Artist Influences

Where did it begin? What was the game which caused me to wonder about the opportunities, to let me explore another world?
The game which sparked the fuse was the PC version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published by EA and developed by KnowWonder, it was this game which as a young boy left a profound impact on me.

While if looking at it now from an critical point of view as an adult it would be very easy to scoff at such a game. However to the child me it fully immersed me in the world.

Due to the mechanics of the game, I was more than happy to spend hours casting spells at walls, hoping to find a secret passageway, the thrill of actually finding them was incredible, the developers rewarded the player for searching every inch of the Hogwarts they developed.

Despite being a tie-in game, they nailed giving the world its own spin, with the lighting and music adding a whole new magical and mysterious feel to the world which even the movies failed to capture.
From early on the in the game Harry randomly says out-loud, “Wow, look at the stars”, if the player looks up they're greeted with a bountiful night sky which I am sure most players didn't bother to see.

The sense of atmosphere and exploration from that game still inspire me today.

However of course as I have grown, I have fallen in love with many other games.
The one thing I am drawn to above all else is atmosphere, it's one of the key reasons why I personally hold Morrowind as the best of the Elder Scrolls series, from the distant moans of the walkers, the mushroom trees, abstract architecture, strange NPCs, hauntingly calming soundtrack and original beasts, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind captured a sense of wondering a strange land perfectly. While I have a soft spot for Oblivion and I enjoy Skyrim, I always felt that those two played it too safe when it comes to fantasy, it all has a sense of 'been there, done that'.

While there's many complaints to be had about World of Warcraft, the one thing I can ever criticise it for is the world itself. While there's stuff you've seen before, it has an unmistakable sense of charm to it.
Sure the forest in the human starting area is the same as a million other forests in gaming, but the soft light through the tress along with that iconic music gives it a sense which other forests lack.
If there's one thing Blizzard nailed, it's giving their zones a feeling of wonder (which makes me annoyed that the view-distance in the game is quite low in my opinion).

The character Li Li Stormstout described a sense of 'Wanderlust' with exploring Azeroth and I get where she's coming from, even with the repetive nature of the game, the environment are so interesting I almost don't even care sometimes.

But it's not just fantasy which can nail this, the cyberpunk MMO The Matrix Online, which was based on the Matrix films had captured a beautiful depression. The city is grim, it's often dark, it's gritty, yet it feels so inviting. Once again music plays a massive role in this, however the game was seeping with personality, to this day it remains my favourite MMO.

However when it comes to an original world, very few can beat Asheron's Call, an MMO which is 15 years old. It's dated both visually and mechanically, however it has aged gracefully for the most part, like a fine wine.
It isn't easy to play due to it being one of the earliest 3D online games, however once you get over the clunky controls, you'll witness what was at the time the largest open world in gaming. Even to this very day Asheron's Call boasts a world larger than most, where you can run from one side to the other without a loading screen (it uses progressive loading, something Vanguard: Saga of Heroes tried and used), you can walk into every building and dungeon without needing to load up a new instance, the windows are real windows, not just a texture.
It's quest system demands your attention, there's no mindless questing in this game.
It's a world which even with it's blocky graphics, you can truly get immersed in.
Interesting enough the game doesn't have any real music in the game, this was apparently a technical r, however it does have sound effects from taverns of laughing, crickets chirping, water flowing and the like.
With the only sounds being that of the ambiance, it gives a sense of loneliness which I think further enhances the world and gives a pure experience of adventure.

But to move in an entirely different direction, Halo is to me the quintessential FPS, the golden standard of which all else will be judged.
Everything is interesting, from the campaign missions to the mutiplayer maps, everything is full of love and care.
I used to just load up a custom game with just myself and slowly walk around the level looking at all the rocks, rivers, tress, buildings and the world beyond the boundaries. There's something peaceful about just standing still on Highground looking out towards the lake, satellite in the distance.

Sonic has always been a series which has interested me, even the terrible games I find some kind of pleasure from the world design.
Colour beyond measure, is SEGA's greatest pleasure.

Despite what could be easily ignored, the interaction between characters also helps build a sense that Mobius really is a living place, not just a stitched together video game land.

The brother like relationship between Sonic and Tails has endured through Sonic's many iterations, styles, genres and even mediums.
I take it as a fantastic example of how to correctly create a bond between characters, one which is believable and heart-warming. In an age where characters have as much emotion as a cardboard cut-out, having the uneasy alliance of Knuckles, one-sided love of Amy, tyrannical madness of Eggman and genuinecare of Tails all helps build Sonic up as a protagonist who feels like he really is fighting for something.

