cleaning up some sketches for the document

I cleaned/coloured some of my sketches that I did for the design of the game so that we could use them in the document, a lot of the drawing were black and white and a bit messy.

As well as that I also added a female portrait to add to the character page since the addition of the female character.

Contextual studies research

In my presentation I want to explore how Video Games compare to Literature and Film in terms of artistic story telling, and as a valid form of artistic expression.

I collected a number of references in order explore some of the issues I think that Video Games face as an artistic medium, the first being how Game developers have a tendency to 'copy' the success of the Film industry, in order to be taken seriously game developers, rather than making the most of what video games have to offer, they try and take what Film did and adapt that into games which results in invasive cut-scenes.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/09/videogame-cutscenes/

Totalbiscuit (Youtube video game reviewer) goes into detail about what I mentioned previously about how Game developers try to emulate hollywoods success with cutscenes and set pieces, and how the video games industry would do well to follow the example of games liek Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Journey, which I will look into in my research for my presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3EmqraAxc

PennyArcade's Extra Credits youtube series has a video addressing the debate that video games that don't particularly rely on gameplay mechanics should be identified as 'video games' at all. They suggest that maybe it doesn't actually matter, maybe the question is wrong, That people are merely afraid of change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se_9eBcNpGM

I wanted to explore how the element of 'exploration' is something very exclusive to video games and offers something that other mediums of storytelling could never possibly hope to give the audience.

I found a very interesting article that looks at the idea of exploration in video games in a completely new way that I had never considered before they describe the desire for exploration as something that is in our genes, something left behind from humanities nomadic days before civilisation and settlement. They suggest that videogames are allowing us from the comfort of our home to quench this desire for exploration.

"Our bodies and minds have not changed as much as our circumstances in the past 8,000 years. And while we have grudgingly accepted that even today's cubicle-dweller has to sate his unruly body's need for exercise, for being used and kept 'in shape', our inner nomad still hungers. We may pacify our vagrant body while staying in one place, as our civilization demands; but what about our nomad souls?"

http://videogametourism.at/node/1694

Infection stages

Until now most of our stuff we had to do with the infection stages of the animals was very rough, so we needed some more polished illustrations, I took one of the sketchy drawings and refined it and added variations at the stages of infection.

The illustration depicts a deer as it would be seen in the 'safe' areas in the game where it would be completely harmless and unaffected by the fungal infection (Stage 0) varying all the way down to the most extreme example of the infection where the animal would be highly hostile and powerful. As the infection gets more severe the fungal infection spreads causing the effects of hair loss in the affected areas of the skin, excessive bone growth and visible fungal growth in the most extreme areas.

I've posted most of my reference for the fungal growth already, but I used another influence for the final stage of a tufted deer which have strange fangs, I felt that it would add to the violent image of the final stage of the infection.

Solving the problem with potential nudity

When originally considering the inclusion of a female player character we encountered a potential problem with nudity, one of the main game mechanics is the 'back tattoo' which the player uses to track their process in the game, which needs to be completely visible/bare for the whole game in order for the player to be able to see their stats at any time.

Of course this caused a problem, if a female character would have a completely bare back that would also mean a bare chest and exposed breasts, which we felt would be inappropriate especially for an action game. the problem comes from the fact that the female character wouldn't be able to wear any kind of top or bra as it would obscure the back tattoo, and redesigning the back tattoo to fit around a bra strap didn't seem like a good option as the skill trees would have to be the same for the male and female character as we wanted the difference to be mostly cosmetic.

After actually carrying out some market research and finding that isolating the female audience would not be sensible we considered a work around, it actually came surprisingly quickly considering we thought it wouldn't be possible before, we just came up with the idea of designing a bra that wouldn't need a back strap but would use other limbs for support, I did a drawing for a potential bra design and a general design for a female character too including a 'loin cloth' redesign and a hair style.

