Final blog post before assessment.
Haven't blogged in a while, mainly because it's mostly been preparations for the final assessment.
For my part I got the writing that explains the methods we used in a little booklet. It was hard to write something that explains things without being really formal and essay-like, but I got it in the end. It took several tries.
On the first try I tried writing it in poems and rhymes. It was nice, but I don't think it brings the point across clearly enough. Next I tried a fantastical style of speech. The kind that you imagine some prophecy would say in a fantasy setting. It seemed really unnatural though, given that this is a small book with child-like drawings. The third go was better. I made up a harsh character that tells you what to do in the game. This is a character and guide that the kid dreamt up. However, it didn't fit the childlike aspect. Not that children can't dream of terrible things, but more like because the character is very harsh and rude with quite a foul mouth. The final choice I did stick with was a simple voice that guides you and tells you a little more about the methods. With just enough detail for you to form your own judgements. From that I learned that sometimes less is more. You don't have to do anything really fancy. Sometimes going overboard with fanciness ends up not achieving what you want to put across.
Anyways, best of luck to all groups. I've heard about other groups doing some really amazing things. So on opening night I'll definitely be there to check them out.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Formative presentation feedback - Clarification
The main feedback we got was that the game wasn't finished enough. This is fair enough as we have the individual parts, but still haven't managed to piece together all parts together yet. We're still working on this, and I do believe that by the final presentation it would be finished. Another very valid point is that since our game is still technically unfinished, we still don't have any results to this experimental game to fully answer the question. This is because without getting anyone to play it through yet, we can't test out which methods worked, which didn't, and why. So we don't actually know which methods are effective and whether or not it's to do with the context yet like we predicted. However, the short answer really is "Yes, you can tell a story through a game, but it depends on how well you do it. Also on how effective your particular methods were." The supporting results from the experiment would help in explaining the "why" to the answer, when we do piece it together and get people to play it through.
For individual feedback it says I need to clarify how I contributed to the group because the tutors were under the impression that my only contribution was in the writing.
Honestly, I was a bit miffed when Edrian made the mistake of saying Ben was in charge of storytelling. Because that was my job along with the writing. Perhaps it was the nerves or he stumbled in his speech. Nonetheless, I am annoyed.
But let me clarify here what I did for the group. I've made it very clear in past blogs what I've done, but I'll still clarify it here in case you missed anything.
My main role is to do the writing, and have a strong influence in developing the story. Yes, I have done this despite my disagreements with Ben for most of this semester. In fact, the evidence for this will be included in my journal hand-in. You will see all drafts for the stories I wrote for this project.
I did a bit of concept art at the beginning and quite a bit of research on how other games have told their stories and character archetypes within stories. I have also researched on people's experiences as a game writer and how that is different from writing for standalone print. This has been shown in my previous blogs.
I also helped Tim with the initial level design by drawing a map of it. Also included in a previous blog post.
I have planned and organised everything for the group. This means I've timetabled the schedule and kept track of where we are on the timeline. I've made sure that every member knows what's going on and that they know important information. For example, when they have to have something finished, when they must be here for full group meetings, and so on. The evidence of a timeline is included briefly in my journal.
I took over the leadership role while Ben was away. I made sure that we kept on developing on our ideas and trying to work out our problems. This was when we were stuck and confused with what we were doing because nothing seemed to fit. I have talked about this also in previous blogs.
In summary, I really have done more than just writing.
I also do agree that I need to "take a more active part in group presentations." I find that by myself in presentations I usually do alright. In a group though, I find it difficult to find a chance to jump in and have my say in presenting. Mainly because people wouldn't stop talking and I feel rude when I cut them off. But yes, I do agree that that is an area that needs improvement. I'd like to point out that to an extent I have improved from last semester, even though I'm not absolutely amazing and charismatic yet. Last semester I wouldn't even say a sentence unless a question was aimed directly at me. For which I am greatly relieved, because I actually really wanted to say something and am grateful for questions directed at me to give me that chance. That was also because it was hard for me to jump in when everybody was talking. This semester though I got more than three sentences in, which isn't a lot. But it's a start and it really is an achievement for me. Also, I'd like to remind you that in the previous formative assessment I did manage to take control over the presentation. That was the most I've said in this year's group presentations because I actually had a chance to speak.
For individual feedback it says I need to clarify how I contributed to the group because the tutors were under the impression that my only contribution was in the writing.
Honestly, I was a bit miffed when Edrian made the mistake of saying Ben was in charge of storytelling. Because that was my job along with the writing. Perhaps it was the nerves or he stumbled in his speech. Nonetheless, I am annoyed.
But let me clarify here what I did for the group. I've made it very clear in past blogs what I've done, but I'll still clarify it here in case you missed anything.
My main role is to do the writing, and have a strong influence in developing the story. Yes, I have done this despite my disagreements with Ben for most of this semester. In fact, the evidence for this will be included in my journal hand-in. You will see all drafts for the stories I wrote for this project.
I did a bit of concept art at the beginning and quite a bit of research on how other games have told their stories and character archetypes within stories. I have also researched on people's experiences as a game writer and how that is different from writing for standalone print. This has been shown in my previous blogs.
I also helped Tim with the initial level design by drawing a map of it. Also included in a previous blog post.
I have planned and organised everything for the group. This means I've timetabled the schedule and kept track of where we are on the timeline. I've made sure that every member knows what's going on and that they know important information. For example, when they have to have something finished, when they must be here for full group meetings, and so on. The evidence of a timeline is included briefly in my journal.
I took over the leadership role while Ben was away. I made sure that we kept on developing on our ideas and trying to work out our problems. This was when we were stuck and confused with what we were doing because nothing seemed to fit. I have talked about this also in previous blogs.
In summary, I really have done more than just writing.
I also do agree that I need to "take a more active part in group presentations." I find that by myself in presentations I usually do alright. In a group though, I find it difficult to find a chance to jump in and have my say in presenting. Mainly because people wouldn't stop talking and I feel rude when I cut them off. But yes, I do agree that that is an area that needs improvement. I'd like to point out that to an extent I have improved from last semester, even though I'm not absolutely amazing and charismatic yet. Last semester I wouldn't even say a sentence unless a question was aimed directly at me. For which I am greatly relieved, because I actually really wanted to say something and am grateful for questions directed at me to give me that chance. That was also because it was hard for me to jump in when everybody was talking. This semester though I got more than three sentences in, which isn't a lot. But it's a start and it really is an achievement for me. Also, I'd like to remind you that in the previous formative assessment I did manage to take control over the presentation. That was the most I've said in this year's group presentations because I actually had a chance to speak.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Presentation Prep
Talk about how group has planned to present final presentation and your role in the presentation.
For the final presentation we're planning on doing something similar to last semester. Last semester our presentation was set in a post-electric world where our documentation was written in the form of a fictional character's diary. We found that this approach tied everything together quite nicely.
This semester we're going to take a bit of the game out into the presentation space. In the opening cutscene we've got a young boy in his bedroom. We're going to replicate certain aspects of that in the space. It will feel like a bedroom. The screen mounted on the wall would be framed by curtains and links to the window of the bedroom. It would be the window to our game. The artwork would be around the walls and the showreel will also precede the game.
Documentation and research will be compiled into small booklets. This is to explain what's going on in the game, why we did it that way, what it means, and so on. This part is what I'm in charge of. I'll be doing the writing and compiling of research. I'll be making the book as well. Here are some quick mock ups.
I decided on accordion binding. It's fast, very easy to make. It's also a good option if you're not going to have a really thick book. It's also something that a child might have in their room too since making accordion books was something that you did back in primary. At least, in my primary anyway.
The black one has pockets that would hold cards in each pocket. On one side of the card would be parts of the game world map. On the other side would be details, the method of storytelling done in that area, why that method, pros and cons, etc etc. So you can take out the cards and put them together into one map. Problems with this: Having the written material on the cards restricts the room I have to put the writing on. Also, even though the idea of it being a mini puzzle might be a nice touch, it isn't entirely necessary. It does link to the part in the game where the boy puts together torn pieces of paper that makes a train ticket though. With the pockets, gluing the pages together is more difficult and leads to a lopsided look.
The second one doesn't have pockets but the pages are glued together differently. This one was sturdier and less lopsided.
I won't be writing the research and documentation in a really formal essay format. Because that would stick out from the rest of the project. It would be written in a style that fits the game while still being clear in what we're trying to say.
For the final presentation we're planning on doing something similar to last semester. Last semester our presentation was set in a post-electric world where our documentation was written in the form of a fictional character's diary. We found that this approach tied everything together quite nicely.
This semester we're going to take a bit of the game out into the presentation space. In the opening cutscene we've got a young boy in his bedroom. We're going to replicate certain aspects of that in the space. It will feel like a bedroom. The screen mounted on the wall would be framed by curtains and links to the window of the bedroom. It would be the window to our game. The artwork would be around the walls and the showreel will also precede the game.
Documentation and research will be compiled into small booklets. This is to explain what's going on in the game, why we did it that way, what it means, and so on. This part is what I'm in charge of. I'll be doing the writing and compiling of research. I'll be making the book as well. Here are some quick mock ups.
I decided on accordion binding. It's fast, very easy to make. It's also a good option if you're not going to have a really thick book. It's also something that a child might have in their room too since making accordion books was something that you did back in primary. At least, in my primary anyway.
The black one has pockets that would hold cards in each pocket. On one side of the card would be parts of the game world map. On the other side would be details, the method of storytelling done in that area, why that method, pros and cons, etc etc. So you can take out the cards and put them together into one map. Problems with this: Having the written material on the cards restricts the room I have to put the writing on. Also, even though the idea of it being a mini puzzle might be a nice touch, it isn't entirely necessary. It does link to the part in the game where the boy puts together torn pieces of paper that makes a train ticket though. With the pockets, gluing the pages together is more difficult and leads to a lopsided look.
The second one doesn't have pockets but the pages are glued together differently. This one was sturdier and less lopsided.
I won't be writing the research and documentation in a really formal essay format. Because that would stick out from the rest of the project. It would be written in a style that fits the game while still being clear in what we're trying to say.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Kalimba
A day or two ago I brought in my kalimba for Tim to play some music on it for the game. We've finished recording most of the audio as well.
Had Tim play on the kalimba a bit and he figured out the intervals of each tine pretty quickly. Below is the notation that Tim wrote down for the intervals. Each one is a different tine(the metal bits) and the number shows the interval between that tine and the root.
Soon we had twinkle twinkle little stars and Brahms' lullaby on the kalimba. I was quite impressed to be honest. I'm not very good at music to be honest, so I asked him how he recognises intervals so well. He does it by relating the interval to a song he knows. For example, a song knows begins with two notes which are a third apart. He remembers those notes and how far apart they are. Then applies that when he hears two other notes, to see where it's a third apart or not.
I thought that was interesting. It's quite an effective way to remember and learn. I think I could use that more often when I can. I think it would help me pick up new skills faster.
Ben and Edrian did the baby screams. They did regular baby cries at first then used a program called morphVox to warp the voices for the demonic effect we wanted.
The disagreement between Ben and I is fully resolved now, so that's good. We've been talking about how to do the presentation for next week as well. I'm under the impression that it's an informal presentation to get advice and feedback on how best to present the final project.
We're going to have a tv screen with the game running on it. There'll be a video of gameplay, some models and drawings before the game demo. Maybe we'll have drawings on the wall and research that binds everything together as well.
For the research we could bind it into a book, maybe drawings included. But Tim does make a good point about it being in a book. If we put all that in a book does it imply that you can't have a story without a book? Does it imply, "No, you can't tell a story through a game unless you have a book."?
The way the research is written up and the overall look of the exhibition is something I'm not totally sold on either.
You've got this game in a wintry landscape, you've got this sleek screen and a bound book. The aesthetics don't fit. Also, I the research notes are written in an essay/formal format there's a huge distinction between that and the rest of the work. It will stick out because it doesn't fit. We gotta think of a way to make the presentation look cohesive and fit together for a smooth feel. It needs to feel like the full package belongs together.
Had Tim play on the kalimba a bit and he figured out the intervals of each tine pretty quickly. Below is the notation that Tim wrote down for the intervals. Each one is a different tine(the metal bits) and the number shows the interval between that tine and the root.
Soon we had twinkle twinkle little stars and Brahms' lullaby on the kalimba. I was quite impressed to be honest. I'm not very good at music to be honest, so I asked him how he recognises intervals so well. He does it by relating the interval to a song he knows. For example, a song knows begins with two notes which are a third apart. He remembers those notes and how far apart they are. Then applies that when he hears two other notes, to see where it's a third apart or not.
I thought that was interesting. It's quite an effective way to remember and learn. I think I could use that more often when I can. I think it would help me pick up new skills faster.
Ben and Edrian did the baby screams. They did regular baby cries at first then used a program called morphVox to warp the voices for the demonic effect we wanted.
The disagreement between Ben and I is fully resolved now, so that's good. We've been talking about how to do the presentation for next week as well. I'm under the impression that it's an informal presentation to get advice and feedback on how best to present the final project.
We're going to have a tv screen with the game running on it. There'll be a video of gameplay, some models and drawings before the game demo. Maybe we'll have drawings on the wall and research that binds everything together as well.
For the research we could bind it into a book, maybe drawings included. But Tim does make a good point about it being in a book. If we put all that in a book does it imply that you can't have a story without a book? Does it imply, "No, you can't tell a story through a game unless you have a book."?
The way the research is written up and the overall look of the exhibition is something I'm not totally sold on either.
You've got this game in a wintry landscape, you've got this sleek screen and a bound book. The aesthetics don't fit. Also, I the research notes are written in an essay/formal format there's a huge distinction between that and the rest of the work. It will stick out because it doesn't fit. We gotta think of a way to make the presentation look cohesive and fit together for a smooth feel. It needs to feel like the full package belongs together.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Dynamics
As you have probably noticed, this semester's dynamics weren't as solid as last semester's. It's more shaky in comparison and our visions aren't fitting together. Because straight from the beginning everybody wanted something different. Also, a middle ground was never reached. As a result our ideas weren't solid and even though it's fine now, the individual parts didn't quite match up. At present, I still don't know how well everything will fit together yet. At the moment it does feel like we're getting somewhere though.
