Soo... Comfy...

This... it looks soo amazing and comfy.

If someone buys me this, I will love you forever!

((Psst, you can get it here.))

Also Boooooppppp!

Project Blend - Narrative Arc

So here's my version of the Narrative Arc for the Story of our project. I actually did this a few days ago, just didn't post it. So now it looks like Daryl and K did this before me...


Also this layout is based on a narrative structure template by Hope Caton


Act 1

Start

Introduce the good kitchen, very white and clean. Introduce Logan and Master Dragonfruit. Combat Training. Introduce other Raspberries.

Inciting Incident

Fruit invade from the bad kitchen. Many of the good fruits are slaughtered. The Raspberries are kidnapped. Master Dragonfruit runs off to fight.

Second Half – Preparation

He follows Master Dragonfruit and fights through the bad fruit, to get to the entrance of the bad kitchen.

Hook

He kills a couple if blackberries that beg for his mercy, calling him brother.

Climax

Logan arrives just as Master Dragonfruit is killed by Master HornedMelon, the guardian to the bad kitchen. Logan goes crazy and fights the guardian, killing him.

Act 2

Start

Enters the bad kitchen, see’s the disorder and decay. Meets the grapevine, gossipy French grapes that are on vines around the kitchen.

They inform Logan that this is all the work of the blender. He sets out for revenge. Must stealth his way through kitchen.

Midpoint Reversal

After a few stealth encounters, Logan stealth’s through the Blender’s outer guard of fruit. He fights and kills Blackberries. It is then revealed to him that he is a Loganberry, i.e. half Blackberry.

Identity Crisis?

Second Half

Deals with crises and strengthens his vows to defeat the Blender. More stealth and fighting.

Climax

Fights a big boss fruit, wins, but is grievously injured. Questions whether or not to turn back.

Act 3

Start

Logan lies there, a blackberry heals him. Determination restored, he decides to keep fighting.

Climax

After bloody battle, gets to the Blender. Showdown.

Resurrection

The Blender blends all the raspberries inside him. Logan goes crazy and finishes him off.

Resolution

Back in the good kitchen, training by himself.

Also here are links to Daryl and K's versions.

Daryl

K

Toon Shading Sanity Test

We had a meeting on Monday in which we decided on art style. It's really nice, as I actually feel like we're getting somewhere now.

A small difference in opinion was whether we should use toon shading on the playable character, i.e Sly Cooper Style.

It was argued that we would encounter too many problems doing this, and that it would be too time consuming to implement. 

I believe that it should be repetitively easy to do in Unity, and that it would look good.

To see whether it was feasible myself and Martin where assigned to sanity check it.

I did this using the level and character from Unity's 2D Gameplay Tutorial. 

http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/2d-gameplay-tutorial

I tried out three different types of shader. Applying them to both the character and the ship.

Bumped Specular

This shader is the default shader which gives a more realistic lighting effect.

Toon - Basic Outline

This shader gives the object an outline, and acts as if no light is shone on it.

Toon - Lighted Outline

This applies an outline to the model, as in the other Toon shader, but this shader recognises light, and is shaded in a tooney fashion. 

As the screenshots with the toon shaders show, this works perfectly well on a playable character.

I can also confirm that it worked fine when the character was animated.

I was also assigned to plot out the narrative ark of the game. This shall be done soon.

Layton Fever!

I've quite recently become a Layton fanboy. When the game first came out I have it a try, I loved the art style, but really disliked the type if puzzles. So I left the game alone.

This all changed when I saw a trailer for the latest game 'Professor Layton and the Lost Future'. It just captured me, loved the style, the voices and the plot behind it.

I mean Steampunk Time Machine for the win! (Also grown up Luke seems awesome.) ^^
I wanted to play this game. But I decided that to do this I would have to play through the first two.

So I dug out the 1st game and played it. Again I was caught by the style, the animated scenes and the voices, and again my brain died when it came to the puzzles. Although this time instead of giving up. I persevered.
I trawled through the games puzzles (many of which made little sense plot wise!) and after a while found myself starting to enjoy them. I'd complete 5-10 puzzles in a row now, without help, or failing many times. It gave me a very nice sense of accomplishment. There where still a few that practically reduced me to tears though.
Soon after I completed the game, and was rather happy with myself.
Good show Professor, your annoying puzzles and charming animation and characters have won me over.

Now to the second game!

Also this new Layton Fanboyness prompted me to buy the film, which I rather enjoyed. I got to enjoy the animation style and the characters without the puzzles!

It wasn't an amazing film though, as the plot is a little flimsy and goes a bit too Japanese xD
They implemented the few puzzles that where in it in quite an interesting way though.

