week 12

Now I don't have much for this week at all because we have handed over our game design document and now are working on our pitch, our pitch will cover:

the story

the characters

the eras

Skills

leveling systems

combat systems

with a lovely intro video which shows the start of the proposed game, the guy walking down a hall in the dreamscape building asking questions about the P.O.D and somnium and then seeing the pod for the first time.

Better get to work

Game Design Doc...Finished!

So hurrah! we have finished our game design document. forty nine pages of sheer information, and some pictures, it took a while to get it right but its done.

there was a little confusion in the last week as to peoples interpretation of certain ideas people have put across, which required a certain amount of rehashing. Also quite close to the deadline we found that we had not put in a development time line and projected costs of a project such as this. So that was a bit of a stumbling block, which I'm glad to say has been over come, I and my team are satisfied we have met all the criteria, it is in the back of my mind that a little more could of been said for certain bits but ah well its away and nothing we can do about it now.

So the next couple of weeks will be focused on  the fifteen minute pitch we have to give on our game, we've thought of many ways to stand out from the crowd so that we make a good impression on the potential investors, I don't want to reveal anything incase spies from other companies are watching, and I know they are, haha, the only thing I would say is that I fear we are lacking in visual content, So I think stuff will need to be drawn up to convey our ideas, whats that saying pictures are worth a thousand words. Seeing that we have done an Rpg style game, I expect our pitch to have to be shortened into fifteen minutes just because the sheer amount of content we have. I will post the game design document next week. for anyone interested.

The finish line is in sight

So we have to finish this game design document by next week. A challenge we accept with open arms...we are now in the final stages of completing the design document...putting the final touches to it in such areas as,gameplay, multiplayer, game engine, rendering and so on.

I dare say we are on schedule to hand this in on time, now the pitch of our game is a different matter, fifteen minutes of uninterrupted spot light on the three of us, while explaining our game. We are to present our selves as enthusiastic about the game, makes sense right. Fortunately for us we are all enthused and ready to go...as we have worked on this game for ten weeks now, im pretty confident when I say we know the ins and outs of it.

We have concocted , what we think, is a great format for our pitch. We think it will grab the attention of the audience and hold their attention for the full fifteen minutes...well I guess only time will tell. Once submitted I will put the design document up for all to see the inner workings of our game.

For now though, I have a great treat...more concept art. This time of the Distorted, unfortunately only three of the five distorted are done purely because my hand has went into severe cramp..I will hopefully have the rest done tomorrow and up.

Incase you forget their discription, ill add that in too.

Distorted: Vaelen

Human like form with demonic wings and massive tails, they are considered scouts for the Praetor and Xicisc, they have sharp talons and can defend themselves if attack, commonly weak.

Distorted: Srinth

Leviathan, it is the combination of creatures, you will spot its roar even before you see it, do not attempt to take this on yourself, it has the dangerous ability of corrupting you  and making you attack your friends.

Distorted: Cryven

Never seen, the only reports of a Cryven has been the sound of its cry as it drags away its victims, although no one gets away from a Cryven when it has its eyes set on someone, people have reported that they felt like someone was staring into the depths of their soul and distorting it, and shortly after while feeling this, they hear a blood curling cry.

N.B. All works you see on this page of the blog and previous are licensed under the Creative Commons act...

..upon visiting deviantArt . Please bare this in mind.

Visit: http://t-beattie.deviantart.com/gallery/33989279 for more on the World of Somnium

More art...and enemies

So as we are closing to the end of our game design there has to be but a cherry atop the cake. that is to be saved for later...during the creation of the pitch.

but for now I would like to make good on a few items I adressed in previous blogs but never spoke of in depth.

first off the rest of the concept art for the four main classes.

The Merc class

by now you have probably seen each piece of concept art has a little of classes role behind it..templar with melee, witch with spells and the merc will specialize in guns as shown by his oh so lovely gun here.

The Scientist class

The scientist here is shown with an elixir, he is the support role.

Next I would like to go on to talk about the distorted...the distorted are creatures which have been distorted through data errors in the P.O.D . They make for vicious creatures. Hopefully i will have some concept art on them too if time isn't in too much of a demand.

The Distorted :-

Srinth: leviathan, it is the combination of creatues, you will spot its roar even before you see it, do not attempt to take this on yourself, it has the dangerous ability of corrupting you  and making you attack your friends.

Vaelen: Human like form with demonic wings and massive tails, they are considered scouts for the Praetor and Xicisc, they have sharp talons and can defend themselves if attack, commonly weak.