This morning Maggie pointed out further group dynamic issues, specifically between me and Ben. The issue here is leadership. While Ben was away I had stepped, very clearly, into a leadership role. However, when he came back I've kind of backed down and become really quiet. When he came back he assumed the role of leader. This strain is also increased further more when I don't agree with his decisions. Especially with the writing, which I've mentioned previously.
The problem is we have two leaders in one group, and you can't have that in a group this big. Or in any group at all regardless of size. The difference between us is that we have different leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses.
He's better at articulating himself verbally, but his time management and planning isn't that great. He's a much better public speaker. He's able to clarify for the group what we want and what we're aiming to achieve. However, sometimes he makes the mistake of articulating opinions that are his, as the group's opinion.
I'm the opposite. I'm not good at public speaking at all. I can articulate myself very well in writing, but not verbally. So when I talk I can't talk clearly, because my mouth doesn't match up with what I'm thinking. If you get what I mean by this. But I'm good at planning and organising people. I'm good at managing people and defining what each person needs to get done in a timeframe.
So this leadership conflict is putting strain on the group and I think it's highly likely that it will show up in the resulting work. Or at least on my blogs. Because I'm not shy about writing what I really think on my blogs.
Now let's show a bit of that strain and tension. Ben did recordings of the narration and dialogue that I wrote. Yes, he took the bones of it, the order of what happens. But he stripped away and changed a lot of the stuff I wrote that gives the writing its character. If I was the one who changed and edited it then that's fine. I'd still be achieving my learning goal of writing. However, if it's someone else who changed it then did I really write then end product? Did I really achieve my goal. His reason for changing it was he thought something else would be "more interesting" and that certain things "didn't fit". Either that or it "doesn't roll off the tongue." Personally, if you think there's something wrong with it you tell ME. I'm the writer here, you tell me what you think and I'll change it if I agree that it's necessary. That way it wouldn't screw me over with trying to achieve my writing goal. I told him this and he told me to see it in another perspective. That him pointing out everything he thinks is wrong with the writing as helping me to achieve my learning goal. Oh yea? I think the contrary. You're just pointing out that you think I can't write dialogue. How am I learning if you don't give me a chance to improve/change the writing at all? If it's gonna be this way why bother having me write anything? Go write the whole damn thing yourself.
While we were discussing this and trying to resolve the leadership issue I admit I was really sour. And I know I've put a lot of negative feelings in my blogs this semester. You think I'm gonna sugarcoat that? You think I'm gonna be all rainbows and sunshine about it? NO! I'll say it like it is.
We did talk about the leadership issue and it's resolved for now. But with the writing? I still have the feeling that it's not going to go my way. If I don't at least pass because I didn't achieve these particular learning goals then fuck it.
With this experience this semester, it's undeniable that the group dynamics are crap. Ideas and opinions didn't coincide straight from the beginning. Clarification wasn't there and defined goals weren't there. In terms of the leadership conflict, I have a feeling that Edrian is afraid of agreeing fully with either side in fear of being caught between the two. I also question whether anyone sees me as a leader. Do people see you as a leader even if you aren't verbose? I don't know.
From this experience, I would rather work in a smaller, more manageable group. In a group of three, if there's a disagreement it gets solved quickly. In a solo project, there's no disagreement and you have total control over your vision. In this sense, next year for the year long project I would opt to solo the project. I would only accept a maximum of two people if there are suitable applicants to my brief. Now let's all cross our fingers and hope I'll be okay and pass this semester.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Random observation here:
I get the impression that most people think they gotta sweep negative feelings and opinions under the carpet to get a decent grade. There's also this notion in the world that anything that hurts or is negative is some horrible bad thing that should be eliminated. And that strong feelings are bad unless they're the harmless, sweet kind.
In my opinion I disagree with all of the above. Having passion for your project might boost your grade, cos it means you've been working on it fervently. If you're having strong negative feelings about it, it's not necessarily bad. Yes, maybe it all turned to shit. But think about it this way. Isn't having strong negative feelings a kind of passion in and of itself? If you didn't care about something so much you wouldn't be this angry/sad/opinionated on the issue.
There's the simple fact that people can't be happy all the time. Being sad and getting hurt isn't wrong. You won't enjoy it, but if you're gonna block away and shun these feelings, I think you're denying the existence of a part of yourself.
About strong feelings, when you say you hate something a lot there's always going to be someone who says "Oh, So-and-so! Hate is such a strong word." Hate isn't just a word, it's a feeling. If that's how I feel then what's wrong with using the word? Because it's unpleasant and it doesn't smell of roses? If you can't use strong words like "hate" how can you use strong words like "love"? How can you love if you can't hate?
I think hate is a form of love to be honest. If there's someone you hate you think about them all the time. You wanna be there to make their lives hell. You would take revenge if you could. You hate them so much that you can picture their face etched on the inside of your eyelids. If you love someone you think about them often as well. You wanna make their lives worth living. You'd make sweet, sweet love to them if you get the opportunity. You love them so much you can see their radiant smile when you close your eyes. Love and hate; they're not the exactly same thing. Hate is kind of like caring about someone a lot, but in a bad way. The main difference is the end result.
This morning Maggie pointed out further group dynamic issues, specifically between me and Ben. The issue here is leadership. While Ben was away I had stepped, very clearly, into a leadership role. However, when he came back I've kind of backed down and become really quiet. When he came back he assumed the role of leader. This strain is also increased further more when I don't agree with his decisions. Especially with the writing, which I've mentioned previously.
The problem is we have two leaders in one group, and you can't have that in a group this big. Or in any group at all regardless of size. The difference between us is that we have different leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses.
He's better at articulating himself verbally, but his time management and planning isn't that great. He's a much better public speaker. He's able to clarify for the group what we want and what we're aiming to achieve. However, sometimes he makes the mistake of articulating opinions that are his, as the group's opinion.
I'm the opposite. I'm not good at public speaking at all. I can articulate myself very well in writing, but not verbally. So when I talk I can't talk clearly, because my mouth doesn't match up with what I'm thinking. If you get what I mean by this. But I'm good at planning and organising people. I'm good at managing people and defining what each person needs to get done in a timeframe.
So this leadership conflict is putting strain on the group and I think it's highly likely that it will show up in the resulting work. Or at least on my blogs. Because I'm not shy about writing what I really think on my blogs.
Now let's show a bit of that strain and tension. Ben did recordings of the narration and dialogue that I wrote. Yes, he took the bones of it, the order of what happens. But he stripped away and changed a lot of the stuff I wrote that gives the writing its character. If I was the one who changed and edited it then that's fine. I'd still be achieving my learning goal of writing. However, if it's someone else who changed it then did I really write then end product? Did I really achieve my goal. His reason for changing it was he thought something else would be "more interesting" and that certain things "didn't fit". Either that or it "doesn't roll off the tongue." Personally, if you think there's something wrong with it you tell ME. I'm the writer here, you tell me what you think and I'll change it if I agree that it's necessary. That way it wouldn't screw me over with trying to achieve my writing goal. I told him this and he told me to see it in another perspective. That him pointing out everything he thinks is wrong with the writing as helping me to achieve my learning goal. Oh yea? I think the contrary. You're just pointing out that you think I can't write dialogue. How am I learning if you don't give me a chance to improve/change the writing at all? If it's gonna be this way why bother having me write anything? Go write the whole damn thing yourself.
While we were discussing this and trying to resolve the leadership issue I admit I was really sour. And I know I've put a lot of negative feelings in my blogs this semester. You think I'm gonna sugarcoat that? You think I'm gonna be all rainbows and sunshine about it? NO! I'll say it like it is.
We did talk about the leadership issue and it's resolved for now. But with the writing? I still have the feeling that it's not going to go my way. If I don't at least pass because I didn't achieve these particular learning goals then fuck it.
With this experience this semester, it's undeniable that the group dynamics are crap. Ideas and opinions didn't coincide straight from the beginning. Clarification wasn't there and defined goals weren't there. In terms of the leadership conflict, I have a feeling that Edrian is afraid of agreeing fully with either side in fear of being caught between the two. I also question whether anyone sees me as a leader. Do people see you as a leader even if you aren't verbose? I don't know.
From this experience, I would rather work in a smaller, more manageable group. In a group of three, if there's a disagreement it gets solved quickly. In a solo project, there's no disagreement and you have total control over your vision. In this sense, next year for the year long project I would opt to solo the project. I would only accept a maximum of two people if there are suitable applicants to my brief. Now let's all cross our fingers and hope I'll be okay and pass this semester.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Random observation here:
I get the impression that most people think they gotta sweep negative feelings and opinions under the carpet to get a decent grade. There's also this notion in the world that anything that hurts or is negative is some horrible bad thing that should be eliminated. And that strong feelings are bad unless they're the harmless, sweet kind.
In my opinion I disagree with all of the above. Having passion for your project might boost your grade, cos it means you've been working on it fervently. If you're having strong negative feelings about it, it's not necessarily bad. Yes, maybe it all turned to shit. But think about it this way. Isn't having strong negative feelings a kind of passion in and of itself? If you didn't care about something so much you wouldn't be this angry/sad/opinionated on the issue.
There's the simple fact that people can't be happy all the time. Being sad and getting hurt isn't wrong. You won't enjoy it, but if you're gonna block away and shun these feelings, I think you're denying the existence of a part of yourself.
About strong feelings, when you say you hate something a lot there's always going to be someone who says "Oh, So-and-so! Hate is such a strong word." Hate isn't just a word, it's a feeling. If that's how I feel then what's wrong with using the word? Because it's unpleasant and it doesn't smell of roses? If you can't use strong words like "hate" how can you use strong words like "love"? How can you love if you can't hate?
I think hate is a form of love to be honest. If there's someone you hate you think about them all the time. You wanna be there to make their lives hell. You would take revenge if you could. You hate them so much that you can picture their face etched on the inside of your eyelids. If you love someone you think about them often as well. You wanna make their lives worth living. You'd make sweet, sweet love to them if you get the opportunity. You love them so much you can see their radiant smile when you close your eyes. Love and hate; they're not the exactly same thing. Hate is kind of like caring about someone a lot, but in a bad way. The main difference is the end result.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Mildly Worried
I'm mildly worried about my learning goals. At the beginning with our nomination forms I wrote down MANY things. This is because I didn't know what role I would be playing yet at the time.
Here's what I wrote:
Here's what I wrote:
"I'm
aware of my flaws and what I can't do. As you can see I tend to move
into a catatonic state when doing presentations where I have to talk
and find it hard to talk in front of a lot of people. If this group
remains the same, I believe a bit of their public speaking skills may
rub off on me and I can learn through observation.
I'm
a horrible programmer, to be honest. If I can get in on this project
I think I can gain a better understanding on how to program and how
it works. At some point I think I may have to program as well since a
lot of roles will cross over and roles will change accordingly. So it
would push me to learn and make me more confident in this area.
I
have no idea what I want to do after graduating. That's why I'm going
after things that I'm interested in. Other skills I'd like to have
are 3D modelling and animation. I can very well pursue these
interests within the group. I can learn and make things for the group
as I go along.
One
thing I'm good at is writing stories. I want to further develop this
skill and really put it to use because I haven't had much of an
opportunity to do that. This also applies with my art."
I've definitely improved my public speaking skills. So yes, I have achieved that particular learning goal. I've achieved my writing goal and art goal. Although the bit of art that I did for the project isn't likely to be used anywhere.
The goals that I'm really worried about are the programming, 3D modelling and animation ones. The main reason I didn't get to do any of those is because they're linked to specific roles. These roles were taken up by other members of the group and I took the role of writer. They have nothing to do with the role of the writer. Also, each individual role didn't overlap at all like I thought it would. So it was unnecessary for me to program, model, or animate. It makes more sense for the 3D modeller to animate the moving models since they can do it straight away in Maya. It doesn't make much sense to pass it on to another separate animator.
You could argue that I HAVE learned things about programming, 3D modelling and animation through observation. Is it learning if I haven't touched it directly though? For example, I've learned what each brush does in zBrush and how to pull at that sphere to make something else. For example, a head. I only know that from watching Tim though. I've learned that in Maya it's easier to make a model with orthographic references. I've also learned that you don't want triangles in your mesh, because you could get slicing happening in your model. This I learned by listening to Nick. I've learned that in Unity3D you want to export your models as .obj or .fbx in Maya for it to work properly. I've learned a whole bunch of little things from listening and watching my team members. However, I haven't applied what I learned. I haven't made anything to do with those skills yet. So I'm not sure if it counts as learning or having achieved a learning goal.
The goals that I'm really worried about are the programming, 3D modelling and animation ones. The main reason I didn't get to do any of those is because they're linked to specific roles. These roles were taken up by other members of the group and I took the role of writer. They have nothing to do with the role of the writer. Also, each individual role didn't overlap at all like I thought it would. So it was unnecessary for me to program, model, or animate. It makes more sense for the 3D modeller to animate the moving models since they can do it straight away in Maya. It doesn't make much sense to pass it on to another separate animator.
You could argue that I HAVE learned things about programming, 3D modelling and animation through observation. Is it learning if I haven't touched it directly though? For example, I've learned what each brush does in zBrush and how to pull at that sphere to make something else. For example, a head. I only know that from watching Tim though. I've learned that in Maya it's easier to make a model with orthographic references. I've also learned that you don't want triangles in your mesh, because you could get slicing happening in your model. This I learned by listening to Nick. I've learned that in Unity3D you want to export your models as .obj or .fbx in Maya for it to work properly. I've learned a whole bunch of little things from listening and watching my team members. However, I haven't applied what I learned. I haven't made anything to do with those skills yet. So I'm not sure if it counts as learning or having achieved a learning goal.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Finished - Game writing vs. Written story
Did a little bit of research on writing specifically for games today. I was wondering if writing for a game is really different from writing a regular written story on paper. I was also wondering if it was as troublesome as it was for me.
From my current experience there are many differences. It's a little more like writing a script for a movie mashed into a regular written story. You've got mostly dialogue and depending on the style you're telling the story in, you'll have little descriptive snippets. I also found it hard to write the story to fit in with what everyone else wanted.