The bra was pretty straight forward, I just used a design similar to the loin cloth and modified the back to have straps around the arms instead of the back, which probably wouldn't work in real life but I feel would be convincing enough for a game and a good solution to our problem. I felt like the loin cloth for the female character needed to be a bit more modest and also conform to the larger hips and thighs more so added another strap. 

In terms of the actual design of the character and the hair I just used some reference images of polynesian women and modified the hairstyles I saw to go with what I felt was the established style.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2c-NTZrEK9Q9Fpk8tYN-jQs9gV9Pi-yRRd9VfHSu4r5l-YsMHw1b-16d7LgNsi94CRlEmiBhGEW334TCag7J_jUyItqziDOErEzGGU4DnMEkz8q9AdFD3kltdYtYltR6sxoAM4J7kvgs/s1600/409px-MeriMangakahia1890s.jpg

http://data2.whicdn.com/images/79183706/large.jpg

Market Research for targeting an audience

After our presentation if became apparent to us that we hadn't put enough thought into the target audience of the game, so we decided to go and do some research into the demographics of video games in general and who plays the kind of games that we feel out game is similar to (namely Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim).

The first thing I did was try to find some demographic statistic for Skyrim, but that proved quite difficult, I couldn't find any good quantitative statistics but I did find an interview with Todd Howard (Skyrim's Creator) by Game Informer.

What I got out of the interview was that the 'Core' market in video games is often overlooked by publishers and is really a  much more marketable audience than people tend to think.

This is a section from the interview that I focused on:

Game Informer: As far as sales goes, Skyrim is the best-selling game in Bethesda history. Is there something about the game from a design standpoint that made it more popular and mainstream? The Elder Scrolls series has been typically thought of as very hardcore RPGs.

Todd Howard: The short answer is "I don’t know." I can give you my guess, which is people underestimate how many core gamers there are; people who want a lot of depth and will play a game for a long time. There are a lot of them. If you give them something unique and good, you don’t have to dumb it down.

There are things we changed to make the game better, but not to appeal to a wider audience. I think we always benefited in Elder Scrolls early on, the fact that it is first-person and kind of walks this action line sometimes. We’ve always benefited from that. Even our own lofty expectations for how the game would be received or sell, it’s way, way beyond that.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/20/todd-howard-interview.aspx

But what is the Core market? I was always familiar with the term 'Hardcore gamer' but whether Core and Hardcore were the same thing or not I didn't know, so I turned to wikipedia to get a definition of the term:

According to Wikipedia Core and Hardcore were separate terms:

Core gamer

A core or mid-core gamer is a player with a wider range of interests than a casual gamer and is more likely to enthusiastically play different types of games, but without the amount of time spent and sense of competition of a hardcore gamer. The mid-core gamer enjoys games but may not finish every game they buy, doesn't have time for long MMO quests, and is a target consumer. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that they designed the Wii U to cater to core gamers who are in between the casual and hardcore categories.

A number of theories have been presented regarding the origins of mid-core gamers. James Hursthouse, the founder of Roadhouse Interactive credits the evolution of devices towards tablets and touch-screen interfaces, whereas Jon Radoff of Disruptor Beam compares the emergence of mid-core games to similar increases in media sophistication that have occurred in media such as television.

Hardcore gamer

Hardcore gamers extend gaming into their lifestyle and may represent the stereotypical “game geek”. They are frequent purchasers of games, prefer to expend significant time on games, and are more likely to try to "master" their games by completing as many objectives as possible. Hardcore gamers may take part in video game culture such as competitions, events and conventions. Competitions may involve organized tournaments, leagues, or ranked play integrated into the game. An example of this is Major League Gaming, an electronic sports organization that often holds events for first-person shooter games such as Quake. There are many subtypes of hardcore gamers based on the style of game, gameplay preference, hardware platform, and other preferences.