Cryven: never seen, the only reports of a cryven has been the sound of its cry as it drags away its victims, although no one gets away from a cryven when it has its eyes set on someone, people have reported that they felt like someone was staring into the depths of their soul and distorting it, and shortly after while feeling this, they hear a blood curling cry.

Xicisc:   fades of the night, the air gets freezing cold at their presence, the first sign that a Xicisc is in the area is that metal and plant-life start to be encrusted in crystals of ice, generally floating in silence and not deadly intent on harming folk, another name for it is the “dark observer”, do not look at it directly, it is said that if you stare at it, it goes berserk and spares no one.

Praetor: Corrupted and tainted high champions, these distorted show no mercy or compassion, their only desire is to kill, spotted by looking for signs of distortion around their bodies and a crackling sound, they typically look like normal humans but with gray-ish skin.

Ooh how about that then

Writing this wee blog entry to show the final drafts of the witch and templar concepts...the merc and the scientist will be up shortly

We have also advanced quite a bit in our game design document...I will upload more details tomorrow about the design document.

In the design document I talk about the game world the enemies and the game overview.

Loose story of Somnium

this week we have worked on the story a bit in hopes of getting it all tied together, so the game doesn't just seem like they are there for no reason. this is what we have came up with so far.

"          The four people go into the pods & their respective timeline memories (with the exception of the scientist,   who is in the pod for the process of carrying out live debugging and maintenance).

A virus released into Dreamscapes Somnium system by a free radical terrorist group has started to eat away at the memory cores in the system & takes them into its own being in such a way that the machine becomes self-aware in a sense.  As such the virus can change the memories in the system to bleed into each other causing the memories to either have aspects of more than one memory or jump between memories.

The inhabitants of the pod don’t realise at first that the machine is malfunctioning and by the time the scientist realises what’s going on, the virus has taking a firm hold of the machine and starting to cause major malfunctions within each of the individual members’ eras.

During the events of the malfunction the individuals are under the impression that they are on their way to exit the pod and get out of the machine – however due to the malfunction, the illusion of escape is diminished.

Together the four characters must work together to overcome the virus and escape the pods. They do this by completing the story lines that there memories have created for them. This means that they will have to use all their skills to overcome the obstacles set before them by the virus. The world shifts will happen when the virus has been harmed in some way it will shift the world to try to make the players weaker & therefore easily defeated.  The scientist has his own agenda though and wants to isolate the virus and study it.

Towards the end, there is a “zone shift” into Somnium. The characters wake up in their respective “virtual” homes, believing that the previous events were just a figment of their imagination, they start to realise, through subtle changes in the world, then the presence of beings that do not belong in the material world, that they are back within Somnium, as they venture towards the dreamscape building in hopes to solve the problem. As they get closer to the building the virus becomes more aggressive, they remember their previous battles and realise that they still have the skills and head out to take on the virus.          "

as i say it is a loose story..which is to be built upon later...this was just to give a grounding so that our story designer can build up a better story based on this.

oh yeah the unofficial name of the game...which im pretty sure will become the official name is "Somnium"...pretty obvious right.

We also began on the Design Document for Somnium, I took the overview of the game answering the broad questions of basically, what? who? why?.

The design document will not be available till it is fully complete though.

Also we have been starting to think seriously about our pitch to our potential investors and I think we have come up with a few awesome ideas...

...as ever stay tuned for more developments.

The multiplayer

Well today when we met we weren't in the best of spirits, but we soldiered on none the less, it wasn't a very productive meeting...in terms of amount but we did get down how we would go about a multiplayer feature.

It was decided that we should keep the multiplayer to a localized co-op , we did have another way to take it , we thought about making it a huge server that had all the different eras and you could enter in a max of a party of 4, others could join and you would be able to meet with them and interact with them through-out the server, for instance you could PvP with them but alas that idea was scraped as trying to incorporate the key events I was talking about before hand would be a mess and we feel that it wouldn't really do the game justice if it was to be implemented that way.

So back to the localized Co-op, so its held by the player with the best connection and has a max capacity of 4, and the way it works is basically like the single player...where you progress through your own story with the aid of your 3 companions and then you get end, in a nutshell, we do have it so that if you have a character in singleplayer you can use that character and everything they have unlocked in multiplayer, the difficulty setting on multiplayer is based on the skill level of the party leader, not the host of the server, the reason for this is to allow players to play at a skill level they choose...and as to make the game more of a challenge for higher level players..so the enemies will scale in difficulty in relation to the players level.

I will post more info as it becomes available..

P.O.D and other various articles!