There's actually not many articles on game writing or game writers. This is because, according to Angel McCoy (2011), the role of game writer in the industry is very recent. Previously, the dialogue and story is a role that's incorporated into the role of the game designer. The game designer is like the director of a film. The game designer designs what the artwork is going to look like, the game levels, maps-- everything. Only designing though, the role of actually making it all is a job for the game developers, artists, and others. This recently includes the game writer. McCoy (2011), who is a game writer for Guild Wars 2 states that "industry leaders begin to realize what trained writers can do for a game."
This is interesting because McCoy does make a really interesting point. She says that, yes, everyone can write. However, not everyone can write WELL. Now that is the point of difference and the reason for the emergence of the game writer.
A game writer develops the narrative and writes any text that appears in the game. This includes dialogue, descriptions, control interface, and so on (Johansen, 2000). The game writer's influence on the narrative depends on how early the writer is taken on board. If they're taken early on they'll have a lot of influence to craft the story. Later in production though, they'll need to write something that fits with everything else. So the game writer would have to familiarise themselves with all other elements (Anonymous, 2012). Working closely specifically with the game designer is an absolute must in both cases.
Right now, my current experience in writing this way is pretty similar. It does get frustrating when half the things you write doesn't actually get used. Even more so when you're told that what you're writing is a mere frame rather than the actual thing. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I'm cool with edits, because that's what happens in the industry. What you write goes through several edits and it might not be the same as the stuff you wrote. Improvisation though? I don't agree with that. Why bother writing at all if it's going to be improvised in the first place? I've written everything so my part is done. I'm happy about that and I'm pleased with my final edit. But to be told that it's only going to be used as a frame for improvised dialogue? I don't know whether I've just wasted my time. I'm not sure whether my role here is even necessary if that is the case. If it's going to end up completely different to what I actually wrote, then I would say that my role is obsolete. My role shouldn't exist if the majority of it is going to be improvised anyway. This I'm not happy about. I've voiced my opinion on this. My part is done. I'll just need to wait and see how it turns out.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Anonymous. (2012). What Does a Game Writer Do? Retrieved September 20, 2012, fromhttp://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-game-writer-do.htm
Johansen, T. (2000). What Kind of Writer Do You Want to Be? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.writing-world.com/basics/types.shtml
McCoy, A.L. (2011). What's Game Writing Like? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.angelmccoy.com/blog/?p=1789
From my current experience there are many differences. It's a little more like writing a script for a movie mashed into a regular written story. You've got mostly dialogue and depending on the style you're telling the story in, you'll have little descriptive snippets. I also found it hard to write the story to fit in with what everyone else wanted.
There's actually not many articles on game writing or game writers. This is because, according to Angel McCoy (2011), the role of game writer in the industry is very recent. Previously, the dialogue and story is a role that's incorporated into the role of the game designer. The game designer is like the director of a film. The game designer designs what the artwork is going to look like, the game levels, maps-- everything. Only designing though, the role of actually making it all is a job for the game developers, artists, and others. This recently includes the game writer. McCoy (2011), who is a game writer for Guild Wars 2 states that "industry leaders begin to realize what trained writers can do for a game."
This is interesting because McCoy does make a really interesting point. She says that, yes, everyone can write. However, not everyone can write WELL. Now that is the point of difference and the reason for the emergence of the game writer.
A game writer develops the narrative and writes any text that appears in the game. This includes dialogue, descriptions, control interface, and so on (Johansen, 2000). The game writer's influence on the narrative depends on how early the writer is taken on board. If they're taken early on they'll have a lot of influence to craft the story. Later in production though, they'll need to write something that fits with everything else. So the game writer would have to familiarise themselves with all other elements (Anonymous, 2012). Working closely specifically with the game designer is an absolute must in both cases.
Right now, my current experience in writing this way is pretty similar. It does get frustrating when half the things you write doesn't actually get used. Even more so when you're told that what you're writing is a mere frame rather than the actual thing. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I'm cool with edits, because that's what happens in the industry. What you write goes through several edits and it might not be the same as the stuff you wrote. Improvisation though? I don't agree with that. Why bother writing at all if it's going to be improvised in the first place? I've written everything so my part is done. I'm happy about that and I'm pleased with my final edit. But to be told that it's only going to be used as a frame for improvised dialogue? I don't know whether I've just wasted my time. I'm not sure whether my role here is even necessary if that is the case. If it's going to end up completely different to what I actually wrote, then I would say that my role is obsolete. My role shouldn't exist if the majority of it is going to be improvised anyway. This I'm not happy about. I've voiced my opinion on this. My part is done. I'll just need to wait and see how it turns out.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Anonymous. (2012). What Does a Game Writer Do? Retrieved September 20, 2012, fromhttp://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-game-writer-do.htm
Johansen, T. (2000). What Kind of Writer Do You Want to Be? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.writing-world.com/basics/types.shtml
McCoy, A.L. (2011). What's Game Writing Like? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.angelmccoy.com/blog/?p=1789
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Written
Managed to do all the writing for the first half of the game. So this is script for the narrator during the intro and in the area where narration is the main medium of telling a story in-game.
It was much easier writing it today because everything else got sorted yesterday and I'm now clear with what I'm actually writing about. Of course, this is a draft, and it needs to be edited several times over to get the best version. At the moment I think the writing is hollow, in that it doesn't have a distinct personality to it. The descriptions aren't very fresh and they sound and feel too awkward. I want to change it to sound more natural. Something that rolls off your tongue. I think maybe it has something to do with the rhythm of the words while you read it. For example, some of my sentences are way too long, "On a cold, cold night, tucked away in his cozy bed, his parents gently kissed him on the cheek." It doesn't feel very natural either. I think in the intro it might be better to include a snippet to show you what the relationship between the parents and the child is like. At the moment the parents seem too impersonal and separate from the boy.
I've re-read it again just now, the imagery is a bit choppy at times. The sentence, "His mother sang him a little song, and the moon shone ever so brightly." is an example of this. You've got this image of his mother singing and then the image chops to the moon. I think I need to re-write this so that there's a smoother transition.
Some imagery also doesn't fit the mood. In one part where the boy has fallen into the winter world he's seeing some mildly creepy things. If you were the boy you wouldn't stop to admire the beauty of the falling snow. You wouldn't perceive the snow as dancing "through the crisp, cold night."
When you write, you never get the whole thing right the first time. I've talked to many writers and a creative writing teacher I've met says that the secret to writing a good story is to just write it all out. It wouldn't be amazing on the first go but to turn it into a story you're proud of, that comes in the process of re-writing what you've got over and over again. You work out a lot of the things you don't want, add a bit of detail, build up some atmosphere and personality, and so on. I'm in this process at the moment. Some choices of words I need to change, a bit of rewording, changing the feeling of the words to match the scene.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Back from Holidays
Had a group discussion about how we're going to pull this game through. We've all gone off and done our own part, but nothing we're doing feels like it's fitting together as a whole. So we've got all these separate parts that don't quite fit together cohesively.
I feel like that especially with writing. I feel apprehensive about writing anything for this game because I know that whatever I write won't be used. AT ALL. Because every time I do write something there's always this massive debate about this bit and that bit. Oh what's happening over here? Take this out, take that out. This should be like this, this should be happening over here. If it's going to be like that why write anything at all? Wouldn't it be wasting my time if everything I do is for nothing? It doesn't make sense to write anything if it's not going to be used in the first place.
I've told my group this, so today we planned out what's happening at each point so there's no stupid debate about what's happening where.
So now we've got that out of the way we're now far clearer with what we're doing and how everything fits than ever before.
I feel like that especially with writing. I feel apprehensive about writing anything for this game because I know that whatever I write won't be used. AT ALL. Because every time I do write something there's always this massive debate about this bit and that bit. Oh what's happening over here? Take this out, take that out. This should be like this, this should be happening over here. If it's going to be like that why write anything at all? Wouldn't it be wasting my time if everything I do is for nothing? It doesn't make sense to write anything if it's not going to be used in the first place.
I've told my group this, so today we planned out what's happening at each point so there's no stupid debate about what's happening where.
So now we've got that out of the way we're now far clearer with what we're doing and how everything fits than ever before.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Friday, August 31, 2012
Still haven't written anything
Argh, been slack with blogs compared to my usual flow of one blog a day.
Mentioned many times previously, I still haven't found my motivation and I feel like I need to get away from the project and just let it rot for a while before I get back into it.
Summary: In making a game so many aspects of it are tied together (such as mechanics, visual style, and what it's actually about) that any kind of indecision will set fire to your work and destroy it. My god. That's pretty much what happened. Indecision straight from the start, decisions being made and unmade, conflicting opinions on what we should do--ARGH
We still don't have a defined visual style. We still don't have a core story that ties everything together.
I'll just write whatever I want and make it related to the basics of what we have now.
Mentioned many times previously, I still haven't found my motivation and I feel like I need to get away from the project and just let it rot for a while before I get back into it.
Summary: In making a game so many aspects of it are tied together (such as mechanics, visual style, and what it's actually about) that any kind of indecision will set fire to your work and destroy it. My god. That's pretty much what happened. Indecision straight from the start, decisions being made and unmade, conflicting opinions on what we should do--ARGH
We still don't have a defined visual style. We still don't have a core story that ties everything together.
I'll just write whatever I want and make it related to the basics of what we have now.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Blah
Still need to write the main storyline in regular written story format. We have the backstory for most of the characters and things that go on but I don't actually know what goes on in the main storyline during the duration of the game. I don't know what to do about that because every time we get to a decision, then I get clear on what I have to do. BAM!! Something happens and suddenly something about the decision changes. Then I don't know what to do because it feels like once something appears definite it just magically becomes just another decision to make rather than something that's solidly decided. If all the fundamental decisions keep changing then I don't know what the heck I'm doing with the story because I don't want to write a full story only to find that none of what I wrote is of any relevance. I would write many different ones, but only if the fundamental things are solidly decided. Because if I don't know the basics of what we want in the story I won't have a guide as to what could happen in the story.
For example, let's say you tell me to write a story but you don't tell me about anything that I must have in the story to work with what you're doing. Let's say you want to have some crazy story but you forgot to specify that what you really want is a story that has robot unicorns and narwhals in it. Except the idea was never solidly decided with a gazillion other ideas and decisions being tossed around. Then I write a story about flying hotdogs that squirt rainbows and other delicious condiments. Spot the difference.
If what I write doesn't fit any of the basic things you need it's not going to work.
Because there are so many things flying around and not being decided solidly I don't know what the hell I'm doing. In addition, literally every time we get something decided it always becomes UNdecided. It's always, "Let's do this and that." "Oh gosh, we can't because we're not exploring enough." Ok, exploring means trying different things and finding something out. Storytelling means sticking to a certain path and progressing along to find out what's at the end. If we do a story and we decide on something and stick to it, is that really exploring?
Argh, so little being solid just doesn't motivate me because I have no direction as to what I'm doing. And in all honesty I've been blatantly procrastinating on writing because I have no idea what I'm doing. Mark me down all you want, I'm not shy about admitting my failures, confusion, and other unfavourable conditions.
For example, let's say you tell me to write a story but you don't tell me about anything that I must have in the story to work with what you're doing. Let's say you want to have some crazy story but you forgot to specify that what you really want is a story that has robot unicorns and narwhals in it. Except the idea was never solidly decided with a gazillion other ideas and decisions being tossed around. Then I write a story about flying hotdogs that squirt rainbows and other delicious condiments. Spot the difference.
If what I write doesn't fit any of the basic things you need it's not going to work.
Because there are so many things flying around and not being decided solidly I don't know what the hell I'm doing. In addition, literally every time we get something decided it always becomes UNdecided. It's always, "Let's do this and that." "Oh gosh, we can't because we're not exploring enough." Ok, exploring means trying different things and finding something out. Storytelling means sticking to a certain path and progressing along to find out what's at the end. If we do a story and we decide on something and stick to it, is that really exploring?
Argh, so little being solid just doesn't motivate me because I have no direction as to what I'm doing. And in all honesty I've been blatantly procrastinating on writing because I have no idea what I'm doing. Mark me down all you want, I'm not shy about admitting my failures, confusion, and other unfavourable conditions.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Moving along
Wrote the story to get a clearer idea of what we're going, with general sequence of events. Even though we're only doing small parts of the game, it's easier to know what you're doing if you have the whole thing written out.
Drew down a bit of level-design for Tim as well, so that he can plan out and start making the actual world and gave Nick a huge list of models to make. Actually did the level-design before writing an overview of the story and little snippets about the characters. I think drawing out what I wanted in the game helped me come up with a simple story for it.
Drawing of what certain things roughly look like and where they should be
Another drawing of the same thing but with text to explain what the drawn objects actually are.
I still feel demotivated though, because for me I'm in charge of story but I don't know if I'm doing enough. Writing a story for a game is a bit different from writing a classic story, at least at this stage anyway. You still have back stories and you can add quite a bit of detail to those, but in the actual game not all the details show through because of the interactive nature of games. So while writing what happens in-game I have to keep it bare and simple, rather than full on detail. Gotta keep it simple too rather than a story that takes a long time to unfold because to show the story, we're only making small parts of the game. So maybe I can save the full story for supporting material in the exhibition instead?
I think now, my job is to gather and make supporting material that informs the work and ties everything together. We did plan to have a special book with drawings and story in it as part of the exhibition, so maybe I can start on that. I did write in my learning goals that I wanted to improve my writing and drawings, so I can definitely do that in preparing our exhibition material. I wrote that I wanted to do 3D modeling and maybe a bit of programming as well but since the roles specifically for that are taken up already and there are other jobs waiting for me to finish them, I think I'll focus on the writing and drawing instead. I'll still help out in giving feedback on how things should be placed, improvements on how things look and so on when needed though. In summary, I'll only do a bit of modeling and programming when I'm needed for that as I have my own role to look after and I don't want to hog all the work, which prevents the rest of my group from achieving their learning goals since the ones doing the modeling and programming explicitly said they wanted to do specifically that.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Perspective
Haven't blogged in around a week because nothing much happened and the general mood is despair and demotivation.
