Only 4 Days?
Hello good people, it has now been only four days since the launch of this website and I'm proud to be able to report that our ideas are prepped and ready for takeoff thanks to the hard work of every person in this team. For this post I just want to show off a little of the stuff that we've come up with since the last time I posted including some new art, concepts for our gameplay and enemies, and even some scrapped ideas that we've since moved on from.
Storyboards
Our assignment for this week was to present our current ideas including characters, enemies, and environments for which our games will take place. Below is a storyboard that we did on our (now) weekly Tuesday meetings for the introduction to our game. We plan on doing a small intro to our game that starts off with two characters. Our characters are companion spirits of the land wandering about to accomplish _____. While cleaning out this grove, a giant tar spirit comes out and surprises them, devouring one of the spirits! It sacrificed itself, but transferred its energy into its scarf before it was eaten. Our character cherishes the last belonging of its devoured companion only to find out that its sentient and points at it to the dangers ahead, urging our protagonist to press on and finish up the job.
Yesterday we also managed to come up with a storyboard for our tutorial, which follows directly after the intro. From here the player will be introduced to character movement and camera movement using right and left analog sticks and will progress through the environment learning new mechanics that will later stick throughout the game. The second panel isn't an actual "choose one" type of functionality, rather it's just for storyboarding clarity. In fact, we deliberately intend for the player to be misguided and learn the hard way that tar is toxic to the land and therefore toxic to our protagonist, who's a spirit of the land. As a refresher I've included the picture of our main character who's holding a sash, and the main functionality as we see it is that the sash is more of a giant hand that will be used for utility in platforming, and also as a means of bashing in those tar spirit baddies. You'll be able to interact with the environment through latching and swinging through the world, jumping as a means for vertical progression, and even guarding from enemy attacks.
More Concept Art
Below we have some samples of the tar spirit enemies drawn up by Shayne Hayama(top) and more drawings from Joel Shibata(bottom). We want these things to be as icky and gooey and grimy to look as much as you'd imagine them to feel.
One of our other ACM students, Noah Domingo, created a sample model of our character based on some T-Pose drawings that Joel gave him. Took him a while to do and we're very appreciative of that.
Some of Our Old Ideas
When I first pitched my game, it was almost a completely different idea from what it is now, but that's not even a bad thing in my eyes. In fact, I love what it's become because it's just full of so many better ideas and all the shortcomings that I had alone have been filled in with the innovations of the people in this team. Joel's critique is very objective and has opened me to see all the flaws, Lucas has great ideas which I look forward to seeing more of, Noah is a hard worker with a charismatic desire to learn, and Shayne puts out a lot of work and is an amicable personality, great for working with in a team.
Without explaining everything, my first idea on a dungeon for my original idea was to have a force of enemies under the main villain that were in charge of excavating the land and draining its resources that way. Spoiler alert, my drawing is on the right. The face branded on his lower body is of the face of the main villain. Joel took it a step further and reimagined my pitiful MinerBot showing his grit and creativity.
More recently I was trying to think up more tar-themed enemies and a new area for our player and I had an idea but ultimately we decided that we just didn't have enough time to implement it. The idea was that we have Bee Tar Spirit enemies that built up a giant hive way up and generated tar as instead of honey. The reason why they were up there and making more tar to begin with was to make more enemies and also burn it in a giant furnace in order to create smog and plague the air while the forces below ruined the land.
Gameplay Idea
Lucas thought up this idea as a fighting mechanic for our game which could also potentially be used to solve puzzles. He imagined the player being able to do an attack that would allow the player to take control of a reticle that slams down the player's giant spirit hand and crushes any enemies in the damage zone. The other idea that he brought up yesterday in our meeting was that it doesn't even necessarily have to be coming down from above. On the contrary it could also be used to come up from below at a target area and lift things up in the cases that you cant jump or latch up to a platform. Below is a short clip of a demonstration that he made to bring to yesterday's meeting. It definitely has potential and I can't wait to refine it and see what else we can do with it and the rest of his ideas.
TILL NEXT TIME!
I don't know if any of you actually read these things all the way through, but I look forward to continue writing these blog entries and sharing the progress that we make. I'm proud of the work that this team is putting in and I'm shocked at the amount of things I'm learning from them outside of reading Unity's scripting API for all the things I don't know. Working with them thus far has been a pleasure and it's been fun. Cheers to a good long run!