Oh and last thing! There's gonna be a Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton Game for the 3DS!
I hope to god it comes out here. Seems like it'll be an awesome crossover.



Very interesting style crossover too :D

Anywho that's me off. Have work to do Dx

Setting and Plot idea

This weeks meeting was interesting, we finally got the 'vision' of the game sorted. We then got split into groups to look at different things. Obviously being Story Co-ordinator I chose come up with ideas for setting and plot. Daryl and Chris will also be doing this, it'll be interesting to see how different our ideas all are.

Setting
My idea for the setting (well an idea I think someone else came up with, but I stole) is a very clean, simple kitchen. It would be spotless and look almost clinical. Here a few a pictures stolen from google that I like.

I see everything have a very straight, angled style. Sort of looking like Mirrors Edge.

I think having a style like this will make the fruit juices everywhere more satisfying.

Plot
Ok, now onto plot! My idea for the plot is that of gang wars. Each gang having the name, and containing the fruit and/or veg of a particular smoothie. The names being amusing or 'punny'. For example 'Banana Blitz' being a gang of hard-hitting Banana's,'Berry Blast' being a group a many different berries, or Strawberry Passion being full of seductive, sordid strawberries.
... I'm sure the group will come up with funnier names.

Anywho, the plot follows the main character... who as he doesn't have a name, shall be known henceforth as Logan. Logan the Raspberry.

Logan arrives with a batch of other raspberries in 'The Kitchen'. On his arrival they are attacked by the blackberries. He manages to get away, but the rest of his kin are slaughtered.
He ends up finding out that they where slaughtered as raspberry is the final ingredient needed by 'The Blender'. They wanted to stop that at any cost.

'The Blender' is master of the kitchen, who has many of the gangs of fruit under his control. He sends these gangs after Logan.

 'Blackberry Blasters', (name pending) are a resistance group who are fighting against 'The Blender'.

Logan spends the game fighting off the gangs sent after him by the blender, as well as chasing after 'Blackberry Blasters' to avenge his kin.

A plot twist at some point is that he is half Blackberry himself. He is a Loganberry.

Well those are my ideas, will be cool to what ideas the others have had, and how our ideas merge.

Omg... minecraft...

This is me posting at the end of a long day at uni... so tired Dx

Was playing minecraft with the house mates last night, till like 4 in the morning. Is crazy addictive. Really didn't think I'd like it as well xD

Evil, evil game.

Everyone go and play it now! xD

http://www.minecraft.net/

Research - Stealth Gameplay

So we had our big team meeting Thursday, were we chose the game idea and such, but we also brainstormed loads of idea and themes to do with the game. We were then assigned to take one of these things each to research. I shall be researching stealth in games.

First up we have Metal Gear Solid, this has to one of the most famous stealth games out there.



It has an array of interesting mechanics used to distract and sneak up on your opponents . You also have to hide the bodies of some people you kill/ knock out, which is quite cool/annoying.

Linking on to this lets look at another game made by Hideo Kojima, Boktai.



These 26 seconds of bad quality video basically show the main stealth mechanic in the games. Knock on a wall, get behind them, and KILL!

Anywho, now onto another very popular stealth franchise Splinter Cell.




This is from the newest Splinter Cell game, so may be slightly different from the others, but this is defiantly very different from the other stealth games above. It looks quite interesting... I may have to give it a play sometime.

Next another famous game, with almost a 'cult game' status. Thief. The following video is for number 2.



This is quite interesting as it is third person, something that isn't regularly seen in stealth games. Another interesting thing is that sounds are apparently used to great affect in this. This could be quite interesting to research more and implement into the project.

Now to one of the most modern and famous stealth games. Assassins Creed.



These games have very interesting ways of being stealthy. Involving luring guards away, hiding, blending into crowds, as well as stealth kills.

Finally a game that at least I envision to be the closest of what our project shall be like, perhaps as  a 2D platformer, rather than a 3D one though. Sly Cooper.



I especially like the cartoony style and setting, something that I wouldn't have thought possible in stealth game, but evidently can be done.

Anyways, thanks for reading, now to go try this minecraft game everyones talking about...

Big Games Project - Voting and such

So yesterday we all pitched our ideas.
Mine and K's ideas drew! But unfortunately after a re-vote K's idea got chosen. Congrats to him though.
Was a bit saddening at first, just because I had been so close, and I usually don't have good ideas... but guess I just shouldn't have got my hopes up.

On a brighter note, I did land the job of Story Co-ordinator. Which is what I wanted. Dunno what to do with this idea story wise at the moment though. I guess I'll have to brainstorm with the rest of the group, and see what we want to do with it.