So I decided that Core/Hardcore was probably the way to go. Originally we had decided that the game was going to be aimed primarily at 'males' but that was mainly due to a problem with encountered with avoiding nudity which I'll get into a bit later. We decided that we had better at least do a bit of research into how large the demographic for female gamers actually was. 

http://www.themarysue.com/gaming-statistics/

We found that actually a very large portion of the gaming market actually consists of females, almost half, so it would definitely be in our best interests to try and appeal to the female demographic, which meant adding a female player character and solving our potential nudity issue.

Finally we considered these statistics on the overall demographics of video games: 

Statistics on Today's Gamer (2013)

The average age of today's gamer : 30

The average number of years gamers have been players : 13

68% of gamers are 18 or older

45% of gamers are female

62% of gamers play games with others

36% of gamers play games of their phones

25% of gamers play on their wireless device

Parents of gamers

89% of parents are present when games are purchased or rented

88% of parents feel that the rating board for games is helpful when choosing games

86% of parents believe that the parent controls in games a useful

71% of parents believe games provides mental stimulation or education

59% of parents believe games encourage their family to spend time together

http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp

We found that actually the average age of gamers today is 30 so now we have our age range for our game.

Target Audience

16-30, Male and Female, Core/Hardcore audience.

Draw-over

While making the presentation there was a number of drawings that we felt would be good to have in the presentation but wasn't really in a condition to be included in the presentation itself (scanned pencil drawings) So I went over the drawing and made everything more neat and fitting into the style of the presentation.

As well as just doing a draw over of the above image I also overlaid the puzzle tiles in perspective over the model created of the room. 

Stone Illustrations

In order to try and explain the different functions or attributes that each stone would give to the weapons I created a fairly quick illustration of a few examples along with their 'quality', although design -side I'm not happy with them and will most likely redesign them in the future.

Backgrounds

We felt that it would be important to have a good background for our presentation that would represent the tone and theme of the game and also frame the artwork nicely, we came up with a few versions of potential background but they ended up being quite overbearing and ended up going with something more simple.

Old versions (designed by me)

Final version (not designed by me)

Logo

I thought it would be nice and make the game feel more real if we had a logo, which would also be useful for the title page in our presentation/game design document. We earlier decided on a title for the game: Haku Hiva, which is the name of the Island we based the map of the island on. I also felt it was fitting as it was almost like an onomatopoeia, it sort of sounds like 'hack and heave'.

The logo is primarily based on the club that we used an out initial inspiration for the game (and as one of the weapons in the game) and with the text creates the form of a skull, which I felt reflected the tone of the game quite well.

first iteration

This was the first version of the logo, the main difference is that the 'eyes' are white in this version, my group felt that it looked too overbearing and 'hypnotic'.

Back Tattoos

I took the tattoo drawings and tried to incorporate them into the back in a way that made it instantly clear that the tattoos will be filled in.

I added a 'border' around the area where the back tattoo would branch, giving a sense of a 'goal' for the player to achieve by filling the empty area. I also tried to illustrate the difference between the different branches of skills and finally a back with the tattoos complete.

Tree paintovers

I did some paintovers on a model of a cross section of the environment including a tree (that was modelled for this purpose) The purpose of the paintover was to show the varying degrees of the fungus' effect on the environment, as the player gets closer to the Spirit gods in the infection zones, the fungus will become more severe, effecting the ground as well as the atmosphere, the worse areas will be darker and covered in a mist of spores.

I think I may have been too restrictive and working too zoomed in so I may have another shot at this but try and take full advantage of the scene and really try and go a bit wild with the infection.

close up of the bottoms of the tree.

Weapons silhouettes

I created intended to do some silhouettes for some potential weapon stone modifications, but I ended up kind of just creating an image for each potential variation. I decided that perhaps each stone has a certain quality that is reflected in the stats of the weapon, for example a deer stone would give the weapons it’s ‘power’ form which would be cumbersome but powerful. A bird stone would give the ‘range’ form which elongates the weapon and makes it more effective from a distance. A turtle stone would make the weapon ‘defensive’ which would simply give the weapon a shield for blocking and perhaps some other defensive measure.

