A summer dream

SO this week marked the start of Off the map, something I've been both dreading and waiting for with excitement. And the theme is Shakespeare; Midsummers night Dream, Macbeth and the Tempest. All great plays and all ones I wouldn't mind making a level for.

Straight away the main piece of advice I was given over and over again was focus on planning first. Whilst it's hard to see other teams steaming on ahead, if you spend the time planning something properly in the first few weeks, once you do get going everything will run a lot more smoothly, and there'll be a lot less correction and step backs being taken.

So the first thing I did was read a midsummers night dream. Our team agreed that we should all go away on Monday and start preparing our ideas to pitch to each other for the team meeting on Wednesday. Then on Wednesday we'd decide on a play and idea for the game to start work on.

My preference was of course Midsummers night dream so I re-read the play and started to make notes on the key elements of it, and ways it could be translated into a level.

This was especially tricky as the play has lots of characters and locations, so making something that is literally a run through of the play was pretty much impossible. I decided early on then that it would be better to go for a game that captures the atmosphere and key parts of the play rather than the whole play.

My main idea was that you are unidentified as the main player using a first person view. Your goal is then to collect all the purple flowers before Puck-the antagonist does. As you collect them you come across various visual representations of scenes from the play. The music is set to iambic pentamenter, and to satisfy all those achievement hunter players you can find love notes between the characters if you explore off the path a bit. I originally visualised a maze like map too that the player needs to navigate to collect all the flowers and reach the centre before Puck does.

Here are some visual representations I drew up of these ideas for my pitch, along with some ideas for mechanics the game could have:

And here is the map blockout I did in engine(maze):

So how did Wednesday go? Well we decided on Midsummers night dream and came up with a good idea for the game. Not all my ideas were scrapped as we are sticking with an unidentified main character, but Puck is now a narrator instead of an anatognist. The maze was scrapped as we didn't want to confuse or frustrate anyone playing our game, therefore we went for a much simpler level design. We also decided to keep the flowers collectable but have that as a stretch goal. Essentially we're aiming for a very beautiful and immersive walking simulator with some flying mechanics if we can achieve it.

We're having four clearings which each represent a key act in the play, and the level design is a simple circle, but we are using a change in levels and having twisty paths, to both prevent the player from feeling like they are walking in an obvious circle and to have an interesting variety in our environment.

This is the very initial blockout I did in Engine to get a feel for the path the player would take throughout the level:

I was given these maps to work with(From team blog):

We decided to go with an underground forest as part of the level not only to give the environment some variety but also because it fit as Oberons region, because he is known in the play as 'the king of shadows.' It also fits with making our level change, well level, so the player isn't aware of the circular route they are on.

We're going to have the environment change slightly as you progress through the level because in the play the environment changes depending on the characters perspective. Therefore as your perspective changes in the play-via pucks narrative and various objects you find and see, so do the environments. The time of day will also change, starting at dusk and ending at midnight when you exit the caves. This lets us play with colour palette, something that is very important for us to give the play it's dreamy, otherworldly feel.

I then made a more detailed blockout in Max to get a better feel for how the environment would actually look. Here it is (as it progressed:

I also had a play around with some mechanics and learnt a bit more about blueprints as I'm the groups technical artist. I also started working on a technical document alongside a style guide.

Here are some of the things I did in engine:

The style guide and technical documents will change a lot over the next few weeks, but I wanted to put a template in place for the group to use, to keep communication about our levels visual look as clear as possible. In the same vein then I also put together a character mood-board:

for the character artists to use a starting point, to break down the look of the characters a bit too. Our main points of reference at the moment are the artists Alan Lee, Brian Froud, Ian Miller and Tony Diterlizzi, as well as an Indian influence, as the faries in the play are described as coming from India.

Of course we need to refine the style more before we start modelling but that will be done next week.

I also made this guiding concept for Oberon:

I also made a Gantt chart to help with planning and Becky made an asset list.

I also made a mood board for the general style of the level:

In critical studies this week we learnt about our upcoming character presentation and the other things we will be assessed on in that module. This means I'll have to be very precise with my planning next week to get both my off the map work done, and my presentation made and rehearsed for Critical studies. It shouldn't be too much of a problem however, it will be a simple matter of working on my character in the morning, and then stopping in time to do a 9-5 at the very least for off the map. Wish me luck.

This week we also went over CV's and cover letters in critical studies, which will be very useful when it comes to applying for the BMW internship.

So time for the Action Plan:

Start blocking out the level using terrain and starting to contain it.

Get back into the habit of writing up what I do during the week to make these blog posts easier for myself

Continue to refine whitebox and work from feedback.

Go on a trip to brad-gate to collect reference and textures

Make a flower

It's hard to make more in depth action plans for myself when working in a team, as the work constantly shifts depending on what is needed. It also changes as we refine our idea, scrap things, add things and so on. Therefore I'll keep my action plans relatively short but sweet, as most of my weekly goals come from team planning and communication right now.

So onto Week 2.