Artwork by Rowseroopa

Tetris, simple, yet addictive. Basic, yet compelling.
Tetris proves that you don't have to have amazing graphics, story, world or character in order to make a beloved game.
It's all about it's mechanics, the quest to make a line. While the iconic tune helps, fact is Tetris is fun even on mute.
I think there's something importance to be leant from Tetris, that at the end of the day, mechanics can easily trump all the aesthetics in the world.

Thomas Was Alone, a game about cubes. The game has less textures than Tetris, yet it's one the emotionally invested journeys I had ever been on in a game.
Thanks to the bed-side story like narration from Danny Wallace and excellent score by David Housden, it's game where you swap between different coloured cubes (with a mechanic unique to them), in order to complete puzzles and progress in the game.
They're AI, who are travelling a mainframe and who desires only basic human wants.
Friendship, Knowledge, Love. The fact that coloured cubes are able to become legitimately more interesting characters than characters with thousands of polygons I think proves that a masterful story can really thrive over big-budget gloss anyday.
If you haven't played Thomas Was Alone, I highly recommend it.

These are just some of the many games which influence how I view and think about video games as an art form.

Perspective

Camera perspective is very important for games, as it's the view of which you play the game.
Different styles can be found.

Today I will talk about 2D, 3D, Isometric, Top Down.

2D games are often seen from an side-on, such as the classic Mario or Sonic view.

2D games can be layered but as the camera is on the side, it all seems as one, this can be found in UbiArt games like Valiant Hearts: The Great War.

Isometric is different to top down as it is on a more diagonal angle rather than a straight angle.
The classic isometric view can be found in Diablo, however it can be found in other games like Bastion.

3D games can be from the first person or the third, Halo is a first person game, Alice: Madness Returns is a third person game.

Top down views can be seen in classic JPRG overworld sections like Pokemon games and shooters like Galaxian.

Different perspectives are often considered better for some genres than otheres, for example making a side-scrolling RTS isn't as effective as the isometric style.
Or Skyrim as an isometric game wouldn't be the same as it is in its current 3D form.

Modular Hallway

I have never used Maya before in my life or any real kind of 3D software (I opened up Blender once and got overwhelmed), however it's something which is important to know, so I gave a crack at creating a modular hallway.

Firstly a wall texture, using PhotoShop I got a concrete base and added pink to it to make a wall, here's what it looks like.

So I figured I needed a plan, so using trusty pen and paper I planned out what I needed to create.

So then using Maya I started creating, I made cubes and using the face tool I cut out faces.
Placing textures on took a bit of work trying to figure out, however thanks to online tutorials I managed to place the textures and adjust them to fit perfectly.

This was my progress.

I never did around to making stairs, however I think the process is making a ramp then making cuts in the ramp or something to that effect.

User Interface

User Interfacing could arguably seen as one of the most important things to get right, regardless of the quality of the game, if the player cannot see where they stand or have no clue of their abilities, then it could all be void.

I believe it was John Bain (better known as TotalBiscuit) who commented that even the highest quality of titles could be ruined by a poorly made inference, this can be either be the way it looks from an aesthetic standpoint, how it displays its information, its layout and of course how well it works.

As games become more complicated, the need for a better user interface grows.

Of course the classic interface was perfect for the time, which is a lives meter and maybe how many coins you’ve picked up.

Interfaces for the most part are detached from the world, as in meaning while you the player can see them, the character in the world would never see it.

This might seem obvious in a case like World of Warcraft or Dragon age where there’s mini-maps, icons, bars and the sort which naturally the character would never be able to see.

However that’s not to say it can’t be done otherwise, Halo can easily do this.
As every single player able character in Halo (with the exception of the Elite’s, but let us pretend they don’t exist for a moment) is wearing a helmet with the HUD inside.
Meaning that the player is getting all the information they need (ammo, health, mini-map, objectives, ect.), but at the same time this is also what the character is seeing. In this case, you can truly pretend to be the Master Chief or random online Spartan as you’re sharing the same sight.

Be one with the Chief.

But that isn’t the only way, a rather ingenious interface can be found as part of EA's 'survival horror' series Dead Space, a third person game where the backpack of the character is actually the health meter, what makes this fantastic is that this is part of the world of the game.
While maybe Isaac himself might not be able to see it, if say somebody else was standing behind him, then that person would be able to see Isaac’s health.

Image produced by Gamasutra 

But of course there’s many times when this doesn’t work, for example MMO’s are by their nature almost inevitably going to be awash with flashing icons, meters, lists and all the like, although that doesn’t mean that more can be done to clean it up.
I personally think the now defunct Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning’s UI, while still following the classic MMO standard popularised by WoW (which itself at the time was considered revolutionary for making the UI more slim-line in comparison to previous MMOs, such as Asheron's Call), did a much nicer job due to not just making the UI more visually pleasing, but condensing the information down into more manageable chunks.