Another thing I've proposed would be the idea for potential context-sensitive controls depending on the equipped stone. For example when the 'Power' stone is equipped the control does a powerful but slow attack, typical in hack and slash games, but when using the 'defensive' stone the button would simply act as a 'block' that would otherwise be unavailable. This feel like this adds incentive for players to switch up their play style from area to area, and possibly have to go back after a failed attempt at a boss with a different play-style, maybe the defensive style would be best for one boss, but the stones can't be changed on the fly, the player would need to go back to the nearest camp in order to change their set-up.

Infection progression

These images are all of the same bear at 3 different stages in the infection process starting with stage one, with some minimal fungal growth and some hair loss, the second image will be a bit more further along, with severe hair loss, fungal growth and excessive bone growth piercing the skin in the chin shoulder blades and spine. as well as excessive growth in the teeth, this stage should really have more hair but I intended it to be the final form, I continued working into it though creating what is now the final stage. The fourth and final stage the bear is almost unrecognisable, with severe fungal growth all over the body and further excessive bone growth now notably in the brow ridge, cheek bones and the nose, giving the bear a more threatening and deathly aesthetic. 

Throughout the stages of infection the bear is also contorted into more horrifying form by the continued growth of the spine which can be made out by the silhouettes, the bear becomes more stiff limbs and bent out of shape the further it progresses into it's infection.

Character back

I needed to create a drawing of the player character's back to illustrate the tattoo progression system.

When we have more of a solid idea of what the tattoos look like I will add them to the image along with step by step how they will upgrade.

I will also use this image later to create a front view using it's silhouette as a base.

weapon upgrading

I briefly mentioned earlier how the Spirit Gods would drop an ore that the player would use to cast a stone that would use to improve their weapons, the stone would modify the effectiveness of the weapon as well as it's appearance. The idea was in part a way of adding a range of weapons to the game without actually having to design lots of different types and different material weapons as the actual weapons used at the time were severely limited, and as a game with heavy Hack and Slash elements I felt it would be important to have a range of different weapons in the game.

I think before going any further into designing these I want to do some more rough iterations, maybe using silhouettes. I just wanted to illustrate how the stone would affect the appearance of a weapon.

I'm not particularly happy with this but this was a quick-sih paintover I did of one of the 3D models.

I think the main problem was that I was very limited by the fact that the bridge and the small island took up the entire fore and midground of the composition so I was severely limited in how I could add the island into the image, I was kind of restricted to adding it in the background and as a result it just kind of looks lazy, I'm going to attempt another paintover probably without the bridge/river and with the village more in the foreground.

Fungus in the environment

After deciding on the new direction for the fungal infection for the animals we decided to have the fungus manifest itself in the environment as well, adding continuity and also explaining a bit more how the infection is actually spread; in all of the infection 'zones' there will be fungus spread around the environment getting gradually more severe as the player reaches the centre, or the the Spirit boss fight, the player then kills the Spirit resulting the the death of the fungus around that area of the island. The fungus would also fire spores into the environment adding a dark foggy effect to the environment and heavily enforcing the idea of the danger of the infection on the island.

The sketch is mainly serving as a reference for a 3D model based on the subject.

A new direction for the infection

From the start I wanted the infection to be a sort of physical real world infection like a parasite, but as a group it was agreed that the manifestation we went with was too similar to the infection in the Princess Mononoke film. Eventually we kind of settled on a more abstract 'corruption' infection, which would sort of take the form of black sludge on the animals body that would gradually get worse and morph the appearance of the animal to more grotesque and horrifying extremes as the player draws closer to the Spirit. Eventually we agreed that this design for the infection was kind of arbitrary so I wanted to take it back to the physical real world animation, we a decided on a 'fungal' infection that would manifest itself over the animals body, on top of that we also went with an old idea of having the animals bones grow excessively to the extent of penetrating the skin and taking the form of outside appendages.