A wee bit about the P.O.D just to show how it works roughly.

When a subject enters the P.O.D, he selects from a stockpile of memories.the memories and histories of the selected character as well are loaded into a custom default map which is redesigned to resemble the players choice in era and location.

for instance -

If the player was to choose the Templar class, the history of that Templar would be loaded in.

The architecture of the Templar's era will replace the default mapping to give a more authentic and realistic feel.
sound from a large data-bank will also be loaded in and matched up with the Templar's memories in order to maintain the realism in place. The sense of touch and smell will also be loaded in from a data-bank but will tap into the neuro-centers of the players brain in order to simulate the sensation of touch and smell.

As a side effect of the new technologies of the P.O.D, there is a certain small bug that may present its self, not only do the memories of the selected character get loaded in, Certain notable figures such as enemies and allies may be loaded in as well.These memories aren't supposed to be loaded in, they might never present them selves within the Somnium but be wary if they do they almost always serve to divert the player from his true goal.

The lay of the land!


The area will consist of One city, five towns and various villages, this will not change no matter what era you enter, the only difference will be in architecture

It may be noted however that the villages are dynamic in the sense that they can be burned down by a group of roaming bandits and rebuilt somewhere else over time. they are the most affected by change.


Enemies


So this is just a general base for enemies more will be added.

Humans -  this is a generic base for all humans in somnium. be they from the witches era or from the mercs era.
           Bandits
           Rogue guards
           Priest Cult Members

Animals-
           Wolves
           Bears
           Vultures
           Snakes
           Hyena

Mythical Creatures -
          Trolls
          Goblins
          Gryphons
          Drekavac
          Bahamut

Malleus Malificarum

I apologize for the lateness of my post, work has been piling up.


Anyways lets get right in about this.


I don't know if we have been clear on this, but when you enter the pod you are taking on the world and back story of the character you select but not the actions, you are free to define your role and what you do after you enter their memory..the character back stories are in place so you can have a feel as to what happened previous to you entering Somnium.


This week we had to think of story for our game, So two of us set about the task of creating a  back story which we believed would help the game, but it was not to be and after doing that work it was 2 for the story and 1 against it so a compromise had to be met, it was decided as we are doing a multiplayer rpg type game that there would be no back story for the future.

 it is simply you in the future entering somnium.

there is a woman guiding you down the corridor explaining how to enter somnium. 

This is because we want the player to feel like it is infact them in the future going into the pod and we can't very well do this by putting a fictional characters story in there ...and following in the footsteps of all the mmo's out there, your character at time of creation does not have a personal back story but at the time of game completion he has an immense back story. this is what we are aiming for.

the overall story while in the pod has not been formally laid out for all to see, the general idea is Total free reign to do what ever the hell you want. but those choices could hurt them or help them later on, there will be a main story to ad hear to and it must be completed in order to get out the pod.

the main story we are still chucking about ideas for but it seems we are all in general agreement that each era will have a few different key events that act as main story way points, the theory here is to make these key events interlink through the distortion caused by the pod malfunction so for instance...

...we are in the templar realm ready to take on some mercenaries from the order of the black hand. we rush into battle and *BOOM*  all of a sudden you are in the merc realm defending your self from gun shots and taking out the leader of a rival army that has nothing to do with the templars and is radically further on in the time stream...this works the opposite way too, the key events are seemingly random and can be from that era or from a different era.

this is to maintain excitement and wonder, "i wonder what will happen next, will i be fighting off demon spawn in the witches era and suddenly be plunged into another era as part of this event", we have thought about the effect this will have on a player, players don't like random change without any warning, especially when they think they are in the middle of an epic fight and then are shifted to another place so to counter this we are going to add in a warning feature to let the player know this event is prone to era shifts.

could promote this as a morality thing in real life, as if your decisions in game gave you a real life morality chart.

Anyway onto the main event

The world story of Malleus Mallificarum.

Malleus Malificarum

This is a briefly detailed description of the era the witch comes from. It allows the Player to get more of an in-depth feel for the place they are entering and may provide some useful ideas that may help the player on their way.

The era of Malleus Malificarum is a strange one, it is not unlike “The Blight” of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, in where it is primarily a nightmarish land where corruption is spread far and wide, you would be hard pushed to find an uncorrupted soul.

In this era the church has imposed a ban on all forms of black magic, witchcraft is punishable by a fate worse than a simple death, the church is ruthless in the hunt for all practitioners of the dark arts and in its pursuit have lost sight of their ideals and have become just as bad, or worse, than those they hunt. Witches hide their identity in fear of the church, even though their power vastly exceeds the churches. The witches tried to declare their selves before; a witch by the name of “The Unseen” made a stand and issued a call to arms for all witches. Unfortunately she was swiftly taken care of by the arch-bishop.