It's still the story that's the problem and exploring. Is it really exploring if you only decide on one particular way to tell a story?
Maggie suggested that we change only one variable to play around with elements within a story. We agree with this so we've decided that perspective is the one we're going to change.
For example, you start off the story with the perspective of one character, but throughout the story you change your perspective to different characters. It's still the same story, but should you wish it you could touch a character and take on that character's perspective to fine out more about him/her. So you can swap perspectives at any point in the game.
So we have this, and as Daniel has noticed when he talked to us this morning, we still don't have a definite focus on what the end product would be. We have the potential to pull of what we're doing, but the problem is we don't know what we're doing.
Since our ambiguity idea was generally disliked and argued against we now need to craft a definite story to tell rather than leave a wide, open interpretation as to what the story is actually about. The ambiguity element was thought to be a "cop out" and not really a story, doesn't really explore storytelling. I can see the argument in that and I do agree that it feels like we're not really exploring storytelling.
Personally I'm still lost with what we're doing. We make decisions but they fly off and become nothing. We come up with an idea and there's always something wrong with it. Conceptually anyway. If we didn't have to think about it conceptually and just make a game that's worth your time we'd be speeding off with our work right now.
Tonight I'm going to write up some short stories to do with the game. We agreed that what I'm writing is the final decision, because we've been tossing around decisions and nothing's in concrete. The story is the core of everything here, we can't have decisions about it be halted any longer if we want to complete this on time.
Also, here's a drawing I did that's related to the game. It's one of the strange, unsettling baby creatures in the game:
It's still the story that's the problem and exploring. Is it really exploring if you only decide on one particular way to tell a story?
Maggie suggested that we change only one variable to play around with elements within a story. We agree with this so we've decided that perspective is the one we're going to change.
For example, you start off the story with the perspective of one character, but throughout the story you change your perspective to different characters. It's still the same story, but should you wish it you could touch a character and take on that character's perspective to fine out more about him/her. So you can swap perspectives at any point in the game.
So we have this, and as Daniel has noticed when he talked to us this morning, we still don't have a definite focus on what the end product would be. We have the potential to pull of what we're doing, but the problem is we don't know what we're doing.
Since our ambiguity idea was generally disliked and argued against we now need to craft a definite story to tell rather than leave a wide, open interpretation as to what the story is actually about. The ambiguity element was thought to be a "cop out" and not really a story, doesn't really explore storytelling. I can see the argument in that and I do agree that it feels like we're not really exploring storytelling.
Personally I'm still lost with what we're doing. We make decisions but they fly off and become nothing. We come up with an idea and there's always something wrong with it. Conceptually anyway. If we didn't have to think about it conceptually and just make a game that's worth your time we'd be speeding off with our work right now.
Tonight I'm going to write up some short stories to do with the game. We agreed that what I'm writing is the final decision, because we've been tossing around decisions and nothing's in concrete. The story is the core of everything here, we can't have decisions about it be halted any longer if we want to complete this on time.
Also, here's a drawing I did that's related to the game. It's one of the strange, unsettling baby creatures in the game:
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Critiques: We're not exploring
Had critiques today and the main feedback was that we're not exploring storytelling at all, no evidence of it. Yes, I agree with this to be honest and that's what we're stuck on.
We're supposed to be exploring methods of storytelling within a game rather than the game and how its mechanics works. We haven't done this frankly. We've been to focused on the details of the game rather than the story.
Afterwards we had heaps of help from Jenny to help us out of this horrible place. She's really good to talk to for feedback. She told us that it might help to pick apart out original question and start from there and gave suggestions on how we could explore storytelling.
What does exploring mean? Finding something that's new to you, maybe it's not "new" but was always there before and you didn't notice it. Searching, finding out about something. Testing how something works.
What is a story and how is it told? We need more research to do with this and how storytelling changed over time. Split up bits of how story is told though, only some aspects we can think of. There's probably more. There's perspective (omniscient, first person, third person, etc), time (is this a flashback, happening right now, or hasn't happened?), and voice (what's the tone of the story? What style of voice is it told in? Comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc? Different genres have different voices and conventions, of course the voice also changes according to the timbre of the author. For example, what would it be like if Shakespeare wrote George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four?).
It would be best and be more of an exploration of how stories are told in games if we had a really simple story and used different ways of telling the same story instead as opposed to deciding on ONE method of telling a story and having one game. When you just have one, it's not really exploring. When you have multiples of the same story, but told differently then that's really exploring methods and elements of story.
We're supposed to be exploring methods of storytelling within a game rather than the game and how its mechanics works. We haven't done this frankly. We've been to focused on the details of the game rather than the story.
Afterwards we had heaps of help from Jenny to help us out of this horrible place. She's really good to talk to for feedback. She told us that it might help to pick apart out original question and start from there and gave suggestions on how we could explore storytelling.
What does exploring mean? Finding something that's new to you, maybe it's not "new" but was always there before and you didn't notice it. Searching, finding out about something. Testing how something works.
What is a story and how is it told? We need more research to do with this and how storytelling changed over time. Split up bits of how story is told though, only some aspects we can think of. There's probably more. There's perspective (omniscient, first person, third person, etc), time (is this a flashback, happening right now, or hasn't happened?), and voice (what's the tone of the story? What style of voice is it told in? Comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc? Different genres have different voices and conventions, of course the voice also changes according to the timbre of the author. For example, what would it be like if Shakespeare wrote George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four?).
It would be best and be more of an exploration of how stories are told in games if we had a really simple story and used different ways of telling the same story instead as opposed to deciding on ONE method of telling a story and having one game. When you just have one, it's not really exploring. When you have multiples of the same story, but told differently then that's really exploring methods and elements of story.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Vicious Cycle
We're in a stupid, vicious cycle and it feels like nothing will ever get anywhere. Ok, so last time we had the fire thing --> work through details after getting basic stuff --> oh this and that doesn't work --> scrap it all and start all over again.
Now that we have another basic idea with chasing a shadow (mentioned in previous blog), we're trying to plan out every single fucking little detail again. Suggested to repetitively look at a bajillion examples of games to see how they tell stories in games and somehow magically come up with something new. Oh yea? Well they're all pretty much the same! If you're gonna ask me to go look at some examples I'm gonna be cool with that, but if you tell me to look at examples so that I can copy how they do it exactly and somehow call that new then go away. LEAVE. Everything's been done before and you know it! Don't lie to me. But that doesn't mean we can't take something similar and use it in a different way. Then it's like "Oh now we can't get every little detail right now at the very beginning, oh it's not gonna work cos we didn't get everything right on the first go. Argh, we should just scrap everything since we can't get everything perfect right now. The tutors will say THIS! The tutors will say THAT! They'll say we're not EXPLORING storytelling enough!"
Oh yea, let's totally do that, it will definitely work. AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Yep, I can see how we're intrepid explorers of storytelling in gaming when we HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING OR TRIED ANYTHING, JUST THINKING.
Yes, the tutors are useful and their advice is useful. But you know what? You don't have to do whatever they want you to do. If you did you'd have a shit project cos they all want you to do a different thing.
I'm just so frustrated and pissed off right now about how we're approaching this. So I said to my group to just DO IT. We have enough to get started, why the fuck are we worrying about all the miniscule details and trying to get everything right before we've even tried anything?
Now that we have another basic idea with chasing a shadow (mentioned in previous blog), we're trying to plan out every single fucking little detail again. Suggested to repetitively look at a bajillion examples of games to see how they tell stories in games and somehow magically come up with something new. Oh yea? Well they're all pretty much the same! If you're gonna ask me to go look at some examples I'm gonna be cool with that, but if you tell me to look at examples so that I can copy how they do it exactly and somehow call that new then go away. LEAVE. Everything's been done before and you know it! Don't lie to me. But that doesn't mean we can't take something similar and use it in a different way. Then it's like "Oh now we can't get every little detail right now at the very beginning, oh it's not gonna work cos we didn't get everything right on the first go. Argh, we should just scrap everything since we can't get everything perfect right now. The tutors will say THIS! The tutors will say THAT! They'll say we're not EXPLORING storytelling enough!"
Oh yea, let's totally do that, it will definitely work. AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Yep, I can see how we're intrepid explorers of storytelling in gaming when we HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING OR TRIED ANYTHING, JUST THINKING.
Yes, the tutors are useful and their advice is useful. But you know what? You don't have to do whatever they want you to do. If you did you'd have a shit project cos they all want you to do a different thing.
I'm just so frustrated and pissed off right now about how we're approaching this. So I said to my group to just DO IT. We have enough to get started, why the fuck are we worrying about all the miniscule details and trying to get everything right before we've even tried anything?
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Story Construction: Cornered
Went over the story more today and found that the whole world without fire thing was totally screwing us over. It was as Maggie had predicted, there are many limitations in a world without fire. For example, you can't even have leather, any kind of light source that's not natural, extremely primitive conditions, very little technology if any. It wasn't working. Another thing we were trying to get around was the incentive to find the fire. Mere curiosity isn't a good enough reason we decided. I mean, let's think logically, if you were a kid and you hear about a story about some magic fire in a world where fire doesn't exist and everything outside would try to eat you, you probably won't have the sudden inspiration to go find the fire.
Even if we did the double world, real or not real world kind of thing it still wouldn't eliminate the limitations that the fire idea has. We've pushed ourselves into a corner.
After brainstorming with the group this is what we've got:
-It's still set in the Winter Wasteland
-We want people to make their own interpretations of the story so we can't define too many details, but here's the "story" in one sentence: You're chasing a shadow. You feel like you'd die if you don't
-The mood is dark and macabre. Weird stuff happens constantly and you can't tell whether it's real or not.
-Paranormal/psychological
-Other than moving you can also pick things up, jump, shine light at things
-Some threats are real, some are fake. There are "things" after you that would slow you down so the shadow moves further away from you. The shadow does leave a little trail though that fades over time. You just gotta find it quick should the shadow be far ahead of you.
Even if we did the double world, real or not real world kind of thing it still wouldn't eliminate the limitations that the fire idea has. We've pushed ourselves into a corner.
After brainstorming with the group this is what we've got:
-It's still set in the Winter Wasteland
-We want people to make their own interpretations of the story so we can't define too many details, but here's the "story" in one sentence: You're chasing a shadow. You feel like you'd die if you don't
-The mood is dark and macabre. Weird stuff happens constantly and you can't tell whether it's real or not.
-Paranormal/psychological
-Other than moving you can also pick things up, jump, shine light at things
-Some threats are real, some are fake. There are "things" after you that would slow you down so the shadow moves further away from you. The shadow does leave a little trail though that fades over time. You just gotta find it quick should the shadow be far ahead of you.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Story Construction: Solid Decisions
Decided on who the narrator of the story should be and some definite characters. Also dissected our inspirations to see how the game works as a whole.
I made a simplified view of how I see a game and stripped apart our inspirations to the bare core. This is to understand how they work.
I see a game like this triangle. You have three main components working together. It's gameplay (what you can do in the game and how you interact with the environment), the story, and the presentation (how the story is told and the aesthetic of the game. This includes visuals and audio).
Previously I went over a little bit on the presentation part of Bastion, Limbo, and Journey. I'll talk briefly about the triangle.
As you can see, the artwork in Bastion is very lush and detailed. In fact, the visuals are hand-painted, which I find amazing and makes me appreciate the work a lot more. It reflects the way the story is told by the narrator too, because the style of storytelling is also very detailed and multi-layered. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing as well. It's dramatic and reflects the mood of what's happening. It's quite detailed. Below is in my opinion the best soundtrack from the game (Outphase52, 2011):
This is the ending song. It has two sets of lyrics and it's sung in a duet that doesn't actually fit together like a regular duet. This is in the sense that they don't sing to each other, but separately if you get what I mean. The tune definitely fits together, but the character of the song is portrayed in a way they're they're not singing together. It's like two people who are really actually the same talking at the same time with different opinions. Absolutely beautiful and the lyrics reflect one of the themes that the game is about. In Bastion, there's this theme of war and relationships between races, their differences and how their conflicts ultimately destroy each other. In Zia's lyrics it appears that she is singing in the Ura's point of view (she is an Ura). Which is ironic because she doesn't identify with the Ura's desire for revenge in the game. The Cael's built this massive wall as protection against the Ura, she sing's about this and implies how those walls would fall some day because the Ura will "be here before too long." But there is this one line that I think is specific to Zia, "One day your bird is gonna fly". I think this is referring to how Ura refuges are allowed to stay in Caelondia, but only if they never return to the Tazal Terminals. This is the case of Zia, but with the Calamity destroying everything including the wall she was finally free.
The second part is sung by Zulf, another Ura. He sings in the viewpoint of a Cael, which is also ironic because after he found out that the Calamity was originally made by the Caels to wipe out the Ura for good, he wanted revenge. He traveled to Caelondia before the Calamity because he believed that there could be peace between the Ura and the Caels, he thought of Caelondia as his second home. The Caels he loved and trusted, tried to make peace with, betrayed him. He had a Cael for a fiancee, but the Calamity killed her too, which I imagine would enrage him even more. This is reflected in his lyrics where he refers to "Mother" who is Mycia, the goddess who watches over Caelondia and how her glowing heart is guiding him home to Caelondia. There's a verse that seems to refer to his fiancee as well "I take your hand, now you'll never be lonely. Not when I'm home, sweet home".
There's one verse that links both songs together: "Lie on my back, clouds are making way for me. I'm coming home, sweet home."
It implies that both the Ura and the Caels just want to go home, now that the Calamity has ruined everything. It makes both the Ura and the Caels sound more human despite their hate for each other. It takes pain, death, and destruction to break them and make them remember the more important things that the home embodies: peace, love, and, family.
In terms of gameplay the controls are in classic RPG style. You've got your movement keys and other things you can do is use melee weapons, use ranged weapons with aiming feature, defending, take potions, activating triggers, and special skills. So the controls are geared mainly towards fighting and attacking. There are also various threats in the game. A large variety of monsters that attack you in different ways. The difficulty of the is unique as well. You activate different idols at the temple, which strengthen the threats in different ways. For example, for one idol your enemies would become faster and strike harder, while another would make them regenerate health constantly.
