Characters

The 3 main characters in this game are the player's character, the player's mentor and the main antagonist.

The player as earlier mentioned would be customisable, they could be male or female and of whatever physique the player wants them to be. They would have a variety of looks that the player could make of them. They would be able to have their voice customised from presets eg. 3 female and 3 male voice to choose from with the ability to edit those voices slightly. They'd be known purely as Jay (male or female), so that there can be more fluid and cinematic cut scenes and for a very androgynous name that can be used for all customised versions of the player.

The player's mentor would be a female scientist reminiscent of Doc Brown. Her name would be Doctor Angela Yu, she'd be of  American-Asian heritage. She'd be elderly in most circumstances. She have a greying mess of hair with no signs of taking care of it. She'd be very slim. She'd look like a typical scientist in terms of the way she dresses. Her personality is what would be most reminiscent of Doc Brown, in that she'd be extremely clever but somewhat absent minded and crazy and eccentric; with and odd speech pattern.

The main antagonist would be 1 of 2 people depending on the player's choice of male or female (always opposite of the player's gender). The main antagonist would also be a love interest to the character at a point in the game.
The male would never be known as anything more than Red. He would be quite a large build. With dark hair and a Samoan complexion. He'd have a very distinctive feature of red irises (hence the name). He'd dress in very classy attire. Despite his large size he would be very much an intellectual as opposed to a fighter, but will fight when he needs to. He will try to deceive into doing dirty deeds for him as much as he can through false identities and feigning alliance.
The female would be known as haze. She would be a very athletic person, she'd have a light complexion, dark eyes and long hair. She would be a warrior and dress in sporty or stealthy clothing. She would always carry around weaponry of some form. She is very adept in combat both close quarters and ranged. She'd try to get the player to help her by playing the damsel.

Change in design

About half way through the project I was experiencing troubles with textures. Because of this I had to change the blueprint design and make it smaller and give it less models. This is the revised blueprint.

I added more detail to this later to aid myself.

The x's are tree locations, the yellow circles are lights, the black cricles are bins. The dark green is an uphill area. The blue is a river/stream. The brown is bridges.

Little Things

Some little things I added into the environment just to give some unicity and detail are varieties of: bins; lightposts; stop signs.

For the bins I wanted some normal looking steel bins. Some of them were to have a fire started inside them. To make them I made a cyclinder in 3DS then I made a second cylinder that was slightly smaller and used boolean to subtract second cyclinder from the first. I then added the texture I used for the autoshop roller doors to them cyclinders to give them that steely look.

For the fire inside the bins I used a small particle renderer in unity. The particles were rendered so that they slowly rose to give the look of a fire burning in the bins. I also added a weak point light to give a slight appearence of the fire creating light around the bin.


For the light posts I made a cyclinder in 3DS I then used a bend modifier to make it bent over. I then made it into an editable poly and edited the end of the cyclinder to flare out a little like a light is there. I have 2 types of lights one broken and one working.

The broken one had a particle render put near the light area and it render some small spark looking particles around it. The working one had a point light put in the light area as well as a light flare to mimic the glare of a light.



For the stop signs I made a cyclinder in 3DS and gave it a steel texture I then made an octogon and extruded it to make the sign. I put the sign in the appropriate place on the cyclinder. I then unwrapped the octogon and made a uv template. I made 2 maps for the octogon. One was of a proper looking stop sign and the other was the proper looking stop sign with graffiti over it.

Bridge

The bridges in the level are all the same model.

To make it I made a rectanguar block in 3DS and applied a wood texture to it. I copied that block and moved and rotated it next to the first block. I kept doing this until I had a series of blocks forming an arch shape and giving that old wooden bridge look.  I then added a few more blocks as supports for the bridge and gave them the steel texture I had used for the basketball court.

Here are some images of what I was looking for in my bridge (minus the railings):

Office Blocks

There is 3 office blocks in the environment I wanted them to be very plain looking nothing that would draw somebody's attention. The office blocks would all be similar looking but not the same. Because it's night the windows do not need to be very flashy nor does the door.

The maps I used for the office blocks:

As you can see they are all different yet similar in look. The all have that boring grey colour with mostly unlit windows.

To make the office blocks I made blocks in 3DS and put Unwrap UVW on them. I then made planar maps and exported them to photoshop where I drew in the windows and doors in.


Some references:

Nature

In my environment I have 2 main natural elements trees and stones. The stones were made in 3DS as boxes with noise put on them and textured. The trees were made in unity with the tree creator.

The look I was gonig for with the trees was like that of a small sycamore.

