Tuesday 25 May 2010

"Haha check this out, Marco" ...... "Polo"

This is indeed true, well for inspiration. After researching into various different explorers just briefly looking at Coloumbus, Francis Drake and Marco Polo, just to see how they record the information on new places. It was looking into Polo however I recieved most information on this. He would describe places in such great detail it was like reading a piece of creative prose, which, is something I can hopefully get across in my Journal Exerpt, so writing that over he past day or so was particularly fun. I do think I could have made it a little longer though but again it was the short and sweet approach.

I have also nearly finished off the gem location area for the forest location which then progresses into the dragon's graveyard which is looking pretty good so far.

Thursday 20 May 2010

Title, title ... um, not yet.

Okay so the design bible title isn't really anywhere in sight yet, so I've been on with the show on the main stage, centre light.

Creating the characters for this game idea is quite an interesting aspect because I need to create quite a diverse cast of characters to keep possible gamers interested. So I have written the character intro's in prose first, to make them feel like better more real characters to possible gamers. I feel I have done a good job in doing so for Elita, the heroine, and since she was the main character I have given her a lot of my time this past week in order for her to look and feel like a good character when played. I also feel I have done this well for Braxen, Elita's companion, whom also I gave great attention to.





I have also written back story for the heros introduction into this game, up until Elita travels to the new world. I was going to write the whole story presis, but because I'd be explaining the story it would take far too long and be at least 25 pages in length, even in basic detail. So I opted for a short and sweet approach, because if I were to present this to a game design studio, they would only be interested in something quite short, not wanting to really read more than 2 pages.

This week I have also started to draw up locations for the first of the gem locations, the heart of where it all begins. This gemstone resides in a graveyard of the the Great 5 which I will write an exerpt (like a cut-scene) later on, when I figure out the floor pla


Wednesday 12 May 2010

Secrets of.... something, I'll come back to a title later

So there's now been plenty of time for me to think of the story line, and work that I will do, so; here's my brief (reviewed): To create a design bible for a fantasy/ action and adventure
game that concentrates heavily upon story, based on the idea of 'great' games today
that are the bestsellers; having a compelling and oftentimes intrinsic storyline, solely
concentrating upon the single-player side.

From this I made a plan, which I hope to stick to for the right time-management. I've created quick rough sketches of different maps while researching the maps of Earth and how it was formed and where certain places occur (for example volcanoes, mountains, forests etc etc. From here I created a rough map of the world that our hero would traverese and become to know well, and then made the final map:



As for working out the storyline I wanted it to be something original and new, so I read
the presis of many good fantasy books to get a good grip of where I wanted to go with
the story. After many long hours I managed to create a rough plan about 2 pages long. I then sat with this plan and let it mellow in my mind while I poured over various concept art images across the internet. But this wasn't really helping me get more ideas for my story because they are images someone else has created with different feelings behind them and they're distilled real-life images. So I then looked at beautiful settings all over the world and created image-boards for the settings that would occur in my world:









After doing this I had so many more ideas for reaching the certain artifacts which I worked out to be the Gemstones of the Great 5 (5 Dragons that ruled the realm eons ago.) From this I created image boards of where the 5 gemstones would be found. I also used the map to plan out the various locations so that I could fit these stunning places in the world in:








Below is my location map for where the gemstones would reside:

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Back to the ... Beginning?

Yes, yes indeed it looks like it may be that way! So I've been home for the extended weekend, a nice one of which concerns banks having a holiday, isn't that great. Surely the world would break down if every single bank had a day off? Maybe that's what went wrong with the so-called economic crisis, managers gave themselves a raise and CEO's a huge bonus and had a day off. Nevermind that rubbish though, on with the show.

So this extened weekend, I've had time to mellow over my final idea, looking to see if there's anything else I would enjoy working on or instead of. I started doodling in my small sketchbook and suddenly thought of an idea I already had: a story. It was only a few sentences and a bit of runic research but it was enough to spur me onto a big thought process. I spent these days just going over other story ideas and what twists I could link into my story. Below are some images of my sketches during the weekend and also some story sketchwork (I don't want to give too much away):









This image below is the start of my sketchbook, what's written here is the ancient runes that will be translated into the now-in-use language of that world (when I figure it out) and then translated into English.