Here's a bit of gameply for Bastion, you can see here the narrator talking over your actions as well and giving bits of info (SealedSun, 2011):
Journey is absolutely gorgeous. The sceneries and the characters may not be photorealistic, but it really impresses you with how beautiful it is. It's simple, but stylistic.
The music is very beautiful. It's actually relaxing and really pure in my opinion. The dominant instruments are the strings, they sound very pure because they're not overpowered by other instruments. The tones are pure and you can hear a distinct voice that soars above the rest. Even though it's not as complex as Bastion's the purity of sound and score here move and undulate in an emotive way. In my favourite soundtrack for Journey, above (Journey Soundtrack, 2012), we have the opening by the strings, specifically the cello cushioned by soft, shimmering bells. The violins arrive and the wave soars and gives way to these almost meditative bells with a golden ribbon of sound by a flute weaving through it. It sounds really spiritual when the bells come in and this is fitting because at the tower you learn more about your people from the glyphs. The "ocean" that comes when you activate a glyph could be a metaphor for the sea of consciousness. When you finish the tower area in a way you have reached a higher understanding and is ready to ascend towards the mountain for your final trial.
The controls are very simple for Journey. Aside from movement the only things you can do are either sit down, fly or call. The only threat you'll ever meet is a huge stone creature that destroys your scarf (the scarf determines how long you can fly). Here's a trailer of Journey that shows a bit of gameplay (CNETTV, 2012):
Limbo's visual style is also unique. It plays with depth of field and silhouettes. There's a bit of grain in the image as well so it's like you're watching a decent black and white TV. It looks raw, simple, but attractive. People see this game and they always ask what I'm playing and whether they can get the game off me as well. The sounds are mostly ambient sounds like footsteps, water, flies, traps, and so on. Things naturally in the environment.
The controls are pretty simple. You can push/pull, jump, and activate triggers other than movement. Your threats are a bit varied though for example, stabby spiders, murderous children, traps, saws, brain worms, electricity, and so on. So you gotta think fast and smart to move on.
Here's a bit of gameplay for it (Level7nu, 2010):
We took the feed back from yesterday about cornering ourselves with a world without fire and really thought about how it could work. We decided that the Child (the main character) would wake up in a mysterious world, where there is no fire. The place is cold and wintry. Won't write about what exactly is in the story here because it would give too much away. This way things are more ambiguous, and you'll get different interpretations of what's happening. We still don't have a set of chronological events set out yet though.
Also, Daniel gave us some feedback. He notices that we're not 100% certain with how we're going to approach doing this yet. I think we can work through this and I believe as we go along the approach would become clear.
I've noticed that when one of our louder members is here nobody actually says anything even if they disagree. I'm guilty of that to be honest, and it bothers me. I don't say much because I feel that member is a better speaker than I am, but sometimes I don't agree with what he says. Also, when we actually need to talk about our ideas to tutors and during presentations he tends to say everything and doesn't leave a lot of room for anyone else to fit in what they want to say. We usually decide beforehand who's going to say what but it never really happens that way, then I end up with nothing of significance to say. I'm more angry at myself for being such a horrible speaker and not talking when someone else talks. It's rude to do that but when you don't, you end up with nothing. NOTHING. I feel subdued, shoved aside, and I feel like my opinions don't matter.
From now on no more of this. I'm sick and tired of it. I know I CAN talk, because when Maggie and Daniel talked to us I was totally fine explaining everything. And this makes me even more angry. If I can talk why don't I show this fact more often? No more. From now on I don't care whether an extrovert is around or not, I don't care if you're in the middle of a sentence. I'm talking and you will listen to me.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
CNETTV. (2012, March 13). Game trailer: Journey [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWhS6tXtN7U
Journey Soundtrack. (2012, April 10). Journey Soundtrack (Austin Wintory) - 12. Atonement [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtYPnCsWzo
Level7nu. (2010, July 16). Limbo Gameplay First 10 Minutes Achievements [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZC1vlGmjs
I made a simplified view of how I see a game and stripped apart our inspirations to the bare core. This is to understand how they work.
I see a game like this triangle. You have three main components working together. It's gameplay (what you can do in the game and how you interact with the environment), the story, and the presentation (how the story is told and the aesthetic of the game. This includes visuals and audio).
Previously I went over a little bit on the presentation part of Bastion, Limbo, and Journey. I'll talk briefly about the triangle.
As you can see, the artwork in Bastion is very lush and detailed. In fact, the visuals are hand-painted, which I find amazing and makes me appreciate the work a lot more. It reflects the way the story is told by the narrator too, because the style of storytelling is also very detailed and multi-layered. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing as well. It's dramatic and reflects the mood of what's happening. It's quite detailed. Below is in my opinion the best soundtrack from the game (Outphase52, 2011):
This is the ending song. It has two sets of lyrics and it's sung in a duet that doesn't actually fit together like a regular duet. This is in the sense that they don't sing to each other, but separately if you get what I mean. The tune definitely fits together, but the character of the song is portrayed in a way they're they're not singing together. It's like two people who are really actually the same talking at the same time with different opinions. Absolutely beautiful and the lyrics reflect one of the themes that the game is about. In Bastion, there's this theme of war and relationships between races, their differences and how their conflicts ultimately destroy each other. In Zia's lyrics it appears that she is singing in the Ura's point of view (she is an Ura). Which is ironic because she doesn't identify with the Ura's desire for revenge in the game. The Cael's built this massive wall as protection against the Ura, she sing's about this and implies how those walls would fall some day because the Ura will "be here before too long." But there is this one line that I think is specific to Zia, "One day your bird is gonna fly". I think this is referring to how Ura refuges are allowed to stay in Caelondia, but only if they never return to the Tazal Terminals. This is the case of Zia, but with the Calamity destroying everything including the wall she was finally free.
The second part is sung by Zulf, another Ura. He sings in the viewpoint of a Cael, which is also ironic because after he found out that the Calamity was originally made by the Caels to wipe out the Ura for good, he wanted revenge. He traveled to Caelondia before the Calamity because he believed that there could be peace between the Ura and the Caels, he thought of Caelondia as his second home. The Caels he loved and trusted, tried to make peace with, betrayed him. He had a Cael for a fiancee, but the Calamity killed her too, which I imagine would enrage him even more. This is reflected in his lyrics where he refers to "Mother" who is Mycia, the goddess who watches over Caelondia and how her glowing heart is guiding him home to Caelondia. There's a verse that seems to refer to his fiancee as well "I take your hand, now you'll never be lonely. Not when I'm home, sweet home".
There's one verse that links both songs together: "Lie on my back, clouds are making way for me. I'm coming home, sweet home."
It implies that both the Ura and the Caels just want to go home, now that the Calamity has ruined everything. It makes both the Ura and the Caels sound more human despite their hate for each other. It takes pain, death, and destruction to break them and make them remember the more important things that the home embodies: peace, love, and, family.
In terms of gameplay the controls are in classic RPG style. You've got your movement keys and other things you can do is use melee weapons, use ranged weapons with aiming feature, defending, take potions, activating triggers, and special skills. So the controls are geared mainly towards fighting and attacking. There are also various threats in the game. A large variety of monsters that attack you in different ways. The difficulty of the is unique as well. You activate different idols at the temple, which strengthen the threats in different ways. For example, for one idol your enemies would become faster and strike harder, while another would make them regenerate health constantly.
Here's a bit of gameply for Bastion, you can see here the narrator talking over your actions as well and giving bits of info (SealedSun, 2011):
Journey is absolutely gorgeous. The sceneries and the characters may not be photorealistic, but it really impresses you with how beautiful it is. It's simple, but stylistic.
The music is very beautiful. It's actually relaxing and really pure in my opinion. The dominant instruments are the strings, they sound very pure because they're not overpowered by other instruments. The tones are pure and you can hear a distinct voice that soars above the rest. Even though it's not as complex as Bastion's the purity of sound and score here move and undulate in an emotive way. In my favourite soundtrack for Journey, above (Journey Soundtrack, 2012), we have the opening by the strings, specifically the cello cushioned by soft, shimmering bells. The violins arrive and the wave soars and gives way to these almost meditative bells with a golden ribbon of sound by a flute weaving through it. It sounds really spiritual when the bells come in and this is fitting because at the tower you learn more about your people from the glyphs. The "ocean" that comes when you activate a glyph could be a metaphor for the sea of consciousness. When you finish the tower area in a way you have reached a higher understanding and is ready to ascend towards the mountain for your final trial.
The controls are very simple for Journey. Aside from movement the only things you can do are either sit down, fly or call. The only threat you'll ever meet is a huge stone creature that destroys your scarf (the scarf determines how long you can fly). Here's a trailer of Journey that shows a bit of gameplay (CNETTV, 2012):
Limbo's visual style is also unique. It plays with depth of field and silhouettes. There's a bit of grain in the image as well so it's like you're watching a decent black and white TV. It looks raw, simple, but attractive. People see this game and they always ask what I'm playing and whether they can get the game off me as well. The sounds are mostly ambient sounds like footsteps, water, flies, traps, and so on. Things naturally in the environment.
The controls are pretty simple. You can push/pull, jump, and activate triggers other than movement. Your threats are a bit varied though for example, stabby spiders, murderous children, traps, saws, brain worms, electricity, and so on. So you gotta think fast and smart to move on.
Here's a bit of gameplay for it (Level7nu, 2010):
We took the feed back from yesterday about cornering ourselves with a world without fire and really thought about how it could work. We decided that the Child (the main character) would wake up in a mysterious world, where there is no fire. The place is cold and wintry. Won't write about what exactly is in the story here because it would give too much away. This way things are more ambiguous, and you'll get different interpretations of what's happening. We still don't have a set of chronological events set out yet though.
Also, Daniel gave us some feedback. He notices that we're not 100% certain with how we're going to approach doing this yet. I think we can work through this and I believe as we go along the approach would become clear.
I've noticed that when one of our louder members is here nobody actually says anything even if they disagree. I'm guilty of that to be honest, and it bothers me. I don't say much because I feel that member is a better speaker than I am, but sometimes I don't agree with what he says. Also, when we actually need to talk about our ideas to tutors and during presentations he tends to say everything and doesn't leave a lot of room for anyone else to fit in what they want to say. We usually decide beforehand who's going to say what but it never really happens that way, then I end up with nothing of significance to say. I'm more angry at myself for being such a horrible speaker and not talking when someone else talks. It's rude to do that but when you don't, you end up with nothing. NOTHING. I feel subdued, shoved aside, and I feel like my opinions don't matter.
From now on no more of this. I'm sick and tired of it. I know I CAN talk, because when Maggie and Daniel talked to us I was totally fine explaining everything. And this makes me even more angry. If I can talk why don't I show this fact more often? No more. From now on I don't care whether an extrovert is around or not, I don't care if you're in the middle of a sentence. I'm talking and you will listen to me.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
CNETTV. (2012, March 13). Game trailer: Journey [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWhS6tXtN7U
Journey Soundtrack. (2012, April 10). Journey Soundtrack (Austin Wintory) - 12. Atonement [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtYPnCsWzo
Level7nu. (2010, July 16). Limbo Gameplay First 10 Minutes Achievements [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZC1vlGmjs
Outphase52. (2011, July 22). Bastion Soundtrack - Setting Sail, Coming Home (End Theme) [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDflVhOpS4E
SealedSun. (2011, August 16). Bastion Gameplay (PC, 1080p) [Video file]. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRXKPdIAAqw
Monday, August 6, 2012
Story Construction: Archetypes
Talked to Maggie today about what we're doing and actually made quite a bit of progress today.
I explained the story and how it's about a child looking for fire in a world where fire is literally dead. Maggie pointed out that we could be trapping ourselves in a corner because without fire there would be a lot of things that that world can't help. This is because technology may be limited without fire. She also talked briefly about archetypes and how we had some really good ones in our basic story already. She suggested that we look at the work of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung on archetypes.
I've already had a brief look at Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I've also watched a two-part video about it and how in some games you can find the archetypes of Campbell's monomyth (Hero's Journey).
Here's part one and part two.
An article I found argues against the Hero's Journey, stating that "not every story is a Hero's Journey" and that for this reason it is somehow irrelevant and invalid (Hull, 2010). From what I see I think the writer of that article assumes that the Hero's Journey and the existence of archetypes is some kind of formula that's supposed to work for every story. I personally disagree with this notion. While certain structures and archetypes do exist, they're just generalisations and ideas on how stories may or may not work. I don't think they're intended to be formulaic rules that are absolute. They're interesting and they're something to look at, but I don't think you absolutely to have them to get a good story. I mean, if you had to obey a certain archetype and your character has to be exactly like it we'd end up with a lot of the same characters but in different books and under different names. That would be boring and I don't think this is the case with good books. We all love different characters because they are in their own way unique "people" and that's why you can really connect with well-written characters.
I recognise many of the archetypes Campbell touches on, as well as that of Jung, but like I said, they're only generalisations and make it easier to understand how components of a story work together and to quickly understand the basic traits of a character personality. So I don't see a need to really make or change any characters to conform to Campbell's monomyth or a particular archetype.
For today I talked to the group about the differences in how the story is told in our three main inspirations, which I talked about in the previous entry, and we decided where we wanted to be on the spectrum. We want the story to be very open but we don't want it to be like Limbo where there is absolutely no information or appearance of a story until the end. So we decided that we'll keep it open but have an unreliable narrator that gives you just enough information to give the player a starting point/context to make their story in but not enough to fully tell them what the story may be about. This way you still have a sense of a story throughout the game but since details are limited you get varied interpretations as to what's really happening. It will be narrated, similar to how they do it in Bastion, instead of having cutscenes and long bits of text to read. This is to preserve the flow of gameplay and story. Cutscenes and walls of text make experiences feel too disconnected and choppy.