I just finished my Basketball Court model for the 3D environmet. Here is the render:

 For the cage walls I used 4 planes with the steel texture below on it. I then added the next image onto the opacity channel of texture so as to make the plane transparent except for the wires. To make the wires diagonal in direction I just rotated the aplha map 45 degrees.

For the floor I used an asphalt texture combines with photo of a basketball courts lines to make an asphalt floored court. Below I ave added the asphalt texture as well as the UV Template and map.

   

For the hoop backboard and pole, I used: a UV template and map on a box for the backboard (as below); the steel texture used for the cage; and the steel texture with a red colour map over the top for the hoop.

 

3D Environment Textures

I want the models and textures for the the 3D environment to be mostly very slummy looking. I want them to look like they have been poorly constructed and vandilised. This would mean some buildings having corners that aren't perpendicular; pathways with lots of cracks in them; graffiti on buildings; buildings that look like they have been either abandoned or broken into.

Here are some textures I have been using thus far:

This is a steel texture used on the poles for the Basketball court and to be used on lightposts

This is an asphalt texture that was used for the Basketball court surface and for roads

This is a stone texture that was used for stepping stones in the Apartment area. The stones were made with chips in them and crooked to fit into the make the look low quality. They have also been made to have an oragne tinge instead of the grey.

This is some graffiti that would be added onto walls of buildings.

More On Time Travel Game

For the time travel game I imagine there being a  central time and place where the character spends a lot of time. The idea I had for the that area is a very slummy urban area. I have drawn a blue print of what the basic layout of the area would be. The objective in this level would be to find necessary upgrades for the players equipment.

This picture is an idea of what the auto shop would look like, with graffit and other vandalism as well as blood on the wall and vomit.

This is sketch of the front of an office block next to a basketball court.

This is a rough blueprint of what the Apartment area would be like.

Elaborating On Time Travel Game Idea

The other day I came up with an idea for a game, in which you travel to the past and ensure events stay the same or change depending on what the player wants. I imagined the game as a free-roaming action adventure and elements of puzzle games in it.

The backstory for my game is that, the main character lives in a future dystopia. One day he crosses paths with a man who has invented a machine in which the user can travel to the past. The man, soon dies in the company of the main character and in his dying moments the man gives the main character the machine. The main character tries the machine and goes back about 10 years in time (this is where the tutorial at the start of the game would be). In that time they learn to use the machine. When they arrive back in their present, they run into a number of people who hear of the characters possession of the time travelling machine, some of the people they meet offer them money in return for changing the past in their favour and some plea with the character to use the machine to improve the world they live in. The character then starts on their journey.

I would like the main character to be able to be customised to the player's will in terms of voice pitch, physique and clothing, in order to create unique characters. However so that the game could have better cutscenes in which the player can be talked to and I would make the player have a nickname that everyone calls them. For the nickname I am thinking 'paradox' at this point.

A character I would like to add into the game would be a comic relief character that travels in companionship with the main character, I like the idea of the character being an animal that through technology has developed a human-like personality and can talk. The animal would be either a monkey, a bird or a snake.

Other characters I am thinking of are a crime boss who offers the main character money in return for the character changing the past in their favour; a blind monk who begs the main character to use the machine to help humanity; a corrupt policital power partly responsible for the world being a dystopia; and a scientist who unknowingly develops a chemical weapon capable of killing entire cities of people.

For the environment I am thinking of the main character's present as a city that is falling apart; and for the other points in time, I want them to be very similar to major cities in different periods of time.

Game Idea

Whilst watching a movie I had an idea for a game that I quite like.

The game is a time traveling game, where the main character lives in a dystopia set a little into the future. A person has created a device for traveling into the past, circumstances have the main character in possession of the device. The player must travel back in time to certain points to either effect the time flow, positively or negative, or even to ensure it stays the same. Once the player gets back to their present, they are able to go back to where they started with all their acquired knowledge and change the past in a different way.

I imagine the game as a puzzle solving action game. Aimed at a late teem/adult audience. Played on the high def next gen consoles.

Comparison between, '80s, '90s and '00s levels.

I have made comparisons between 3 levels each from a different game and decade. The first is the PacMan; the second is Super Mario 64; and the third is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

In Pacman, the look is very basic, there is not a lot of different obects, there is the main character, Pac-man, the dots that are aimed to be eaten, the walls, and the enemies. The level's design never changes, the game just gets harder over time.

In Super Mario 64, the player has a number of worlds they can enter, each world has a number of mission, the world changes depending on which mission the player is doing. The design is very colourful, very cartoony, there is a lot of elements to the games look and the worlds aren't very expansive.

In Oblivion, the player is in a massive medieva fantasy world, with hundreds of individually names characters and items and quests. The design is very much an attempt to recreate a realistic world and make everything very believe and absorb the player into it.