The land is for the most part dead or rotting only small havens of greenery still exist here, the towns are a source of much entertainment, people fear to stray too far from these towns…dangerous things lurk outside in the wilderness. The church aren’t these peoples only worry

The last page of her diary remains an inspiration to all who are afraid, a light in the darkness.

“

Day 47 since declaring myself.

It has been forty seven days since the beginning of a new era for Malleus, it is as I feared, the church has too strong a hold on this nation, not enough are joining the cause, I have spoken to many of my followers and found that the people aren’t joining because of the fear the church is to great.

To these people I say, I dream of a day we can walk the streets freely, being able to use our craft for good, there are those of us out there that wish this to be the case, yes we do not all conform to that stereotype of evil.

I ask those of the church, are you any better than us? You bully your way around the nation claiming you are doing the work of the divine! Your healing is based on faith, faith that everything in the divines power will come alright, YES , become part of the church and be saved. No, you will go to a worse place for what you have done to these innocent people, I have witnessed the church do nothing but kill, torture and kidnap in the name of the divine, while our people are widely hunted for what? Healing the blind, helping those who seek aid, yes there are those of us that would rather use a hex there and a fireball here, but the blame is squarely placed upon the church, we have been forced to take extreme measures to ensure our ongoing existence and potential safety.

No more of this hunt, I say, time to meet these oppressors head on! I may not achieve it today or tomorrow, I may even get killed while trying to achieve it, but that niggling thought will be there in all the witches throughout malleus , “We can change this”, if I die , there are a number of others waiting to take up the mantle, this is not just a baby throwing his toys out of his cot in a tantrum, we will succeed….    …..you are the key to this….Rise up…you have always had the power.      “

As you can see this is not a place for a witch to go gallivanting about flaunting her powers, but one witch has done so, she will bring the church crumbling down with the aid of her allies.

…the church will fall.

Character Design...maybe some level design

So first of all, you know those sketches I done last week, I have more, basic concept art not rendered at all but you will be able to get a understanding of the physical representation of the characters...only The Templar and The Witch I'm afraid.

The Witch

There she is holding a fireball in one hand and her staff in the other, and The Templar...

The Templar

If you wanna see these in better detail head on over to my Deviant art page for this game design, it will have future sketches and such like so check it out http://t-beattie.deviantart.com/gallery/33019182

So onto the main agenda...today after much debate....AND I MEAN MUCH DEBATE, it was unanimously

decided that I would take The Witch and write up a back story for her.

The Witch is able to have two architypes, The first being the hero, if you choose her as your character in the singleplayer she will take on the hero architype, also you play multiplayer she will also be regarded in the usual fashion of a hero.If the player decides on a different character in singleplayer The Witch then becomes an ally.

Being like any witch, she has a nasty streak in her, chaotic, but the myths about witches are exaggerated, well for the general population of witches, witches don't go about hexing people and throwing fireballs for no reason, except that small percentage of the population, Our witch is Chaotic good, she will have the groups best interests at heart but she will go out of her way to hide it even to the point of utter rudeness. As I said before she will have a nasty streak in her, hey what fun is playing a witch if you cant occasionally break the rules? she will be able to have access to dialogue that will allow her to act evil or good depending on the situation.

So now I've talked about the personality of this character(baring in mind that the personality shines through the most if she is an ally in single player and that the dialogue will only be accessible if she is a player controlled character),  I would like to show you a key part in her history.

This is subject to change.

"It is the dead of night, the local tavern has just shut, the drunks are making their way home, among them a young barmaid, who heads to her house down the winding road, she is oblivious to her fate and what lays ahead, she walks on, silently remarking on the nights events, the bar brawls, the comedy...what a laugh..

...Suddenly she is grabbed from behind by a man, the only discernible feature she is able to pick out on the man is a cross, a thought rushes into her head, "Shit, A priest, I've been found out", followed by a throbbing sensation then darkness.

Back at the barmaids house, an even younger woman sits by the fire, engrossed in a book, no , it appears to be an ancient text, the excitement is visible on her face, she finally finishes reading and notes that her sister should have been back by now.

She heads on over to the tavern and is greeted by the owner who tells her that her sister headed home quite a while ago, with that knowledge the young woman sets out around the village to find her sister, thinking she is probably face down in a bush,drunk. A thought flashes across her mind "oh not again".