_________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography:
Campbell, J. (2009). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. United States: Pantheon Books
Hull, J. (2010). Not Everything Is A Hero's Journey. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://storyfanatic.com/articles/story-theory/not-everything-is-a-heros-journey
Penny Arcade. (2012). Season 4, Ep. 20 - The Hero's Journey (Part 1) [Video file]. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-1
Penny Arcade. (2012). Season 4, Ep. 21 - The Hero's Journey (Part 1) [Video file]. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-2
I explained the story and how it's about a child looking for fire in a world where fire is literally dead. Maggie pointed out that we could be trapping ourselves in a corner because without fire there would be a lot of things that that world can't help. This is because technology may be limited without fire. She also talked briefly about archetypes and how we had some really good ones in our basic story already. She suggested that we look at the work of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung on archetypes.
I've already had a brief look at Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I've also watched a two-part video about it and how in some games you can find the archetypes of Campbell's monomyth (Hero's Journey).
Here's part one and part two.
An article I found argues against the Hero's Journey, stating that "not every story is a Hero's Journey" and that for this reason it is somehow irrelevant and invalid (Hull, 2010). From what I see I think the writer of that article assumes that the Hero's Journey and the existence of archetypes is some kind of formula that's supposed to work for every story. I personally disagree with this notion. While certain structures and archetypes do exist, they're just generalisations and ideas on how stories may or may not work. I don't think they're intended to be formulaic rules that are absolute. They're interesting and they're something to look at, but I don't think you absolutely to have them to get a good story. I mean, if you had to obey a certain archetype and your character has to be exactly like it we'd end up with a lot of the same characters but in different books and under different names. That would be boring and I don't think this is the case with good books. We all love different characters because they are in their own way unique "people" and that's why you can really connect with well-written characters.
I recognise many of the archetypes Campbell touches on, as well as that of Jung, but like I said, they're only generalisations and make it easier to understand how components of a story work together and to quickly understand the basic traits of a character personality. So I don't see a need to really make or change any characters to conform to Campbell's monomyth or a particular archetype.
For today I talked to the group about the differences in how the story is told in our three main inspirations, which I talked about in the previous entry, and we decided where we wanted to be on the spectrum. We want the story to be very open but we don't want it to be like Limbo where there is absolutely no information or appearance of a story until the end. So we decided that we'll keep it open but have an unreliable narrator that gives you just enough information to give the player a starting point/context to make their story in but not enough to fully tell them what the story may be about. This way you still have a sense of a story throughout the game but since details are limited you get varied interpretations as to what's really happening. It will be narrated, similar to how they do it in Bastion, instead of having cutscenes and long bits of text to read. This is to preserve the flow of gameplay and story. Cutscenes and walls of text make experiences feel too disconnected and choppy.
_________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography:
Campbell, J. (2009). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. United States: Pantheon Books
Hull, J. (2010). Not Everything Is A Hero's Journey. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://storyfanatic.com/articles/story-theory/not-everything-is-a-heros-journey
Penny Arcade. (2012). Season 4, Ep. 20 - The Hero's Journey (Part 1) [Video file]. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-1
Penny Arcade. (2012). Season 4, Ep. 21 - The Hero's Journey (Part 1) [Video file]. Retrieved August 6, 2012, from http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-2
Friday, August 3, 2012
Story Construction: Inspirations
Not much development over the last two days, however, we did get our basic story. So I'm gonna work hard on that to get the best story for our game and did a bit of research.
Anyways, before I start on explaining why my research is useful and what I learned let's take a look at our goals for this story.
For me I want an original story that has a lot of meat in it. I don't want a hollow shell of a story that doesn't mean anything. Just a superficial little shell that offers nothing to the overall end product. A game that is simply a game.
I want it to make people think and enjoy the story for what is. This is especially important to me. For a story to be like that I want it to be a stand alone original story. I don't want people to play this game and think, "This is just like this story I know but in a different setting and different character names. Everything else is the same." That would be boring and predictable. I want people to play it and think of the story as a story on its own rather than a copied story of something else.
That's not to say we shouldn't look for inspiration and merely pull a story out of thin air. That's impossible. Everything comes from somewhere, it's just a matter of expressing what you want to say and determining how you want to say it. This is where you need to find the core of your story. Decide what you're really trying to say and how you want to say it. Do you want the audience to see what you're getting at guided by your voice or do you want to show them and let them decide for themselves what they have just seen?
I'll show you what I mean by that using our main inspirations for our game. There are three main inspirations that we're using at the moment:
Bastion by Supergiant Games
In Bastion the story is told through narration that happens throughout the game. What your character does is narrated at times and when your character moves through the world details and history of the area are told by the narrator. The details and histories string together to explain what happened prior to the Calamity (an apocalyptic event that happened moments before your character wakes up) and why it happened. This style of storytelling is very specific in the information it gives and adds a lot of depth to it. It gives you additional information as the game moves along and most if not all of your questions are answered by the end of the game. There is no debate as to what happened in the story because it was guided and defined. No loose ends.
In summary, Bastion's story is very clear in showing you what the story is about. Narration is a great tool that it utilised to give flow. This is because when you have a lot of cutscenes to explain the story it becomes staggered and disjointed. Here, using narration you play as the story unfolds through narration.
Limbo by Playdead
At the other end of the spectrum we've got Limbo. Limbo has zero dialogue and zero cutscenes. It simply refuses to tell you anything in favour of you finding out what's going on by yourself. Even the ending is really ambiguous and doesn't tell you much. I'll explain what happened.
The tagline for the game is "Uncertain of his Sister's fate, a boy takes a journey of exploration in the mysterious and hauntingly beautiful world of LIMBO." At the beginning you wake up in a forest and along the way you meet giant spiders and children who for some reason want to kill you. In fact, wherever you go everything is trying to kill you in one way or another. Eventually you reach a total of three different areas: The forest, the rooftops with the hotel, and the factory place. In the end you're back at the forest where you finally find your sister. The boy doesn't approach her though, standing a short distance away. She senses him there but the scene doesn't show her turning around. The final scene in the credits shows that a lot of time has passed shown by the rotting ladder and two swarms of flies buzzing away where the two children once were.
As you can see, when you play the game the game just IS. It doesn't explain anything to you so you gotta decide what it is you've just seen/experienced. Is it a sad story with a happy but wistful end? Or is it something much, much darker? Because of the way the game doesn't tell you details of the story there are many interpretations and theories as to what Limbo is actually about. The player has the freedom to decide what the story is.
There are many theories about Limbo due to the fact that it doesn't actively tell you what its about like in Bastion. Here I'll show you the two most interesting theories I've come across.
The Death Theory
One theory is that the Boy is actually dead. He's traveling through Limbo, a place between life and death, to get back to his sister to say goodbye (Homestar563, 2011; ImaBee2, 2010 ). The sister senses his presence at the end, where she mourns his death beneath the tree house he fell from, and after a long time she dies too, hence the ending scene with the flies.
The reasons for his death vary depending on the person who supports this theory. Some say he fell from the tree house (the most popular) while others say he died in a car crash. In some theories the sister is also dead (Bratcher, 2010).
In a way, this theory is about dealing with grief and death.
Villain theory
The villain theory is more morbid. Limbo is already a very macabre game so to some it doesn't make sense to have a happy ending. The ending scene is gritty and filthy; doesn't look happy at all. This theory postulates that the Boy is, once again, dead. However, he is seeking out his sister for revenge--to kill her (Reparaz, 2010). The children who try to kill the Boy are actually trying to protect his sister from him. This also explains why the children flee when the Boy gets close. You are defenseless against something that's already dead. It also ties in well with how the Boy respawns moments later. It also explains why the sister doesn't turn around even when she senses his presence.
For me this theory is really interesting because that way you'd be unknowingly playing the villain the whole time. I think it fits in well with the overall vibe of the game as well.
There are many other interpretations of the story, for example, some think it's about growing up, rejecting rural beginnings and sacrificing your friends and family for power, and so on. I love how this game gives different people a different story. This is the kind of freedom a game that doesn't tell you what it's about can give you and I think that's really special.
You can find more story theories about Limbo here, here, and here.
Journey by Thatgamecompany
Journey is somewhere in between Bastion and Limbo. Journey uses cutscenes to tell you the story about the world you're in but has no dialogue. So the story is guided in a way but leaves enough room for different interpretations to be made. When I played it I thought the story was about how greed and power destroys peace between people and how your desires can lead you to get out of control. It causes you to forget who you are. Thus, the journey to the mountain is about learning from past mistakes and finding yourself.
The various other theories for Journey I've read about read along a similar line of thought. For example, the search for enlightenment and higher understanding about the world, growing up, life, and so on. The theories aren't as varied as Limbo's but they do run across similar trains of thought.
The thing we need to decide on is where we want to be on this spectrum. Do we want to guide the player, give them a lot of freedom to decide what it's about, or a bit of both?
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Bratcher, E. (2010). Limbo: What Does it all Mean? Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.gamesradar.com/limbo-what-does-it-all-mean/
Homestar563. (2010, September 10). Limbo; The Ending Speculation and Thoughts [Video file]. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR3mreYegVA&feature=watch_response
ImaBee2. (2010, July 21). LIMBO - The Ending (HD 720p) [Video file]. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kgZZ89mh-Q
Reparaz, M. (2010) Limbo: What Does it all Mean? Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.gamesradar.com/limbo-what-does-it-all-mean/
Anyways, before I start on explaining why my research is useful and what I learned let's take a look at our goals for this story.
For me I want an original story that has a lot of meat in it. I don't want a hollow shell of a story that doesn't mean anything. Just a superficial little shell that offers nothing to the overall end product. A game that is simply a game.
I want it to make people think and enjoy the story for what is. This is especially important to me. For a story to be like that I want it to be a stand alone original story. I don't want people to play this game and think, "This is just like this story I know but in a different setting and different character names. Everything else is the same." That would be boring and predictable. I want people to play it and think of the story as a story on its own rather than a copied story of something else.
That's not to say we shouldn't look for inspiration and merely pull a story out of thin air. That's impossible. Everything comes from somewhere, it's just a matter of expressing what you want to say and determining how you want to say it. This is where you need to find the core of your story. Decide what you're really trying to say and how you want to say it. Do you want the audience to see what you're getting at guided by your voice or do you want to show them and let them decide for themselves what they have just seen?
I'll show you what I mean by that using our main inspirations for our game. There are three main inspirations that we're using at the moment:
Bastion by Supergiant Games
In Bastion the story is told through narration that happens throughout the game. What your character does is narrated at times and when your character moves through the world details and history of the area are told by the narrator. The details and histories string together to explain what happened prior to the Calamity (an apocalyptic event that happened moments before your character wakes up) and why it happened. This style of storytelling is very specific in the information it gives and adds a lot of depth to it. It gives you additional information as the game moves along and most if not all of your questions are answered by the end of the game. There is no debate as to what happened in the story because it was guided and defined. No loose ends.
In summary, Bastion's story is very clear in showing you what the story is about. Narration is a great tool that it utilised to give flow. This is because when you have a lot of cutscenes to explain the story it becomes staggered and disjointed. Here, using narration you play as the story unfolds through narration.
Limbo by Playdead
At the other end of the spectrum we've got Limbo. Limbo has zero dialogue and zero cutscenes. It simply refuses to tell you anything in favour of you finding out what's going on by yourself. Even the ending is really ambiguous and doesn't tell you much. I'll explain what happened.
The tagline for the game is "Uncertain of his Sister's fate, a boy takes a journey of exploration in the mysterious and hauntingly beautiful world of LIMBO." At the beginning you wake up in a forest and along the way you meet giant spiders and children who for some reason want to kill you. In fact, wherever you go everything is trying to kill you in one way or another. Eventually you reach a total of three different areas: The forest, the rooftops with the hotel, and the factory place. In the end you're back at the forest where you finally find your sister. The boy doesn't approach her though, standing a short distance away. She senses him there but the scene doesn't show her turning around. The final scene in the credits shows that a lot of time has passed shown by the rotting ladder and two swarms of flies buzzing away where the two children once were.
As you can see, when you play the game the game just IS. It doesn't explain anything to you so you gotta decide what it is you've just seen/experienced. Is it a sad story with a happy but wistful end? Or is it something much, much darker? Because of the way the game doesn't tell you details of the story there are many interpretations and theories as to what Limbo is actually about. The player has the freedom to decide what the story is.
There are many theories about Limbo due to the fact that it doesn't actively tell you what its about like in Bastion. Here I'll show you the two most interesting theories I've come across.
The Death Theory
One theory is that the Boy is actually dead. He's traveling through Limbo, a place between life and death, to get back to his sister to say goodbye (Homestar563, 2011; ImaBee2, 2010 ). The sister senses his presence at the end, where she mourns his death beneath the tree house he fell from, and after a long time she dies too, hence the ending scene with the flies.
The reasons for his death vary depending on the person who supports this theory. Some say he fell from the tree house (the most popular) while others say he died in a car crash. In some theories the sister is also dead (Bratcher, 2010).
In a way, this theory is about dealing with grief and death.
Villain theory
The villain theory is more morbid. Limbo is already a very macabre game so to some it doesn't make sense to have a happy ending. The ending scene is gritty and filthy; doesn't look happy at all. This theory postulates that the Boy is, once again, dead. However, he is seeking out his sister for revenge--to kill her (Reparaz, 2010). The children who try to kill the Boy are actually trying to protect his sister from him. This also explains why the children flee when the Boy gets close. You are defenseless against something that's already dead. It also ties in well with how the Boy respawns moments later. It also explains why the sister doesn't turn around even when she senses his presence.
For me this theory is really interesting because that way you'd be unknowingly playing the villain the whole time. I think it fits in well with the overall vibe of the game as well.
There are many other interpretations of the story, for example, some think it's about growing up, rejecting rural beginnings and sacrificing your friends and family for power, and so on. I love how this game gives different people a different story. This is the kind of freedom a game that doesn't tell you what it's about can give you and I think that's really special.
You can find more story theories about Limbo here, here, and here.
Journey by Thatgamecompany
Journey is somewhere in between Bastion and Limbo. Journey uses cutscenes to tell you the story about the world you're in but has no dialogue. So the story is guided in a way but leaves enough room for different interpretations to be made. When I played it I thought the story was about how greed and power destroys peace between people and how your desires can lead you to get out of control. It causes you to forget who you are. Thus, the journey to the mountain is about learning from past mistakes and finding yourself.
