During weeks 1 and 2 there was initially a lot of discussion about the given theme (Coin-Operated 'RECHARGED') and the three choices of games that were voted; House of the Dead, Castlevania and Metal Slug.
Our team had a vote and we chose 'House of the Dead', after this occurred we all went our separate ways to look into one of the House of the Dead games and researched everything that we could see in the game. I looked into the original game and mainly focused on Mechanics and some Art. Here is the rough document I created.
After we had this all outlined and discussed we talked about what levels we could make and where the setting of the game would be and so I made a list and we had a vote. (Here is the list)
'City' and 'Hospital Lab' outstandingly won this vote and so the Level Design team liked these ideas, and since we have 3 Level Designers and 3 Level Artists we decided that we would make 2 larger levels and 1 smaller transporting level between the two. We believe this will allow us to stay within the scope of the project, especially if we keep to levels without too many large open spaces.
The third level idea was up to me and I chose to create a Museum Level. The Museum was chosen as the last part of the game where the last boss would be held. I loved the idea of creating a museum due to the amount of variations that there could be, I could choose anything from a modern art museum to a natural history museum, and all the ideas were interesting. After talking to the Level Artist who is working with me on the level I decided to go with a more natural history approach, however again this left so much up to the imagination, there is many different directions that I could have went with this.
I decided due to the scope of the project that I would be creating a Smaller Constricting Corridor -> Large Open Room -> Another Larger and Wider Corridor.
After this I started to research different Natural History Museums around the world, to begin with I looked at what the exterior of the building could look like. I made a mood board of different possibilities and here is what I came up with...
Looking at these I decided that the best one to go for in terms of both scope of the project and the feel that I want to evoke was the third idea (the Tate Britain in London). This also fit the architecture that I would like to reach for this area also as I want a Romanesque and Gothic style building, the Tate Britain (from this entrance) looks very much like the Roman Pantheon which is a lovely building in Rome that has a ‘Tardis feel’ where upon entering it opens up into an unexpectedly large room, an interesting fact about the pantheon is that ‘Rome’s iconic Pantheon was designed to represent—if not actually function as—a giant sundial’. The only way that light can access the building is through a large circular gap in the roof.
I then started to look into what the entrance to the Museum could look like and so I researched and made a mood board for this idea with some different options.
For the entrance area I believe that I will go for a mix between these two mood boards shown however I will take more inspiration from the second and I use pillars in certain areas to break the players Line of Sight. There will be windows above and to the side of the player so that zombies will be able to burst in and surprise the player, once the player realises that this can happen it will create a state of uneasiness for the player which I think will be great for gameplay and the experience of the player. You can also see some reasoning for these ideas on the mood boards text above.
Next was the design of the larger open room for this I wanted a room with a large centre piece and a room that could 'WOW' the player. I really hope that this can be achieved and here are my ideas.
For this room I will be moving in a direction that would merge these two ideas together. I will have a large open room with assets that would be similar to decrease the workload on the art side, however also making it look amazing and keeping cool architecture as seen in the first idea . The large set piece will be a skeleton of a dinosaur and there will be other smaller exhibits around the room and information hubs that can be used as cover.
The final room where the main boss fight will take place will be a larger, wider corridor than seen at first in the Museum however there must be enough space to allow the boss to move and cast it's abilities. Here is my idea.
My idea is to go with a Egyptian / Roman exhibit detailing their histories, however I am preparing to cut this down to a just Egyptian exhibit to keep to a lower prop count. This room would be interesting as there would be loads of places to hide NPC's and also places for enemies to appear from, such as; Crypts, glass display cases, windows, behind columns and much more. These different places could also be used in tandem with the boss' abilities (Death) and him being able to raise corpse's from the dead. I am very excited to start designing for this.
After this I got in contact with my Level Artist and came up with a small asset list with general assets that will appear in the level no matter what. In this document I also gave specifications for different sizes and linked my inspirations for these assets.
This was a simple and temporary document that I quickly put together that the Level Artist could use for reference, a larger more comprehensive list will be created later.
After this I collaborated with the Gameplay Designer and came up with some ideas that we could use for the game, here is what we came up with:
· Mania and doing weird things with players screens and tying that in with that players game story
· Stress meter - Stress Levels heighten when the player gets hit (Could look like you’ve been stunned in CoD, will be harder to aim for the player etc…)
· Weak Points on enemies visible in game? OR just on blueprints
· Third person when in cover, first person when moving about (OO7 Casino Royale game)
· LITERALLY ON RAILS (sort of like a theme park ride - interesting way of changing directions like shooting levers and stuff etc…)
· Reanimating past players (so if you die your old character is a zombie) (they can kill you and you basically must kill yourself)
· The World Changes when replaying (different times - later in month or year ties in with killing past player characters)
· Different characters that have interesting abilities (GTA V like)
However after talking with other members of the team the list was cut down and so the list ended up like this:
Main Mechanics:
· Character has interesting abilities (GTA V like)
· Weak Points on enemies visible in game? OR just on blueprints as seen in the original
Stretch Ideas:
· Mania and doing weird things with players screens and tying that in with that players game story
· Stress meter - Stress Levels heighten when the player gets hit (Could look like you’ve been stunned in Call of Duty, will be harder to aim for the player etc…)
· Third person when in cover, first person when moving about (OO7 Casino Royale game)
During this time in Weeks 1 & 2 the team were holding AGILE team meetings and taking advantage of SCRUMS and Show and Tells to make sure that the entire team was keeping up to date on what other people are doing and also giving feedback on others' work.
The next step now is for me to make Paper Top-Down designs for my level and see how the level would flow, where enemies would be placed, where cover would be etc... This is my goal over the next week as well as maybe starting my in engine block outs for the project.
Thanks for reading.