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

Another change of direction

After meeting up with the other groups and seeing what everyone else was doing it became apparent that the idea of using masks and spirit worlds may not be such a good idea, it was a very popular setting with a lot of the other groups so we were forced into reconsidering our idea, we wanted to come up with something a little more original.

We decided to let the masks take a back seat and to do some research on other sort of tribal cultures without letting the masks control the design too much, it was my opinion that we should just ditch the masks altogether but my group wanted to keep them to an extent.

We did some research on one of the objects in the Sainsbury centre that caught our attention and it turned out to be created by a polynesian tribe. Upon discovering this I wanted to take a look at polynesia, it was always a location that was interesting to me, as a collection of small islands with lots of intertwining history I thought it has some potential for soem intresting exploration dynamic.

 

I wanted to explore the idea of having island exploring gameplay, sort of like a sandbox at sea, where there would be enemies and things to do in the sea but most important gameplay would be happening on land, but the player would have to make their own way around on foot and using their boat and maybe a crew. supposedly polynesians were well known for being great sailors which isn’t surprising given the nature of their surroundings, I want to look more into this, how the different islands interacted and their history.

Taking a step back

We met with Mark and Kim and presented our idea, they made it clear that we had gotten ahead of ourselves, we were kind of skipping past the research phase and trying to come up with game ideas first, this sort of resulted in some cliche's and a slight lack of coherence in the idea/s.

We decided to just take a step back, put all of our ideas to the side for a moment and just carry out some research without necessarily thinking too much about the game ideas and getting carried away like before.

We set up a google document to keep track of out research as a group: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whDtZiUkEVpu78X5xii4X6QN36roZTmTv7ml1JDcJ_Q/edit

New direction

After meeting up with my group again we decided with  new direction for the game, The idea of choosing a mask to alter gameplay still stands but it will be less of a roguelike and more like an adventure game.

After much discussion and disagreement, I came up with the idea of using sort of a 'Megaman' format to the levels, where the player can actually choose the order in which they play the levels, but a certain order would make it easier, for example if someone attempts the 'fire level' for example first they may have a very hard time completing that level (though it would be possible) however if they go back and beat the 'water' level first they will receive the water mask which will give the player power/s that will make the fire level easier. The masks may also be necessary to unlock secret areas in certain levels, for example the fire mask may not be ideal to use in the water level, but may unlock a part of the level previously unreachable at the cost of the level being harder to beat.

Rather than having an old school character selection screen I suggested using a hub world with a centre area with the other areas accessible by running, like one large open map, from the hub level you should be able to see the other levels in the distance.

In order to add more challenge it was proposed that we have 'tiers' of levels, so rather than having every single level available from the start, some levels are hidden behind the previous levels, so you must first pass that level before reaching the next tier.

Also a potential design for a tribesman.

The idea would be that the mask and designs would be interchangeable depending on the selected mask although we haven't decided on an artstyle or target audience yet.

Design Document

For the current project brief I will be working in a group of four to create a design document for a game based of a particular point or event in history.

The prepare for the project my group and I went to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich.

While there we took a number of photographs and had a close look at the sculptures on display, the tribal figurines, sculptures and sculptures particularly caught our attention and inspired a few ideas in us.

We were interested by the strange stylistic aesthetic that a lot of the tribal sculptures possessed, they looked almost alien, like they weren't based on humans at all but were based on some strange alien creatures. We began thinking about the possibility of an alternate universe where perhaps tribal groups were directly influenced by aliens and were a significant part of their culture, resulting in the tribes creating sculpture depicting them.

I tried to take this Idea and think of how I could incorporate this story element into gameplay, My initial idea was to have a game where the enemies of a level were tribal followers of the aliens, with the aliens being the boss of each level, each level would be taking out a tribal group and then finally their alien deity, almost like a crusade. The player would play as one of the tribal groups, which could be chosen, depending on which tribal group is chosen would affect gameplay and the available power-ups and weapons.

I