The various other theories for Journey I've read about read along a similar line of thought. For example, the search for enlightenment and higher understanding about the world, growing up, life, and so on. The theories aren't as varied as Limbo's but they do run across similar trains of thought.
The thing we need to decide on is where we want to be on this spectrum. Do we want to guide the player, give them a lot of freedom to decide what it's about, or a bit of both?
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Bratcher, E. (2010). Limbo: What Does it all Mean? Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.gamesradar.com/limbo-what-does-it-all-mean/
Homestar563. (2010, September 10). Limbo; The Ending Speculation and Thoughts [Video file]. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR3mreYegVA&feature=watch_response
ImaBee2. (2010, July 21). LIMBO - The Ending (HD 720p) [Video file]. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kgZZ89mh-Q
Reparaz, M. (2010) Limbo: What Does it all Mean? Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://www.gamesradar.com/limbo-what-does-it-all-mean/
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Got a basic story finally
Tomorrow's our presentation with Andy, we're pressed for time with story. However, it turns out with this added pressure we're actually getting some good ideas and now we have a basic story.
Previously, we talked about fire worship and how in the Winter Wasteland fire is obviously precious. Therefore the idea of fire being precious or divine would fit in well with the setting.
Prior to the main storyline the gods existed to keep balance and natural order in the world. That is, until the Ice God rebelled to gain more power. The Ice God defeated and effectively killed most of the gods until the Fire God remained. The Ice God was still winning though and the Fire God knew this. So before dying the Fire God cast his/her final essence somewhere on the Earth.
Now, fast forward to the main storyline in a world devoid of fire. We've got this kid listening to the story about the Ice God and the Fire God. This child is adopted, found at the base of the mountain. The child begins to get curious, wondering if the story could be real, and wants to try and find the last essence to bring back fire.
The child begins on their journey to find the truth.
That's the basic frame of it. We'll need to add more details to it to flesh out the story of course. There'll be more of this as the game is developed.
Previously, we talked about fire worship and how in the Winter Wasteland fire is obviously precious. Therefore the idea of fire being precious or divine would fit in well with the setting.
Prior to the main storyline the gods existed to keep balance and natural order in the world. That is, until the Ice God rebelled to gain more power. The Ice God defeated and effectively killed most of the gods until the Fire God remained. The Ice God was still winning though and the Fire God knew this. So before dying the Fire God cast his/her final essence somewhere on the Earth.
Now, fast forward to the main storyline in a world devoid of fire. We've got this kid listening to the story about the Ice God and the Fire God. This child is adopted, found at the base of the mountain. The child begins to get curious, wondering if the story could be real, and wants to try and find the last essence to bring back fire.
The child begins on their journey to find the truth.
That's the basic frame of it. We'll need to add more details to it to flesh out the story of course. There'll be more of this as the game is developed.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Story Research
Still hopelessly stuck on story. D:
We did make a few decisions though. We've decided that we're going to adapt an existing story to our chosen environment. Our artstyle will also be monochromatic with contrasting colours every now and then when the scene calls for it and it's most likely going to be 2D.
We had a look at Rumi's fables to see if there's anything worth adapting there. I found that a lot of Rumi's fables has strong religious undertones, this is shown when Rumi explains what his fables actually mean (Gibbs, 2008; Kassam, 2011). I'd rather stay away from religion as a core theme in the game to be honest because it's not something that I want to talk about in our story and religion is generally a touchy subject. It won't be a very good core theme for us to portray I think.
Also thought of Arabian Nights for the story structure. Basically, you've got what you call a "frame story" and within the frame story you have someone telling multiple stories. So it's many stories within a story. In the case of Arabian Nights the main character, Scheherezade, is the narrator. In her original storyline the King marries a new virgin girl every day and executes her the next morning. He does this out of anger as his first wife was unfaithful to him he began to believe that all women are evil and untrustworthy. One day there are no virgins left because he killed them all, Scheherezade is the only one left. She volunteers willingly though. On the wedding night Scheherezade tells a really good story, but stops in the middle saying that there's no time to finish. The King wanting to hear more lets her live for another night to finish the story. That same night she starts a new story more exciting than the last, but stops before the end. And so this cycle continues. Many stories within a story. By her last story the King already loved her and had three sons with her, so she never got executed.
Similar in structure, the movie Slumdog Millionaire (Colson & Boyle, 2008) also has story within a story. The frame story is where Jamal is in the interrogation room. The other stories that fit in to this are his recollections to how he knows the answers to the questions in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". At the end we full circle back to the interrogation room and continue the story in the present time.
I'm not sure how well this structure would work though, it's something to consider.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Colson, C. (Producer), & Boyle, D. (Director). (2008). Slumdog Millionaire [Motion picture]. United Kingdom: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Gibbs, L. (2008). Rumi: The Fable of the Lion's Share. Retrieved July 31, 2012, from http://journeytothesea.com/rumi-lion/
Kassam, Z. (2011). Two Tales from Rumi: The Snake-Catcher and the Serpent & The Elephant and the Travellers. Retrieved July 31, 2012, from http://simerg.com/parables/two-tales-from-rumi-the-snake-catcher-and-the-serpent-the-elephant-and-the-travellers/
We did make a few decisions though. We've decided that we're going to adapt an existing story to our chosen environment. Our artstyle will also be monochromatic with contrasting colours every now and then when the scene calls for it and it's most likely going to be 2D.
We had a look at Rumi's fables to see if there's anything worth adapting there. I found that a lot of Rumi's fables has strong religious undertones, this is shown when Rumi explains what his fables actually mean (Gibbs, 2008; Kassam, 2011). I'd rather stay away from religion as a core theme in the game to be honest because it's not something that I want to talk about in our story and religion is generally a touchy subject. It won't be a very good core theme for us to portray I think.
Also thought of Arabian Nights for the story structure. Basically, you've got what you call a "frame story" and within the frame story you have someone telling multiple stories. So it's many stories within a story. In the case of Arabian Nights the main character, Scheherezade, is the narrator. In her original storyline the King marries a new virgin girl every day and executes her the next morning. He does this out of anger as his first wife was unfaithful to him he began to believe that all women are evil and untrustworthy. One day there are no virgins left because he killed them all, Scheherezade is the only one left. She volunteers willingly though. On the wedding night Scheherezade tells a really good story, but stops in the middle saying that there's no time to finish. The King wanting to hear more lets her live for another night to finish the story. That same night she starts a new story more exciting than the last, but stops before the end. And so this cycle continues. Many stories within a story. By her last story the King already loved her and had three sons with her, so she never got executed.
Similar in structure, the movie Slumdog Millionaire (Colson & Boyle, 2008) also has story within a story. The frame story is where Jamal is in the interrogation room. The other stories that fit in to this are his recollections to how he knows the answers to the questions in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". At the end we full circle back to the interrogation room and continue the story in the present time.
I'm not sure how well this structure would work though, it's something to consider.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
Colson, C. (Producer), & Boyle, D. (Director). (2008). Slumdog Millionaire [Motion picture]. United Kingdom: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Gibbs, L. (2008). Rumi: The Fable of the Lion's Share. Retrieved July 31, 2012, from http://journeytothesea.com/rumi-lion/
Kassam, Z. (2011). Two Tales from Rumi: The Snake-Catcher and the Serpent & The Elephant and the Travellers. Retrieved July 31, 2012, from http://simerg.com/parables/two-tales-from-rumi-the-snake-catcher-and-the-serpent-the-elephant-and-the-travellers/
Monday, July 30, 2012
Stories
At the moment we're still really stuck on story. I think the problem is that every time we start talking about ideas we all start thinking about the gameplay and how the game works/looks rather than how to tell the story with the game. How can you tell a story with a game if you don't have a story in the first place? That's the important part we're missing and I feel like we can't make much progress until we have that sorted out.
It's also getting really hard to make decisions. Edrian, Tim and I would like to do a horror story for the game. They didn't tell me about what they really thought until later because they were afraid of disagreement. I told them that you gotta say what you think whether anyone agrees or not because nobody's going to know and nothing gets done if you don't. Anyway, Maggie talked to us about being innovative for the game, how one part of the game has to be really different from other games. For the horror story we're thinking it's the environment the person plays in that can be more interactive. For example, at a certain point in the story a particular scene or atmosphere should be reflected in the space. So maybe the lighting would change, shapes would merge out of the walls, and so on. However, Ben is vehement that horror is the "easy way out" and that you can't have much of a story around horror. I disagree with him to be honest. You can't condemn a genre like that on the assumption that horror stories are made just to scare people and that it's impossible for a horror story to have any deeper meaning. In every genre you have your good stories and your bad stories and every genre has their own code and conventions. The quality and what it means depends on how you write it. It is in no way determined by the genre. So in my opinion the assumption that it's the easy way out and that it can't have a deeper meaning is erroneous. It depends on how you write it.
I think having differing opinions is normal though. This kind of thing also happened last semester when most of us didn't agree with using rockets to make a network. At the end of the day it all falls down to the majority vote.
It's also getting really hard to make decisions. Edrian, Tim and I would like to do a horror story for the game. They didn't tell me about what they really thought until later because they were afraid of disagreement. I told them that you gotta say what you think whether anyone agrees or not because nobody's going to know and nothing gets done if you don't. Anyway, Maggie talked to us about being innovative for the game, how one part of the game has to be really different from other games. For the horror story we're thinking it's the environment the person plays in that can be more interactive. For example, at a certain point in the story a particular scene or atmosphere should be reflected in the space. So maybe the lighting would change, shapes would merge out of the walls, and so on. However, Ben is vehement that horror is the "easy way out" and that you can't have much of a story around horror. I disagree with him to be honest. You can't condemn a genre like that on the assumption that horror stories are made just to scare people and that it's impossible for a horror story to have any deeper meaning. In every genre you have your good stories and your bad stories and every genre has their own code and conventions. The quality and what it means depends on how you write it. It is in no way determined by the genre. So in my opinion the assumption that it's the easy way out and that it can't have a deeper meaning is erroneous. It depends on how you write it.
I think having differing opinions is normal though. This kind of thing also happened last semester when most of us didn't agree with using rockets to make a network. At the end of the day it all falls down to the majority vote.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Concept Art for Environments and Characters
Did a bit of concept art. I did one environment of the mountains in the Winter Wasteland and four characters that are unrelated to each other. The characters are just ideas at the moment, don't know if they'll actually be used.
The mountains were based on what I think the mountains in the Winter Wasteland would look like. I imagine they'd be tall and covered in crags and precarious precipices.
As for the characters I was inspired by Bastion, Adventure Time, Journey and the Tuareg tribe.
From top to bottom, left to right:
The Child: Has fur hat and fur cloak--both made from various beasts of the Winter Wasteland. Also has super poofy pants. The Child is innocent and naive, doesn't know much about the world and oblivious to the dangers around him/her.
The poofy pants were inspired by the Ura in Bastion.
Bunny Boy: Another child. He lives in the underground jungle beneath the Winter Wasteland. Wears animal hat and salad leaves, like most other children of his people. He has never seen the Upperworld before so is not aware of the Winter Wasteland. He hears stories about it and wanders up there while unsupervised. He's super curious. The style for Bunny Boy was inspired by the art style used in the Adventure Time cartoon series.
The Moth: Specialised soldier in the Winter Wasteland for fast, unexpected kills. The special helment prevents your breath from being seen by condensing it back into water and keeps the heat in. This one had no specific influences, but I drew this one to have more of an Arabic feel to it and continued on with the poofy pants fashion.
The Noble: A noble lady living in the wealthier region of the Winter Wasteland where most of the resources are hoarded and distributed among its wealthy citizens. This one had strong influences from Journey and the head scarves of Tuareg women.
In terms of gameplay I really like the gameplay in the game Limbo. The art style we're going for is leaning towards Limbo as well but with splashes of colour here and there to make a contrast to the monochromatic colour scheme.
Here's a video of Limbo at the beginning:
As you can see a lot of it is trial an error and you need to think about how to get out of a mess all the time so it's not just a mindless hack and slash where you do the same thing over and over without much thought.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
TobyGames. (2012, February 10). Let's Play Limbo - I'M DEAD - Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGtDesNPl2o
The mountains were based on what I think the mountains in the Winter Wasteland would look like. I imagine they'd be tall and covered in crags and precarious precipices.
As for the characters I was inspired by Bastion, Adventure Time, Journey and the Tuareg tribe.
From top to bottom, left to right:
The Child: Has fur hat and fur cloak--both made from various beasts of the Winter Wasteland. Also has super poofy pants. The Child is innocent and naive, doesn't know much about the world and oblivious to the dangers around him/her.
The poofy pants were inspired by the Ura in Bastion.
Bunny Boy: Another child. He lives in the underground jungle beneath the Winter Wasteland. Wears animal hat and salad leaves, like most other children of his people. He has never seen the Upperworld before so is not aware of the Winter Wasteland. He hears stories about it and wanders up there while unsupervised. He's super curious. The style for Bunny Boy was inspired by the art style used in the Adventure Time cartoon series.
The Moth: Specialised soldier in the Winter Wasteland for fast, unexpected kills. The special helment prevents your breath from being seen by condensing it back into water and keeps the heat in. This one had no specific influences, but I drew this one to have more of an Arabic feel to it and continued on with the poofy pants fashion.
The Noble: A noble lady living in the wealthier region of the Winter Wasteland where most of the resources are hoarded and distributed among its wealthy citizens. This one had strong influences from Journey and the head scarves of Tuareg women.
In terms of gameplay I really like the gameplay in the game Limbo. The art style we're going for is leaning towards Limbo as well but with splashes of colour here and there to make a contrast to the monochromatic colour scheme.
Here's a video of Limbo at the beginning:
As you can see a lot of it is trial an error and you need to think about how to get out of a mess all the time so it's not just a mindless hack and slash where you do the same thing over and over without much thought.
__________________________________________________________________________
References:
TobyGames. (2012, February 10). Let's Play Limbo - I'M DEAD - Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGtDesNPl2o
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
More Thinking
Did a massive brainstorm to help us develop a good story. Split it up in to setting, characters, and style. Once we have that we can build a story around it. I think it would be easier doing it this way rather than coming up with the story first. This is because we don't know what we want yet.