From now on I shall be posting weekly about my involvement in this project, should be pretty interesting.

Anywho, I shall leave you with this.

Games Pitch!

Ok so the High Concept of my game pitch for big team project is this:

Take over the world as an Alien Hat, who can read minds, shape shift, and control people.

• It will be a single-player PC game, for the PC, created in Unity.
• The style of the game shall be simple, containing everyday objects and low poly humanoids.
•   The view shall be isometric, so that the player can see a large area of the game world. Similar to The Sims 3 ( Below. Fig 1.)

Fig 1. Sims 3

As stated in the High Concept above, the player is an Alien Hat that has come to take over the world. Obviously the Hat has certain abilities that will help it achieve this goal.

•  The main one being mind control. If anyone wears the hat, it can control their actions.
•    It can shape shift into different types of hat, to lure people to put it on.
•    It can read the minds of people around it.
•    It can hover/ teleport short distances, as long as it isn’t being looked at.

Each level will have a target; a head the hat must reach to complete the level. This will be done using the Hat’s abilities, and other people’s abilities to work up a chain and eventually reach the target. A few examples of this would be:

•   Taking over a shop clerk allow the player to more easily take over and person in that shop.
•      Taking over a clown/ entertainer would allow you to place the hat on a child’s head.
•      Taking over a Sports Instructor would allow you to give the hat to anyone participating in the Sport. 

A passive ability of every person in the level is the ability to more easily take over anyone they have a relationship with.

The story of the game shall be told through the thoughts of the people in each level, as well as the hat’s own thoughts. There will be plot, sub plots, and themes that carry throughout the game.

In this way the story shall be integrated into the game play, and won’t be a separate entity. 

Eurogamer

So I attended Eurogamer on friday. It was pretty damn awesome. My first experience of an actual gaming expo. It was really cool actually seeing upcoming games being played.
Games that are defiantly worth playing are Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. The multi player of that was pretty amazing, really looking forward for that coming out.  Little Big Planet 2 was pretty fun, especially with the the new game modes. Really looking forward to seeing what I can make in it's level editor when it comes out.

An indie game that was Freakin' Awesome was 'Swimming Under Clouds'.



You play as a ball of water containing a fish. It's quite a simple platformer, but the interesting thing is that the fish can fall out of the water, and you need to get it back before it dies. Very interesting mechanic, sorta reminds me the Yoshi games were when you get hurt, you have to get Baby Mario back before he's kidnapped.

One really cool thing that I really didn't expect was there was a Nintendo booth where The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I got in the queue with my mate Josiah and was told we'd have to wait an hour. I was just about prepared for that, could chat and stuff while we waited. Then the Nintendo booth guy came and told us we'd have to wait two. So was like fudge this and left.

On another note I was pleasantly surprised by the Playstation move. Yes it was similar to the Wii, but was alot better. For one it's using the Playstation 3, which is 3 times as powerful than the Wii, also it's the Wii Motionplus or better, right out the box. Lastly they seem to be doing more interesting things with it, for example with the archery and gladiator stuff you can play using two Move controllers, which gave a better experience.
Don't get me wrong though, it doesn't look amazing, and I'm not saying it's THE NEXT BIG STEP! I'm just saying it seemed better than I thought, and it looks like there will be a few interesting games for it.
Also it looked alot better than Kinect, which kept breaking. Also playing Table Tennis without a controller in your hand... feels a bit odd to me.

The highlight of the expo though had to be the careers section, and the developer talks.
It was really nice getting leaflets from and chatting with some actual game developers. I defiantly need to work on my portfolio!
The only talk I actually went to was the Sucker Punch one, the guys who make inFamous. I really should have gone the the Fable and Deus Ex ones.
The Sucker Punch guys were pretty cool, was really nice seeing them explain the game, and parts of it's development. I do think they should have kept his new hair.

Not the best picture ever, but think he looks sooo much better on the right. Damn you Sucker Punch!

Big Games Project!

Woop! So today we had our first meeting for the Big Games Project! Am quite psyched.
We shall be be proposing our ideas next week. I have an ok one about a parasitic hat. But I may think of something better... something involving a Wii-mote could be interesting.
So! From now on I shall be trying my best to post weekly on what I'm doing in this project. This shall hopefully be stuff to do with story, as I am hoping to get Story co-ordinator.

On another note, I am currently writing a review of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, for this blog. I loved the game, but I should hopefully be giving an interesting and mostly impartial review.

Anywho, I shall leave you with a link to the song 'Black Sheep' from the Scott Pilgrim movie. It's originally by Metric, but I much prefer this version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jMruFHTwrY