27th December, 2009
Here is an update on some bits and pieces I have been doing since starting my new job way back in October now.
Misty winter morning steps to work.
Arrival of the massive box for my new PC.
Because there was a video on YouTube of the PC game Witcher’s strange monkey creature, or Mamune which has subsequently been removed I decided to record my own and upload it.
20th February, 2009
This pretty much marks the completion of the first ‘whole year’ module with the playtest of the game. I took some photos of our game being played along with some others of neighbouring demos:
The Sony TV:
12th February, 2009
A video of us testing the game for the first time after setting up the arcade controller. It should be explained that we were experimenting with some of the powers, and how they might be best used in real levels, resulting in some pretty hilarious attacks and counter-attacks (that’s half way to game success already surely?):
Powers available: The map rotator, the control inverter and blindness.
Also a shot of the arcade controller we would be using:
10th February, 2009
Having finished linking animations to actual realtime world movement I thought it was time for another screenshot since the game is really coming together. Here you can observe a character jumping down from a height while the blocks get revealed by the map movement mid-transition.
Also below are a couple of power up objects.
9th February, 2009
I spent a huge amount of time over the weekend attempting to build a ‘rotateWorld’ function that animates the flipping of the world on its head, while inverting all the controls, collisions and gravity etc. to cope with being upsidedown!
Meanwhile however here are some additional collectible/buttons/mechanics icons for the game:
In order: Blank, Gravity, Vision, Random Teleports, Jump Strength and World Flip.
3rd February, 2009
That’s right, busy writing a game engine and considering level designs as I add functionality to what the game should be able to do. Additionally, I’m adding towards my dissertation full draft. Hence there hasn’t been much in the way of blog posts lately.
Here is the game with both players fully functional and able to move around the same map independantly:
The latest demo of the game can be seen here: http://www.srjm.co.uk/i-dat/idat310/
15th January, 2009
Here are some vector-y building blocks for the platform game, the requirement was shiny and glowing colour:
29th November, 2008
Friday saw possibly the first final deadline for a piece of work this year, the Design for Entertainment Systems game critique. Entitled ‘A Critique of Dungeon Keeper: The Subterranean World’ it explores the techniques behind the immersive world created by Bullfrog’s original Dungeon Keeper.
Dungeon Keeper was released in 1997 by Peter Molyneux’s Bullfrog Productions and was quickly succeeded by a Deeper Dungeons expansion and more importantly a Gold Edition that featured all of the combined previous efforts and a map editor that with a little bit of work could be installed and used to build your own levels. For me it was one of the most engaging of the early PC games owing to a number of reasons, teaching me quite a few things about how to structure a successfully enthralling Real Time Strategy game, as well as having a few quirky concepts that I have yet to see repeated since. But most of all it showed me what I look for in a game that I truly enjoy and hence influenced my own ideas for designs.
This essay intends to discuss how the game created a unique and immersive game world which translated into many, many hours of play from what was really a rather limited tile set with unassuming objectives.
Extra Stuff (Click to find out more!)