There's a reason why EVE has been called a "Spread Sheet Simulator", UI is one of them.

The key to a good User Interface ultimately is that player shouldn't need to think about it too much, they shouldn't have to be digging around to find the information they need.
That at a glance they can tell what it is they need to know, maybe the bitter-sweet truth of a good UI is, that it isn't even noticed at all.


RESEARCH AND DEAD SPACE IMAGE FOUND AT GAMASUTRA ->
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4286/game_ui_discoveries_what_players_.php?print=1 

2D Artwork in games

2D Artwork in games has for a long time been as staple of the medium.
From the pixel based graphics to the current more detailed artworks, there has always been a place for side-scrolling based environment, more so than a long time in this current digital age.

So with my idle hands cast aside,  I tried giving it a shot myself.
My first attempt used PhotoShop, I was going for a 'forest at night' vibe, so here it is.

Basic sky, more a test of how things would pan out, I tried having a stump in the middle of the frame to be a reference point for all three of my attempts.
I fade the trees to try and give a sense of depth.

For my next attempt I used the program Paint.Net

With more colour, added moon and trees it looks better. Although I faced the problem of you can see through a layer of tress into the next layer of trees.
Also the greens are a bit stark and not appealing at all, they're almost painful on the eyes.

My final attempt was also using Paint.net

 In this one I added better lighting from the moon with the stump being moved back.
The colours have been dulled, which not only is more pleasing on the eyes, but also better conveys the darkness required for a night-based scene.

For a scale reference of how it would with a character, I decided to threw in a stock vector (of which I take no credit for producing*) just for curiosity.

With a character now in place, it makes the forest come to life a bit more, giving a better sense of depth in my opinion than if there was no character in the scene at all.

However naturally due to copyright reasons I can't use Rainbow Dash in my game, however her height is roughly the height I wish to use for the original character which  I am  currently working on creating, but I will talk about that in more detail another time.


What I consider to be a shining recent example of 2D game envrionments is from Ubisoft's World War 1 game Valiant Hearts: The Great War, let me show you what I mean.

Here are three night time examples taken directly from the game.

Looking at these masterpieces makes me re-consider my choice of putting trees in the foreground.
The Paris example shows a great use of fading in the distance and the crash-site shows a wonderful example of scale to show how large something (in this case a Zeppelin) is in comparison to the character.


CREDITS:
Rainbow Dash Vector: Made by Scrimpeh, copyright Hasbro.
Valiant Hearts: The Great war. Copyright Ubisoft.

#3 Further concepts

I have been thinking more about how things are going to work.

I've decided that the game should have a third person camera behind the player which follows them.
However I am undecided if you can control the camera movement with the cursor in the middle, or if you can just move the cursor with a fixed camera.

The HUD should be pretty basic with only the score and time on it.

As for secondary mechanics, I like the idea of the rip. Basically once randomly activated it will scatter the victims in its range. The idea of this is to keep the player on their toes and to increase the difficulty, the rips will only last a few seconds, but it should be enough to discombobulate the players.

Text is cut off to side, but the diagram to show the basic idea of how it will.
It's modeled off how rips work in real life.

 When the mechanics is done in the game, I am thinking of having a game over screen of sorts.
But knowing my horrible skill of programming, sadly I don't think I will reach that stage.

Loading screen or gameover screen idea. Number could change based on how many times you fail.

#2 Concept

This post was originally written on the 28th of February, I have since been lazy with my blog.
I had thought I had posted it, however it was in my drafts. Sorry.

Sorry for the delay of my blog post.
My weekend was spent in the Sunshine State for a convention, of course by Sunshine State I mean cyclones, rain, wind and no sun just grey skies.

Still it gave me time to think about on my 3D game.

Basically my idea is that you play a lifeguard who needs to save people, by saving you just throw life-rings at the victims, so basically a shooting mechanics.
The victims randomly appear in an area for you to save, they’ll be up for about 3 – 5 seconds before disappearing (drowning), you could think of it as a reverse whack-a-mole.

The dot is the player, red line is the track they can move along, blue line is the vision and the red doted area is where the action will take place.
I think the map should have a cliff to one side and water on the other in order to save building unneeded environments, but keep the setting believable.

The increase in difficulty will come in the form of more people showing up, also random events including rip-tides or sharks.
Rip-tides move the victims around, making them harder to hit.
Sharks are like an instant death, you’ll be able to see their fins.

My initial concept.

Doodle of what a main menu could look like
(I have the  idea of being able to pick between male/female,
although I am not sure if that will honestly be feeble).