PHOTOGRAPHS

This is going to be a three part post in which I will first post photographs I have taken from each city, then I will use the final post to address my favorites from each city, and how I'm going to use this to help me.

MANCHESTER 
(Please ignore the photographs that haven't been rotated, I did change them but blogger wouldn't let me use them once rotated D:)

Here they are, I had to take them on my phone, since my camera is playing up again!
I think the vents and the long streets full of odd pipes and fire escapes was the most interesting stuff I found, but all of them will become useful at some point! Taking these helped my try to attempt to piece what the environment would like to me,and I have decided that buildings with similar structure design will create a move believable environment. I shall have the Liverpool photographs ready on Wednesday, and hopefully they will help me with my idea. I think the idea of having one huge focal point within the level will help with navigation and this could possibly be the main objective to reach said focal point. One place that is a huge focal point in Manchester is Beetham Tower!

 For me this building has always been a point in which I realize I'm by Manchester and is viewable from a range of different points within the city. If I use Manchester as my point of choice a new take on this would be interesting.

MANCHESTER

New project, away from Spin Doctor.
I'm deeply interested in how this small work will play out, and will hopefully show all of our abilities to work on our own. The title for this 'MANCHESTER' and this is partially my theme for architecture and structure of the world. I'll be looking into Liverpool for photograph materials, alongside my photographs from Manchester.


Overall Idea/Theme

I've recently been playing Dues Ex: Human Revolution and Half-Life 2. Both games I've never played before. I've been playing these because they are games that I've been putting off playing, and also I thought that playing these will help me with this project. Here are my first thoughts on playing both games.

Initial thoughts on Dues Ex: HR

I haven't really enjoyed the game-play of Dues Ex at all. The aiming is awkward, and some of the controller layout feels strange, this doesn't give the player a huge deal of freedom in how the game is going to be played out in my opinion. If the player goes with a straight forward attack plan, I found that I was dying countless times. After playing with this method I tried using stealth and this is where the game-play became interesting, and gave me a real chance to explore the levels. This worked greatly and I was then thoroughly enjoying my time with the game. After doing the first mission I then ventured into the streets, and was literally walking around for hours just exploring and listening to conversations that NPC's was having. I felt as though this was a fully functioning world, with people full of their own thoughts and views, this got me intrigued in the whole Augmentation conflicts and gave me my own thoughts and opinions on the matter.

The city also had a huge amount of stuff to explore and I found myself breaking into any apartment to just see if there was any interesting eBooks or a computer to hack. These small notes and e-mails I was discovering was helping me explore - by giving me interesting things to read, that had only a small impact on certain things within the world, but gave a new view or sometimes spoke of the ongoing conflicts that I was hearing throughout the city.

All of this was constantly rewarding and it didn't feel like a chore - in which some games such tasks do feel like this, such as Assassin's Creed, in which exploring the city was needed to help transverse, but it didn't give me such a feeling and enjoyment that I was having with HR.


Initial thoughts on Half-Life 2

I haven't spent as much time as I have with HR with HL2, and there isn't any reason for this.
HL2 is a much different game, and does some very similar things to do with HR. It gives the appearance of freedom, but I felt as though I couldn't just wander the streets and have the same enjoyment, I felt as though I had to move towards the vague objective that I had. This is very similar to some of Valves other games. In Portal 2 I felt like I was exploring these large and impressive environments, but I knew that I was moving in pretty much a straight forward path. There isn't any problems with this and it gives a much more straight forward experience.

One thing I loved about HL2 was the Citadel which was always in view, it is such an icon in that world. With it always being in view, it was used a place to look at to know where I was going.


Idea Time


After all of that I've finally chosen what I want to do with this project, and that it try and create a environment/level that will be full of interesting things for the player to do, but while trying to keep on a much smaller scale than both of the above games. I'm not entirely sure about the objectives/story for this yet, but I want to go in the direction of these and use the time spent with each game to my advantage and  try and push forward some of my own ideas.

I think the environment will have steam-punk themes, but I want this to feel more futuristic, but still keep to the themes and appearance of steam-punk. I'm not sure if I want this to be a totally different timeline to our own, or keep this based in Manchester and Liverpool with a whole new take on there locations and address some of the history of each city. Liverpool was a huge participant in the slave trade during when this was allowed, and maybe this would be used to help pick the theme and view of characters within this idea. 

Everyone Else.

I'm emailing Ben everyone's work in a folder with everyone's name on the work they have done. I'm also going to post on here who has done what.

• Jonny- HUB World Overview(all of that section), Art Direction, and the Level walkthroughs.
• Gina - Timeline, Story Extracts, Dr Reeves' Journal, Notes by Victims, Note by Ida, Methods of Kidnappings, Previous Victims, Collectibles and The Ending.
• Sam - Example Comic Frames, Puzzle's(Whole section), Music and Dialogue.
• Mark - Story Characters (Whole Section)
• Harry - UI section (And some of the art in the doc)
• Khal - Controls.

Also I done the small write up on the flow chart ;')

Actually.

Me and Jonny have been here all day, its been stressful.

JONNY EVEN HAD A NOSE BLEED!

Aha, it's been alright. We managed to get everything done with only a few minor hiccups.
We've shown Ben the GDD and he seemed happy with it.

But basically here is a run down of what I've done towards this and the GPD.

• Formatting of whole GDD.
• Writing up of: Story, Story Overview, Harland Shears(all of that section), Tool's of the Hero(all of that with added images from Harry!), and some small sections through-out the document.

For the GPD I  handed same a doc with what I had been asked to cover which was: Game Mechanics and I then covered about the items that Harland will find in world.
I've also done small bits of Art which I'm sure everyone has seen at some point.

HOLY SHIT.

We have fuckin' finished for Christmas!

Mine Concept.

Here is a small concept for the mine, trying to gauge on how it might look. Not the best work I've done. Just trying to build up my PS work.

Computers.

The computer in futureworks are awful. Just done 2 hours of modeling and finished my model! But the computers like to just stop working, and I've just lost all that work. There wasn't even the backup to continue from. :/
Apart from that I'm going to upload a bunch of stuff I've done in the next few posts. I won't be able to post much either, I don't have the internet right now.