Week 3 Journeyman Blog

During week 3 the first thing that I worked on was a short pitch on a mechanic and how it would work in the game using simple images and explanations. The mechanic was a 3rd person cover mechanic as see in the 'James Bond 007 Quantum of Solace’ game.

3rd Person Cover Pitch.docx

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All that this details is how it works in the original game and a simple diagram of how it would work in game. It would work by having the player change to a 3rd person camera when they choose to enter cover and once the player chose a side to aim out of they would be restricted to that sides view to prevent the player from seeing everything all the time, this would allow the player to be snuck up on.

After this I started to plan how my museum level would look from a top down perspective, I used the mood boards that I made the week before and planned how the layout would be and how it would flow. Once I moved to paper however I found it very difficult to choose where certain placement of assets would be, after trying over and over and failing I decided that I would move into engine on the Thursday of week 3.

After I had completed this pre-production work by the Thursday we had a small meeting in discord which turned the whole tide of the game, we decided that the game would change to an FPS free moving game rather than on rails, for many many reasons one being that it would shorten production time and it would be easier to design mechanics for.

Following this we had a meeting on Friday with our supervisor and again there was more cuts, people decided that the Museum level did not fit fully into the game and so it was cut and I would have to design another level. Other team members said that a lab would fit into the narrative more and so I started work on this. I started to make mood boards so that the following week I would be able to start designing a laboratory level and also start blocking it out.

Before I started to design my levels however I had to change the designs and mechanics for my boss. The boss would be similar to before however it would take on a new life and would be made to be similar to Tyrant on Resident Evil 2, the boss will follow the player around the map and keep the player moving around, there will be some scripted sequences however not too many as to affect to scope of the project.

Here are the mood boards that I created for the Character Art team to work from, I also included a short backstory for the boss to give reasoning for his weird stature and looks. Using these images and my chat with the character art team I started to design some mechanics for this boss and also an animation list for the boss.

Boss Mechanic Ideas.docx

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Death Boss Animations List.docx

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There will still be more mechanics designed as a stretch goal for later in production.

I next started work the Zombie character design. For these mood boards I decided to look for the zombies from drawings I found online and other 3D renders that people have created. I also included some small specifications to point the character artist in the right direction as well.

Succeeding this I started my work on the laboratory design, since there was not much time in the week left I just decided to make a mood board on different laboratory designs and how I could include all of these ideas in one. I decided that I wanted to keep the look of this lab very modern and make the laboratory almost hypermodern or having the building be a place of cutting edge technology.

Next week when designing the level from a top down view and starting to blockout I will use these mood boards to design the look and feel of the levels and how I can use these areas to surprise the player and throw them into action.

Thanks yet again for reading.