We're really into the Winter Wasteland setting. Other settings we have are jungle, ocean, desert, and tripped out world. We're thinking that we could incorporate certain aspects we like about these other settings into the Winter Wasteland. I'm hoping to put desert tribe inspired peoples into the Winter Wasteland though, I think that would be really interesting.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Different ways
Yesterday we hit a bit of a dead end on different ways of telling a story through a game. We found out from a lot of our discussions that most of the ways we thought about have already been done before. I'm wondering if it actually matters whether or not it's been done before though. Imagine, through generations and generations of humans thinking and making things, I doubt much is truly original any more. I think it's more about doing the same thing, but in a different way. Or using something for something else that you won't normally think of. Basically, using something that's already there but in an ingenious way.
Some things we all agreed on was that we wanted the game to be like a story book. I imagine the game we want to make is like a book, movie, and game mashed up together. For me, I want the narrative to have a natural flow and many possibilities. I obviously don't have children, but I think when you tell children stories one day you'd run out of stories to tell. They'll want you to tell them a new story.
So keeping that in mind I had an idea of what we could do. We could have a selection of characters, locations and decision points. The character and location would be selected randomly. As the person plays through the story, each decision point has the chance to spin the story in a new direction.
Let's say we have 5 characters, 10 locations, and 5 decisions to make in 25 stages.
nPr = n! / ( n - r )!
so:
( 5! / 4! ) x ( 10! / 9! ) x ( 5! / 4! ) x 25 = 5 x 10 x 5 x 25
= 6250 stories
They won't all be different though, which is something my group pointed out. It depends on the decision the player chooses whether or not the story would take a new turn. If 2 out of 5 of the decisions can change to something completely different then I think there would be this many different stories:
( 6250 / 5 ) x 2 = 2500 stories
Another thing is that if there are so many decision points where the story could change, how do you make sure that the story still makes sense? That's the difficult part. It WILL be difficult, but it won't be impossible. I think we could do it well, it all depends on how you write each decision so that it still makes sense with previous events.
________________________________________
This idea got banned though. Mainly because the group thinks it would be too difficult and the work load for this would be too great for the time frame that we have.
Some things we all agreed on was that we wanted the game to be like a story book. I imagine the game we want to make is like a book, movie, and game mashed up together. For me, I want the narrative to have a natural flow and many possibilities. I obviously don't have children, but I think when you tell children stories one day you'd run out of stories to tell. They'll want you to tell them a new story.
So keeping that in mind I had an idea of what we could do. We could have a selection of characters, locations and decision points. The character and location would be selected randomly. As the person plays through the story, each decision point has the chance to spin the story in a new direction.
Let's say we have 5 characters, 10 locations, and 5 decisions to make in 25 stages.
nPr = n! / ( n - r )!
so:
( 5! / 4! ) x ( 10! / 9! ) x ( 5! / 4! ) x 25 = 5 x 10 x 5 x 25
= 6250 stories
They won't all be different though, which is something my group pointed out. It depends on the decision the player chooses whether or not the story would take a new turn. If 2 out of 5 of the decisions can change to something completely different then I think there would be this many different stories:
( 6250 / 5 ) x 2 = 2500 stories
Another thing is that if there are so many decision points where the story could change, how do you make sure that the story still makes sense? That's the difficult part. It WILL be difficult, but it won't be impossible. I think we could do it well, it all depends on how you write each decision so that it still makes sense with previous events.
________________________________________
This idea got banned though. Mainly because the group thinks it would be too difficult and the work load for this would be too great for the time frame that we have.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Project Nominations
Heard some really interesting project pitches from the class today. The one that interested me the most, other than my own groups project of course, is Jenny's pitch. Her one is about making good use of a space and portable homes that can morph in to the space that you need.
I really like the idea of that and it works so well with the idea of sustainable living. For me, I always wanted an underground house. They're pretty well insulated, they could be really strong structurally if you design them properly. The ground reinforces the strength I think. Also, since it's underground it stops me from getting burned by the sun, which is a problem for me as I burn easily. I think it could be interesting to experiment with different shapes to use in making portable homes though. For example, hexagons and triangles. They're so strong and save a lot of material. I think it could be possible to use those shapes to make a portable house that could morph.
For my own group's pitch we got some interest from a few people. It might be nice to have just a few more people. This would make the work load easier to handle, but people would be more difficult to co-ordinate and make group decisions. Overall though, I think it would be a good idea to add in a few more.
I'm a bit worried about my role though. I'm worried that I won't have enough to do because I only have experience with art-making and making stories. I could organise time and people, but other than that I don't know what my role would turn into after we've got the story down.
I really like the idea of that and it works so well with the idea of sustainable living. For me, I always wanted an underground house. They're pretty well insulated, they could be really strong structurally if you design them properly. The ground reinforces the strength I think. Also, since it's underground it stops me from getting burned by the sun, which is a problem for me as I burn easily. I think it could be interesting to experiment with different shapes to use in making portable homes though. For example, hexagons and triangles. They're so strong and save a lot of material. I think it could be possible to use those shapes to make a portable house that could morph.
For my own group's pitch we got some interest from a few people. It might be nice to have just a few more people. This would make the work load easier to handle, but people would be more difficult to co-ordinate and make group decisions. Overall though, I think it would be a good idea to add in a few more.
I'm a bit worried about my role though. I'm worried that I won't have enough to do because I only have experience with art-making and making stories. I could organise time and people, but other than that I don't know what my role would turn into after we've got the story down.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
More ideas
Not much happened today, just getting presentation for project pitch ready for tomorrow.
Got some more ideas in terms of the setting of the story though.
The Winter Wasteland has a lot of similarities to the deep sea environment. Both are cold and eternally dark. Both are rather harsh environments for living things.
In the Winter Wasteland we understand that humanoid inhabitants are struggling to survive, but what about certain tough plants and animals? It's highly probably that there are survivors and they would have changed and adapted over time to live in the environment. Just like the creatures in the deep sea. So maybe in the Winter Wasteland there could be carnivorous plants (generally they live in extremely nutrient poor soil), bioluminescent plants and animals like in the deep sea and so on. Also, the stars could be like the marine snow that falls down to the deep sea. The stars could fall/drift down every once in a while and the character can collect these to use as a safe light source, since fire would attract enemies. However, over time the fallen stars would disintegrate and become nothing more than greyish white dust.
Got some more ideas in terms of the setting of the story though.
The Winter Wasteland has a lot of similarities to the deep sea environment. Both are cold and eternally dark. Both are rather harsh environments for living things.
In the Winter Wasteland we understand that humanoid inhabitants are struggling to survive, but what about certain tough plants and animals? It's highly probably that there are survivors and they would have changed and adapted over time to live in the environment. Just like the creatures in the deep sea. So maybe in the Winter Wasteland there could be carnivorous plants (generally they live in extremely nutrient poor soil), bioluminescent plants and animals like in the deep sea and so on. Also, the stars could be like the marine snow that falls down to the deep sea. The stars could fall/drift down every once in a while and the character can collect these to use as a safe light source, since fire would attract enemies. However, over time the fallen stars would disintegrate and become nothing more than greyish white dust.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Signed off
Made some adjustments to our proposal form yesterday and today we got it signed off. So that's good.
Last night I wrote up some possible settings that might work for a game. Showed it to the group to see which ones they like. All of the settings come from my dreams, which are pretty crazy most of the time.
There are four worlds that are suitable for a game and might be interesting to think about. They are: World of Magicians, Winter Wasteland, Tower, and Snake Worlds.
World of Magicians
In this world magic is relatively common and very real. The only difference is how people treat it in different cultures.
On the fringes of a relatively wealthy continent is a small town. Here, being a magician is an honour and using it to benefit society is nearly an absolute responsibility. Families and people with magic here have a strong sense of noblesse oblige. However, one witch hated her family for caging her up like a bird, forcing her to be someones she's not.
In a poor, industrial country where parents throw away their children for food, knowledge is power. That power is magic. A slum boy and his friend, scrawny like a bundle of twigs, are in an orphanage. The bullies make them eat mud every day and they beat them bloody. They tore out the slum boy's left eye and killed his friend. He ended up learning, and learn he did.
In the desert as wide as the ocean prosperous towns spring up here and there where the water glitters and date palms sway. Houses made of orange mud bricks all decorated colourful and bright stand draped in silks and precious fabrics that shimmer with every breath. Here, you're not a real magician unless you've had an adventure regardless of your power.
In another country of cold, white stone, faith is purity and justice. Magic is only for the unclean; the Untouchables. They're really just afraid of things they don't understand. A vengeful, wounded ghost seeks help from a young boy who is an alchemist's slave.
Winter Wasteland
Here, snow blankets the land and the trees are all black with death--strangled by the frost. Here, the sun doesn't smile. The night is eternal. The moon is nothing but an empty shell and the stars don't sparkle like ours. They're dull and faint, like stale bread crumbs scattered across the sky.
Fire is a rare gift, but make sure to panic if you see that friendly, warm, yellow light. For dwarves have resorted to cannibalism and they're not the only ones. Everybody wants to live.
It's so cold that you can't even feel your hands. Oh, that's right. You don't have hands any more. You had to get mechanical ones because yours froze and broke off years ago.
Tower
Welcome to the afterlife. There are many strict rules here that you find out as you go along, but beware. If you break them you die. Rather unpleasantly in fact. This is because the number rule is that you can't die again, and if you do you're very, very naughty. There are many doors in the tower, behind each is a world to explore. Try as hard as you want, there's no escaping this tower or its worlds. Sucks to be you.
Snake Worlds
It's okay if you get eaten by a snake, because there's a strange world inside every snake. Inside every snake world is also an exit snake. Just gotta get the exit snake to eat you without knowing so you can get back out to your world.
And that's all four worlds. Winter Wasteland we all agree is the best one for us and we want to incorporate the industrial aspect of that really poor country in World of Magicians.
Notice that in all of these little blurbs the tone is rather dark. Ben said that it wouldn't be suitable for younger kids and he wants something that people of all ages can enjoy. Basically a game for everyone. I disagree with him though. If you try to make a game that actively tries to please absolutely everyone it's impossible. You end up with a mediocre game that has a bit of everything in it but none of the aspects and faces are good. They're not bad, but they're not good either. I think it would be better to focus on the story and what this story is all about rather than worry about the audience for now. Personally, I think children can appreciate scary, or dark stories. Why else would you find anthologies of scary folk tales for children?
We all have different ideas on how this game should be and that's really frustrating me because we're all thinking in different directions. It's hard to agree on one thing when we all want different things. It frustrates me and it worries me when that happens and it's putting me on edge because decisions haven't been made yet.
Last night I wrote up some possible settings that might work for a game. Showed it to the group to see which ones they like. All of the settings come from my dreams, which are pretty crazy most of the time.
There are four worlds that are suitable for a game and might be interesting to think about. They are: World of Magicians, Winter Wasteland, Tower, and Snake Worlds.
World of Magicians
In this world magic is relatively common and very real. The only difference is how people treat it in different cultures.
On the fringes of a relatively wealthy continent is a small town. Here, being a magician is an honour and using it to benefit society is nearly an absolute responsibility. Families and people with magic here have a strong sense of noblesse oblige. However, one witch hated her family for caging her up like a bird, forcing her to be someones she's not.
In a poor, industrial country where parents throw away their children for food, knowledge is power. That power is magic. A slum boy and his friend, scrawny like a bundle of twigs, are in an orphanage. The bullies make them eat mud every day and they beat them bloody. They tore out the slum boy's left eye and killed his friend. He ended up learning, and learn he did.
In the desert as wide as the ocean prosperous towns spring up here and there where the water glitters and date palms sway. Houses made of orange mud bricks all decorated colourful and bright stand draped in silks and precious fabrics that shimmer with every breath. Here, you're not a real magician unless you've had an adventure regardless of your power.
In another country of cold, white stone, faith is purity and justice. Magic is only for the unclean; the Untouchables. They're really just afraid of things they don't understand. A vengeful, wounded ghost seeks help from a young boy who is an alchemist's slave.
Winter Wasteland
Here, snow blankets the land and the trees are all black with death--strangled by the frost. Here, the sun doesn't smile. The night is eternal. The moon is nothing but an empty shell and the stars don't sparkle like ours. They're dull and faint, like stale bread crumbs scattered across the sky.
Fire is a rare gift, but make sure to panic if you see that friendly, warm, yellow light. For dwarves have resorted to cannibalism and they're not the only ones. Everybody wants to live.
It's so cold that you can't even feel your hands. Oh, that's right. You don't have hands any more. You had to get mechanical ones because yours froze and broke off years ago.
Tower
Welcome to the afterlife. There are many strict rules here that you find out as you go along, but beware. If you break them you die. Rather unpleasantly in fact. This is because the number rule is that you can't die again, and if you do you're very, very naughty. There are many doors in the tower, behind each is a world to explore. Try as hard as you want, there's no escaping this tower or its worlds. Sucks to be you.
Snake Worlds
It's okay if you get eaten by a snake, because there's a strange world inside every snake. Inside every snake world is also an exit snake. Just gotta get the exit snake to eat you without knowing so you can get back out to your world.
And that's all four worlds. Winter Wasteland we all agree is the best one for us and we want to incorporate the industrial aspect of that really poor country in World of Magicians.
Notice that in all of these little blurbs the tone is rather dark. Ben said that it wouldn't be suitable for younger kids and he wants something that people of all ages can enjoy. Basically a game for everyone. I disagree with him though. If you try to make a game that actively tries to please absolutely everyone it's impossible. You end up with a mediocre game that has a bit of everything in it but none of the aspects and faces are good. They're not bad, but they're not good either. I think it would be better to focus on the story and what this story is all about rather than worry about the audience for now. Personally, I think children can appreciate scary, or dark stories. Why else would you find anthologies of scary folk tales for children?
We all have different ideas on how this game should be and that's really frustrating me because we're all thinking in different directions. It's hard to agree on one thing when we all want different things. It frustrates me and it worries me when that happens and it's putting me on edge because decisions haven't been made yet.
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