I did a drawing of my own interpretation of this infection, which at the moment is a rough sketch but may be developed further as I see how the group feel about it.

building

As a part of our Game Design Document our group decided we would include 3D model assets in order to showcase the art style and various environment pieces in detail.

I created reference for one of the models, a building from one of the camps or villages on the island, and a variation of the same building that is 'incomplete', the purpose of these assets being to illustrate the idea of the colonisation being ongoing when as the game takes place, some parts of the world would still be under construction and the construction would advance as the player gets further into the game.

Weapon types

Here I am just exploring further the different types of weapons based on the original club design. I highlighted the the bottom 'face' because the idea is that this is a gem that is interchangeable, different gems will affect the appearance and functionality of a weapon, and I'll be exploring into that some more later.

My only concern at this point is that maybe basing every weapon on the club might be boring, but the gem influence may fix that issue, depending on how I choose to implement that.

Character customisation

I created some alternative versions of the same face to give an impression of how the initial character customisation may work, I'm not sure about the tattoo'd face because of the levelling system, but I guess it's possible that the rest of the body could be tattoo'd because the levelling only effects the back.

http://larskrutak.com/embodied-symbols-of-the-south-seas-tattoo-in-polynesia/#prettyPhoto

This is a link that I found that goes into some detail about tattoo's in Polynesia. I used this image in particular as reference for the middle faces tattoos.

http://larskrutak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/38b.jpg

I used the following image as my main reference for the actual shape of the face.

http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/images/marquesan_warrior1.jpg

the following are some miscellaneous reference that I also found helpful.

http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/images/marquesas_man_1.jpg

http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/images/46Marquesanwarrior.jpg

http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/images/marquesan-female.jpg

Overview for the game and Game Design Document

There had been some confusion and disagreement when it came to certain aspects of the game so I took it upon myself to create an overview for everything in the game, it may be missing certain things so far as this is just a first draft but I'll show it to my group and see if there is anything I left ambiguous.

Premise 

Monster Hunter in a sandbox Island setting

Setting

Polynesian Island, Marquesan tribe, Some time in the 19th century

World

Colonisation of an unknown island inhabited by spirits who have infected the local fauna. The player must bring the infection under control in order to continue colonisation of the island by his tribe.

Aim

Sandbox island where the player must kill six Spirit Gods in order to destroy the infection in their domain of the island, surrounding each Spirit Gods is almost a horde of infected animals the the player must fight through in order to kill the respective Spirit God. After killing all of the Spirit Gods the player must then take out the final 'Overlord' spirit, putting an end to the infection once and for all.

Gameplay

Hack n Slash with RPG elements. The player can collect and modify weapons based on the original marquesan club. The player will level up by collecting tattoos that will eventually cover their bare body to unlock abilities in a number of fields. Approaching each Spirit God the player will be required to play though a light puzzle in order to access the Spirit.

Art style

[Artwork depicting the art style and perhaps a mood board]

Character

The player takes on the role of a Marquesan Warrior, at the beginning of the game the player will be allowed to modify the basic appearance of the head/face/hair but the character will only wear loin clothing was typical of marquesan warriors.

Upgrades/Customisation

A number of temples are scattered across the island which allude to the history of the island and also house powerful weapons to be collected by the player. The player may further strengthen these weapons using spirit stones acquired after defeating each Spirit God. The spirit stones are freely interchangeable and moderately affect the appearance of each weapon. The player will wear tattoos starting with one small tattoo on the back tht will branch and spread over the whole body as the player levels up, the appearance of the tattoos is affected by the skills the player chooses as they level up. Tattoos on the arm also keep track of progress such as collectables, completed challenges and defeated Spirit Gods.

Spirit Gods

The Spirit gods are tangible entities that have always inhabited the island. The main Spirit Gods take the form of normal animals but with ethereal and godly elements to their appearance, sometimes taking the form of multiple animals. The 'Overlord' Spirit takes the grotesque form of the infection it has spread on the island.

Animals/infection

[Illustration of infected animals and the stages at which they are infected, along side illustrations of natural uninfected animals.]

