Man have the last five days been busy. And a lot of that time was dedicated to Senior Team discussion, working on our presentation, reciting it,actually giving it, and stressing out about the results.
Let's start at Friday though. Last Friday night was our scheduled "sprint review" meeting. For those who don't know what a "sprint" is, it's basically a set amount of time during which everyone has tasks to do. We took a look at Chris's new Mageball prototype (which I got hooked on for fifteen minutes). It was pretty awesome.
Then it came down to picking a game. It went surprisingly smooth, I think. I was dreading the meeting the whole day, because I thought we would end up debating until midnight on a Friday night after what was a very stressful week.
But in about an hour and a half we decided Mageball was our game.
The next few days were spent making the presentation together, polishing and practicing, and discussing our next steps in Stage 2.
We were assuming pretty hard that we would pass the Stage 1 challenge.
It was extremely close, but we unfortunately did not make it this week. Everything was great, except our teachers wanted us to explore the design of the actual sport (independent of the magic) more. Understandable.
The good news is that's all we were missing. It doesn't really slow us down at all, especially me since design is not my area. I am continuing with my tasks as if we had passed.
That task being modeling a character. Phew...
Here's a cute little guy I drew over the weekend though. Alex and I played through the Little Big Planet story earlier this semester, which inspired him.
I like him but he's too cutesy for Mageball.
Anyway, Chris and Bryan will be working on some more designs which will likely be pretty important. I'll be sure to post them here when I can!
So I realize I've never explained the actual class this blog is for.
Basically, we are split up into teams of four (typically two designers, one programmer, and one artist). We are all functioning as if we are small game studios. We are pretty independent of a normal class structure. Each class session is spent either discussing our ideas and progress of the week and getting critique from everyone else, or...
"Challenging."
Here's the deal: there are four "stages" each team must pass to even be able to be considered to move onto the second semester with their game. Each stage has its own set criteria that must be filled to move on to the next one.
"Challenging" a stage means putting a long presentation together with your team and presenting what you've done and why you deserve to move on. Why should the school fund your game over someone else's?
By the way, "funding" a game means giving more students to your team. There is no actual money involved. Unfortunately.
Where is my team at right now you ask?
We're hoping to challenge this upcoming Tuesday. [Shakes in her flip flops.]
A lot of work on the presentation starts tonight. We've got to finish and polish all tasks required for this stage, make sure all of us know the games forwards and backwards, put together the presentation, and practice the presentation. Each of us need to be able to answer any question thrown at us.
Also -- even more daunting -- is the task of... picking a game. We have to pick which game out of our prototypes we're deciding to move forward on.
You might be like, "Psh, no big deal which game do you like better?"
I don't blame you for thinking that's how it works. But it totally doesn't work that way.
It doesn't matter which game I want to play. It matters what the rest of the world wants to play. Furthermore, it doesn't matter what I want to play. It matters what game I want to make. The two are very different. "Tightening the graphics on level three" is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
This is totally what game design is like.
Even then, I (personally) am still 50/50. Each require a very different set of artistic skills and assets. It's just a matter of "which art-heavy game am I going to pick?"
Wingsuit has a LOT more environmental assets to do. I mean a ton. Imagine standing on top of a mountain and looking out at the landscape. Try to think of every unique item you're looking at. Now imagine that you have to model all of them in 3D, texture them, and then someone has to go in and put every individual item in the level. I don't even want to think about it.
Mageball has less environmental assets, but there are characters and spells. Characters are extremely hard to model. They also need an enormous amount of animation, and spells need awesome effects and animations. Now, I'm no good at either of those things. In fact, I'm not even designated animator for this semester (Chris is). Particle effects and spell animations are something I can learn, but it is going to be hard. There are also a million other things to consider that are game design, game programming, and marketability related. If you want to read about that in depth, I'm sorry but you'll have to go elsewhere. We've got to decide on a game in a couple of hours and, right now, I really couldn't tell you what direction we're leaning in. But next post will! Stay tuned.
With the basic ideas for character design done for both game designs, I decided to move right along to concepting the environments.
Just something about me personally: I don't like to get stuck on one thing for too long. That's not to say I don't finish long projects or anything of the sort. Rather -- especially for these projects -- I feel the characters and environments work together harmoniously. It's better for me to work on both at the same time so they are fluid, rather than nail one down completely before moving on.
My last post included what I have done so far for the wingsuit game. This is what I've got for Mageball:
This is the basic idea. At the least, we would like to have two maps -- a Team Fire stadium, and a Team Ice stadium.
Although, there is some debate on whether or not the maps should actually be stadiums or not. While the rest of us were envisioning a professional sport, EA Games type feel, Chris was envisioning something different. I suggested, though, that I would concept the fields inside a stadium, and if we decided otherwise, we would just move the field to another environment.