In comparison I notice that the '80s game is very much the same as you progress through it, only gets harder. The '90s game sets a number of worlds and finds different ways to play in that different world, so it makes different objectives for the same environments. The '00s game creates a giant world which makes the character play for hours on end to expand it all. It still has that increasing difficulty, but it gives the player much more drive to play it, as it really creates a world to escape in.

Comparison of Levels and Environment In Different Genres

I have compared 3 different genres levels and environments from 3 different genres the games I am using to compare are: Dead or Alive 4 - a fighting game; Unreal Tournament 3 - a first person shooter; and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Dead or Alive 4 is the fourth installment in the fighting game series Dead or Alive, it is a fighting game so the main goal for every player is to beat their opponent. It is played in a 3D arena environment. Arena refers to the fact that play is stuck in a set area, that isn't very large such as an arena. The story behind Dead or Alive is of a tournament run by the company 'DOATEC' and the winner gets a large monetary prize, 'DOATEC' is a corrupt company who use the tournament as a cover for more sinister things. This setting creates a strong basis for the fighting game as it tells why they are fighting, it also gives different motives for people to fight too (e.g. needing the prize money, wanting to bring down 'DOATEC'), which makes a more interesting The ultimate goal of a level desginer in designing a fighting game is balance, balance in the characters not to make any character better than the others, balance in the arena - not to make the arena effect characters positively or negatively. The risk-reward system in a fighting is, risking losing so that you can win.

Unreal Tournament 3 is the seventh game in the Unreal series, which are first person shooters. Being a shooter what the player wants to do is shoot everything that isn't on their side. In Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) the matches are played on an areas similar to that of the fighting games, but much larger. The setting of UT3 is that there is war going on in a futuristic age. This setting is very common shooting games as it gives a good reason for why you are playing as somebody shooting other people. The risk-reward in shooters is primarily just risking your life to kill your enemies, but there is also different goals depending on different game modes (such as risking your life and sometimes skills in order to capture a flag, in capture the flag modes).

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (or Oblivion for short) is the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls Series, a series of role-playing adventure games. In Oblivion the player goes on journey in a medieval fantasy world. Oblivion is a freeroam game that doesn't have a very linear story, the player can choose just to play the main quest straight away all the way through, but there is more to do in side-quests in total than there is the main quest. The risk-reward system is a lot more complex than in fighters and shooters, in that every quest or every the player tries to achieve has a different risk/reward, for example if a person commits a crime they have to decide whether the reward they get from getting away with the crime is worth losing stolen items and gold if they are arrested or killed.

Risk-reward in comparison: Fighting games are the simiples in that they have a very basic risk, dying and a basic reward winning; shooters are a little more complex in that they have different games modes which change the risks and rewards a little for each mode; and the adventure games are a lot more complex because they are not very linear and they create an entire world to explore which includes legal systems to an extent, questing for special items, joining factions and more.

Settings in comparison: fighting games are also quite simple in that they need little story, they just need to be consistent in different levels; shooters are the same, they usually have more backstory to each level; adventure games require a whole world to be set up with lots characters with their own stories and personalities as well as the world needs to be believable in that you can't have a lot incogruenties.

Goals in comparison: fighting games have one goal which is to beat your opponent; shooters have differet goals depending on the situation and game mode; adventure games have an array of goal, which depend on the player's current quest and what they want to achieve whether it is completing the game fully or trying to level up.

'80s Level Design

I have been pondering on what sort of game I would develop if I were a level designer in the 1980s, keeping in mind all the restriction on the technology they had then.

In the early '80s the golden age of videos was happening, there were some monumental games released such as: Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong and Centipede; just to name a few. In this period scrolling games were gaining popularity, developers were starting to experiment with psuedo-3D and alternative forms of controls, such as racing wheels for racing games.

Around the mid '80s and onward saw the third generation of video games makes it's debut, with the NES, Sega Mega System and Atari 7800, which in turn saw The Legend Of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Ghostbusters and many more games set in history.

Back to the original point, if I were in this designing a game in this era, I would design a side scrolling game to fit in with the upcoming trend. It would most likely be a space themed, which seemed to be a very popular theme at the time because of games like Space Invaders and movies like Star Wars. The game would also be a shooter because that was a genre growing popularity. It would have very limited controls, so directional buttons, a shoot button and a jump button. It would look very simple in terms of graphics because of the limited technology. The audio would also be quite simple, but there would be a digital background track because they were occuring in games at the time.

So to summarise, I would make a space-themed, side scrolling shooter that was very basic in that it had only a few controls and looked simple.