Side Quests
The game will feature side quests that can be avoided altogether if the player so wishes, the side quests will be mostly themed around the aid of colonising the island, it could vary from anything simple like a fetch quest with complications involving hostile animals, to something that involves some specially design mutated animal you must take out specifically for this mission that can't be encountered naturally in the game. Some side quests would also uncover some of the lore surrounding the island.

sketchbook stuff

Shortly after deciding on our idea my computer broke, so I was unable to do any digital drawings. In that time I was working exclusively out of my sketchbook drawing and making notes.

The first page is some notes and ideas of how the infection might work.

I was using the infection in Princess Mononoke as inspiration for the infected animals, though we decided against it later as my group felt it was too similar.
The notes aren't very legible but on this page i was just proposing the idea of animals with a more severe infection would some how morph together in a grotesque kind of way adding some challenge and unpredictability, in the example I used was a boar morphed together with a large chicken, the idea would be that rather than something boring like the pig simply attaining the chickens wings to fly, the whole bird would actually be inside the pigs body with extremities liek the wings, the head and the feet sticking out and articulating, I thought it adds quite an element of horror to the design which works as a device for illustrating the danger for the enemy.

On the second page I wanted to simply come up with some environment thumbnails so we could get more of an idea of what the game and the island was actually going to look like

The first thumbnail depicts just a general scene of one of the successfully built villages or camps, with people working and socialising in the scene.

The second is a look at a more specific building, it's a shop for warriors so it's hidden amongst the trees and foliage.

The third is a scene of a potential encounter with a spirit, it looks almost God like as it stand on the stone in the centre or of a field with ll the rocks upturned in it's direction, I added a volcano in the village thumbnail and this one to give a sense of location.

The third is just a sort of action shot of a warrior fighting with the same spirit.

In the third page I wanted to explore the weapons in the game

I started off with a simple drawing of the marquesan club, from there I explored how I wanted to develop further weapon types based on that same overall design for continuity.

First of all I simply modified the design and proportions to take up new functions, the original club would have been used for bludgeoning, so I wanted to design a new one in the form of a war hammer, a spear and a mace.

I developed a rule that the common design trait for all design needed to be the 'face within a face' of the original club, which I illustrated on the bottom left corner, I felt that this would help keep the design consistent.

One of the last things I did was to consider how I could incorporate weapon customisation. I took the bottom face of the marquesan club, which to me always seemed quite 'alien' and decided that perhaps this was a sort of power gem that could be crafted after killing the spirit, each gem would be respectively shaped after the spirit in question, the default would be a human head, after killing the first spirit the player could craft a gem that took the form of say a tiger if that were the first spirit boss. The gems would them be interchangeable at will, and would affect the weapons performance and appearance to a certain extent.

The last thing I looked at was simply the imagery on the club, the eyes were quite striking to me so I just made a simple note to perhaps involve that imagery further into the project.

pinning down out idea

As a group we were all kind of on the same track with basing the game on a series of Polynesian islands, we met up and had a long discussion, trying to decide what we all agreed on and trying to come up with a solid idea.

In the end we decided to go for a sandbox game set on one island, the premise would be that the tribe would be colonising this new island but would find an obstacle when they got there, the island was already inhabited by a group of spirits. The spirits had infected the fauna of the island making them hostile towards humans, so the player must take out the source of the infection by first taking out the six spirits and then the final spirit who started the infection.

By the end of our meeting me agree'd on some bullet point notes:

Island colonisation

you get there after the the colonisation is in process              

After some time it appears the island is infected by spirits

There are a number of spirit ‘gods’

Skill trees reflected by tattooing

open world island

menu zooms in on back tattoos/menu or UI revolves around the body

Slowly discover the infection and must eventually defeat it

Infection primarily caused by the ‘boss’ spirit

infected animals are normal enemies

some animals are uninfected

spirit powers from spirits

polynesian club used as main weapon in game