Anyway, the thought behind the ice field is as if it's an actual arctic environment. So there are little ledges, or high points. There are cracks in the ice, and snow. The environment may not necessarily affect players. I really feel that we need to sell that this is Team Ice's home field, though. I also want the art to radiate the feeling of coldness. That's when I know that I have done a good job. The colour palette has a lot to do with this.
This sketch I am not even counting as actual work. It was done pretty quick while I had some down-time. I posted it here to point out that the hoods are up on the characters in the picture above it. Chris and I have talked about character customization way down the road, although he prefers the hood-down version of the characters. I'm not sure what I prefer, but it comes down to what I can get done and how efficient I can be as an artist. Faces are extremely difficult to model. And that's on top of the difficulty of modeling a character in general. The hood-up version of the character allows me to at least skip the face, so it may be a large load off of me. We'll see how that plays out in the end though.
Lastly, here's the short concept I did for a Team Fire stadium. I imagined more rock structure, some lava pits, and dark red-brown colours. I feel like this says, "Fire Stadium" of some persuasion. Then again, I feel like it's way too evil. I don't want Team Fire to be the "villain" of our game, simply by colour association. Then I had the idea to add a touch more professional sport feel. It would probably include brightening up the colour palette for the stadium, and keeping the field as is. This is a good example of colour association being a real bitch, though. I mean, when you look at Warcraft races, don't you see Alliance - Good, Horde - Evil? That's what I saw, but that's not really the case. Neither are good or evil, they're just different. It's quite a challenge. I'll let you know how I try to overcome it!
It wasn't long before our first day, and we still only had one game idea for Capstone. Dissatisfied, Bryan quickly whipped up a new design document for a wingsuit game. It's basically a flight simulation game using the Razer Hydra. There would be a specific track the player would have to follow. I think the default mode would be time trial. We were also thinking about a networked racing mode.
As a concept artist, I was having a lot of trouble with this one. A wingsuit is so very, very boring to look at.
Those bottom ones are a little more interesting, but I mean come on! Where's the personality? Mageball was much easier to concept. I had to do quite a bit of practice drawings before I came up with something I even liked a little.
I call this drawing "If I Had A Wingsuit, What Would It Look Like?" The answer was apparently: yellow bunnies. Bryan seemed alright with this one. The one that came before looked like Assassin's Creed hero, Ezio Auditore, in a wingsuit. It was a miserable piece of work.
I also did a bit of painting for practice. Landscapes are not even a little easy, as I learned in oil painting class a year ago.
This, too, is pretty not good. I just wanted to get a feel for painting mountains, really. So I probably shouldn't show you this.
This is (what might be) a more accurate depiction of what the game would look like. The flags, by the way, are to indicate the path the player should take. We were thinking of also going in the traditional direction of rings that you have to fly through.
I LOVE Spyro
Bryan also came up with another iteration of the game, which includes secret agents and wingsuit combat.
Design QA is tomorrow so we'll see how everything goes over.
(QA is to make sure an audience would actually respond positively to our game, and to see if the game works.)
We're only in week two of senior year here at Champlain, and we're already pretty buried with work. Capstone keeps getting more exciting. At this stage, we are required to come up several game ideas to flesh out and pitch to our teachers and peers.
By the end of spring semester of junior year, my team already had a couple game ideas. More importantly, we knew what kind of technology we were going to be working with.
The Razer Hydra.
How many games have been made specifically for the Razer Hydra?
Zero.
Challenge accepted. In case you haven't heard of the Razer Hydra (it's okay, most people -- even gamers -- haven't), imagine a Wiimote... but better.
For a better and more technically accurate description: http://www.razerzone.com/minisite/hydra/what
Back to game stuff:
Our very first idea was a cyberpunk Japanese sword combat game that took place in a city. It lasted a couple weeks. And then we were like, "Wait, no."
Reasons why: 1. We'd have to model an entire city. An entire city. 2. Japan is a pretty popular subject for games. I don't want to say it's cliche... (It is.)
By the end of junior year we sort of ended up settling on a gladiator-type game idea. The player would be in an arena, and monsters would be sent out to battle. Ideally, we would have liked to have several battle types (archery, magic, sword, etc.), but we ended up going with magic as our starting point.
Why? Easy. Our technology gives us the AWESOME advantage of a more immersive and interactive experience. We combined this with the fact that everybody wants to be the mage. (No I don't have the numbers to prove that.) How do you play a Mage in most games? Choose your spell and press a button to cast, right? Well with the Razer Hydra, we are able to design a system so hand movements trigger the casting. Which means we're one step closer to being a real Mage. Sweeeeeeet. Well we played around with that arena/gladiator for a while. Around midsummer, Chris came up with a new design. As he explained, it combines soccer with that Mage system we already came up with. This is one of the ideas we actually ended up running with for this semester. Its current name is Mageball, but that's definitely subject to change. Mageball is a 3D game. We're using Unity as our game engine.The game itself works just like soccer would. The twist is the magic. At the start of the game the player chooses to be either Team Fire or Team Ice. These teams are both balanced and their spell lists are identical, aside from the aesthetics (which would make their spells look like fire or ice). Then they choose from two other elements: earth, air, lightning, and arcane. These spells are balanced but not identical. For example, earth has a time slow spell and lightning has a ball magnet spell. There is both offensive and defensive magic. It can also affect the ball, the caster or other players. This would be both a multiplayer and single player game, which means Alex has the load of doing both AI (Artificial Intelligence for Non-Player Characters/computer characters) and networking.