After a while of searching she is about to give up when she notes muffled noise coming from a near by barn, she enters stealthily. Her attention is immediately drawn to a lifeless body being set ablaze by what appears to be a priest wearing unusual garments with the insignia of a rogue priesthood, the body seems strikingly familiar to her, if only she could get closer...."Oh no!" and with that she launches into an attack, putting her faith in all that she had learned from reading the Grimoire, she lauches fireballs one after the other, scorching the unawares priest, she then finishes him off with a hex, he chokes then suffocates.

She walks up to the body of her sister, kneels down, chants a few verses of an unknown script, it is visible in her eyes, the reinforced eyes of a person with vengeance on the mind...

...and so she would walk a path that would lead her to face all kinds of perils, she would hunt down this rogue priesthood and all those that would seek to destroy the ways of The Witch."

I plan to write more on The Witches homeland throughout the week  and some rough sketches of the environment.

The creative juices are still flowing!

So we are in our second week of designing this game and its fair to say we have made significant progress .

although I doubt we are ready to comment on our unique selling point , that will obviously make this theoretical game a success and gain significant financial backing, we are ready to divulge a brief overview of what we are expecting the game to turn out like.

so where do I begin, we sat down to decide on what is going to be in our game ...such as areas and who are the characters going to be...this is all in very loose detail...we haven't fine tuned any of this yet but here goes....

The game will initially start in the waking world....where the rich are rich and the poor are poor and a revolutionary new invention called Somnium has allowed anyone with the right money to enter Somnium via a piece of machinery called a P.O.D (Pro-memory Output Display), this tech was originally marketed at anyone with a dream, although with the onset of social decay it is now only the wealthy that can partake in this unique experience.

we have for different eras in which our game is set;

The first era has heavy influences from the Napoleonic Wars from the 1800's although these areas will not be factual they will be based on factual things such like the uniforms the NPC's wear will be similar to the actual ones, the structures will have that Napoleonic feel to them... you get what we are trying to bring across here. This era will be called Pax Britanica.

The second era is called Sigillum Militum, which pertains to the time of the Templar crusades and the Illuminati, I'm thinking particularly within this era there will be allot of conspiracies the heroes must unravel in order to help them, as above it will have obvious references to that particular time but with a unique somnium twist.

The third, Maleius Malificarum, is referenced to the salem witch trials, sorcery and paganism...in this i think the church will be vigilant on the burning of witches and all those who harbour them, which could present a problem.

The fourth will be called Somnium,..if it can be thought of, its in this world, you are most definitely not safe in this world!

these are just brief outlines what could be our levels but for now they stay as is, it allows the player several different stories in one game that wouldn't bore them because it is ever changing

head shot concepts for the Witch and the Templar

I also have some sketches and preliminary art for character design.

all these and more can be accessed at:
http://t-beattie.deviantart.com/gallery/33019182

Templar sketch

So...our first day!

After standing outside the classroom for fifteen minutes, we had realised that the class had actually started fifteen minutes before, yeah I know...nice start to your first day Tom!. So after settling in, we learned we had to design a game...no not develop a game as some of you would believe, design one. It, in a nutshell, is the process of designing a basis for a game to sit on, such like character creation, story creation, what engines you will use to make your game run?, everything bar the actual making of the game.

So! after we discussed what a game was, which factors decided it was a game, we moved on to creating groups and in these groups we have to create a game design document, a pitch for this game and a personal blog for to note our progress and thoughts, which will be marked. The labs were there for us to use, or not but today they were getting refurbished so they were out of use. It was made clear to us that the labs were optional, common sense dictates that if you want at least a passing grade, you best be getting down to those labs.

As I noted some of the students leaving to go home I thought, well they are heading to a bad start, So my team, made up of my self, Bryan Watson and Scott Docherty decided to go down to Qwerty's cafe and churn out a few ideas. we were there for three going on four hours!

We came up with idea after idea, ideas were forming then collapsing and then forming again because somebody had thought of a brilliant hook for the idea. In this brainstorming session were were able to come up with a unique hook to our game or characters and settings, all of course in brief summaries, no where near as in depth as we should be going but hey, that is a task for another day, today was just to try and think about what our idea was going to be and I think we achieved that quite successfully.

I will be writing this blog at least once every week, so if I don't go into detail in one blog, rest assured that there will be another one in the following days going into more detail...

.. I will write another one this week going into detail about our thought processes and what game design we came up with and how we did it but I thought for the moment I would just stick to a bit of light reading instead of a large bulk of text with good amounts of detail, ill try to make it as entertaining as possible.