplay mechanics to aesthetic decisions within the project, and I'll be creating a little outline for a game here as a kind of "dry run" for the FMP.

The basic premise of the game is a highly immersive PC co-op horror game centered around the idea of sensory deprivation. 2 players would navigate levels attempting to reach an exit, solving puzzles and avoiding hostile characters in a co-operative manner. The main mechanic of the game lies in the fact that one player cannot see, and the other cannot hear. The player who cannot see still receives visual information from their screen, however, in the form of particle effects manifesting on an empty blackness whenever sound happens in the level. For example, a room filled with humming fans would be partially visible to the blind player. In this sense, sound acts almost as a light entity. The deaf player cannot see or hear sound at all. As the enemies in the game are revealed primarily through the noise they make whilst moving, the deaf player has little warning of oncoming hostiles. The 2 players counter the weaknesses of the other through communication over a microphone feature.


Setting:
"On a routine voyage from Earth, Munich to Mars Phobos, Long Kansas, the IGS Ishmael cruiser ship was abandoned after a fire in the engine-room. 42 crew members were lost in the lockdown of the lower decks. Whilst reports claim a bug in the AI maintenance systems, the exact cause of the fire is unknown. Military Technicians from Long Kansas was dispatched to investigate and terminate the possible rouge maintenance-robots. Most of the robots were successfully terminated, but 2 have been detected as attempting an escape through the lower decks of the Ishmael. A specialist extermination team was sent down into the depths of the cruiser in order to safely purge the last remaining maintenance-robots. One has already suffered severe visual sensory damage, and the other has lost its audio receivers. The termination mission should be over in a matter of hours."

System Shock 2

Doom 3 used and advanced lighting system to its advantage to create atmosphere and a claustrophobic environment.

The game would rely very heavily on atmosphere, as it is primarily a horror game. For this reason, it would be built in a high-fidelity game engine such as cryengine 3 to allow for dynamic lights/shadows as well as next-generation visuals. Assets would be created in 3DS max and Photoshop. The art-direction of the game would be gritty realism, with a primarily grey colour palette for the deaf-robot and a more colourful one for the blind robot. Games like System shock 2 and Doom 3 help to illustrate the intended isolated feel for the levels of the game. The enemies of the game will be rarely seen (by the deaf robot), but often heard (by the blind robot) and will be humanoid. Although the main characters are robots, we as players will relate with humans when they appear, so to ensure the enemies are still scary, they will be dressed in face-concealing space-gear, similar to gas masks, to create a sense of the unfamiliar and the hostile.

Overall the game is an exercise in creating fear for more than one player- something that has yet to be successfully executed in a co-op game. It seems that when horror games become co operative, players loose that sense of immersion through relation with their partner. I hope that with providing 2 distinct experiences for the co operative players, they will continue to feel sufficiently isolated in order to promote a sense of fear.

Pit Droid (Star Wars Episode 1)

The 2 main characters would have approximately 30,000 polygons each, as well as 2 1024x1024 textures. They are to be humanoid in appearance, but without distinguishing facial features. The Pit Droids from the star wars universe are good examples of the level of "human" that the maintenance robots will appear to be. "Cute" is a horrible word, but it does find its way in there somewhere.

Environments would be highly detailed, nearing 500,000 polys on screen at one time. Assets would all utilize advanced materials to interact with light realistically, as well as having realistic physical properties. Due to the claustrophobic areas in the game, a lot of detail could be pushed into a small space. Visual fidelity is priority, and this game is intended for higher end PCs. Enemies would be around 10,000 polygons and use a single 1024x1024 texture. Props are included within the environment budget, and a reasonable count for a prop such as a screen or a generator would be around 2,000-5,000 depending on the size of the asset.

Main character:

30,000 polygons
2 1024x1024 materials including:
Colour specular,
Normals,
Diffuse,
Gloss maps.

Enemies:
10,000 polygons.
1 1024x1024 material including:
Colour specular,
Normals,
Diffuse,
Gloss maps.

Small prop: (screen, table, electrical box)

2,000 polygons.
1 512x512 material including:
Colour specular,
Normals,
Diffuse,
Gloss maps.

Large prop: (generatiors, wall-mounted piping sections)

5,000 polygons
1 1024x1024 material including:
Colour specular,
Normals,
Diffuse,
Gloss maps.

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/03/PCG220.Reinstall_Shock2_103.jpg
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/1/17285/604479-doom454.jpg
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070420055210/starwars/nl/images/3/31/DUM.jpg

Task 16: Level design

As stated in the task brief, level design is not the visual appearance of the level, but rather the mapping and construction of the level as an interactive layout. Similarly to good composition, good level design will guide the player without them realising it, and especially in the case of singleplayer experiences, will direct the flow of story in a seemingly natural and nonrestrictive way. This can mean laying out an environment in such a way that players are naturally drawn to various interactive elements without feeling walled-in, when of course the level in actuality is significantly smaller than it would appear. Good level design will promote exploration where exploration is needed, and "getting lost" is a difficult thing to get right in these situations. Pacing becomes incredibly important, to ensure that the player never gets bored nor overwhelmed by what is happening in the game environment. "Metroid" on the NES (back in 1986!) is a stellar example of level design. At the time, the platform genre was beginning to be defined by games like Super Mario Bros, and despite some deviation from the trend, the vast majority of these experiences were linear.


Metroid, for most players, introduced a new way to look at these 2D environments. It allowed players to explore in all directions across the level, with backtracking being a foundation stone of the series. Players would progress in one direction before being halted by an impassable door or an unbeatable enemy, and then would have to return to old rooms to find a way to proceed, perhaps acquiring a key or a better weapon. This meant that as players moved through the game, they were given constant reminders of areas they could not yet access, giving the game a strong sense of progression when these areas were finally explored. This kind of non-linear level design is now found in most singleplayer games, and generally enriches the experience. In some cases, these off-shoot areas are not mandatory, and this gives the player control over how long they spend in a particular environment.

For competitive multiplayer games, stong level design must bring human players together in such a way that the maximum interactivity occurs (in a traditional competitive experience at least). MOBA games like Dota 2 rely on clean, simple layouts to guide players into various areas in order to win the game. Dota 2, in this instance, largely separates the 2 teams into 3 distinct routes across the map or "lanes". Now, gamers as a species will always, if they can, break something. It's interesting to note that in my own experiences with Dota 2, any attempts to "break" the game by forcing all of the team players into one lane and generally not playing the game as it was intended always lead to our own defeat. That is, the level design is so strong and works perfectly with all the other elements of the game that any attempts to "outsmart" the system were futile. This shows that level design must work synonymously with all other elements of the game, be it the character movements, the shooting mechanics or even in the case of games like "Outlast" (A first-person horror game) with the players inability to see clearly.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hOJh_rom8fM/Tadw0M-toCI/AAAAAAAABOI/3ozGTsBDeYU/s1600/Metroid.png
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132700/twisted_timeline_iterative_level_.php?print=1
http://www.worldsfactory.net/2013/07/17/dota-2-review-a-compelling-and-comprehensive-game
http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Metroidvania