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..