Chris and Bryan have the tedious task of coming up with spells, the hand movements for spell casting, and balancing those spells. These things are more time consuming than you might think. Not only does it take time to just test the game, but to fix the things that don't work. It takes a lot of familiarity and intuition.
This is also a pretty art-heavy game. We need multiple animated characters, all of the spell effects, a coliseum, seating, an audience, all other environment things, goals, a ball, and on and on. That's not including that concept art, which is the stage I'm at now.
Artists end up running into a lot of design problems. Well I guess it's not a problem, exactly, but I had to ask myself (and my team) a lot of questions. While I was designing the outfits for our Mageball players I had to make a decision. What is the ratio of Mage to sports player? Character design is really a tricky thing. SO MUCH about a game's design can be told through the character. Ignore the floating balls of ice and fire. Without those, can you tell they're Mages and also sports players? I wanted to find that perfect balance that would allow the player to be able to tell at a first glance. I also ended up thinking about "home" and "away" jerseys from playing too much soccer and watching too much hockey. Those things actually came in handy for a game design! Who knew?
This was my second sketch for character design. Team Ice is in a home jersey: blue with white and ice blue stripes. Her banners have a symbol for Ice. Her shin guards and other "armour" are gray. Team Fire is in an away jersey: white with orange and red stripes. Her banners have the fire symbol. Her "armour" is a gold-coloured plastic. Maybe it's really segregational (that's definitely not a word), but I kept their colour palettes even through their hair. Mageball, and other sports games, are fast paced -- that's why they're exciting. So players should be able to identify a teammate immediately, even if they just see their teammate's head. I will be playing around more with the outfits in the future, but Chris wanted to design the ball as soon as possible. My first concept was this:
Then he iterated on that about five hundred times. Now we've got a lot of different ideas for game balls to choose from. But I am going to move on to concepting some environments. We also have another game idea, but this blog post is a book already so I will give you a break and post that another time. Thanks for reading!
Before we get down to business: I feel like you should know the person behind the blog before you can fully appreciate what the person is writing. So who's writing this blog?
My name is Samantha Thode. Some people call me Noodles. Most people call me Sam.
I'm a senior at Champlain College (ugh it's weird to say that) in Burlington, Vermont. I'm a Game Art and Animation major and, yes, I love video games. But I also love other things. I love baking. I love being outside. I love watching hockey. I love learning anything.
As a jack of all trades kind of person, it is -- and has been -- weird to be focusing most of my time and energy into one specific field of art. Three years passed by, and I barely even noticed. But here I am in my fourth, and final, year of school at Camp Champ.
And that brings me to the core of this blog: Senior Capstone. As I understand, most colleges or universities don't have "capstones" like Champlain does. It's basically a huge demonstration of what we've learned during our time here. It's kind of a big deal. And it takes a lot of time and effort. I mean a LOT of time and effort. For Game Majors -- Game Designers, Game Programmers, and Game Artists -- this capstone runs for an entire year and eats up anywhere from most to all of our time. This blog gives me the chance to step away from the work, and just log what I've been up to. It provides a place to give a little insight to making a game, from start to finish. I know these things exist all over the place, but most are probably done by professionals, right? Well this is a little insight to my world: the world of a student Game Artist! I want this blog to be for everyone. To clarify: I don't want this to be only for my teachers to look at. I don't want it to be only for people in my graduating class of game majors to see what I'm up to. Not only for game major students, and not only for people in school at all.
While I will have to be using some technical game jargon from time to time, I really want this blog to be a little window into my world, and the game major student world in general. Because -- let me tell you -- there are A LOT of misconceptions about us game majors. I will tell you now: We are some of the most hard-working people you could meet. We're passionate about what we do. We get done what we need to get done. (And if we're lucky, it comes out pretty awesome.) I hope this blog will allow you to see that. Especially since this is not only my work, but the work of my amazing teammates. Alex, our Programmer; Chris, our Game Designer and Level Designer; and Bryan, our Game Designer and Producer. Of course, since it's my blog, you'll be seeing a lot of my work and my works in progress. But you'll inevitably see some stuff we've all done together too! Alright well that's the end of my introduction. Hopefully that puts this into perspective. And I sincerely hope you follow along and see what we come up with! - Sam
